Calder Cam: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill Charities Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Calder Cam: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill Charities Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 30 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2725. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to rise and take a very brief call on the bills arising from the Crown Entities Reform Bill which at the Committee stage was divided into the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill the Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill and the Charities Amendment Bill (No 2). At this stage I would like to acknowledge the excellent chairmanship of the Hon Ruth Dyson. I am not a member of the Government Administration Committee but I have been given a briefing by the deputy chairman Mr Chris Auchinvole who spoke of the excellent work and the collegiality on that committee.  
The Crown Entities Reform Bill as we said has been divided into the three bills we have here. This is part of the Government’s overall programme to improve State sector performance as a whole. One of our four priorities as we heard in the Budget debate earlier today is to get better value from our public services—more efficient more effective better public services. We are about not growing the Public Service but growing services to the public. This means more front-line service delivery and more efficient back-office services. We are aiming to reduce the duplication of corporate and governance overheads and ensure that agencies can continue to deliver the front-line services that all New Zealanders have a right to expect and indeed do expect.  
One of the things that I am particularly taken with is the establishment of a new Health Promotion Agency. With a background in medicine I do believe that prevention has a huge part in improving the health of New Zealanders. The new Health Promotion Agency will take over the functions of the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand—often known as ALAC—the Health Sponsorship Council and the relevant functions of the Ministry of Health. The reason for this change is that it is part of the Government’s programme as I said to ensure that the State sector delivers efficient front-line services. We believe that reducing the number of Government agencies is likely to improve coordination reduce fragmentation and ensure that functions are delivered by agencies with greater resilience in a state of some uncertain and harsh economic times. We believe that for instance will allow efficiencies in the commissioning of television advertisements and possibly in education resource production just to show a couple of small examples.  
This is an opportunity. It strengthens the focus on health promotion activity as I say also by transferring existing health promotion activity in the Ministry of Health to a focused health promotion entity. We believe this will create more opportunities for innovative and targeted approaches to those people in communities with multiple health issues. I commend these bills to the House.