Bond Ria: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBond Ria: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5549. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RIA BOND (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I am pleased to take this short call on behalf of New Zealand First. I specifically want to actually talk today about palliative care in the Vote Health estimates. It is easy for the Government to turn round and say “We’ve put $76.1 million into palliative health care services.” and yet in the same breath it says it would spread this out over a 4-year period.So what we are really dealing with here is the fact that we have 29 hospices from around New Zealand for palliative health care services and they receive only $19 million per year. We know from Hospice New Zealand that in 2014 it dealt with 16000 patients. It visited over 114000 homes of patients who actually have life-limiting conditions. This is actually for them an emotional roller-coaster time of their lives. It is generally in their last stages—about 10 days—when they can expect to live comfortably.So what I can see is that what that works out at is that we are dealing with $1187 per hospice patient. That is not enough. This is the most sensitive time. It is emotional for families it is gut-wrenching and it is really quite a traumatic time for families to go through. Any death in a family is not wanted by anybody but when you have a loved one who is dying of a terminal condition every emotion is wrenched and it is elongated. So what our palliative care specialists could provide and could be funded for is not just $1187 dollars per patient; it is now going to be spread out among our whānau members and within the means of our community.But of course we are not just dealing with the $1187 being the total cost of looking after our loved ones in a hospice or in palliative care because now as the previous speaker Louisa Wall mentioned we are looking at a 70:30 hospice-funding split. That represents 70 percent of the cost of looking after patients provided by the State but the hospices then have to go out past their district health board and reach into the goodwill of their community to help them fund-raise. We have seen this annually through bucket collections on street corners and through groups like Rotary supporting hospices by funding by holding annual events and by giving support by sitting at the bedside of patients in hospices as I know they do in Invercargill. I have also seen fund-raising occur outside the Warehouse with sausage sizzles. I have seen it outside Harvey Norman in order for the community to try to make up the shortfall of the 30 percent of funding that they need.Hospices along with community groups have hundreds of volunteers who have to help raise money for what is a vital part of our public health service at a time when the public health sector and our people need to know that these services will be met. This Government expects the community and many volunteers to cover the shortfall in funding and in 2014 it was to the sweet tune of $42 million. That $42 million of shortfall meant that communities had extra pressure along with hospices to go out there and find some money. In 2014 it cost $99 million to provide these essential health services for palliative care in hospices. I am grateful when I see the figures to speak about them and to understand that our volunteers contributed a million hours as part of their commitment to help with hospice funding.I look at the Mary Potter Hospice here in Wellington which does an amazing job for the citizens of Wellington. It is run by very special people. So I do not begrudge the fact that we probably feel that with a growing ageing population perhaps the Government is being a little bit mean. Of course this is not necessarily the fault of the Government but it is the fault of the Government’s leadership because some district health boards—and as we know from the estimates for Vote Health South Auckland’s Totara Hospice is named as one of those that is receiving 50 percent less than what it needs from the responsible district health board.Vote Health agreed to.