David Cormack: It's National v National on cancer

National Party Leader Simon Bridges speaks during the 83rd Annual National Party Conference at Christchurch Town Hall. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

COMMENT:

Just about everyone's lives are touched by cancer. Family members, friends, themselves, we've all known someone with cancer, seen someone suffer through the treatments, or watched helplessly as people have slipped away.

On paper, National's announcement at its conference that it will set up a new $200 million cancer fund and expert-led agency is a good thing. And it's a particularly good thing when you consider that New Zealand's largest right-of-centre party is wanting to put more money into socialised healthcare.

National Party Leader Simon Bridges and Deputy Leader Paula Bennett (C) look on during the 83rd Annual National Party Conference. Photo / Getty Images

All around the world, democracies are battling with right wing reactionaries. From Trump to Brexit, through Le Pen in France and into Germany's rise of right wing fascism, even in Australia where One Nation has some vile and revolting politicians, there are problems with right wing extremist policies becoming more mainstream. While here in New Zealand we get a commitment to fund more social healthcare.

Through that lens this is a good thing.

Despite Simon Bridges' latent conservatism, his two big announcements at the two National Party conferences he's attended as leader have been forays into left wing policies. Last year it was reducing class sizes to make it easier for teachers, this year more money for cancer drugs.

One could uncharitably call it a sign of desperation, as National looks to plug two areas it's always struggled in compared to the left - education and health. Many in New Zealand have an internalised sense that the left do better for healthcare, education and other "wellbeing" type areas, while the right has the monopoly on economic nous and toughening up our law and order policies. Rightly or wrongly, this is still what many people believe.

National having announced these two policies at its conferences is an acknowledgement of those weaknesses and an attempt to address them - for that there should be praise.

And yet, the announcement of a $200m cancer fund with expert-led agency does raise the eyebrows a bit. It was after all just four years ago that a National-led Government decommissioned Cancer Control, an expert-led agency that was doing what National claims it wants this new agency to do. And just two years ago, it was former National Minister Steven Joyce who said "Labour's proposal of setting up yet another agency is very underwhelming. We simply don't need more health bureaucracy" when Labour proposed a Cancer Agency.

So this current National Party is yet to reconcile itself with the National Party who was in Government two years ago. Government National is largely responsible for the funding deficit our health system is still experiencing, one that this Government is trying to address. And so until current National can own what it did in Government and say "look, we didn't do as good a job in the health sector as we would have liked, we did make some mistakes" then these sorts of policies can just look populist. And as National might argue if this was a Labour policy, this feels like National is just throwing money at something to fix it.

National Party leader Simon Bridges addresses party members. Photo / Dean Purcell

The other concern is the politicisation of medicines. Pharmac is independent so it can make cold hard rational choices about what medicines to buy, and it uses its buying power to negotiate amazingly good deals for those drugs here in New Zealand. Anything that politicises the medicines that are funded should be avoided. Telling Pharmac they must spend $50m a year on cancer drugs, instead of just beefing up Pharmac's budget means that people with illnesses that aren't cancer could miss out if Pharmac thought those medicines were more worthy. A party insisting Pharmac spend money on a particular type of treatment is unwelcome interference and could give rise to more aggressive lobbying by cancer drug companies than we've already seen.

And while New Zealanders look at Pharmac as some gold standard, world-leading drug-buying agency, it's not without its flaws. We do miss out on some cutting-edge drugs because of the way it's structured to focus on a utilitarian principle of most good for most people. This can force people to go off-shore for some treatments - particularly in cancer - and so this does require work.

The Government has promised us a cancer plan which we're told is on its way soon. It will be interesting to see what it's going to do. National has thrown down a strong challenge with its proposal, and good on it. Now they just need to change their policies on climate change, abortion, law and order, welfare, housing, workers' rights, public transport, rights for marginalised groups, and diversification of the economy and they might get another voter in me.

• David Cormack has worked for the Labour and Green parties and interned for Bill English while studying.