Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker—tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I have to say I was pretty shocked by the Minister of Health's contribution just now when he said that New Zealanders at the rugby in Rotorua do not care that their Minister and the Ministry of Health made a grievous error in the allocation of the Budget. I think that is quite disrespectful to New Zealanders. I think he does not give them enough credit. Of course New Zealanders themselves do not want to worry about those numbers—that is why they elected us as representatives. They expect the Minister to do that work so that they do not have to. But our Minister of Health—and sport as he rightfully pointed out—is far more interested in attending sporting matches than actually doing the very important job of being a Minister of Health and having oversight of what is happening in the health budget which is the single largest area of expenditure of taxpayer money. I think New Zealanders would rightfully expect that their Government would take that spending seriously. It does matter. Yes it was an error and errors do occur but errors like these add up.The disengagement of this Minister of Health is undeniable. It is certainly what I have heard talking to people in the health sector around the country since I took on the health spokesperson portfolio 9 months ago—that this Minister is incredibly disengaged. And hey I feel sorry for Minister Coleman. It is no secret that he wanted to be Minister of Foreign Affairs or even Prime Minister but sadly for him he did not win either of those contests. So here he is stuck being Minister of Health and he has got very little interest in actually improving the health system for New Zealanders. He wants to kick back and attend the rugby matches and attend the sporting games and smile and shrug and say: It's all good—doesn't matter."But the slow erosion of health services over the last 8½ years under this National Government is becoming very apparent to many New Zealanders. That is what I have heard when I have talked to people in this sector. There are some areas where this Government has focused more money and those are ticking right along. It is no surprise that those areas where it has focused more money are the ones that benefit the people who are most likely to vote. The Government knows how to keep its voters happy. But it is not meeting the needs of all New Zealanders and in the medium to long term that is a ticking time bomb that is going to come back to haunt us.I know that all New Zealanders do not care for just their own health; they want to live in a society where their fellow citizens are healthy and happy for the long term where the environment is healthy for the long term. That is what New Zealanders want and they are starting to see through the smoke and mirrors and spin that this National Government has been so good at. It pretends to value the same things that New Zealanders value but you have got to put action and Government spending where your words are. You have got to back it up with real action and that has not been happening. It just is not good enough to hear yet one more excuse for why the Government made this minor mistake that actually involves tens of millions of dollars and how they are allocated to different district health boards. It just is not good enough.Health underfunding—the Minister just claimed that there has not been underfunding in health. Yet Infometrics analysis makes it very clear that while the Government is nominally putting more money in that has not kept up with inflation population growth—record population growth—and increasing demand from an ageing population. All of that adds up to cuts. I am not saying that you just need to spend more money for the sake of it but when we talk to people in the sector it is clear that they are experiencing the real impact of these cuts. There is burnout amongst specialists general practitioners and nurses and no more so than in the mental health sector.Minister Coleman allocated a slight increase in mental health funding but has no idea what it is going to be spent on. When he came before the Health Committee he said "Oh we don't need a nationwide inquiry." which many people in the sector have been calling for. The Green Party has supported those calls. We need an independent nationwide inquiry to get to the bottom of our broken mental health system. The Minister claims that we do not need an inquiry because we already know what we need to do but then with the additional money he has allocated for mental health he says it is for "innovation" and we do not yet know what it is going to be spent on.So which is it Minister? Do we know what it is going to be spent on? Do we know what we need to do or are we going to have an inquiry and get to the bottom of it? And make it be independent and make sure that we are hearing from everybody affected—the patients the families of those patients and the people working in the sector—because they are the ones who are best placed to tell us how we should best be allocating money and what levels of funding we actually need to ensure that the need out there in the community is being met so that we can start reducing our disgracefully high suicide rate and youth suicide rate. It is just not good enough that New Zealanders with mental health difficulties are reaching out and being told that they have to wait sometimes more than 8 weeks to get the help they need. It is not good enough.The National Government is also while underfunding the health budget totally not funding the areas where we really need to make a difference in the long term and those are prevention and primary care. Over the last 8 years the primary healthcare strategy that had been instituted and executed under the previous Government has basically fallen to the wayside. What we have seen is that the very slight increases to the nominal health budget have mainly been sucked up by hospitals and that is really an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We are not putting enough money into primary care. We are putting less than a quarter I think of what GPs have said they actually need to meet the need out there.This is pretty obvious because—the Minister talked about the Opposition spokespeople not knowing what they are talking about. Well at the select committee he claimed not to know about a paper that was recently published in the New Zealand Medical Journal that estimates that one in four New Zealanders is not accessing primary care because of cost. The total cost of that is actually far greater than the cost of just funding the primary care in the first place.We in the Green Party and the Labour Party have already committed under our budget responsibility rules with our memorandum of understanding to restore health and education funding to meet the need that is out there in the sector and we have shown how we can pay for it. That means that the $2.3 billion hole in the health budget that has been created by this National Government will be met under a Green-Labour Government. That means that people out there in New Zealand are going to be able to access primary care.We know that that is actually going to achieve what New Zealanders really want which is their fellow citizens their families their co-workers and themselves being able to access the healthcare and support that they need to live healthy happy lives. That is the expectation of New Zealanders the rightful expectation—that the Government will ensure that what they need the Government services that they need will be provided and that our Ministers will actually sit down and do the sums and do the work to make sure that funding is appropriately allocated not just shrug it off and say: "Oh New Zealanders at the rugby don't really care about the numbers." They do not care about the numbers; they expect us to care about the numbers. They expect us to do the governing. That is what we are here for. Accept some responsibility.This National Government is a disgrace. It is so good at the spin. It is so good at the spin and it does just enough to keep it all from falling apart but it is running out of time. It is running out of time.The Green Party will prioritise public health. That is one thing that this National Government has completely—completely—let go. I have heard from anyone working or trying to work with the Ministry of Health that they know there is no capability or capacity in the Ministry of Health to meet our long-term health challenges.We have heard excuses from the health Minister as to why we cannot have an effective plan to actually reduce the chronic disease related to childhood obesity like a tax on sugary drinks that would fund health services and health promotions and reduce overconsumption. No this National Government would rather prioritise the profits of a big multinational like Coca-Cola than the health of New Zealand children.Hon Members: Aw!JULIE ANNE GENTER: That is right. It just bends over backwards to help the Food and Grocery Council make sure that its members can keep making record profits on the back of New Zealand children being sick which is going to cost New Zealand taxpayers in the long term.We would institute a tax on sugary drinks and use the proceeds from that to fund health promotion. People would still have access to sugary drinks but the tax would reduce overconsumption. We want to reduce the availability in schools. We want healthy food in schools. We want healthy food and drink choices available for New Zealanders and particularly children in sports clubs in hospitals and in all our public buildings and we can achieve that. A Green Government will achieve long-term health benefits for all New Zealanders."