Simeon Brown

Everyone knows someone who's been affected by cancer or had cancer themselves.

And making sure that we're providing those modern medicines closer to home is a top priority that we're focused on delivering.

And that's why we invested...

the additional money in Pharmac back in Budget 24.

That's why we're investing in the rollout of additional cancer infusion centers closer to home.

And particularly, I think travel is a big thing for people with cancer.

They have to travel often for their infusions.

Delivering these services like the Waitakere Infusion Center at Waitakere Hospital is going to make a massive difference for patients.

And for many patients, that's going to be life changing and actually mean they can start their treatment sooner and have a much better response to their treatment.

Simon Brown, who's the health minister with us this morning.

If I had a child, God forbid, or a family member addicted to meth, and then I find out the people that sold them the meth are getting money to take them off meth, I honestly want to cry.

We can't send that message.

The full name of it is the Public Finance Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs Amendment Bill.

And essentially what this is aiming to do is to amend the Public Finance Act so that we don't allow the Crown or their agencies to

to provide funds directly or indirectly to gangs, basically.

And has that been a problem?

What's sort of prompted this?

It has, and, you know, I don't usually like to use the word loophole, but I will use it in this situation because there's been examples where public funds, and so that's the pool of money that is available for New Zealanders, have been given in a form of a fund or a grant specifically

to different organisations that have some affiliations or are affiliated directly to gangs.

The last time we saw that happening glaringly was in 2021 under the former Labor government.