- By Christopher Luxon, Leader of the Opposition and MP for Botany
The Government launched its billion-dollar health restructure on Friday, which merged all the country’s DHBs into one centralised system called Health New Zealand.
But simply rearranging the health sector will do nothing to fix the issues we are currently facing.
Our hospitals are falling apart, doctors and nurses are burnt out, emergency department wait times have blown out, surgeries have been delayed and wait times to see specialists and have scans have increased. None of these are remedied by a bureaucratic restructure.
We are also facing a critical workforce shortage with New Zealand currently short of 4000 nurses, 1500 GPs and 1500 specialists.
Every day brings new headlines about our health system’s abysmal staffing shortcomings, but all Health Minister Andrew Little has done is hire 1000 paper-pushing contractors and consultants to set up his new health bureaucracy.
Minor changes to our immigration settings – like putting nurses on the fast track for residency – will help address some of the immediate workforce issues.
Yet the Labour Government has forced nurses to wait two years before they are even eligible to apply. Meanwhile, nurses are on Australia’s priority skills list, offering them immediate residency, so why would nurses apply to come to New Zealand?
The health sector has been aware of these shortages for over a year and sent an urgent letter in July 2021 warning of impending health workforce shortages and requesting immediate changes to immigration settings. However, the Health Minister decided to ignore it and pushed on with his health restructure.
The letter clearly outlines the danger of critical workforce shortages, the need for overseas-trained staff and an expected increase in demand in emergency departments. Unfortunately, this gloomy prognosis from the sector has come true.
New Zealanders are now missing out on health care because the Health Minister has failed to act on warnings from the sector. Meanwhile, New Zealand is losing nurses to Australia because the Government has refused to put them on the fast-tracked residency pathway.
New Zealanders deserve better. Parents should be able to get their children to the doctor in a timely manner. Patients should not have to wait eight to 10 hours in emergency departments and should have easy access to specialists and scans.
The Health Minister is failing at his core responsibility of ensuring New Zealanders have access to health care and has been too busy rearranging bureaucrats. More money, more bureaucrats, worse outcomes.
The Health Minister has been so focused on rearranging the health system – in the middle of a pandemic – that sick New Zealanders are now paying the price.
The National Government I lead will focus on outcomes and services, not systems and bureaucracy.
