Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Health): Thank you so much Mr Chair. I'd like to first of all acknowledge the passing of Mr Pita Paraone. I know that he was one of the colleagues a former New Zealand First MP from Ngāti Hine and he is related to so many of our Māori MPs and he will be missed—such a humble man of integrity. I wish his family well. May he rest in love. After nine years of underfunding after nine long years of neglect in the health sector I want to first of all touch on infrastructure. Our Government is investing in rebuilding the health system and we are investing in building and maintaining our hospitals. When we came into Government one of the things that Treasury told us was that it would take an investment of up to $14 billion—$14 billion—just to fix our hospitals and to make sure that they are well maintained right throughout Aotearoa. When one of our speakers was talking earlier on quite a few of the folks over on the Opposition side were kind of shouting out Oh the hospitals are not really that bad. It is rubbish."—that you know we do not need to fix our hospitals that badly. Middlemore Hospital is a hospital right in my electorate in South Auckland and just over the weekend I was actually spending some time in the hospital visiting a relative and I can tell you there were at least two of the big hospital buildings in Middlemore that were all covered in plastic. Why? Because they are fixing it up because the walls are rotting because it has been leaking—and yes as per the Minister of Health there has been some sewage that has been going down the walls at Middlemore Hospital. We came into Government and in just over two Budgets we are investing $1.7 billion to fix up our hospitals. Our last Budget we're investing $850 million and that's in addition to the investment that we made in our first Budget. Compare that to the previous Government. Their last Budget investment in terms of capital for hospitals was $150 million. Now how can you fix up all of the issues in hospitals with only $150 million when Treasury tells us that it will take at least $14 billion to fix our hospitals up? There have been nine very long years of non-funding and neglect and we are investing to rebuild our hospital systems up. The other thing that we're doing as a Government that is different to what the last Government did is we are actually partnering with industry because we know as we are fixing up our hospitals we also need to train and to attract young people to come into the building and construction sector. We know that industry is also very interested in ensuring that we train up our young people. In terms of cancer we hear the calls from the Opposition saying "Where is the Government's plan in terms of cancer?" Well I've got good news. On Sunday our Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern will be announcing our cancer plan and I cannot wait to hear more because we are a Government that has really invested in fixing things long term. We do not just come in and tinker around the edges. We are about fixing things long term. In terms of Pacific and Māori we're investing $12 million in terms of rheumatic fever because we know that two-thirds of the rheumatic fever cases are in Auckland and especially in South Auckland. But we also know because the feedback from Māori and Pacific providers and our families—they've been telling us that the services that work for them are when they actually have a say in designing those services. So we are ensuring that "by Māori for Māori" and "by Pacific for Pacific" providers have a big say in ensuring that those services get out to them. In terms of wellbeing we are also investing $47.6 million in the Ministry of Health the Ministry of Education and Sport New Zealand because we know that in order to address things long term for our young people we need to ensure that our nutritional guidelines in our schools are actually something that the Ministry of Health is working on. We also need to ensure that more of our schools have water only in their schools and we also need to ensure that our children are eating nutritional healthy foods because that is the way to address health long term. Thank you Mr Chair."