Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I've been reflecting on the intervention by the Minister of Health the Hon Dr David Clark a few minutes ago. I think the saddest thing about that intervention is that he honestly believes the rhetoric that he told the House—that things are somehow getting better on his watch. But there's very little evidence to show that that's the case and there's plenty of evidence to show that Labour have not delivered on so many of the promises they gave to the people of New Zealand. There's very little of the extra money—certainly not the $8 billion that he claimed had been starved from funding under the previous Government. Those DHBs are now under massive massive financial stress—stress that might be understandable if throughput was going up.But actually what we're seeing are fewer services being delivered not more. So I want to go through these areas. I accept that there was one reasonably significant area where there was money invested but how can this Budget be called a wellbeing Budget if in order to fund that extra investment in one part of the health sector the other parts of the health sector are stressed and starved financially? And I want to go through the areas of health where Labour aren't delivering on their promises.If there's an area they're not delivering on their promises that is most obvious to every New Zealander it's in GP fees because it was for every New Zealander that Jacinda Ardern and a bevy of caucus colleagues stood in the Manukau shopping centre and said Every single New Zealander is going to get a reduction in GP fees."—not delivered on that promise not only this year but last year. It was a "Maybe we will but not yet." And we still wait for that promise.I wonder what the people who were told they were going to get better cancer care thought about Labour's delivery of that promise. Good people who have come before the Health Committee like Blair Vining Wiki Mulholland Terre Maize. There are about two dozen petitions talking about increasing funding for certain drugs or treatments and there's another big one coming from the Vinings. I wonder what they think about whether Labour have delivered on their promise to deliver world-class cancer care. That is certainly not the perception of many.They haven't delivered on their promises on pharmaceutical funding. I mean that is so fundamental to what we are doing and I was staggered to hear the Minister of Health who criticised the previous Government for nine years for what he described as underfunding in pharmaceuticals management saying that 1.1 percent is enough because we make savings by turning patents into generics and that'll be all right. That is hugely misunderstanding the degree to which New Zealand is falling behind the rest of the OECD on world-leading medicines. It was one comment in Opposition. It was the delivery of promises but not the delivery of funding.There's another big big area where Labour is failing to deliver on its promises and that is in—and this is scandalous in my view—the community of midwifery. Now the community of midwives took the previous Government to the High Court for equity—a female-dominated occupation but effectively self-employed so they didn't have a pathway through the Equal Pay Act into the Employment Court. They did the novel thing and took the Government to the High Court under the Human Rights Act. The previous Government agreed a process for a mediated settlement which would result in a budget increase—a budget bid at least—that was transparent. The Minister of Health in the previous Budget completely ignored it to the point where the Ministry of Health had to apologise to the College of Midwives for their failure to deliver a budget bid for Budget 2018.One would think that in the face of that sort of take down—and just bear in mind that not only was there no budget bid; there was zero communication between the ministry and the Minister's office about even thinking about it. That's what this Minister and that Government think about the community of midwives. In the face of that response one would think that in Budget 2019 there would be something of a remedy.Hon Scott Simpson: Nothing.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Not a sausage. Indeed because of that failure to do what they did last year a new mediated settlement was reached with a pathway to conclusion in July 2020. That's fine but there's another part of that settlement agreement and that is that there should have been a significant bump in this year's Budget. That's why I call it scandalous. It is scandalous because they have been ignored and midwives are voting with their feet to leave the profession or leave the country.We had some staggering statistics today about net migration where our greatest export is now our people. There's been a 73 percent increase in the number of people leaving New Zealand and my guess is that there's a good number of the community of midwives among them.Hon Scott Simpson: That's what happened under the last Labour Government.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Absolutely. Quite right Mr Simpson.Now I also wonder why Labour isn't delivering on its promise to provide a free health and eye check for its seniors because that was in the coalition agreement. It's not like they could say "Oh well you know we only said that when we were the Labour Party; now we've got to balance the books a bit more so we're going to backtrack from that." This was in the coalition agreement with New Zealand First. Not a dickie bird about when. We're two Budgets in and there's a heck of a lot of stuff backing up. The Minister of Finance must be having kittens over the number of "not yet but soon" comments that have been made by his colleagues. Breast screening—increasing the age to 74. That's standard now around the world. They promised it. They have failed to deliver on that promise.I was fascinated by the Minister's comments about staffing frankly because he talked about this great increase in nursing. Well actually two things about that: that was delivered under the previous Government and if there is such a big bump in the nursing workforce that's coming why does this Budget say the goal for the nursing workforce—for the number of nursing entry to practice trainees—is equal to or greater than two years ago. It was 1135 this year—1135. Next year? 1135. That's flat-lined like a really really bad patient.GPs was a specific campaign pledge where Labour has not delivered on that promise. They said they would increase the number of people in the GP registrar training programme to 300. It's gone from 185 two years ago to 180. Now I have a degree in accounting. I don't think I need it to know that that is lower not higher and certainly heading in the wrong direction if the goal is 300—a significant failure to deliver. To pretend that the workforce is somehow better off under this Government is going to make people laugh but they're not going to think it's very funny.The last biggest failure is in the fact that the district health boards (DHBs) are drowning in a sea of red ink and this Budget does nothing to keep them afloat. The Minister admitted to the Health Committee this morning that he cannot expect financial viability from the DHBs—he's just given up—and why would he? Three of the DHBs—Waikato Counties Manukau and Canterbury—still haven't had their annual plans approved for this year. The year is about to end in two weeks. Their forecasted financial deficits are $210 million of the $390 million—that I think is actually way conservative and so does Treasury; it'll be closer to the half a billion dollars that I've been predicting for four months—and he says he can talk them into financial viability. He'll give them a damned good telling off he'll fire the odd board and stick in a commissioner but none of that is going to reduce the massive sea of red ink that the health sector has been put under presided over by this asleep-at-the-wheel Minister.My question is simply this: how can a Budget that is so punctuated by the failure of the Government to deliver on its promises be considered a wellbeing Budget? How can the wellbeing of all of those corners of the health sector that have had their tins raided to fund another part think that this is a wellbeing Budget? It's not even well-meaning; it's petty and it's penny-pinching and it's sending this sector—I feel very sorry for it; I've worked in it for a long long time. I know these people well; they're desperate to do better for their patients and this Government is significantly failing them in their attempts to do that. And as I say we heard today that our biggest export is people and many of them will be from the health sector. I think that is a crying shame."