Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. As this is the first time that I've spoken in the House since the passing of our Queen I'd like to pay my tribute to her her 70 years of service to us as a Commonwealth: RIP my Queen.I just wanted to say we've heard some very interesting debates and backslapping from the Labour Party today but behind those glossy stories sits a reality that most of the people that we are talking to out there at the coalface of New Zealand are giving us and some of that stuff is not good news. One of the ones I'd like to start on is the health sector. Now for someone that comes from the West Coast I can tell you that we have shamefully enjoyed the highest rate of nursing vacancies in New Zealand. We are running on capacity of 74 percent. So what that means to our existing staff is huge pressure. And when you understand the pressure that these people are under the hours they've had to work—our doctors and our nurses—up to 70 hours a week and they are buckling under the pressure the solution just seems so blatantly clear from our vantage point on this side of the House: open up the borders get our nurses into the country give them residence on arrival and get them into the workforce. I don't know why that seems like such rocket science to this Government but the reality is that if we don't support that workforce soon we are going to have the mass exodus of those professionals from our health sector. And I can tell you from personal experience of someone who needed medical attention could not get into a GP—the books are closed their waiting list is long—sat for five hours in A & E trying to get urgent attention a couple of weeks later and then finally a couple of weeks after that got some testing done and was found to have a serious life threatening illness. So the treatment being delayed is the risk to life and we need to get real about this. These delays and the pressure on our health system are costing people's lives.It wasn't that long ago that we as MPs in our electorate had a direct line through to our DHBs but we've got this mega-entity now called Health New Zealand and I still for the life of me can't find out how to contact the person who represents Health New Zealand so that I can talk to them. I know that Dr Shane Reti put a question to the Minister and asked: Of the functions of the 20 former district health boards the Crown agency responsible for leading the day-to-day running of the health system where are the locations and contact details for these district offices?" The answer was they could be found on the Te Whatu Ora website. So OK I go on to the website and I go round and around—I still haven't found the contact details. This is such an irony from a Government that said it was going to be the most open and transparent. I can't even find the contact details. But I want to move on to an NGO I spoke to recently. This NGO provides fantastic local services for the people who most desperately need it. So they have now been in correspondence with Oranga Tamariki (OT). Oranga Tamariki are going to focus their attention I was told on those very difficult 3 percent of the clients that they work with. That's a very fine ambition and I applaud that. But the kicker is that the 97 percent are going to be passed over to these NGOs to deal with in their communities but that comes with a little problem because in the same letter that I've got a copy of they say "By the way we're going to reduce your funding by 10 percent." So here we are. The NGOs who do all this fabulous work in our community are under huge pressure themselves are now taking on more work from OT and having a financial reduction in their budget. But I wanted to use a few minutes to mention something that is very near and dear to me and that is the stewardship land review that's going on. I want to get it on the record. The people in Haast that we have visited who have had generational grazing leases and run their cattle generations of cattle farmers and who are now at risk of losing access to that land—which will be decimating for those communities—got a report from the Otago University that over the four years they were investigating water quality on these grazing leases their findings came back and said the water is pristine. Leave our land alone."