Health system in crisis: What are the Government’s plans to fix it? - The Front Page

Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has acknowledged the health sector is in crisis - but has the Government focused on the wrong priorities in its 100-day plan? Photo / Mark Mitchell

“Uncertainty and concern” are two of the common refrains coming from the health sector, as the Government implements more plans for the sector.

Yesterday, the Government tabled two bills that are part of their 100-day plan targeting health policies.

One repeals Labour’s smokefree plans, including a ban on cigarette sales for people born after January 1, 2009 and limits how many outlets can sell tobacco.

The other scraps the Māori Health Authority, which National, Act and NZ First had all opposed under the previous Government’s health reforms.

The debates sparked a furious response from Opposition, with Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer saying the Government sees “Māori are expendable”, while health researchers criticised the smokefree repeal as lacking logic and evidence.

NZ Herald health reporter Isaac Davison told The Front Page, the Herald’s daily news podcast, while the Maori Health Authority has only been around since July 2022, the governing parties aren’t interested in waiting to see how effective it could be.

“For the Government, the longer something’s bedded in, the harder it is to scrap, the harder it is to get rid of it, and they would argue that, well, we’ve got the mandate to get rid of this, we all campaigned on it, it’s in our manifestos, and we got in overwhelmingly, so why wait?”

While the Government has earned support for plans for a third, graduate-focused medical school to deal with a shortage of doctors, scrapping the smokefree policy and Maori Health Authority - as well as a surprising move to decline signing up to amendments to World Health Organisation regulations - have “burnt a bit of goodwill” with public health experts, Davison said.

“Other priorities are obviously being welcomed, especially around workforce, but particularly the tobacco stuff, I think, has given them a bit of a false start, and they’ve got to work to overcome that now.”

He said Health Minister Shane Reti had been clear in describing the health system’s issues as a “crisis”, which has signalled to the frontline how seriously the Government plans to take things, but said that “uncertainty and concern” are what he’s hearing from health professionals.

“You’ve got to note that the issues that [Reti] is dealing with are really entrenched, they’re significant, especially these issues around workforce shortages, long waiting lists, and there’s uncertainty among the people I’ve spoken to about how National ... are going to get us out of that hole.

“I think Reti acknowledges that. He said to me the other day, ‘what was hard for Labour, that’ll be hard for us’.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about the state of the health system, where the Government’s priorities are, and why they’ll struggle to compete to keep staff in New Zealand.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. This episode was presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined Newstalk ZB in 2016.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.