Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. After the Budget announcement I had along with colleagues a Zoom meeting with a number of aged-care providers across Otago and Southland. These providers are at their wit's end. This is a sector that has not been looked after by the Government's so-called wellbeing Budget; it has provided no relief for that sector at all.This is a big sector. They provide 36000 beds across New Zealand. If you compare that with the public hospitals they have 12500 beds across New Zealand. Aged-care facilities range from small family-run stand-alone businesses to large publicly listed collocated sites of care services and retirement villages. But be very clear: 50 percent are small individual family-run businesses and this is a sector in crisis both financially and related to that through the lack of registered nurses. This is leading to beds being closed; it is leading to whole facilities being closed. Registered nurses are being enticed to district health boards (DHBs) because of the pay difference which is currently a $15000 pay difference. The pay equity deal to be finalised will bring that pay difference up to somewhere between $23000 and $30000 per annum.Now no one—no one—is disputing the nurses' pay increases wasn't needed; they are the hard-working backbone of our DHBs and we welcome that their pay increases occurred. The problem is the Government has not extended an increase in funding to the aged-care sector to be able to match the funding or the pay of the registered nurses in the aged-care sector with the DHB and so they are losing nurses week after week. They can't put up their fees; the Government price caps what they can charge. So they are squeezed by no additional income no ability to put up their fees and this competition from the DHBs—that is taking our registered nurses out of aged-care facilities.I've heard Government MPs say big corporates should be cross-subsidising from the retirement village income." Well that misses the point that 50 percent of our aged-care facilities don't have retirement villages attached and those that do they are running separate operations and there is no reason why retirement villages should be cross-subsidising our aged-care facilities.The situation as it is now is that we have got beds and facilities closing. Over 700 have closed in the past few months; 180 beds in Otago and Southland alone have closed. Residents are being relocated some distance away or being put in hospitals. This is turning into a health issue. If we cannot take referrals for new patients from hospital or the community and we are moving aged-care residents into hospitals and out of care homes because there are no registered nurses available we are creating a health problem.If this keeps going—and the extrapolation from the sector is—this could get to around 5 percent of those 36000 beds being closed. That's 1800 beds that could be taken up in our hospitals for people that should be in our aged-care facilities. This is going to cause a health crisis because this Government will not fund the aged-care sector appropriately to attract and retain registered nurses in the sector.Our aged-care facilities are being put in a position where they must shift their residents out or they are putting these vulnerable citizens at risk. People who have worked hard paid taxes contributed to this country for decades are being put at risk by this Government by not providing sufficient funding for them to be able to keep sufficient registered nurses in the aged-care sector."