Goodhew Jo: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Goodhew Jo: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2445] 
JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) 
: 
 What exactly is the state of the health system? We have heard that it got 5½ out of 10. What is the level of confidence in the new Minister? 
Lindsay Tisch 
: Good question. What’s the answer? 
JO GOODHEW 
: Well I can tell the member. As a former health professional I have been talking to other health professionals and they are very very concerned. They have diminishing confidence in the new Minister of Health. They have described what is going on as “shifting the deckchairs on the  
Titanic 
”. Why is that? I have posed a question to a number of groups in my electorate when talking about health. I have asked them whether knowing we had spent $6 billion on health some 6 years ago and $10 billion on health more recently they would say we were any better off. Resoundingly they shake their heads in disbelief. They cannot believe we have spent an extra $4 billion when they can see no benefit. People are outraged. They say that they are in fact worse off. 
When I thought about my opportunity to speak here this afternoon I thought about what is happening in health. I looked at press releases such as “Pathology services at risk” “Canterbury DHB failing to meet demand” “Wellingtonians have to be sicker to get operations” “Financial crisis at Capital and Coast DHB” “Hodgson needs to wake up”—we are looking forward to that—and “Dramatic decline in heart surgery in Auckland”. Another release reads: “Labour cannot ignore call to review maternity services”—and boy have we seen the headlines about that one. Others read: “Labour’s head in sand on GP crisis” and I wish to speak a bit more about that in a moment; “Pharmac advice leaves Health Minister red-faced” as we have heard; “Labour irresponsible over BreastScreen”; “Patients counted but no surgery” what another scandal that one was; and “Smaller DHBs”—and I am in the area of one of them—“struggle for viability under population-based funding”. I thought to myself that if those statements appeared over 6 months then that would be fine; the Opposition would be exposing them. But it was not over 6 months; those are just 2 weeks’ worth. It is absolutely horrifying. 
I wish to comment on the two further areas of aged care and general practitioners. First I will deal with aged care. Last year Sherrill Dackers on behalf of rural women of New Zealand and 18000 others petitioned Parliament to take urgent action to guarantee the provision of home-based care services for rural communities by paying travel costs and travel time for home-care workers who are required to travel more than 15 kilometres return to care for their clients. Those petitioners have exposed a problem that has been building over the years. The problem means those who are home-care workers in rural areas are doing it for the love of it. I understand some home-care workers are being paid no more than $1.52 an hour. That is absolutely criminal. 
Some of the first letters I wrote as an MP were to the Minister of Health. They were about home-care workers who were having problems making ends meet. I got a very reassuring answer that it was intended that the home-based support services price increase in 2005-06 be targeted to address travel costs for workers. Has that happened? No it has not happened. I still receive phone calls about the problem and I am still making representations on the part of those same people. Aged-care services are grossly underfunded. We are undervaluing these very important members of our society. 
The next thing I want to touch on is general practitioners. The crisis there has not arrived overnight. Over the past years we have heard only rhetoric about this growing problem that is now described as a crisis. General practitioners are overworked underpaid and ageing. That sounds pretty grotty does it not? Hundreds are planning to quit yet the Minister of Health says that general practitioners’ profits are soaring and their training courses over subscribed. That does not sound like a very comforting thought does it? Yet general practitioner discontent appears to be reaching fever pitch. Last year we heard that about a third of general practitioners were planning to leave and their average age is 48 years.