Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Labour's high-powered" waiting list plan announced yesterday is another failed health outcome—announced on 4 May and here we are six months later. What have we seen? Well surprise surprise—this high-powered task force—waiting lists have actually gone up. Waiting lists have gone up. And furthermore what they said yesterday when they had this big announcement was that they're not going to deploy anything for another three months. Oh and by the way that'll cost $30 million—that three-month delay. They have had years to come up with a plan but in fact what we saw yesterday with Labour's high-powered waiting list plan was actually a plan for how to shut the door on surgery not how to open the door. It was a "shutting the door" plan and I say that on three grounds.First of all if you look at the report and look at ministerial answers what we know is that 10000 GP referrals per month are declined by Health New Zealand. What we know is that Christchurch district health board shut the door on GP referrals back in August. What we know is that there are GPs who now don't even bother sending a referral because they know it won't be accepted. So the size of the iceberg underneath the water is much bigger than this Government can conceive. What we also saw was that follow-ups have been cancelled. Well that's a good plan to shut the door! If you hadn't thought about it when a surgeon does surgery they need to do the follow-up one to address complications but also to quality assure that they did a good job. So if you remove those follow-up appointments you remove the opportunity for the person who had the knife on the day to address the patient—"Has everything gone OK?"—and also to quality assure themselves: "I did an OK job" or "Here's where I can do better." All of that is gone because Andrew Little and his high-powered task force has said that some follow-ups are unnecessary. Good luck to the Health and Disability Commissioner when that comes back to bite you.The third part to shutting the door is that by default they have set a new waiting list time. Instead of it being that when you go on the waiting list you can receive your surgery in four months the new default time now is 12 months. Health New Zealand is only operating on its priority 12-month waiting list. Now we know there are roughly 5315 on that list who have been waiting more than 12 months. It used to be 4 months—the target. We know that went out the backdoor by default. The new waiting list target for Health New Zealand is 12 months. We have the worst wait times on record. First specialist assessments those even wanting to see a specialist—36000. People who are on the surgical list—they were told by their surgeon "You will be seen within 4 months." I've just said that it is now 12 months at best—28000 of them. Put those two together—everyone on the list; those "more than four months" and those "less than four months"—and it's 200000 people; 1 in 25 New Zealanders on waiting lists. And surprise surprise here's the spinner: when I asked the Minister how many people on waiting lists end up in the emergency department (ED)—"Are you surprised that it's 30 percent—one in three—on a waiting list eventually end up in ED?"—now to be fair I can't tell that it's with the condition that put them on the waiting list but with a high probability that it likely is and that is adding to our ED wait time problems. ED wait times—76 percent the worst they've been on record.And let's look at the excuses because I heard them here again today. "Worst flu season ever"—that is not correct. Look at the Environmental Science and Research Ltd health stat data of 300 general practices. This is not the worst flu season ever. Find another excuse. So they go to COVID. No again wrong—all of the waiting lists were failing long before COVID even arrived. Look back at your own data. Look at what John Bonning the head of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine said this week around ED wait times: "This is not a COVID blip." Look at the letter we filed today from all of the specialists all of the heads of department at Tauranga and they say "However we believe that COVID is providing an excuse for delays in access to care." And then the third excuse we heard last week was missing data—"The dog ate my homework." Well good luck with that! Find another excuse. Find a better excuse because no one believes and the data does not support the pathetic excuses that have been put forward here.Several things you can do: workforce—turn on the day one pathway to residency for nurses today. Targets: refocus the health workforce refocus resources and funding on health targets. And on the question of targets we clearly have a difference. We have a difference of opinion here with the Minister and his high-powered task force saying on TV ONE last night that they are distractions but the real question Andrew Little needs to answer is why in October last year he said to reporters "I'm more confident today than I was two weeks ago about hitting the 90 percent COVID target." Explain why you supported the COVID targets Mr Little."