Craig Liz; Hipkins ChrisDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. One of the things that we discussed in our Estimates hearing was the effectiveness of the response to COVID-19 in our country and what we talked about was that we are in a fortunate position as a country to be able to pursue the elimination of community transmission. I think a lot of that comes down to the efforts of the team of 5 million but also some really amazing and dedicated health workers—those working on Healthline and in our community-based assessment centres GP clinics and hospitals—but also I think it comes down to planning and it comes down to significant investment. Budget 2020 made some significant investments in our health system but there's also been a number of other packages that have been there to assist with the COVID response and so I'm just thinking about the spending that's gone into extra personal protective equipment and medical equipment and basically looking at testing and contact tracing and also looking at telemedicine and the way that GPs were able to pivot quite quickly into virtual consultations. I think the other thing is in terms of stepping up some of those community-based assessment centres and also investing in our public health units which have been under-invested in historically for probably a decade or so and so being able to put that extra resource in was incredibly important. But thinking through again going through lockdown and what we basically understood there had been ongoing emergency care provided with our hospitals and also ongoing cancer treatment but we've got a huge backlog now of other elective procedures and surgery basically with the DHBs already coming after a decade of under-investment and they were then having to step up and deliver a whole backlog of care as well as their routine care. Budget 2020 has put some significant investments into our DHBs and for us down in Southern DHB that's $78 million per year which is incredibly welcome. But there's also that extra catch-up funding so that we can catch up on the surgery on the delayed procedures etc. So it would just be good if the Minister could talk a little bit more about how Budget 2020 interfaces with the other investments that have gone into the COVID response and your view of the success of our response to date. Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Health): Of course I think our response to date has been incredibly successful when you look at the fact that we have no evidence of community transmission in New Zealand as of today. We're up to about day 80-something of no evidence of community transmission in New Zealand and I think that's something that all New Zealanders can be incredibly proud of. With regard to Dr Craig's questions around extra investment in things like medicines equipment personal protective equipment contact tracing and telemedicine the member may be familiar with the fact that I did make an announcement on additional funding for those things last week. One of the big challenges that Pharmac has faced during this period is that the cost of medicines that it currently funds has increased as a result of the supply chain challenges that are being experienced around the world and it is a reminder for us in New Zealand that whilst we're doing all right here many of the countries that we trade with including ones we buy medicines from are still experiencing quite significant restrictions in their ability to undertake commerce and that's having an effect on the amount we're having to pay for those things. With regard to telemedicine it'd be fair to say that the response there has been mixed. Yes we're putting more money into things like Healthline and other services and some GP practices have really embraced this. Others seem to think the idea of telemedicine is to ring their patients back talk to them on the phone and then tell them they need to come in for an appointment which kind of defeats the purpose. So there are a variety of different experiences around telemedicine out there but look I think our overall response has been a very good one.