PM puts hospitals on Budget shortlist

By JOHN ARMSTRONG, Political Correspondent


Hospitals are to get more cash for elective, non-urgent surgery as the Prime Minister keeps a wary political eye on the length of time people are waiting for operations.

Helen Clark, who returned from a cross-country skiing holiday in Norway this week, yesterday flagged the top-up as an element in this May's Budget, which will be dominated by the "Future Directions" package of assistance for low and modest income earners.

Speaking before the first Cabinet meeting of the New Year next Tuesday, she said that income assistance would be phased in over a period of years, starting from April next year.

"We will also do some stuff on [hospital] waiting times where performance is not quite as good in some areas as others," she told the Weekend Herald.

"Particularly in the orthopaedic area, we have not got the results we have got in other areas. We are leading up to some targeted interventions."

The Prime Minister said she would deliver a pep talk to the Cabinet on Tuesday "about how we want to run the year".

"I see my role as keeping ministers' feet firmly on the ground - stay in touch, say what you are going to do, mean what you say, speak plainly, deal with the issues, be predictable."

The Prime Minister appears to have put any thoughts of a Cabinet reshuffle on the backburner.

"I have got no plans right now at all."

After the 2002 election, she indicated that she would reallocate portfolios midway through this parliamentary term, by which time some ministers would have been in the same posts for nearly five years.

However, she said yesterday that the prospect of a reshuffle was diminishing rather than growing.

"By and large, people are quite happily settled and doing quite well at it.

"I will need some persuasion that there would need to be change, put it that way."

She singled out Annette King's handling of health as a difficult portfolio where the minister was managing "extremely well".

Any reshuffle is now unlikely to take place before early next year after Jonathan Hunt retires as Speaker to become New Zealand's High Commissioner in London.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has yet to decide whether she will attend Waitangi Day commemorations at Waitangi.

If she goes, she will be the focus of Maori protests over her Government's handling of claims to the foreshore and seabed. On the other hand, she is bound to face criticism from opponents of chickening out if she boycotts Waitangi.

"There will always be an issue at Waitangi," she said. "Last year when there was not a specific Maori issue there was the Ngawha prison. So there will always be something."