Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): I am actually quite elated to finally get up here and have the chance to speak in an urgent debate and I will tell you why. I have sat here in this House as a member for 2 years and 2 months and in that time I have seen the much-flouted Minister of Health Minister Coleman tussle with the Hon Annette King and it seemed he was more focused on that tussle here in the House than actually the tussle out there on the street in our healthcare system and that is despicable. What I have also seen now that the Hon Annette King is not in the role of the spokesperson for health for the Labour Party he has now got in I guess his sights to have a go at Dr Clark and question his numbers and question actually what the people out there in real New Zealand are telling us.I do not know why that side of the House that Government is not hearing their voices. You have officers; you surely know that this is an absolute critical area for our healthcare system with New Zealanders out on the street. What I sat here and watched in the last 10 to 20 minutes was a Minister who actually spoke more about rugby than about people who are not getting on to the elective surgery lists—Hon David Bennett: Tell us about your mates who are going to bring in cannabis.RIA BOND: —who are actually having to be heavily medicated because the system cannot deal with the demand. That is a disgrace Mr Bennett. Shut up and sit down and listen. What we have also seen around this country—and I have been on the tour; in the last 2 weeks for the last year I have visited palliative healthcare. I have seen the failing of this Government in its health-allocated Budget spending or lack thereof. I have also attended the GP seminars their panels and spoken about the fact that in real life GPs are actually massively underfunded and we do not have enough GPs for our normal citizens to actually have access to them.Hon David Bennett: What? How many?RIA BOND: It is a fact Mr Bennett. The doctors are telling us themselves. Pull out your earplugs or your wax and start listening and pipe down in the front seat there.What has also become evident is that the New Zealand Nurses Organisation has told us—it has had an open letter to the Government and its message has been: Please give us more funding so we can take of people in our hospitals and our residential homes so we can take care of people who are actually the most vulnerable people within this healthcare system." That Government crowed over it and thought it was so great in the Budget day release on 25 May that not one of you knew your Budget was wrong. The whole lot in health was wrong. Fools—fools if you did not know that. So yes I get worked up because I get out there in New Zealand. Families come and tell me the difficulties they have that they cannot get simple access that we have 0- to 18-year-olds sitting there for 9 weeks waiting for mental health services to pick them up. It is not the fault of those nurses and doctors within mental health; it is the fault of this Government for having its head in the clouds because it does not realise what its policy is doing to New Zealand. I think I have heard from memory a saying: "Keep 'em dumb keep 'em stupid." and that is what that Government has delivered in this healthcare budget. It is a disgrace.This is not going to go away. The Minister did not even address the issue of the fact that there has been a debacle and there has been absolute gross negligence from the Ministry of Health under that Minister. He preferred to talk about the rugby—the Lions games—and how wrong Mr Clark was in his figures. He preferred to talk about the issues of anything else but the fact that there has been no accountability put on the Director-General of Health. There has been not one thing—not one thing at all. Yes Canterbury District Health Board (DHB) is calling for his resignation. Somebody has to be accountable and that someone who allocated taxpayer money to be spent is the Minister of Health.Although that Minister thinks that he now owns the Teflon coat that is not going to last for ever—not in this year; not at this election. In September the people are going to vote. They have had enough of being stuck within this underfunded healthcare system that sees our children not having access to primary healthcare services; that sees our babies sick; that sees our families unable to actually see appropriate mental health care services given to them; and that we have to as families in this country take care of our most vulnerable loved people when we actually cannot get them to be seen by mental health services when they say they want to kill themselves. We find as members of our community that we have to become the mental healthcare people to take care of them. There are too many of our children who have been lost to suicide. We have the highest suicide rate in the OECD. That is nothing that this Government should be crowing about. That is nothing that families out there in our community are at all proud of. If anything it breaks our community even more because of the fact that we are losing too many of our children.Let us talk about the rural sector. Let us talk about the mental health in our rural sector. The amount of men and farmers in our rural sector committing suicide is an absolute concern on this side of the House and gets fobbed over on that side of the House. Let us talk about the fact that women in rural New Zealand cannot get access to healthcare services either. When we sit there—and I read actually a document from Cabinet from 2014 that said there is no recommendation to change the population-based funding formula and that it is fit for purpose. Well I beg to differ. I beg to differ on that fact and I absolutely can see and question now the question to that Government is: is a population-based funding formula fit for purpose today? Does it actually have its integrity intact over the debacle of what this Ministry of Health has actually done? Does it have the integrity to stand up now and still provide the key instrument in order to allocate funding for our healthcare services here in New Zealand? I suggest that no it does not. That Minister Coleman that Ministry of Health have actually just done the very job and made it become known to members of this House that that funding formula is not fit for purpose. The real question here that should be being asked is: when is Minister Coleman going to stand down? When is he going to stand down?I will tell you what: I live in Southland and I am proud that I live there with my family. My family accesses services from the Southland Hospital and when our two areas Otago and Southland were merged into the Southland District Health Board we had the biggest geographical area in this country of trying to cover all those who live within it all those who live in that catchment. Some of the Ministers and some of the backbenchers do not seem to understand the distance in Southland there is to cover in terms of healthcare. My DHB Southern DHB has as I have already said actually lost out by $5.7 million. The concern here is that these DHBs between 20 of those DHBs—yes 14 were given an overspend and actually six were given an underspend. These DHBs have already allocated the central spend. The Government might want to say: "Oh it was a piece-of-paper problem." The fact of the matter is that these DHBs built this budget into their budgets. The excuses that have come from that side of the House do not cut it. They are not going to cut it when it comes to election day and they are not cutting it right now here in this House today.The DHBs—and I think we have had members read out the whole list. I am not going to go down that way and read it all out again. What I am saying is that New Zealand First can hear the concern out there between DHBs. We know that they are being massively underfunded. We know that there is a problem with the population-based funding system and we know that because of the debacle and the flunked way in which the Government had no idea on Budget day that its health budget was wrong. Not one figure was right—not one figure was right. The Minister might like to crow that "Oh but the budget got $439 million extra in this Budget day." but we are still short $200 million in health just to keep it afloat today—just to keep health afloat today.I think it is actually really quite worthy to say that in terms of primary health from one of the panels that I went to—the question was put to the panel members: how much of Vote Health does primary healthcare receive? How much? I bet you Mr Bennett does not know that answer and I can tell you it is less than 5.5 percent of total health spend. That is a disgrace. If we are trying to prevent health issues and outcomes—primary healthcare is only funded less than 5.5 percent of the total health budget. It needs at least 7 percent. When is that Government going to start listening to the country start listening to the professionals inside of the area and actually listen to what is essential to ensuring that our society and its health is put at the forefront of this Government? Thank you."