Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): What a great pleasure and an honour it is to stand here in support of yet another stunning Budget from this Government the Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson - led Government that we all have the great joy of being a part of. For the member who's just resumed his seat Rino Tirikatene I tautoko what he said particularly in relation to that health initiative for bowel screening—that is health equity in action. That is a reflection of the fact that we know when it comes to considering the prevalence of various diseases and health conditions that they do not fall evenly across populations. We know from epidemiological studies and just from observance over many many years that when it comes to things like bowel cancer and colon cancer they do hit Māori and Pacific populations earlier in age than other population groups. So it makes sense when we're doing bowel screening which has been so critical and fundamental to actually getting ahead of the real challenges that that condition can lay down to actually get to Māori and Pacific communities much earlier. We're doing it and that is the right thing to do and that is health equity in action.But I want to talk about the health services generally that this Government has started the long arduous process of rebuilding. We had to do it because it was just completely and utterly ignored and neglected year after year after year under the last Government. They do not care about health. We know that is a fact—National Governments do not care about health so they let buildings run down. They underfund the system. They don't care about people's health conditions. They don't top up Pharmac to the extent that we did—three years frozen actually under the National Government and we have topped it up every year. Once again in this Budget another top-up—$191 million over two years. We've got Pharmac now actively looking at that cancer list that the Cancer Control Agency put up and we are closing the gap when it comes to cancer treatments—long overdue. That'll save lives in New Zealand.When you're a Government that cares about health that's what you do. When you're a political party that cares about health that's what you do because that's who we are. We can go all the way back to 1938 and that stunning Labour Government of that time that really set up a public health system that created that commitment to public health. That is in our blood and it's in our bones. That's why whenever Labour is in Government we give priority to health.This time—this time—in my view I'd have to say that we have done it. We've really done it now. We have looked at the ongoing deficits that started under the previous Government and across our DHBs and said No more." Those deficits actually start to reflect a structural underfunding of health. So we said "Oh yeah. We're going to fix that up." But actually that's not enough. We've got to put in more funding if we're going to get the health services that New Zealanders are crying out for and have been for some time. So we put in in addition to the nearly half a billion dollars roughly thereabouts of structural deficit an additional $1.3 billion starting 1 July this year each year. Then because this is a two-year Budget we've done a further top-up in the second year—an additional $1.3 billion on top of that.That is just a health system starting the long arduous task of keeping up with what is demanded of it. That is a system now getting ready to be the system that New Zealanders demand of it as part of our rebuild. We're taking the 20 DHBs and we're putting them into one organisation. We'll get more coherent planning better coordination better services. We can actually deal with primary care as a nationwide set of services and deal with primary care providers provide them the support that they need. We can actually having learnt from the COVID campaign the vaccination campaign we can take the best out of that and we can have the best public health system in the world. That's what our goal is. It can't be anything less.But there's other stuff we're doing too because when you have a Government that spends nine years neglecting that there's even an emerging mental health crisis you've actually got a big job to do to pick up and we're doing that too. So we made the big investment in 2019. That's doing amazing things—more than 900 extra front-line people doing mental health. And now we put in another $100 million over four years to start dealing with that acute and specialist end but most importantly focused on the community beds and community support for people who've been through their acute phase who don't need to be in hospitals who are currently in hospitals now because there's nowhere else for them to go but actually getting them the support in the community so that they can recover and reintegrate as they wish to do.There are so many things as Rino Tirikatene said that we could talk about. What about the ambulances? Sixty-one new vehicles and 248 ambulance crew now being added to our workforce to make it easier and that'll really help rural communities who struggle to get decent ambulance services."