Hodgson Pete: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Hodgson Pete: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:632;Page:3722] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 That speech is another example of why National is not about to reach the Government benches any time soon. That gentleman spent most of his discussion which was supposedly about the Budget on a sort of rollicking ad hominem attack on people who have been defeated by other people. I ask the member who did he defeat in the last election? Who did he take out in the last election? What electorate success does that member think that he can offer the House? That member ought to do something more with a debate like this than talk about who defeated whom. I congratulate those members of Parliament on the opposite benches who enjoyed electorate success in the recent polls. I congratulate them. I hope their stay here is good. I do not of course hope that it is long. 
In the election we have just mentioned we actually had a debate going on in our society about whether we would use the idea of investment as a way forward or whether we would disburse the largesse of the State into tax cuts we could not afford especially as the National Party made sure that it had targeted them towards the rich. The National Party put $11 billion on the table and asked: “Are you interested?” and of course New Zealanders around the country were and they sniffed pretty hard at it. They gave it a sniff test and they said: “This is not affordable. The damage to be done to roading investment health police education or whatever would be too high.” That is why this Government was returned. 
That happened despite the fact that National promised $11 billion of tax cuts and despite the fact that National rolled out the Exclusive Brethren a very strange group of white men who do not even vote who put a million dollars on the table to help the National Party get across the line and went very close to breaching electoral law in this country in doing so. That is a very strange group of people. They were the people that Don Brash “did not meet” until he met them “oh well perhaps once” then until he met them “oh well perhaps more than once” and then until it became clear in the course of the campaign that he had met with them several times. Then the scales dropped from the eyes of those New Zealanders who were taken in by the $11 billion worth of tax cuts and the Labour Government was returned to office. 
New Zealanders said no. Because they said no we have funding to make student loans interest-free. Because they said no we can build roads rail and public transport infrastructure throughout New Zealand. Because they said no we can invest further in research science and technology in both the public and private sectors; we can invest in economic development; we can develop exporters further; and we can invest in our tertiary education our early childhood education and for that matter in our primary and secondary education. We can invest in health because New Zealanders said no to the $11 billion tax bribe. They said no to $11 billion over 4 years and of that $11 billion precisely $3 billion is going into health over the next 4 years. 
We will put $3 billion extra into health. That is enabling us to build hospitals to continue the building programme that starts in Kaitaia and finishes in Invercargill. Not far from here an entire new hospital is being built in Wellington. The one most recently opened was in the Wairarapa just a few weeks ago with the Prime Minister. We are able to invest in new buildings but we are also able to invest in primary health care. We are able to say to New Zealanders that there can be lower fees when they go to the doctor. We can say to people working in our primary health care sector that we are pleased they are doing better than they were before that general practices around the country are somewhat more sustainable and that general practitioners are making more money and are worth more on the market. One would not know that if one heard the National Party talking. But that is the fact of the matter. 
While I am on that point I would like to congratulate all those people who were party to the negotiations that concluded at 9 o’clock this morning as we saw the roll-out of the next phase of the Primary Health Care Strategy so that 45 to 64-year-olds can have access to cheaper doctors’ fees from 1 July—just 10 days from now. I thank those people who took part in those negotiations. We have achieved a good deal. We have made sure we have transparency. We have made sure we have worked out what a consultation actually is. We have made sure that in the unlikely event that a recalcitrant doctor decides to put the money in his or her pocket we have a way of stopping that. All those things are important. That has been achieved and I congratulate those who were involved in the negotiations. 
We have made progress in this country. Because the people said no we were able to roll out further funding into mental health further funding into Maori health. One never hears the National Party talking about those areas of health. National does not care about them. We have made further investment into mental health further investment into Maori health and further investment into the health of older people. We have made a bigger investment this year than ever before when all the bits are added up. We have made a bigger investment than we have ever had before into the disability support directorate into those people who do not consider themselves part of the health system but who live with a disability of one form or another and who are supported to live a more ordinary life—one day one hopes an even ordinary life—because we are able to improve the support services for those people. 
What about children’s health? One does not hear the National Party talking about children’s health. It could not care less when it was announced today that there had been a 90 percent reduction in meningococcal disease amongst Maori children in Auckland. Members opposite could not care less that nine cases out of 10 now do not occur and that we have had a very successful roll-out of a vaccination for a very very serious disease. They seem to be uninterested that this country is about to move into the screening of newborns for hearing loss so that if children are discovered to have hearing loss it can be addressed very early in their life. 
National seems to be unconcerned that we have decided to pay attention to oral health for children. It is a fact that the improvement in oral health in New Zealand’s children has stopped. Our children’s teeth used to get better and better as each decade went by. Now it is not getting better any more; in some measurements it is actually getting worse. That situation cannot be allowed to continue. How did it happen? 
Hon David Carter 
: Blame the Government. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Well we will blame the previous National Government because in the 1990s guess what happened? This country stopped training dental nurses. Unbelievably in the 1990s this country stopped training dental nurses—now called dental therapists. 
 So in the 7 long years of this Government we began first of all a course in dental therapy at the dental school at Otago University and secondly a second course in dental therapy at the Auckland University of Technology. Those courses have been developed people have entered the courses and they have completed the courses so that this February for the first time we had graduates from those courses going into the dental service. So in this Budget we decided we had better make sure we had decent clinics and decent pay for them. That is something we will never hear the National Party talk about. 
We will never hear National members talk about the Cancer Control Strategy. We will never hear them talk about diabetes or cardiovascular disease. All we will hear them talk about is electives. In this Budget we continued the roll-out of the orthopaedic initiative which doubles the number of major hip replacements performed in this country and we continued the roll-out of the initiative to increase cataract surgery by 50 percent on what it was earlier. These are the things that a Government can do when it decides to invest in our health. This is what we can do to enable 60-year-old people to live well through into their 70s and 80s because they have received a hip replacement or a cataract operation in a timely manner. That is what happens when we invest in people; when we invest in children; when we invest in a public health system. 
What we have heard from National members is them simply hollering up a storm and dialling up a crisis and their being professional grizzle-guts—even though they went to the polls 9 months ago and said: “We do not need to put any more money into health you can have it in tax cuts.” Now they say that somehow or another the expenditure is not enough even though it was increased by 8 percent in 1 year in the last Budget. They say that we spend it on bureaucrats even when they are confronted with proof that the ratio of bureaucrats in the New Zealand health system is dropping.