Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well that is the definition of irony that the lead-off speaker of the Labour Party accuses our lead-off speaker of talking about nothing except about them and then spends 4½ minutes talking about the National Party. That is ironic in the extreme but I'll give her that in the last minute she did give something of a nod to the Wellbeing Budget that we're going to hear about in eight days' time. My question to them is this: how is the wellbeing of 81-year-old Kevin Gibson of Gisborne better as a consequence of this Labour-led Government? In December 2017 he was diagnosed with a benign enlarged prostate that required surgery. It's not a cancer but it is a very very difficult condition but a procedure that is very straightforward. There were four cancellations in 18 months and the Minister today admitted that his Government is now 4098 procedures behind where they should be just to do what was done last year in our public hospitals and he doesn't know if there's a target or not. He said that there isn't despite the Ministry of Health website saying that the target is to do 4000 more this year than last which means we're nearly 8000 procedures behind and falling. Here's the inconvenient truth: he can do all the statistical manipulation he likes about minor procedures and injections but we are on target to do 250 fewer cardiac procedures; gynaecology 1800 fewer procedures; orthopaedic surgery 1500 fewer procedures this year than last; and urology the thing that Mr Gibson needs 750 fewer procedures than last year. The question is: is there a target for elective surgery or not? Well I think there was and I think it went through what I call the KiwiBuild filter; that is raise the target talk about it and when one realises that it's absolutely unable to be achieved quietly dust it under the carpet call it an aspiration call it some kind of other thing but don't call it a target. The irony of that—here's what I don't understand—is today the Government proudly announces its targets for child poverty reduction saying how really important it is that in order to meet that problem head-on one sets a target for it. Why on earth not do the same for improvements in healthcare? It was done under the Clark Government. Pete Hodgson was the Minister of Health that proudly introduced what were then nine national health targets which we refined down to six and continuously improved. Where are those targets now? Not achieved so therefore they remove them.It would be OK if there was something else but all we have is a sea of red ink. The district health boards are slowly and surely sinking into deficit to the tune of $500 million and remember that announcement yesterday—that $21 million for ambulance services? The Deputy Prime Minister asked the Minister—it was a patsy but actually it was a very good question—What extra services is the New Zealand public going to get out of that $21 million?" and the answer was nothing—nothing. They bought the farm when St John said they were in trouble. There won't be a single extra ambulance officer. There may be one or two extra ambulances with the capital funding. But the unions saw through it like a window. They know that there is going to be no extra pay for ambulance officers and no extra ambulance officers. What kind of announcement is that? Well it's one that the Minister has become very good at: funding deficits.I'm going to talk next week about what's happening with access to GPs because that Minister also said this in Opposition. He said that there are half a million New Zealanders adult New Zealanders that can't afford to go to a GP and he was going to fix it. Guess what's happened to that number? It's gone up not down. There are now 538000 New Zealanders 21000 more than the previous survey showed that cannot afford to go to a GP.So when we go into a Budget with delivery as its theme they better deliver for this health system this ailing sagging health system that has had targets taken away from it that is rudderless that has no direction. The cost of that is going to be eye-watering. And if they don't deliver for the health system I think members can expect to hear a lot more stories like the one about the lovely Mr Gibson in Gisborne because there are thousands of them out there—non-delivery in the year of delivery."