King Annette: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 04 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4332. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]2.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: What recent reports has he received this year on access to rural health services?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): I have received a range of reports mostly positive about improved access to health services in rural communities including positive reports about the Voluntary Bonding Scheme introduced by this Government which has seen more than 800 extra health professionals work in hard-to-staff communities. However there always remains more that can be done.Hon Annette King: If rural communities are getting their fair share of the health budget why did the President of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners Dr Tim Malloy who comes from the rural chapter and has a wealth of experience look at the Budget and say: “I’m disappointed. It’s unclear what they think we do and we have heard the rhetoric around integrated care but the investment isn’t being made.”?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I talk to Dr Malloy regularly and we both agree that district health boards are well funded and have the responsibility for distributing funds to ensure that rural communities receive the funds they require to deliver the services needed by those communities.Barbara Stewart: What is the total amount of new money allocated to rural health services from Budget 2015 so that as previously stated by the Minister “all New Zealanders and their families have access to timely quality healthcare no matter where they live”?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: There is $403 million of new money in the Budget and $320 million of that goes to district health boards. It is up to those district health boards to make decisions about how they distribute those funds to the communities they serve.Hon Annette King: If rural communities are receiving their fair share of the health budget and are having their health needs met why have 1700 people in the small towns of Wānaka Cromwell and Alexandra attended meetings unprecedented since the late 1990s to express their anger at the Government’s lack of funding for rural health?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I do not think that those meetings are about a lack of funding; they are about ensuring that the right services are provided to those communities. I can tell you that the population-based funding formula is the same formula that previous Governments have used to distribute funding across the country.Hon Annette King: What was his response to the letter he received from representatives at the meeting in Alexandra which said “We have resolved a vote of no confidence in yourself as Minister of Health. The funding of health services is ultimately your responsibility. You decide with your Cabinet colleagues on priorities. Quite clearly $26 million on the New Zealand flag is far more important than using it for rural health services.” and by the way—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: My response was I got straight on the phone to the gentleman who proposed that notice of no confidence. I told him I was not going to resign. He laughed. We talked through some of the issues and he accepted that there are some real challenges there that the Government is committed to facing up to and solving.Hon Annette King: Has he been told that the Southern District Health Board intends to push ahead with its cuts of 5 percent across the small rural health centres according to its latest board minutes which will lead to 50 percent of in-patient beds being closed the closure of the high-dependency unit at Dunstan and the loss of nearby cardiac acute care at Wānaka?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I have got very clear expectations of the Southern District Health Board and it knows that it has to provide the services required by those communities within the budget that has been allocated to it.Hon Annette King: Is it not rather pathetic for him and the local member to blame the district health board for mismanagement when taxpayers have been paying for intensive monitoring by the Government-appointed Crown monitor since 2010 for 5 years of intensive monitoring; when do you stop blaming the board and take responsibility?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: What I think is rather pathetic is that we have got the former Minister from 10 years ago who was very much involved in the problems that occurred in Southland and Otago and who provoked a response from 45 general practitioners writing to the board in 2007 expressing their dismay at the Labour Government’s abysmal performance—and quite frankly we are still left picking up the pieces that Annette King left behind.Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table a Jonathan Coleman speech in the estimates debate in 2007—Mr SPEAKER: No the member will resume her seat immediately. That is not—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Is this a fresh point of order?Hon Annette King: Yes Mr Speaker. I notice that in the answer you allowed the Minister to raise when I was Minister in 2007—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat and I remind her to have a look at the question she asked which led off by saying: “Is it not rather pathetic”. That gave the Minister a very wide avenue to respond. He took it. [Interruption] Order! The member then is using a point of order to table from Hansard a speech that was made. That is freely available to all members if they want to bother to look it up. Some might; I doubt whether many will.