- By Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister and MP for Botany
After announcing our cancer drug plan just a couple of weeks ago, it was great to see rapid progress from Pharmac in kicking off the process to approve two of the new cancer treatments being delivered thanks to our $604 million investment.
The two cancer treatments out for consultation could benefit around 500 Kiwis in the first year, including those living with advanced triple-negative breast cancer.
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.
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 child’s 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.
This is good news for the Botany electorate as it’ll see much-needed progress made on the Mill Road project.
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.
