Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well thank you very much Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise on the second reading of the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill—a bill that National oppose. And I rise on behalf of the National Party and as a member of North Shore. And what I haven't heard this evening is any acknowledgment of those hard-working clinicians who are currently working around the country such as those in my local hospital of North Shore Hospital in the emergency department there looking after people around the place or those ambulance officers such as those working on North Shore one this evening based in Takapuna who are dealing with the significant reality of delivering healthcare services in this country at the moment which has been a very difficult period post-COVID but fundamentally will not be supported by this bill and this legislation. We have heard a number of speakers on the other side promising a lot of hope and ambition in terms of what the future may look like but they will not be able to deal with the underlying issues that are within our health system this evening or tomorrow. I'm going to talk this evening in my short call around some of those key drivers.There is never a good time to blow up the health system. I quote there an important point to note that this Government has decided to undertake reform of a monumental scale in the middle of one of the largest impacts on our health system that we have seen in generations. The challenges around the timing shows that there is absolutely no understanding in terms of how to actually implement change within what is a very complex complicated and not integrated system which is the health system. No one is standing here this evening saying that the health system is absolutely perfect and there cannot be any improvements but the way in which this system needs to be reformed needs to be done in co-development with those people at the front lines; those that understand the issues and we need to deal with the significant aspects that are facing our individuals in our health system today. And that key issue is around workforce.I looked through my notes when I got up in this House last June and July and asked the Minister of Health what he was doing around the significant healthcare workforce crisis in this country and what were his plans around solving that. That was June and July of 2021. Where are we now? What has changed? Well I can tell you what: things have got worse and we are nearly a year down the track of a lot of talk from that other side of the House and Kiwis have clicked on that these guys are good at talk but have a complete inability on delivery. They cannot implement and do not have a plan and we are seeing this coming through in this legislation. We are not going to see any improvement in health outcomes we are not going to see any improvement in our rural and our suburban communities as a result of this and we're going to continue to see the issues around health workforce crisis continue to get worse and worse as the borders reopen and our workforce move across to Australia which 70 percent already do at the moment. The centralisation of bureaucracy behind this reform is mirrored in other aspects of reform by this Government across a number of other areas. The increasing of bureaucracy and the centralisation—this mind-set that Government knows best—is endemic in the way in which this Government is trying to implement change. The challenge and the reality is that this change will not deliver the outcomes that Kiwis require in this country and that is a great shame because the opportunity cost of failure to deliver will be felt by our communities and our most vulnerable. There are those members of my community of the North Shore who are struggling to get access to healthcare services who are struggling to get their next elective operation and who are not getting the Pharmac drugs that they require but instead you're going to see half a billion dollars of taxpayers' funds—hard-earned taxpayers' funds—going on more bureaucracy and not the actual factors that are going to help improve those health outcomes. Māori health outcomes have been noted as one of the drivers of this. This Government could take one action this evening to change that. It was a National Party policy around the introduction of lung cancer screening for ex-smokers in the Māori population. There is an eight-year differential between Māori and non-Māori around mortality. That initiative in itself would take one year off that eight-year differential yet this Government are not even focusing on the examples right in front of them. National oppose this legislation because it will not deliver health outcomes for our community.