King Annette: Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5870. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is a pleasure to speak in this Budget debate in its third reading but I do want to correct before I get into my speech the malicious fabrication from National members today. I want to tell them that Labour voted for the Support for Children in Hardship Bill; they keep saying we did not. So can we just put that on the record once and for all.I want to talk about the health budget for 2015-16. I am going to call it the big con job because we were proudly told by the Minister that this is the most money there has ever been in the health budget. Well if the Government had put $1 more in it would have been more than it was last year. The questions that have to be asked however are: was it what was expected is it what is needed and is it what was promised before the last election? I have to tell you that the answer to those three questions is no. It is not what was expected it is not what is needed and it is not what was promised. The district health boards got a $300 million increase; they asked for $320 million. They are now required to make $141 million in savings in this year—goodness knows where from. The Ministry of Health asked for $150 million. It got $74 million. It needs to make $30 million in savings this year. So what we have really got on the health budget is a lot of rhetoric and spin.If you do not believe what I have said about the Budget what have some other people said about it? Let us have a look at what the Salaried Medical Specialists said. For those who are listening and do not know who they are they are the specialists in our hospitals who do your operations and checks to make sure you can have an operation so they are pretty highly regarded. What did they say? They said: “The Government has failed yet again to use its Budget to invest in the health workforce …”. They said the Treasury figures that they have received show that total health spending as a proportion of GDP has gone down and is not keeping up with the cost or population growth.What did Phil Bagshaw a highly respected person who runs the charity hospital in Christchurch say? He said the Government’s good news announcements are more like smoke and mirrors and “that despite more operations there is a burgeoning backlog of unmet need in our health system.” He said: “It seems like the spin machine [is] going in to overdrive again. Well we’re all adults now we can cope with the truth.”We also wanted to know what this Government’s legacy has been in health since National became the Government almost 7 years ago. We knew that the Government would not believe any figures the Council of Trade Unions put out because Jonathan Coleman said that it is the political enemy—a funny thing to say about an organisation but that is what he said. So in fact we got Infometrics—of course National members believe Infometrics when it suits them—to have an independent look at the funding using Treasury’s own health figures. Infometrics looked at the core Crown expenditure. What did it see over four of the six Budgets of this Government? It found that there is $1.7 billion missing from the health budget since National became the Government. Four of the six Budgets have seen a cut. The Government has put in money for population growth but it has not put in money for cost. What the Minister did in this House only 3 weeks ago was admit that it has not kept up with inflation in the health budget. It has not put enough in to cover costs in the health budget.So what does that mean when it comes to health? Well the Minister needed to disguise pretty much what he was doing so he made big announcements. He put out 20 separate press releases last week about the number of operations that have been done since National became the Government. I am glad more operations are being done. As Phil Bagshaw said we need to do more. The population is ageing. We have more need. We have to be doing more. But what I did object to was the Minister using selective figures to make his case. He did not need to. He used 2007-08 figures and then compared them with 2014-15. The new members opposite may not know but the 2008-09 Budget was the Labour Government’s Budget. It was the Labour Government’s Budget of 2008-09 brought in by Michael Cullen. It was our appropriations—Labour’s appropriation for health—that followed in 2008-09 not the National Government’s.In 2008-09 there were 136194 operations carried out under Labour so what does the Minister do? He takes a figure from the 2007-08 year which was 115000 and then adds it up extrapolates it over a number of years and says: “Look how good am I?”. Well let us have some honesty in the figures. We got another lot of dishonesty today on figures in health. The Minister has put out a statement. We had the very good member Barbara Kuriger asking a question in the House today. What the member did not ask was how many people have not got a first specialist assessment—how many have not even got through the door to see the specialist and had in fact been sent back to their GP without an appointment?The Minister in this House when I asked questions about the Waitematā District Health Board about 4 weeks ago said that no such figures had ever been collected. That is what the Minister said. I was appalled that a Minister of Health does not know what figures are collected. Since 2010 the number of people being sent back from the specialist to their GP has been counted. I took the trouble of asking every single district health board how many they had sent back without an appointment. The Minister did not know and said that the figures have never been collected—he repeated it. So what do we find? In fact I have got only 15 district health boards that have replied in time but of those we find 140000 New Zealanders are not getting the specialist appointments that they need. They are being sent there by their GP and they are being sent back. They are being played ping-pong with as they go from their GP for an appointment that they never get and back to the GP who refers them back for another appointment.You needed only to see this tragic story on the Sunday news on Television One about Graham from Kaikohe who had been waiting for a specialist appointment at Whangarei Hospital. He could not get an appointment. He was told by Whangarei Hospital to try Kaitāia Hospital. So he tried Kaitāia Hospital. An appointment became available—he was going to have to wait yet another month after waiting almost 6 months for an appointment. He finally got an appointment only to be told that it was too late—he had terminal cancer. So it is all very well to crow about the number of people getting first specialist assessments when there are so many who are not.What do they get from the district health boards which are struggling to provide within 4 months what the Government wants? They get a letter like this—thousands of them sent out every week. The letter says: “You were recently assessed for surgery. The specialist recommends that you have surgery. However your current condition falls below the level at which we are able to give you surgery.”—it does not say that you do need it but it says that they are not able to give it to you—“You could benefit from it at a later date if we have the capacity.” The capacity goes back to the financial threshold that they are operating under.So when this Government crows about how great it is at health just have a look at the 2000 replies I have had to emails to people asking what is happening to them in the health sector and you will get an idea of what is happening to thousands of New Zealanders when they are one not getting a first specialist assessment and two when they do they are getting the letter saying that they would benefit from one—“You need one but we can’t do it for you.”Then you get headlines like this. This is not the Labour Party putting out these headlines; these are surgeons—surgeons there for service.Andrew Bayly: That’s the media.Hon ANNETTE KING: You can laugh at it Mr Bayly but this comes out of Dunedin. It comes from an ear nose and throat specialist. What does he say? He says that a quarter of ear nose and throat patients are being turned away from Dunedin Hospital. I have got many of those. If members want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it is all OK then that is all right by me because the public are certainly telling the Labour Party and they are certainly telling the Opposition that in the health sector there is a looming problem. You can call it doomsaying if you like. I believe the people because the people are not wrong. They know exactly what is happening.We now have a picture emerging of a health sector that has been denied enough money to cover its costs—admitted by the Minister himself—and out of that come the problems that occur. And whom do they occur for? They occur for the New Zealanders who are most in need of health services.