Mr SPEAKER: Question No 3, Hon Annette King.
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour)
to the Minister of Health: If Government health expenditure
has not kept up with all inflationary pressures,
as he admitted on 29 July, what impact has this shortfall
had on patients?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health):
The central premise of the member’s question is wrong.
Inflation is currently at 0.3%.
Cost pressure funding for 2015-16
for health is around 0.6%.
Extra investment of over $4 billion
under this Government is delivering free GP visits for under-13s,
50,000 more operations, 60,000 more first specialist assessments,
and 5,500 more doctors and nurses.
It is only a National Government
that can both handle the country’s finances and deliver more services.
Hon Annette King: Can he explain why, after his claims of all that
extra spending in health, we have failing emergency departments
unable to treat the number of patients arriving and seeking help,
with many of them sitting or lying in corridors,
with or without fluorescent lights, because the hospitals—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Bring the question to a conclusion.
Hon Annette King: —are running to capacity?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, that is totally incorrect.
The member is having flashbacks to her own tenure.
What she knows
is that 95% of patients are in and out of our emergency departments
within 6 hours.
The service is much, much better than it was
a whole decade ago, back when Mrs King was the Minister.
I am really surprised that she has got the gall to get up
and ask that sort of question, but she can continue to do so.
Hon Annette King: Would his answers about how much money
he has put into the health system be much comfort to Mary, who reported
on 11 August 2015 that she sat for hours with a severe leg infection,
unable to get a bed in the emergency department,
while five other people sat beside her with intravenous fluid drips
in their arms, waiting to get out of the corridor?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: That sounds more like 15 August 2005,
not 2015.
But, as Mrs King has said before, it is better
to help patients rather than use them.
I am very pleased to see
that Mrs King’s views on the health system have changed
substantially over time, because back in 2002 she said that NZ
is not rich enough to have the kind of health system found in Australia.
Yet only last week she was saying—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
The answer is now almost as long as the question.
Hon Annette King: Is it acceptable to him for a person with renal colic
to sit in a jam-packed corridor outside the emergency department
on a chair for hours because there were no beds available—
so overcrowded in the corridor that the doctors and nurses
were bumping into each other and had difficulty taking blood
from the patients?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: You will notice that Mrs King gives no names,
no dates, and no hospital.
I do not think you could possibly believe that.
I think it is probably fiction.
Hon Annette King: Does the Minister realise that rather than
constantly dodging direct questions, failing to give direct answers,
and then harking back with selective figures from—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Can I just have the question.
Hon Annette King: —10 years ago, he needs to focus on what is happening
in emergency department corridors today, which, according to
a member of Parliament, is described as—
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Who—who?
Hon Annette King: —wait till I tell him what they said—
Mr SPEAKER: You had better hurry up.
Hon Annette King: —“It makes them look like some sort of
"makeshift refugee camps.”?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: This is all scaremongering and rumour.
The member gives no details.
The only facts we know
are that she doubled the budget and delivered 7,500 fewer appointments
and 2,000 fewer operations.
As they said in the Dominion Post
in September 2005, how can a Minister spend so much money
yet make the system worse?
That was Annette King—
no record to stand on, I am afraid.
Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Although this is unusual, the Minister did say:
“Who was that record a quote from”—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
I just want the point of order.
Hon Annette King: I would like to table Hansard, 6 March 2008—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
[Interruption] Order!
The member will immediately
resume her seat.
There is no need to table Hansard in this House.
Hon Annette King: When he railed against people waiting in corridors
under the previous Government when hospitals were at capacity,
calling it unacceptable and a failure of the health system,
did he envisage that he would be hearing under his watch
about a man with cancer who waited for hours in the ambulance bay
beside the emergency department without a pillow or a blanket?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: To be honest, if all this was true,
Mrs King would be giving names, naming hospitals, and giving dates.
I believe she is just making it up and, frankly, you have got
no credibility unless you give details.
It is better to help patients
rather than use them, Mrs King.
Hon Annette King: Is he aware that the increase in those
getting a first specialist assessment since 2008-09
averages out at an increase of just 3.8% a year—
which Professor Philip Bagshaw, who knows a thing about people
waiting in pain and disability, described as absolutely inadequate—
and reflects the $1.7 billion missing from the health budget
under this Government?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The only fact in all this is that Mrs King
doubled the budget twice and actually delivered
7,500 fewer appointments and 2,000 fewer operations.
All the rest is Mrs King making it up.
If it was not made up,
she would be citing—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —names, dates, hospitals.
She cannot do it.
Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
I did cite a name, and that was Professor Bagshaw.
Can I seek leave—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
That is not a point of order,
but I will have the point of order that you are getting to.
Hon Annette King: Can I seek leave to table where I got
the direct quote from?
It is from a newspaper, but Dr—
Mr SPEAKER: No, no.
[Interruption] Order!
The member will resume her seat.
We are not about to table
newspaper articles in this House.
Question No 4.