Craig Liz; Mallard TrevorDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): After nine long years of neglect I am absolutely proud to be part of a Government that is rebuilding our health system. What I want to do today is just talk about some of the consequences of that neglect and also what we're doing to get on and fix it. I think we've all heard those stories about the mould the raw sewage and the rot in the walls of some of our largest hospitals. The question is: Well how did we get there? How did it get like that?" And thinking back on being at a DHB and the consequences of nine long years of underfunding also where you've also dropped the ball is in our housing crisis. Where you have not invested in primary care and where your A & E departments are absolutely overflowing with patients with acute needs what do you do?What you do is you actually look after those patients but where you cut the corners is you don't actually go on and do the maintenance on your buildings you don't do the capital investment because you've got to prioritise. And the problem we've got now as a Government is what we've inherited: a whole hospital infrastructure where we've got hospitals at the end of their life. We've got hospitals where they haven't addressed the earthquake-prone issues and we've got mould in the walls. But we can get on and fix that and we are.What upsets me most though is that we've got a whole generation of children and young people now carrying permanent and invisible scars as a result of that underfunding. What we've got is children who have grown up and they've got bronchiectasis which is permanent lung scarring that's resulted from living in crappy cold damp houses and then not being able to afford to go to the GP to get the antibiotics they need. We've got kids carrying around the scars of rheumatic fever on their heart valves and what we've also got are families where we've got permanent scarring because their young people couldn't access the mental health services that they needed.So what I'm really proud of is to be part of a Government that's getting on and starting to address all of those issues. And so in Budget 2019 we've put aside $1.7 billion over the next two years just to get on and do that basic infrastructure spending. We will be fixing up that mould that rot etc. in the walls but we'll also be using some of that money to get on and build some mental health services addiction service facilities and we'll also be starting that rebuild on Dunedin Hospital. So there's a lot of stuff we're going to be doing in that infrastructure spend and that's on top of the $750 million that we've spent in last year's Budget to get on and make a beginning.The other thing we're doing is the most massive increase in mental health spending that we've seen—$1.9 billion into a mental health package—and what that means is that once this is built up and we've trained that workforce people will be able to turn up to their GP via primary care. They'll be able to say "Yes I am struggling. I am doing it tough and I need to see somebody." And what we're going to be having in those primary care practices is mental health workers who can sit down and say "OK. These are the options. You can stay with me and I will provide that support you need. Or if you need to have a referral I'll arrange that. I can be that broker that navigates you through those mental health services." We're also talking about putting some of those intensive wraparound services around those who are at risk of suicide because again what we see in our communities and in communities all around the country are particularly young people absolutely struggling in terms of getting the services they need. So we'll be looking at that. We'll also be looking at those that are with corrections being able to access the mental health and addiction services that they need as well.One of the other things though that we've seen in the context of those overflowing A & E departments is that a lot of people are coming in with conditions that are considered to be ambulatory sensitive. What that means is conditions where if you'd actually got in and treated them early in primary care you could have prevented a hospital admission—so things like an early skin infection. Go to your GP get some antibiotics and you don't end up in hospital needing intravenous antibiotics for five days. So what we've done again is we've made significant investments in primary care. We've extended very low-cost access to GP visits to anybody with a community services card. So what that means is that if their practice is a participating practice—and most of the GP practices and primary health organisations in the country are part of this—people can turn up and pay much much less to see their doctor than they previously would have. And so again that's an area where the previous Government completely dropped the ball in terms of the affordability of access to primary care. It just declined over the term of the previous Government. We're getting in and we're investing in making sure people can access the services they need.I haven't got time to go on in terms of talking about the cancer funding although I can mention our 12 new linear accelerators that we've just announced. I'm proud to be part of a Government that is getting on and basically reinvesting in our hospitals.SPEAKER: The member's time has expired."