Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Appropriation (2016/17 Estimates) Bill. Tonight my main focus is on Vote Health and I hope to cover four main areas that New Zealand First still maintains continue to be underfunded: district health boards (DHBs) elective surgery mental health services and palliative health care services. We see that the Government has announced a whopping $16.1 billion across the health care services in this 2016-17 financial year. New Zealand First knows that this money is desperately needed within our health care services and sadly we feel that this money does not go far enough. My question to the Government is why now? Why wait until now to improve the lives of New Zealanders when they have suffered within this health care system for 8 years? Minister Coleman said that This investment in Budget 2016 will help New Zealanders continue to access the healthcare they need. The new Health Strategy sets the direction for a more integrated and patient-centred system. We want more services delivered in the community with more prevention and self-management." That was a quote from Minister Coleman. New Zealand First questions why this Government's previous health strategy was so out of touch with what New Zealanders needed. The $16.1 billion will be spread out over 20 DHBs which service 4.6 million people in New Zealand. If you do the math that works out to be $3473 per person but who gets a chunk of that is determined by the population-based funding formula. DHBs are struggling in New Zealand. The Hutt DHB finished $7.5 million in the red in the last financial year. The Wairarapa DHB actually had a budget blowout of $3.3 million. The Capital and Coast DHB showed a $4 million deficit. The Southern DHB has shown a deficit of $22.5 million. There is more. How many more DHBs will it take before this Government realises that there is a problem with the population-based funding formula and it is not adequately supporting our DHBs? Sometimes we lose sight of the very human cost of choices made within the health sector like Mr Savage from Invercargill who walked into my office beside himself after years of waiting for knee surgery. Three times over a 2-year period Mr Savage was refused treatment and it was during this time that he appeared along with his wife in my office utterly beside himself and with disbelief that the New Zealand health system had let him down so badly. The pain and restrictive movement Mr Savage experienced meant that he could no longer continue in his day job which happened to be driving children with special needs to school. These are the great people in our communities whom we need a health system to support so that they do not live a life of uncertainty. Just this week I received news from Mr Savage that after a long long 6 years his surgery has finally been approved and thank goodness for that. But to be honest it should never have got to this point and $96 million for elective surgery will not be enough when so many New Zealanders have been kicked off the waiting list around this country. Perhaps now they will have an opportunity to try again but $96 million spread over 20 DHBs will not go nearly far enough. Twelve million dollars for mental health is not enough. We do not want to see another tragic—tragic—killing like the killing of Alex Fisher by his half-brother a disturbed young man who slipped through a mental health system on the brink. We know that there are so many hard-working individuals inside the mental health services doing the absolute best job that they can but the funding simply has not been there for them to manage the huge caseloads they face on a daily basis. In the case of Eric McIsaac all the warning signs were present. We heard through the media that the mental health system disregarded the warnings about Eric's situation. The fact is that this is too much of a familiar story that we are seeing occurring in New Zealand. Palliative health-care received $13 million. That will not cover the expected $100 million needed for the hospices to run in this next financial year. The shortfall has to be met by the community and it does that gladly but it is so unfortunate that without the community support funding for palliative health-care our hospices run the risk of closing. That is a real worry. The point I am compelled to make is that this National-led Government's underfunding of our health care system to the sweet tune of $1.7 billion actually has a real-life consequence for New Zealanders and New Zealand First simply cannot ignore this. So often in this House we get wrapped up in the numbers and we lose sight of the real-life consequences of our health funding decisions and the impact they have on everyday New Zealanders. When the Minister tells us that all things are great and that he is doing the best he can do I would like to remind the Minister that he could be doing better and that New Zealand and the public deserve much better."