Bond Ria: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBond Ria: New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10848. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RIA BOND (NZ First): It is a great privilege to stand here today on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Southern DHB) Elections Bill. This is a bill that is very dear to my heart. It is also very dear to the community that I reside in having grown up there from the age of 14 and actually two of my children were born at Southland Hospital. I just want to touch on a few points that previous speakers have spoken about today.I do want to say that the number of submitters was quite small. We heard from them and read their submissions. I think it is fair to say I can echo what the Hon Annette King said in her call about the issues that were worked through throughout the Health Committee process to ensure that all parties had their say throughout that committee process. I also want to touch on what Mr Hague said about the fact that Māori representation or the voice of Māori was actually forgotten about by the Minister of Health. I am quite pleased now that Ngāi Tahu will be the voice of Māori to ensure that we do not get forgotten about in this bill.I also want to address a statement made earlier by Jacqui Dean when she said it was not about the food. Well actually it does not take a saint to understand that when you are in hospital and you have had surgery you need a good square diet—good food—to actually recover. If you are not getting fed good food that has nutritional value you are going to stay in hospital as a patient for longer. So I do not support that statement at all. I also want to make a point about the number of elective surgeries which has been mentioned. Down in Southland where I come from where my family has grown up and in the community that I know best I can say that I have had people come into my office to show me that they have been kicked off the elective surgery list. I have had to write letters to the Minister of Health to ask him to reconsider the treatment for those constituents.We have all heard the Government members say so many times that this bill is about cost cutting and it is about efficiency. But I believe that this bill means so much more. I believe there is a bigger problem than this and it is the fact that our community has a right to have a say. We deserve to have our voices heard when it is to do with local health-care and how that is managed. Southlanders have had to ask themselves what their priority is—where does their priority lie? What do they believe in? Is it important that they actually get to have a say over what health-care services are dispensable or are being made dispensable in Southland?Under the guise of fiscal responsibility this National-led Government has decided it wants to suspend Southerners’ rights to vote for our health-care representatives. The Minister believes that he knows best. He appointed his commissioner and thinks that she knows best. Well Minister Coleman I can tell you now that Southlanders think that actually they know best how to vote for the people in their community to ensure that they have the right to lobby those members on the board at such time when they need to. In Southland we recognise that there is a deficit problem with our district health board. New Zealand First strongly believes in holding the district health board fiscally accountable for the choices that they have made. But New Zealand First does not believe in railroading the democratic processes simply to fulfil a cost-cutting exercise.Elections are often thought of as the heart of the political process. That is how the Minister got into Parliament and that is how New Zealand First got into Parliament too. In New Zealand democracy gives people the ability to be the owners of their own destiny. Think for a moment about some of the recent examples of New Zealanders standing up and sending a message. The Northland by-election is a good example.So many constituents have been in contact with me. In fact over the last week I have been to one public protest in Otago where—it has been echoed already—there were over 400 people attending. That was because they were not satisfied with the food that they were receiving in the hospital or out in the community through the Meals on Wheels scheme. I have also been to one public meeting in Invercargill where the deputy mayor came to talk about the fact that we have a problem with this Compass Group contract and we deserve the right to have our say to show our disapproval. We are certainly planning on more meetings.The food that is being served to our patients at the Southland District Health Board hospitals is an issue. I know Mr Deputy Speaker that earlier you said to the previous speaker to bring it in.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Bring it in.RIA BOND: Thanks. But the issue is that the district health board has been forced to deal with a deficit. In that it has actually been forced to take on a contract and it has to watch its bottom line so that contract is part of that process. I asked the district health board members when they appeared before us in the select committee whether they would be prepared to actually put an independent food auditor in to spot-check the food to make sure that it had a nutritional value and that just fell on deaf ears. That was actually really sad.I will come back to an area that I am quite interested in—and people in Invercargill are too—which is that the ability for the people of Invercargill to be stripped of our rights to vote for our elected district health board as this all comes before the House is an indictment. In Southland it means that we cannot have the voice to fight for our rights; to voice against our absolute horror about the slop that is being served to our people. We do not get the right to actually hold our board responsible and we absolutely lose the right to hold the Minister of Health responsible too. We will lose that right until such a time as the Minister sees fit to return to the people of Southland the right to vote for our district health board members. We heard that that could be in 2019. I have heard Annette King mention that she surely does hope that that occurs. New Zealand First is quite hesitant to actually completely absolutely trust that that will occur given that recently in this House another bill was put forward to actually extend a time for the Canterbury area to not have its democratic vote.Before I heard too from previous members that Southlanders do deserve the right to vote and actually so do Otago people. In Otago especially they deserve to have their input into the rebuild—or the overdue renovations—of Dunedin Hospital. They deserve to say what services they want for their community. When the Minister appointed the commissioner to run the Southern District Health Board he was quoted in the Otago Daily Times in June saying: “The plan is really for the commissioners to stay on as appointed members of that board and new elected members to come on at the local body election.” I still do not understand why this cannot be the solution. I am asking why there was such a big U-turn Minister Coleman. Why cannot Southlanders vote for the remaining board members and then everyone actually gets what they want which is really at the end of the day to have their say to ensure that the community is not lost in that. Stripping the votes from Southlanders by this National-led Government is placing all the decision-making powers in an unelected few and that really concerns us.This is the same Government that oversaw the merger of the Southland and Otago district health boards in 2010. It further streamlined a centralised agenda and it actually burdened our district health board because we have the largest geographic area in New Zealand. That National-led Government watched from the sidelines for years as the district health board struggled without giving any timely assistance. That Government has gone to great lengths to blame the former board management while it quickly undertook a review of the population-based funding formula. For me if that is not a concession that it has starved our district health board of adequate funding then I do not know what is. We know from Cabinet papers that the rural adjuster calculation did not adequately fund the Southern District Health Board and that the district health board missed out on the correct funding for many years.When the district health board members appeared before the Health Committee I asked how much money they thought that it had actually missed out on that has continued to add to its deficit. Have a guess what they replied? They could not tell me. They could not give me a figure; they could not do that. I asked how responsible that was of that commissioner and his subcommittee members now today—not the previous board who could have told us but the commissioner that we have in place now.More than 40 percent of the Southern District Health Board population lives outside the urban centres and this increases the cost of the delivering of services. With such a big region to service it is no wonder it struggles to meet its service needs and its financial needs also.In closing I want to issue a challenge to the Labour Party members tonight. If they support the Real Meals Coalition for a call to stop the Compass Group contract why are they supporting this bill that will strip Southlanders and Otago people of their democratic right to vote? Thank you. New Zealand First opposes this bill.