Watts Simon; Little AndrewSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I appreciate the Minister's contribution on the last point. I refer to clause 86(3A). It goes into some detail in terms of When determining appointments to the committee the Minister must be satisfied … collectively" around the capability and competence and the experience and knowledge and expertise of those on that committee. My question actually relates somewhat to the point I've made previously around Pharmac in terms of the cost-benefit model and the fact that the investment may be made within a health appropriation but yet the benefit crystallises or is derived or is realised—three words meaning the same thing—outside of the health sphere. When I'm looking through the skill sets of the people within that advisory committee there is no requirement for anyone with any health economics financial sustainability fiscal health fiscal experience or any such aspect. Noting that one of the most significant challenges that we have within the healthcare system globally is how to meet the fact that in effect demand for healthcare services is infinite and yet funding is finite—quite simply that lens is important in terms of having that perspective around the table. You know it can all sound nice in terms of blue-sky thinking of where we should be in terms of outcomes but the reality is that we can't achieve everything within that finite health budget.We saw that come through—and I was fortunate to be part of the Health Committee—when we went through COVID and saw the impacts of COVID on our health system. One of the I think learnings which will no doubt be picked up when we review our response—and of course we did very well in aspects. But one aspect that I think we could have done better on was in regards to that operationalisation of the policy and clinical policy decisions that were being made such as the aspects around procurement of services the speed of that procurement and the fiscal considerations around how we did that. I think that would probably be acknowledged as an area that we could have improved. So this composition here is missing that aspect and my question to the Minister quite simply is why and what are the reasons for that?Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I'm happy to respond as best I can to Mr Watts' question. I think the role of that expert advisory committee on public health is really to deal principally with epidemiological issues and to look at the technical and clinical information coming locally but more often from overseas to understand what is happening with our population-based health issues that we need to be addressing what are the non-communicable diseases that we all struggle to deal with and the various community interests that go to influence decisions on that. That's what that committee is really set up for. I would expect as an ongoing thing that the ministry which has the broader policy responsibility for health generally and health systems—and bearing in mind that the Public Health Agency will be a discrete body within the ministry—that it's the ministry that will have economists and other disciplines to bring to bear on this and indeed I expect that Treasury will continue to have health economists as part of the make-up of their workforce as we expect them to do for their long-term planning around health and the sustainability of health funding. So the broader agencies will have that capability and we expect the Public Health Agency to be focused on the challenging epidemiological issues of the age."