After announcing our cancer drug plan just a couple of weeks ago, it’s been great to see such rapid progress from Pharmac in kicking off the process to approve the new medicines, and all the other treatments being delivered thanks to our $604 million investment.
First off, the block for consultation were two cancer treatments to benefit around 500 Kiwis in the first year, including those living with advanced triple negative breast cancer.
Since then, we’ve also had a proposal to increase access to five more treatments, including medicines for kidney and lung cancers.
There’s also been action to widen access to a further seven medicines for other conditions, benefitting over 6,000 people within the first 12 months of funding.
Our government’s funding boost of $604 million is making this possible, and there will be many more treatments to come. We’re fully committed to delivering better health outcomes for New Zealanders, and for their families.
Recently, I also shared our latest quarterly Action Plan, containing 40 actions we’ll take in the next three months to keep rebuilding the economy, restoring law and order and improving our public services.
The Q3 Action Plan is particularly focused on cracking down on criminal activity and making you and our community safer.
Before the end of the quarter, we will have passed laws to give Police tough powers to go after gangs by restricting their ability to associate and banning gang patches in public.
We’ll have also passed laws to give Police more power to get guns out of the hands of criminals, increase access to rehabilitation for prisoners on remand and improve efficiency in our court system so it’s easier for victims to get justice.
This month, we will also begin a pilot Youth Military Academy. These programmes will be used to help serious young offenders, who are frequently involved in retail crime, to turn their lives around.
This Government is not prepared to simply give up on young people that are on the wrong pathway. We are prepared to make the powerful intervention necessary that will ultimately keep the community safer.
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve also shared more actions to address the issues you care most about.
In housing, we’re taking action to make houses more affordable by requiring councils to zone for at least 30 years of housing demand at any one time and scrapping rules standing in the way of increasing the supply of affordable homes.
In education, parents can look forward to having a clearer picture of their kids’ achievement thanks to the consistent assessment tools we’re bringing in from next year.
In mental health, we’ve set clear and ambitious targets to deliver better services faster and we’ve set up a new Mental Health Innovation Fund to scale up successful community providers of mental health services so they can reach more Kiwis.
And in transport, we’ve confirmed the next seven Roads of National Significance are expected to begin procurement, enabling works and construction in the next three years.
We’re a government squarely focused on delivery and the actions we’re taking will make a real difference to our country and to the lives of New Zealanders.

-Hon Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister of New Zealand