Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you Mr Chair and I thank members Melissa Lee and Harete Hipango for their contributions and hopefully I can respond as quickly as I possibly can.To Melissa Lee's concerns about provisions for ethnic communities I refer the member to a number of provisions in the bill. Clause 14(1)(h) provides for—it says (1) The functions of Health New Zealand are to— … (h) improve service delivery and outcomes for all people at all levels within the publicly funded health sector;". And I refer also to clause 7 of the bill which sets out the health sector principles and one of those principles under clause 7(1)(d) is that "the health sector should provide choice of quality services to Māori and other population groups including by— … (ii) providing services that are culturally safe and culturally responsive to people's needs; and (iia) developing and maintaining a health workforce that is representative of the community it serves;". So I think there's a statutory requirement as Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority to develop health services to make sure that both the health services are culturally appropriate and safe and that we have a workforce that meets those particular population needs.I might also add that the Government policy statement is about ensuring that the health services provided for and the Government policy statement itself meet the objectives of the Act which of course is set out in clause 3 of the legislation. Clause 3 in terms of the purpose of the Act expressly states: "The purpose of the Act is to provide for the public funding and provision of services in order to—(a) protect promote and improve the health of all New Zealanders;". So everybody is catered for in that respect. I'm not aware of any Supplementary Order Paper that is calling for a specific ethnic community's strategy or a strategy for any particular ethnic community.When I look in practise I look at for example the Waitematā District Health Board (DHB) who at the moment have an Asian directorate effectively and a specific focus on meeting the needs of their Asian population. One of the challenges we've had with the system as it currently is configured is that good innovations like that are very very difficult to migrate across the system as a whole. So certainly my expectation is that I want when Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority are properly set up that they have an opportunity to pluck the really good stuff out of each form of DHB and actually make that a practice across the organisation as a whole where there are concentrations of ethnic communities—to replicate what the Waitematā District Health Board has done in relation to their Asian people strategy.To Harete Hipango about children I acknowledge the comments she has made. I think there's a range of legislation that places an obligation on the State where it is engaging with children in a whole variety of different contexts to put children first and so there's no question about that. And when it comes to health services again for the reasons I've pointed out in relation to Melissa Lee's comments there will be an obligation on Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority in the delivery of services to make sure that they are safe and appropriate and relevant to the patient population that they are delivering their services to. So I'm confident that the needs of children will be well catered for. I think that when it comes to the planning processes the Government policy statement the New Zealand health plan and the various strategies that come out of the Government policy statement the needs of children will be well catered for."