In December 2025, public hospitals in Aotearoa New Zealand were asked to cut another $510 million, despite $538 million going unspent.
That’s an effective cut of $1 billion i.e. $1000 million, to public health.
It continued a trend started under former Health Minister, Shane Reti, that Health NZ cut $2 billion from the public health system, a fact I reported on in 2024.
So it’s perhaps no surprise to learn this from the government that:
- Froze doctor and nurse hiring, on top of other hospital roles, that put pressure on remaining frontline staff and saw National only hire 54 FTE nurse (while taking credit for the thousands hired by Labour)
- Made major cuts into Health IT investments of at least $380 million. Combined with the firing of almost half of the IT and data workforce, National significantly increased patient risk, cyber attack risk, and left hospitals scrambling for information from fraught paper records, while reducing overall hospital resilience.
- Heavily subsidised corporate GP organiations, like Tend/Aratataki at the expense of community GPs and,
- Funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars, at least $300 million that we even know ofso far, away from public health to private corporates and hospitals.
- To get a sense of how some of these organisations operate, 1News recently profiled a private doctor who misplaced a screw in a 48 year old patient during surgery, causing excruciating, pain, and then demanded $46,795 to review and reverse the error.
The attack on public health is intentional, and NZ’s pre-eminent doctors told Jack Tame on Q&A last year this would be devastating for the country and our people: Top doctors: NZ heading toward US-style health system (VIDEO)
And it was disappointing to see 1News omit these significant factors in a recent report on New Zealand’s hospital and health crisis.
Instead, the reporter put it down to “successive governments”
The difference between successive governments, however, is clear:
- Intention: One does their best to establish a long term plan for health and support the public health system and the other actively tries to privatise it (It was John Key who first brought Dr Lester Levy, a serial healthcare investor, into the fold to support National Party privatisation manouveres. Luxon merely followed suit)
- Investment and ‘follow the money’. This NZ Doctor graph shows investment in public health per capita under “successive governments” Labour is shown in red in this graph, and National in blue (Luxon’s government is the light blue bar on the right, reflecting a negative per capita “investment”)
Even more pertinent is that a lot of the Luxon government’s health money is being funelled over to private hospitals and corporations, further weakening our public system, which has to compete with the private sector for healthcare professionals, infrastructure technology,, and funding.Finally, on Starship Hospital’s deferral of cancer procedures for young children, and it facing the “worst nursing staffing” they have “ever seen”, the cause and effect is also unfortunately clear.
National only hired only 54 FTE nurses and took credit for Labour’s thousands.
In conclusion, the “both sides are the same” argument has never washed in practice, so be wary of those that preach it.