The Treasury last week told the Government there was room to borrow more for essential infrastructure such as health and education. The fact is that Aotearoa/New Zealand GDP to debt ratio is the lowest in comparative countries.
In response, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour stated there was too much debt and debt reduction would continue. False economic decisions are being made by government resulting in the chaos and crisis that the many rather than the few are experiencing. Further, government spending choices are being proudly displayed on large billboards around the country by National stating “building roads, schools, hospitals (and the military ‘toys’).
What’s missing? The people, the people, the people. Or in other words social infrastructure. We know we do not have enough people with the right qualifications, experience, expertise to provide health care where and when it’s needed, particularly to focus on health and wellbeing rather than cure. Why? Over $500 million was ‘saved’ out of Te Whatu Ora in 2025, and the same is expected from the government in 2026.
What does that look like in health? Technicians are being supported to replace registered nurses and doctors – because they are cheaper. Health care assistants/kaiawhina are being asked to do more of the nurses’ roles that put them in unsafe places that can impact on the patients – because they are cheaper.
IT local workers are being replaced with a call centre – because in the short term, its cheaper. Logging the IT issue e.g. access to clinical platforms does not mean that the issues are being ‘fixed’ because IT people have been reduced by half and now thousands of issues are outstanding, increasing the likelihood of a major catastrophe soon. We are already seeing escalating IT outages limiting clinical staff to access to clinical records, labs, X-rays etc.
The freeze on recruitment of new graduates and experienced nurses is being seen in the fact that ‘shifts below target’ or not enough nurses on shift, in Te Whatu Ora found in 2025 was an average of 56% and up to 90% of every shift over the last year in mental health and pediatrics’. And it goes on.
All of which result in lack of safety for our patients, families and communities in a context where presentations to hospitals for health care has seen Code Red reports become nearly daily for some. And lack of safety for health care providers. Human and financial costs of avoidable harm is increasing in response to these government and employer decisions, and it costs a hell of lot more than investing in primary health care and the nurses/midwives/health care assistants we need to prevent the unsustainable, unsafe workloads and avoidable harm that is occurring.
Waiting for care is a systemic issue due to the lack of investment, when there IS room to move to turn this around as the GDP/debt ratio attests. Further, the focus on curing rather funding the work needed to improve equitable social determinants of health such as healthy homes that contribute to 80% of preventable health issues (e.g. asthma, rheumatic fever, heart disease) results in an unhealthy population rather than a healthy one. Other countries of similar size and GDP can do it, so we can.
An unintended consequence of these decisions made by others, about us, without us, is the escalation of violence and abuse against health workers, nurses, doctors, midwives, allied and support staff. Recent NZNO surveys have strengthened previous New Zealand research that found that between 76 to 90% of nurses experience violence and abuse. They rarely report it as nothing changes or they fear victimisation and blame. Worse, it has become an expectation by employers, that we pick ourselves up and get on with the job. It’s been normalised.
More security staff will not fix the above underlying contributing factors to the rise in violence and abuse. Some countries have made it a crime to abuse a health workers with fines and jail time. but punishment rather than fixing the contributing factors will not create the change we need to see.
The International Labour Organisation Convention 190 states clearly that every worker has the right to work in a workplace free from violence and abuse, yet successive New Zealand governments have not seen fit to formally sign up to do the work needed to make this happen. That isn’t just about having legislation and zero tolerance policies in the workplace, it means that the government must understand all aspects of the factors contributing to violence and abuse in the workplace, rather than blame the perpetrator, and fix them.
We can advocate and act to encourage government to do right by us all. It is also up to all of us to be part of the ‘fix’ by reporting and making visible the actual prevalence of violence and abuse. Then collectively, use our professional, industrial and political power of our members to force the change we need to see. We are a membership led organization, lets lead the way to advocate and activate the change we need to see. Its election year and 64,000 of us acting collectively can make change happen. Let’s do it!