Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Oh Mr Speaker it's not often that I have to disagree with my good friend and colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith but I'm going to. When he said in his general debate speech the words poor old David Clark" and that he was "put out on a stick by Labour"—I think Mr Goldsmith used those terms—well I would suggest that Dr Clark has put himself out on a stick with some of the most omnishambles behaviour that I have seen by a Minister. I would love to have been a fly on the wall after the post-Cabinet press conference on 24 April when the Prime Minister probably hauled him into his office after she was explaining away the firing of two Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB) members. She said "Of course board appointments do have to go through a particular process so I won't comment on that till it's complete." Only the process had been completed 12 days before and the Minister had not told her and had not told the public.That's just one example of the many many failures by this Minister. But the most overreach I would suggest is on the building issues at Middlemore Hospital. Now they are serious. But the Minister has completely overblown the issues and the best metaphor for that was this visual image of sewage pouring down the walls of the hospital and Louisa Wall in this House saying "Why did I not know?" Well the answer was: because there was nothing to know. The DHB itself came out and said that this terrible issue was cleaned up with half a bucket of water and it was four years ago. Yes they're serious but this is a thing that a Minister and his or her ministry has to deal with on a day-to-day basis. That is the job and it's a job that the previous Government did extremely well. It increased Vote Health by more than 40 percent; there was $5.5 billion more put into Vote Health.I do accept we would not win the "who's going to spend the most money in health" competition; Labour will always win that. But what the public want more than the amount of money that's going in is the number of services that's coming out and I'm very proud of the performance of the previous Government. With that money generous though it was to allow for population growth and inflation we also said "We need you to do a lot more with a little more." This is why elective surgeries went up from 110000 surgeries a year to 178000 surgeries a year; the immunisation rates for our young went from 67 percent to 93 percent—and even higher for young Māori and Pasifika; our cancer treatment waiting times were shortened to world's best standards; we no longer had gurneys in the waiting rooms; our emergency department waiting times went under six hours as the gold standard; and not a single cancer patient was flown to Australia.The Labour Government would say "Oh but you did all of that and you screwed down the district health boards." Well financially that is not borne out by the facts. The previous Clark Government's combined deficit in DHBs was over $600 million over the nine years.Hon Dr Nick Smith: How much?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It was $600 million—I think it was $607 million. Under the Key - English Government there were deficits but even without accounting for inflation and the increase in the vote it was $576 million—a much lower percentage on a per capita basis.So of course Labour will say "Oh well you really flogged the staff"—really flogged the staff—only that period marked the most benign industrial relations climate in the health sector in two generations. But what's the industrial relations climate like now? It's extremely restless. Why? Because the Minister in Opposition had talked up the expectations for massive pay increases for nurses for doctors for allied health professionals for midwives and he cannot deliver.There is no crisis in health; it is being manufactured. It's being talked up by a Government that promised big in Opposition because they didn't think they were going to get into Government. Well now they are and they have to honour those promises. And the shame of it is that the people who have to pay for those promises are the taxpayers and GP patients because the first thing that's gone the first major broken promise is that GP visit fee reductions will now not take place and that will be the legacy of this Government."