Coleman Jonathan: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building ProjectText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeColeman Jonathan: Urgent Debates — Health Ministry—Financial Management of Building Project[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9434. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Every time I hear Mr Little speak I am thoroughly reminded of why he could not win the New Plymouth electorate two elections in a row. I tell you there is one thing that unites the Labour caucus: it is the overriding feeling of boredom they get whenever they see their leader get up to speak. He was talking about arrogant and contemptuous—[Interruption] He was talking about arrogant and contemptuous—[Interruption]Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Calm down.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: He was talking about arrogant and contemptuous. What none of the Labour caucus could see was that right throughout that speech Phil Goff and David Cunliffe were talking between themselves in the back row because they have given up so much hope in Andrew Little they could not even be bothered listening to their leader speak.Hon Annette King: Behind you.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I have got a number of messages for Annette King actually but I tell you that if she is going to let that doofus take over her seat at the general election she is going to end up—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You heard what the member just said—a disgraceful comment about the Leader of the Opposition. If he cannot argue the issues he should not get to his feet at all.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The point is taken. The Minister will restrict himself to parliamentary language and terms of address.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well that was a very easy wind-up. You can see that Mrs King gets very het up very quickly. Look there are quite a few things that we just need to clarify about this whole situation and I can tell you that you can tell when Labour members are on the ropes because they will not listen.The first thing I would like to say is that if this is the biggest issue that Labour members have got to campaign on today I tell you they are in real trouble. It is very interesting that they do not want to be in here and talk about the funding of melanoma drugs because actually they have put themselves in a terrible position over that. They are compromised with their contacts with drug companies over that. It is very interesting that they do not want to talk about the economy because as they know they are losing on the economy so they try health. That is the strategy over there. But look you will really like this bit. You will really like this bit so just listen up. The Ministry of Health—[Interruption] Listen you will like this—[Interruption]Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Just to quote former Speaker Hunt interjections are to be rare and reasonable and hopefully witty. Just repeating the same line over and over and over again is not within the Standing Orders—[Interruption] No do not crank up the volume as my cousin would encourage you to do. Just see whether you can limit yourself to what is rare reasonable and hopefully witty.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Come on Mr Deputy Speaker. It is not all about you you know.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You cannot make comments like that. You will withdraw and apologise.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Now Labour—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You will withdraw and apologise.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I withdraw and apologise. Listen up—you will like this bit OK? Just listen to this: the Ministry of Health made a mistake. I will say it again: the Ministry of Health made a mistake right? So its financial governance in this matter—and it has admitted it—was not up to standard OK? It said that it could fund this move out of cash reserves and when it came down to it actually it was $18 million short. That was completely unacceptable and Chai Chuah has taken responsibility for that on behalf of the ministry. I have made it very clear to him that that cannot happen again.But you want to look at the wider context here. What this move is about is five large Government departments—the Ministry of Health the Ministry of Education the Ministry of Social Development Crown Law and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—moving into new premises. That is going to constrict the footprint by 30 percent over the next 20 years. It is going to cut costs by 20 percent and it is going to save $338 million so it was a very good decision to make—absolutely a great example of Better Public Services. There was a mistake in the financing of it but I can tell you that the wider story is very very good news.I can tell you that there are a few things that Mr Little said there that were completely incorrect and I am not surprised about that because the fact is that this is being funded out of departmental expenditure. So it is the back-office expenditure of the Ministry of Health and the very good news—[Interruption] Once again you can tell these guys do not want to hear because they know they are being delivered knock-out punches on this stuff. When they were in Government they were spending $230 million just on running the ministry not on delivering clinical services. Today that ministry costs $190 million to run. There used to be 1500 people there; there are now 1100 people. And guess what? They are producing better results all the time. So we are not in a situation like when Mrs King was the Minister of Health when she put in an extra $2 billion and produced—Hon Annette King: Oh dear oh dear oh dear.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —and I have got a folder for you here; the “King file”—2000 fewer operations. It was absolutely incredible. We were talking about first specialist assessments today. You know when Annette King was the Minister—when she started—they were doing 38000 specialist appointments in the Auckland District Health Board each year. When she had finished they were doing 7000 fewer. So how can you spend 6 years as the Minister of Health and deliver 7000 fewer appointments? But it was worse than that in other places—well actually not quite as bad; that was the worst. In Canterbury she ended up delivering 1800 fewer appointmentsover 6 years. And here in Wellington where she is an MP by the end of 6 years she was delivering almost 5000 fewer appointments.Hon Annette King: It’s only 11 years since I was the Minister—11 long years.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yes and I think what it shows is the dearth of talent on the Labour benches. What are those members going to do when Mrs King leaves? They are absolutely stuffed. They could not have the MP for Wigram there; she is not up to it. Kelvin Davis—a pretty good footballer but not much good for anything else. Iain Lees-Galloway—they are never going to have a King’s College old boy on the front bench; universally despised outside Parliament and inside Parliament outside the caucus and inside the caucus. So the cupboard is pretty bare over there. There might be a bit of hope for that guy from Dunedin North but remember he is the guy who wants to ban Google.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but he needs to remember—sit down while I am on my feet. Thank you Minister. He needs to remember that this is not a general debate. It is a specific debate—an urgent debate—and he needs to address it. If he has not got anything more to say about it he does not need to fill his whole 15 minutes.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Oh yes I have. I have got plenty to say because actually I am responding to the character assassination of the Minister of Finance and the scurrilous attacks on me by just pointing out a few things about those members’ pedigree. Andrew Little—[Interruption] Listen to this. Andrew Little was talking about Dunedin. He was talking about Dunedin and he was saying that the sick and the elderly would suffer there. He was saying that people would not get their operations there. Well that is absolutely untrue because actually the point is that this $24 million is money well spent. It is going to save money in the long term. It does not come out of the operational budget right? So it does not take one dollar away from patient services.Hon Trevor Mallard: Rubbish. The member doesn’t know how to run a budget.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: So actually anyone who is saying that—like Trevor Mallard the time-expired member for Lower Hutt—is wrong. They are wrong. And I can tell you that if Labour members did a bit more work—if they got around the sector if they did some reading if they produced some discussion documents—they might know some facts about the health sector because in actual fact we are delivering more and better services all the time. I know that Labour members read a few press releases. They would have been bitterly disappointed to see that over our time in Government we have produced an extra 110000 appointments per year. So it has gone from 430000 appointments per year to 540000 appointments a year.This was going to be Labour’s big knockout punch because those members were sure that when it came to GP referrals to specialists they were going to be able to say that it was absolutely terrible and that no one was getting their referrals. But do you know what the data shows? It shows that 90 percent of patients referred from a GP to a hospital specialist—in the 3 month period; of the first data released last year—got an appointment with a specialist. I know that that is very very disappointing to Government critics to the haters and wreckers of the health system and to Mrs King and the Labour Party but that is the fact. What is happening under this Government is that we are making more and more front-line services available to the public all the time.The other thing that I need to absolutely raise here is that Labour members keep on stating—and for the record it is completely untrue; it is incorrect—that $1.7 billion has been cut from the health budget. That is untrue and it is a lie. I do not know why they keep on saying it. It is completely untrue. In actual fact the health budget goes up every year. It went up by $400 million last year. It has gone up by $4 billion over our time in Government.So what was happening with Labour? It was increasing the spend like crazy. It was going up by 7 to 8 percent per year and I can tell you if we had continued on that spending track the Government would now be running the books at a massive deficit. So the question that Labour needs to actually answer is how it can promise to put more and more money into health and keep the books in balance. I can tell you Grant Robertson cannot do it. He absolutely cannot because it is impossible.The fact is that when Labour was in charge of the health system it put more and more money in and it delivered less and less. That is all those of you at home need to remember. When Labour is managing health it spends more and it produces less and I can remember that at North Shore Hospital. I would go there and there would be people waiting under the harsh fluorescent lights. There would be queues of ambulances in the car park and people were saying: “We’ve got to get National in because quite frankly we’ve had Annette King we’ve had Pete Hodgson we’ve had the disaster of David Cunliffe and we cannot bear to have the health system run by these people any longer.”The other thing I would like to say is that the health targets have been a massive success and I know Labour would concede that they have because when Labour was running the health system about 65 percent of our kids got immunised at the age of 8 months. Now it is 95 percent. It is absolutely incredible. Over Labour’s time in Government there were fewer elective surgeries delivered. We promised an uplift of 4000 per year and we have delivered an extra 50000 surgeries per annum since we came into Government an extra 110000 specialist appointments and 5500 more doctors and nurses in the system.Hon Annette King: One of his big porkies.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: You know when Annette King was the Minister of Health she was sending 800 people per year to Australia for basic cancer care—800 people. Do you know how many go now? Zero. So there is no question that people are getting better health-care under this Government. Annette King speaks about cover-ups. Well I will tell you what a cover-up is. It is sitting in the room when the decision is made to spend $800000 of taxpayer money on your election pledge card it is kicking 30000 people off wait-lists and it is sending people off to Australia for cancer care. So I think Mrs King has thoroughly proved the case for her incompetence. It is sad actually that she is blocking up the Rongotai electorate. I think she would be far better going off to local government but actually on reflection there is no one competent in the Labour Party—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Come back to the question.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —to take over the portfolio so they are probably better to leave her there for the moment. But when you come back to it we have put more front-line services there for New Zealanders. If these guys ever get into Government they will spend more and more they will produce less and less and do you know what? They will continue to go around the country misleading the public.Hon Annette King: You should be ashamed of this—Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: You know what Annette King said on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? She said that people would die. She said that the TPP would kill people. She said that it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and she has been proven wrong and now she is—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I require him to withdraw that. I have never said that TPP would kill people. That is a total lie.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is a matter for debate.Hon Annette King: Well it’s a lie.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is matter for debate.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Anyway while Annette King was saying that the TPP would kill people secretly she wants to vote for it and that is the big problem they have got. Apart from the hard-line left-wing Marxist Grant Robertson there are a whole lot of people who want to vote for it—just like David Shearer wants to vote for the flag. You know there is so much to debate in this Parliament that I am amazed that Labour is wasting Parliament’s time with an urgent debate—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will remind the Minister—Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —on a minor financial blip.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I remind the Minister again that this is not a general debate; it is an urgent debate on the question that was raised. The member should confine himself to that.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yes. Well going back to that question I can tell you that this move by the Ministry of Health into new premises is an excellent move. It will reduce costs by 20 percent it will reduce the footprint by 30 percent and it will save $338 million over 20 years. But I can tell you that Labour would not have a clue about how to do anything more efficiently and how to produce better services. And I can tell you that the constant commitment of this Government is to more front-line health services for New Zealanders. So that is more operations it is more cancer care it is more doctors and nurses and it is more immunisations. The bottom line is that only National can manage the books and produce better health services for New Zealanders and the public knows that.