Hutchison Paul: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hutchison Paul: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8438. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) 
: 
 It is an absolute pleasure to talk about the health service review in New Zealand. Investment over the last year has come to a record high of $14.1 billion. I must say that this health system has been better managed in the last year than ever before and it is getting better and better. Compared with the regime under Labour where over 9 years the Budget went from $6 billion to $12 billion with no real increase in output the last 4 years have been quite extraordinary in their success and should be celebrated. 
I want to tell you just for one moment about the Bay of Plenty District Health Board financial review. I happened to look at a little paragraph about Te Kaha a small isolated rural community on the East Coast. There it reported that almost 100 percent of women were having cervical screening almost 100 percent of women were covered for breast screening and almost 100 percent of children aged 2 were fully immunised whereas 5 to 6 years ago that would have been less than 60 percent if not 50 percent. That record under National is something that should be celebrated. One can then extrapolate it to the record of National right around New Zealand. Whereas 4 or 5 years ago immunisation coverage was 67 percent under Labour now it is over 93 percent and going up. In terms of extra operations 35000 more electives are done per year in New Zealand than 4 years ago. That has got to be celebrated. So when we hear Annette King having the gall to suggest that our health system is not well managed she ought to look at herself very carefully in the mirror. She was the very lady who culled up to 30000 patients off the waiting list and sent them back to the general practitioners to wallow. Today as I said before there are 35000—35000—extra electives per year than there were 4 years ago under that extremely inefficient regime. 
I would like to point out that some of the new initiatives over the last year that have been shored in are incredibly important for sustaining the affordability of our health services in New Zealand because right around the world sustaining health services has become problematic particularly under the very very difficult position after the financial economic crisis. The initiatives have included cementing in the National Health Board which is a national purchasing agency to ensure that every health dollar counts. Secondly Health Workforce New Zealand—and we heard Annette King saying that the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists was querying the figures of Mr Ryall and the Prime Minister. Well the facts are that it is talking about only hospital doctors not about doctors in primary care. We learn from the Ministry of Health that the greatest gains in health will come from health promotion disease prevention and the integration of primary and secondary care. That is where we need the new doctors and that is where National has delivered 1000 new doctors and 2000 more nurses and has reduced back-office staff by 1000. That has got to be pretty good. That is the fact of the matter and I think Annette King has been very very selective when she has used—