Peters Winston: General Debates 
Peters Winston: General Debates 
[Volume:619;Page:14612] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Our country faces a cancer-treatment crisis and the answers to questions in the House today confirm it. Thousands of cancer patients will die needlessly over the next few years because the health system cannot provide enough early treatment for them. The problem is getting worse and here are the facts. Cancer is one of the biggest killers in this country; three out of every 10 deaths each year are from cancer. The number of cases per year will increase from 16000 now to 22000 by 2011 and 9000 of those people will die from cancer per year. Those are unacceptable facts. In New Zealand we have unacceptable delays in getting treatment. There are strategies and guidelines but they are meaningless and are bogged down in New Zealand’s bureaucracy. There is a dire lack of medical staff specialising in oncology there is a shortage of research funding and there are problems in acquiring drugs and equipment—in particular First World latest-technology drugs. Maori and Pacific Island women especially face serious disadvantages. 
The Minister of Health has spent the last 5 years blaming everyone else for the serious problems that face New Zealanders. She has called for more reports more responses more reviews and more working-parties than any other Minister of Health in the history of New Zealand. There is more paper more talk more hot air and more health management doublespeak from the Ministry of Health than from any other ministry but nothing is being done to solve the crisis that we face over the treatment of cancer patients. It seems that the Government’s solution is to send sick New Zealanders to Australia and that is a fact. As at 14 July this year 165 New Zealanders have already gone to Australia for treatment. The way that the Government sees to solve the cancer-treatment crisis is to buy a patient an airfare to Australia. Top cancer specialists are on record as warning the Government of this crisis. They say that services are piecemeal and that information is fragmented. The issue is simple: if cancer is detected and treated early many cancer patients will survive; if there are delays many of them will die unnecessarily. There are delays in radiotherapy and surgery. Those delays are costing lives and I ask the Government to do something about it. The Minister and her officials are playing Russian roulette with cancer patients. Thousands will die unless something is done and done now. 
We urge the Prime Minister to intervene in the health portfolio if she can drag herself away from being the “Minister of Political Correctness and Gender Bending”. She should take the health ministry by the scruff of the neck and shake some sense into it. Thousands are dying and they are dying unnecessarily. New Zealanders demand action to solve the cancer treatment crisis in this country which puts us at the very bottom in terms of competing with similar countries. A recent Commonwealth Fund report put us right at the very bottom in terms of cancer survival rates. An expert Chris Atkinson an associate professor at Christchurch Hospital said: “New Zealanders need to get very angry about a dismal failure to plan for the rocketing burden of cancer”. This man the clinical director of oncology at Christchurch Hospital said: “… with cancer forecast to jump by up to 50 percent by 2011 the lack of a coordinated approach to treatment was disturbing.” He also said: “We must get outraged. We can’t stand up in front of an international forum with this data and feel proud.” 
Today we heard the answers given by the Minister but the fact is that none of those answers can be squared with the facts and the opinion of experts. A recent article in the  
Listener 
 set out exactly how bad it is to get cancer in New Zealand. The  
Listener 
 article stated that people who get cancer in this country would be far better off if they lived overseas in Australia and worse it also states they would be better off if they were living in any other country but New Zealand. After 5 long years surely the Government must now accept responsibility for failing to keep experts here for failing to keep professionals properly employed here and for failing to bring in qualified people. When we have had 55000 immigrants a year how come we did not bring in some experts in this field? With 55000 immigrants coming into this country in some years why on earth did the Government not bring in somebody who knew what he or she was doing? 
Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister for Trade Negotiations) 
: 
 I want to use this opportunity to speak briefly about the adoption of a framework text by the World Trade Organization general council—a framework text to advance the Doha round development agenda. This is a very good outcome for New Zealand. Ten months ago at Cancun few would have predicted that the Doha round could have been put back together again so quickly; still fewer would have taken them seriously. What is remarkable is that what has been achieved is in fact a much better deal than was ever on the table at Cancun. The agricultural framework is at the heart of that. 
In terms of our own New Zealand contribution we have good reason to be satisfied. The outcomes reflect that. With Tim Groser in the chair of the agriculture committee we made remarkable progress and I pay tribute to his particular skills. He also chaired the relevant sessions of the “green room” and it was a remarkable display. Without him I do not believe the “green room” process would have been successful. I also pay tribute to our chief trade negotiator Crawford Falconer who was with me in the “green room” and is a man with a huge reputation amongst his peers as a professional trade negotiator around the world. There is no doubt about it; New Zealand has a truly world-class team in that role. The rest of our team based in Geneva is also of an extremely high calibre and the results that we obtained there reflect the investment that has been made in the quality of that trade negotiations team over many many years. 
Throughout the marathon “green room” process I was able to work with our friends to keep the prospect of a historic agricultural deal alive. We did play a key part in keeping the industrial tariff negotiations alive also when it looked as though they could collapse in the same way taking the whole deal with them as happened in Cancun with regard to the so-called Singapore issues. There is no doubt that New Zealand comes out of this process with an enhanced reputation as a committed multilateral player and a credible arbitrator of conflicting interests. 
The framework for agricultural market access is much better than that on the table in Cancun. Because it is a framework it is not the shape of the final deal. That will remain the most difficult part of the forthcoming negotiations. Getting the text on this aspect was the hardest part of putting the deal together last week. But it sets the basis to get the deal done. It gives us the key elements to improve our access to important markets. Whereas the text in Cancun left everything vague this framework spells out many of the elements that we wanted. At the top of the list is the historic commitment to eliminate export subsidies in agriculture. There will be long tough negotiations to set the date and the pace of their elimination. But for the first time in more than 50 years the debate will be about when and not about whether that will happen. 
The framework also sets the stage for big cuts in domestic subsidies. The rest of the negotiation will be about how far the cuts will go. But this framework will certainly help. It will help to put the pressure on and to keep it on. This was actually the key target of the large G20 developing countries.