Luxon’s panicked reshuffle

Written By: - Date published: 1:12 pm, January 20th, 2025 - 61 comments
Categories: act, chris bishop, Judith Collins, national, nicola willis, nz first, paul goldsmith, same old national, simeon brown - Tags:

It looks like the internal pressures in National’s caucus caused by poor polling are beginning to take effect.

Yesterday Christopher Luxon announced a rather significant cabinet reshuffle. The announcement was rather strange and did not go into the detail of some pretty major changes.

Melissa Lee is stripped of the Economic Development and this has now been transferred to Nicola Willis with the new name of “Economic Growth”. I am always fascinated how the right think that our finite world can continue to have infinite growth. Willis does not have to worry about climate change either, as if she did beforehand.

Lee also loses Ethnic Communities which is handed over to Mark Mitchell. I guess pakeha male is an ethnic type but I am certain the ethnic communities will regard this as an insult. She also loses her Associate Ministerial role. I guess Luxon is hoping she will take the hint and resign as an MP.

Shane Reti has lost health and is replaced by Peewee Herman lookalike Simeon Brown. He also drops from 4 to 9 in the rankings. National’s front bench looks even paler now.

This suggests highly that National are looking at a PR blitz to cover up the ever widening cracks in the Health system. But Simeon will not find this as easy as potholes to fix up. And I cannot think of a less qualified Minister of Health over the past few decades than Simeon although Reti showed that experience does not necessary mean competence.

Chris Bishop picks up Transport but loses Sport and Recreation to Mark Mitchell. No more trips to the Olympics for him.

Paul Goldsmith loses SOEs to Judith Collins.

Louise Upson picks up Tourism from Matt Doocey who also loses ACC and Youth and an associate role in Transport.

Simon Watts keeps Climate Change and picks up Local Goverment and Energy but stays bottom ranked.

Andrew Bayley remains outside of Cabinet but picks up ACC which is weird given its importance.

And James Meager is given Hunting and Fishing, Youth and the South Island as well as an associate Transport role. The South Island ministerial appointment is strange. National only have two Ministers from the South Island in Cabinet and one of them had two thirds of his portfolios taken away from him.

Act’s and NZ First’s Ministers were not affected by the changes.

Clearly Luxon wants to reassert the initiative and show that he is in charge. But if he thinks that a change of face at the top of health and wall to wall rhetoric about how things are better is going to work he should think again.

61 comments on “Luxon’s panicked reshuffle ”

  1. Nic the NZer 1

    Mickey, you have clearly missjudged Nicola Willis, she is against economic growth and has killed it off at every opportunity presented this term.

    • Tony Veitch 1.1

      Re-read 1984 – war is peace, the ministry of plenty etc.

    • Chris 1.2

      Sorry Nic, but how exactly has a misjudgement happened here?

      • georgecom 1.2.1

        Nic is using sarcasm. Implying that Willis is indeed against infinite growth, ie economic expansion, as her track record has been degrowth, ie economic contraction. The reality of course is that Willis wants growth, but delivers recessions.

  2. Tony Veitch 2

    It's good to know all the other parties' ministers to this CoC are doing so well Luxon doesn't feel the need to reshuffle them.

    Y'know, incorruptible Shane Jones, tobacco benefactor Casey Costello, NRA delegate Nicole McKee, the ice woman Van Velden and so on.

    Or could it possible be that Winston and David told our CEO leader to just piss off?

    Nah, Luxy couldn't be that weak . . . could he?

  3. Populuxe 3

    I'm not against the appointment of a Minister for the South Island, largely because the lower population density means its infrastructure has been badly neglected for decades. I don't expect National to do anything good with it, but Meager seems to be on the rise in the party and is engaged with his electorate. I hope Labour keeps the position when they inevitably get back in and actively do something with it.

    I was very surprised by the Local Government, Energy and Climate Change portfolios being grouped together with Watts. It's unfortunate that we have this coalition government because that is a very workable arrangement otherwise. Labour would do well to emulate it.

    Brown's appointment to Health only benefits Labour. He's widely disliked, really hasn't done a good job with Transport, and his attitudes on things like abortion are frankly scary in the Health Ministry.

    • Bearded Git 3.1

      I still say that creating a MOSI is just pretending to do something…they are trying to fool the electorate. But we all know that this is a coalition obsessed with the NI triangle where their voter base is largely located.

  4. Darien Fenton 4

    The description today of Simeon Brown I liked was "Miniature Brown" with a picture of him putting road cones around hospital entrances. Yes, I know he can't help being short, but brings to mind the old saying (and songs) about short men.And the song “Short People”!!! I didn't know we have a Hunting and Fishing Minister. As for Andrew Bayly with ACC ; all those with injuries should now be expected to be called losers.

    • Anne 4.1

      "I didn't know we have a Hunting and Fishing Minister."

      Could be a euphemism for some other form of hunting and fishing. (Just joking)

      Muldoon was said to have suffered from Short Man Syndrome. They hanker for power and control over others to compensate for their shortness.

      • Obtrectator 4.1.1

        Mulders had a particularly acute form of it which I think of as flub syndrome. I could name one or two others with the condition, but they're still living.

  5. Kat 5

    If the situation for New Zealand wasn't so serious this would all be funny, like watching the Goons, Monty Python or Basil Fawlty doing a politics skit. Nicola Willis is as much qualified to drive economic growth as I am a Boeing 747.

    Simeon Brown couldn't even fix the potholes in the nations highways so giving him health is either an indication of a hidden agenda or pure stupidity, I suspect both.

    Mark Mitchell taking on Ethnic Communities is an oxymoron and in more ways than one.

    The tortured face of Louise Upston championing Tourism should give the roads a rest at least.

    Anyone else sense an early election…………….

    • Grey Area 5.1

      Brown will be humorously remembered as the Minister for Potholes, but his darker legacy was as Minister for More Deaths on New Zealand Roads.

    • Bearded Git 5.2

      Kat…it is simply a mess. Luxon has no idea.

      Having led the all important RONS issue for 15 months Brown should have stayed in the transport portfolio untill the next election. It's called getting things done.

      Talk about disjointed.

  6. James Simpson 6

    I am always fascinated how the right think that our finite world can continue to have infinite growth

    Do you include Labour in that fascination? From their website it appears economic growth was its first priority.

    In any event, the rumours of Reti's demise were circulating last year, so it was no real surprise that he has gone. His replacement was always going to the tough part in the equation. Simeon was one of the better performing ministers (which doesn't say much). I am not sure how he fixes anything with a shrinking budget.

    • Bearded Git 6.1

      Reti was made health guru due to his extensive knowledge of health. To chuck him out of this absolutely key portfolio after 15 months is a shambles.

      I repeat; Luxon has no idea.

      • James Simpson 6.1.1

        Health is an utter shambles. If things are a shambles the boss usually gets fired. So is really not a surprise.

        Luxon may find that out himself in the next six months.

  7. AB 7

    Reti was clearly unable to convincingly sell the Nats’ vision on health. The vision is that you can simultaneously cut funding for public health and improve the quality of the services it provides. To ordinary mortals this looks like a simple contradiction. But Luxon is an enthusiastic magical thinker believing that this Gordian knot can be sliced clean through by applying a relentless focus on "outcomes" and "delivery" – a mysterious piece of alchemy available only to emerging geniuses such as himself. Simeon is a fellow believer. In reality, they will end up privatising what they can get away with and then cook the numbers to make things look better. This is colloquially known as “Lestering”. It may even work for them in the 2026 election.

    • Mike the Lefty 7.1

      Reti simply was unable to make public health function within the funding cuts proscribed by his government and he increasingly looked like someone way in over his head and not comfortable with it.

      Simple Simeon won't have the same moral considerations. He will be cutting and slashing with all the enthusiasm of The Grim Reaper during the Black Death pandemic.

      • tc 7.1.1

        Agreed, he's shown in transport he's all about culture wars and very good at complete BS which he never gets called on like his inadequate road funding.

        Reti had the knowledge to know where the serious risks are in the current system given their refusing to fund it as it's designed to be run.

        Simeon will try and bluster his way through what comes next as IMO Shane's either not up to it or not up for it as Lesters probably got the plans drawn up now.

        So it's over to the bloke who wants 110kmph Highways and increased speeds everywhere else, my what a refreshing approach to health he will bring.

      • Bearded Git 7.1.2

        AB…but Brown slashing health budgets while Bishop spends $22 billion on building RONS doesn't seem to me to be a great strategy for winning the next election.

  8. lprent 8

    Bernard Hickey did a good economic summary this morning at the The Kaka I cherry picked a few – my notes in italics….

    • Luxon said the reshuffle was all about re-focusing the Government on restarting economic growth, but the main changes were in the big spending areas of Health and Transport, and the reshuffle came straight after a bad poll;

      [neither Health nor Transport do anything about short-medium economic growth. Effectively massively cutting Health budgets as the population ages will cause immense longer-term economic costs]

    • Big businesses are increasingly impatient with a lack of economic growth in the wake of the Government’s blunt fiscal tightening last year and its early-2024 freezing of spending on building state houses, local roads, school buildings and hospital re-builds;

      [dropping economic consumption directly and indirectly does. So does scaring potential investors in productive industries with arbitary policy moves. Which is why the economy is in the dumps and will remain there most of this year as well. ]

    • Retail spending was sluggish again over summer and manufacturing contracted in December for its 22nd consecutive month, which was more than twice as long a contraction than during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008;

      [consumers, employees, and employers are looking at this pile of economic illiterates in cabinet with deep suspicion. So far this year I haven't found anyone with any actual SME business experience who thinks that these fools have any idea of how much economic damage they are causing]

    • Luxon’s reshuffle hasn’t changed the self-imposed budget rules forcing the politically painful and economically unnecessary cuts in health, housing, welfare and transport;

      [Politically locked in to a stupid slogan, these economic morons have failed to understand that austerity does absolutely nothing to grow an already working economy. It doesn't improve productivity, it doesn't cause cost savings to magically appear. Mostly it just shunts larger costs to grow further down the timeline. Sudden government austerity simply cripples and economy because the underlying changes costs are always higher than expected, the benefits are far less, and the moron politicians bank a paper profit before it is realised. They do large tax cuts first and then try to manage a shift in the economy afterwards. Conservative politicians are the worst simply because they are too stupid to know how stupid they actually are ]

    • The personnel changes also haven’t changed the fundamental incentives in the economy rewarding households for investing in residential property, rather than real businesses.

      [And that is the crux of the economic problem. Our tax structure is completely unbalanced because capital gains are not taxed effectively. All effectively untaxed property sucks up the investment capital that could and should be going into growing an economy ]

    Last year I have 'retired'. In other words I became eligible for superannuation and took it.

    Getting made redundant from a high paying NZ remote startup job as offshore investment bailed in January after this government was elected made that choice easier. But when I looked at jobs around Auckland, the unpaid commute times and costs meant that I simply wasn't interested in giving up about 10 hours of my life per week to sit in traffic. Companies would have employed me, but export based software and hardware shops are not close to my apartment anymore.

    RocketLab, for instance, seemed to find my query about flexible start and stop times meant that I didn't adhere to their 'sense of mission'. As if my wasting many unpaid and highly unproductive extra hours to get 15km to and from their Mt Wellington site was laziness… It is 18 minutes by car in light traffic. Up to 55 minutes at rush hours with any accidents. Usually 60-75 minutes by public transport. 55 minutes by e-bike – but there are no effectively no safe bike lanes heading south. I'd happily start early or late or even just work from home… But flexibility is apparently lazy and has no sense of mission… (fuckwits)

    We don't have a mortgage, my extracted kiwisaver is invested and making money. Our costs are minimal provided we don't try to buy another place in Auckland (and start and enslaved tithing to the bankers again). I'd move out of Auckland and upsize, however my partner's work, friends, and many family are here. But I'm just as happy to mostly work on my own projects.

    Unlike the previous National extended recessions 1978-1988, 1990-2000, 2008-2013, I have no literally reasons to be well paid, productive, and paying off debt.

    So I took a remote part-time 10-15 hour exporting coding job with a interesting learning curve. It pays the bills. Leaves time for me to write my own code. I can play play with devices, work on open source and browser through kobo plus. That isn't expensive.

    Plus I'm having fun with Hnry using my MBA accounting skills to reduce my taxation and effective GST rate down for the first time in my life. Usually I just get a job with higher pay and pay PAYE and have high PIR rates. My target for this financial year is to have a taxable income that is close to half of my last years income tax – and have a much more enjoyable time doing it. That is what National's contribution our chronic productivity crisis means to me….

    I'll sit this latest iteration of National's chronic economic incompetence causing a deepened recession out. The economy will improve eventually. Kids grow up. My partner stops battering her head in her business. House prices stabilise at a more reasonable earnings to price ratio. Or I finally get to leave Auckland (despite being a native Aucklander, I find the place to increasingly be a bit of a hole). Or find a job that I am interested in.

    And who knows, I may spin out a few passive money earners with my fiddling of code and leave that income legally parked somewhere away from this country as a slush fund for weathering National chronic economic incompetence in the future..

    • Ad 8.1

      Helluva confessional there Mr Prentice and congratulations on getting that solid state Super. Vey glad you got out in one piece. And congratulations on being debt free that is very hard work and consistent planning.

      I can only recall things being as consistently bad as this after the 1987-88 sharemarket+property crash, particularly in terms of job security, construction industry crashing, exports crashing, and company liquidations as we have now.

      I devoted about 15 years of professional life to Auckland. I was happy with the permanent differences my projects made. But Auckland is now such a sprawl it's consistently harder for any one infrastructure project or programme to make a difference for long.

      All my relatives above my generation decamped to the likes of Helensville, Thames, Paeroa and Katikati some years ago. My own permanent exit was in early 2023 and it's been liberating. I popped back over Christmas and make sure we headed straight for Cornwallis Beach and main art gallery. But Smith&Caugheys and Jason Books packing up leaves just no further reason to be in the CBD for us.

      Happy to leave another generation to a fresh generation.

      Lordy I would welcome any party to come up with a believable economic plan that is something more than writing ie legislating deals for mates and pretending that isn't corrupt. First one with a credible plan for improving NZ"s economy thankyou …

      • lprent 8.1.1

        Most of my family have moved out of Auckland. I would because I don't really work here any more (as pointed out above) as it is pretty unworkable if you have to commute.

        Lordy I would welcome any party to come up with a believable economic plan that is something more than writing ie legislating deals for mates and pretending that isn't corrupt. First one with a credible plan for improving NZ"s economy thankyou …

        That happened in the 1999-2008 government with the tech sector. In 1994-99 getting startups off the ground mostly involved mortgaging houses with essentially zero support. No investment capital. No support by banks without property attached. No significiant tax or monetary support from government through universities etc. No significiant support from MFAT unless you were already and established company.

        Basically all support was targeted at existing businesses with existing offshore markets, or farming/forestry. In other words – nothing new by companies that should have been supporting themselves.

        By the time that the Key government got in, we had a thriving startup sector and support from everything like VC, angel investors, some from MFAT, icehouse and the like.

        Key's government pushed a lot of it back to the older model for instance with the focus on low return tourism, more intensive farming and forestry – areas that favoured rentier capitalism rather than profit to the whole economy. But Key couldn't get rid of it all. Investors and owners from the late startups and early 00s startups were reinvesting in other startups

        That meant that when you look at the contributions to GDP in 2015, you see this
        https://figure.nz/chart/J9uzBAJQCpVFcuVh. That didn't happen by accident, and most of the substantive work was quite deliberate in the Clark governments to get higher paying jobs focused towards exports.

        The Tech and ICT sector in 1995 was tiny by comparison. The growth rate has slowed since then. But is still substantial https://nztech.org.nz/nzs-tech-sector/

        I'd also point out that the Clark governments and Labour prior to 1999 were also accused not having a "believable economic plan". I guess that a lot of people have no idea what one of those looks like.

        I don't see any trace of one in the mindless trashing about of the Luxon National government, the bullshit theoretical waffling and hand-waving of Act, and what looks like simple pork-barrelling by NZF for support.

        I also don't see much substance in the policies from the Greens when you look at the details apart from the tax structural changes on capital gains.

        Labour is essentially using the same pre-covid framework that they went into the 2014/2017 elections with – which was actually a viable low-key plan. In particular the decaying infrastructure plans. Bloody hard to build a more productive economy on infrastructure from the 1980s.

        I really hated the captains calls that kept the property ponzi scheme running (including in the Clark government) and the state support during the pandemic kept everything in stasis. The broad productivity plan is also getting old now, it should have been dropping at least a decade ago …. Now it is fighting a demographic shift

    • Muttonbird 8.2
      • Big businesses are increasingly impatient with a lack of economic growth in the wake of the Government’s blunt fiscal tightening last year and its early-2024 freezing of spending on building state houses, local roads, school buildings and hospital re-builds;
        [dropping economic consumption directly and indirectly does. So does scaring potential investors in productive industries with arbitary policy moves. Which is why the economy is in the dumps and will remain there most of this year as well. ]

      This is really important. The media have only just begun to explore/expose the damage done by Nicola Witless in 2024. Not only does blunt fiscal tightening and spending freezes directly affect economic consumption (workforces fired and projects stopped), it also indirectly affects it by both sending a message to the private sector to drop everything they are doing even if they can survive. It also retards future recovery by sending hard won institutional knowledge and expertise to other industries or worse, offshore or retirement.

      Treasury and the RBNZ for some reason did not factor in the economic destruction the National party did when making forecasts and setting rates. Perhaps they were too scared to point out what should have been evident?

  9. thinker 9

    An old saw from the education sector – if one student in the class is below par (cf a Minister needs reshuffling), the problem is with the child. If many are below par the problem is with the teacher.

    I took from this that someone's questioned the low polling and Chris "the buck stops elsewhere" Luxon is on notice. In the business world you rattle the cages on the level below and make people jump into action through fear they will be next. IMHO, that's what we are seeing. If so, the strategy ignores the potential for angry politicians in large groups.

    This could be the hard lesson that you can't do politics using business methods and you can't give the economy more oxygen by using a garotte to all your budgets.

    • Anne 9.1

      Right on the button there thinker.

      That is exactly what is happening. Chris "the buck stops elsewhere" Luxon wants it to look like he's not the problem. By removing big bucks from the Health sector he [and his sidekicks] put Reti in an impossible position, then they make him the fall guy. Its all smoke and mirrors to make it look like Luxon is in control when he isn't.

      He/they are hoping the peasants [us voters] will fall for it. Sadly many will.

      • Kat 9.1.1

        Yes Anne, sadly many will……..

      • thinker 9.1.2

        If we remember Mike Moore, he was PM for 9 months, but that wasn't long enough to turn things around.

        If I was the power behind Luxons throne, I'd make June 25 the latest I could kick the can down the road, as far as leadership decisions go.

        Then give 8 weeks to let the troops know they can challenge the leadership and for that to happen, takes you to start of September, 12 months out from the next election.

        Luxon, imho, just antagonised quite a few of his colleagues, and also put Bishop and Willis in springboard positions. Brown, also imho, is too aligned to Luxon. He's spoken about as being a mover and shaker, but I can't think of anything he's done to justify that.

        I think the next 6 months will be very interesting. If I'm right, then just when you want the team to be working like a Swiss watch, there might be factions forming.

        All conjecture.

        • Obtrectator 9.1.2.1

          If we remember Mike Moore, he was PM for 9 months, but that wasn't long enough to turn things around.

          Nine weeks (or more precisely 59 days).

          • thinker 9.1.2.1.1

            OMG what a sacrifice Mike Moore made. I take my hat off to him.

            Ok, I change my comment but I think that anything under 12 months of a new leader is risking it.

  10. Binders full of women 10

    Peewee Herman lookalike. FFS so are we now following Michelle Obama's playbook of abandoning "when they go low we go high."?

    Didn't end well for Michelle.

    • Populuxe 10.1

      You seem to be confusing Michelle Obama with Kamala Harris.
      Do all Black women look the same to you?

      • Kat 10.1.1

        It was Michelle Obama that made that catch phrase…..but I am struggling to see the connection in the previous comment in relation to Pee Wee Herman a comic character………was it because Brown is short on everything…….Michelle Obama is tall and naturally high…..

      • Binders full of women 10.1.2

        Thanks for asking but I'm okay with my black women IDs. I'm def referring to Michelle, her spiteful speech at the Harris convention and the MSM articles opining that it was because of the fact that she 'went low ' that she was a noticeable absentee at two recent big events. The Carter funeral and Trump inauguration.

        • Muttonbird 10.1.2.1

          What was spiteful about Obama's speech? You haven't said or linked to anything. Commenters who have not followed it have no idea what you are banging on about. In the absence of an argument the assumption could be that you, yourself have an issue with Obama and Harris merely out of spite, or colour…

          …most decent people for instance say African American women rather than black women.

          And now I think about it, what is the meaning behind your strange handle?

          • Populuxe 10.1.2.1.1

            …most decent people for instance say African American women rather than black women.

            Before you get all tone-police-y on it, Black is perfectly acceptable, as in Black Lives Matter. African American has specific connotations which people identifying as African American probably would disagree with being applied to Harris.

            • Muttonbird 10.1.2.1.1.1

              I bow to the obvious expert on what African American people think.

              What are your credentials on this, by the way?

                • Muttonbird

                  A google expert. Ok, then champ.

                  • weka

                    the people in the second article are actual black people, the article is part of a series on Black History Month, and the man quoted in the article is an associate professor of African American and African studies at the University of Minnesota.

                    I don't know who the website is. But really, the article was a good starting point for learning something. Go have a read around of the issue and then bring something back to the table instead of taking dismissive potshots because you've run out of argument.

                    • Muttonbird

                      I kind of read them and stand by the original conclusion that both Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama are African American women first.

                      My original point was about the attack by Binders on both Harris and Obama with no references. I found it odd and wondered whether something else underlay it.

                • SPC

                  One person (first article) tries to explain a distinction between black and African American, that is unconvincing.

                  There are black people in every continent who are all over the world," explained Professor Celeste Watkins-Hayes, an African American studies professor at Northwestern University. "African American is nation-specific.

                  At Harvard half of the black students are children of African migrants (their parents came into the US on Green Cards). They and their parents would see themselves as African Americans.

                  Descendants of Jamaican slaves in America sometimes call themselves black Americans sometimes African Americans – just as those born in the USA as descendants of slaves do.

                  Some people here call themselves Pakeha, some as European New Zealanders and some as New Zealanders – some identify as all 3. Often depending on context.

              • granada29

                I was under the impression that Ms Harris is of Indian descent.

    • mickysavage 10.2

      Peewee Herman lookalike. FFS so are we now following Michelle Obama’s playbook of abandoning “when they go low we go high.”?

      You are upset by this but not upset by what the Government is doing to health? You need to recalibrate your outrage.

  11. Tiger Mountain 11

    Good summation Micky.

    Mr Luxon again showed his lack of any real political ability. ACC Minister outside of Cabinet? Oh well, as another poster said…ACC applicants and recipients can now look forward to being called losers.

    It is tragic the lack of skills in the Natzo ranks. The damage these vandals are doing is piling up, defunded NGOs including food banks, disabled treated like second class citizens…I’ll spare you the full list…

    Do what you can for an early election and encourage Labour to get tax policy sorted asap in case one happens!

    • Anne 11.1

      "Do what you can for an early election and encourage Labour to get tax policy sorted asap in case one happens!"

      Excellent advice. Please Labour don't mess around arguing for 12 months then come up with a compromise that satisfies nobody. It needs to be sorted and released within 6 months – sooner if possible.

    • Kay 11.2

      Disabled treated like second class citizens.

      Try 3rd or 4th class. Especially if one has the audacity to need a benefit because of said disability.

  12. Christopher Randal 12

    If I were Hipkins I'd be getting ready for an election around about the time that the Member for Epsom takes real control

  13. Incognito 13

    Act’s and NZ First’s Ministers were not affected by the changes.

    In other words, it wasn’t a Cabinet reshuffle, panicked or carefully orchestrated and directed by Luxon and National’s PR team of spin doctors, it was a National Party reshuffle.

    I have some doubts as to whether this was influenced by polls and ‘vibes’ as much seem to believe (e.g. Marc Daalder at Newsroom: https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/01/19/luxon-tries-to-head-off-vibecession-with-major-reshuffle/) but more (or also?) by internal Coalition dynamics that run under the surface of public purview.

    • gsays 13.1

      I love a good conspiracy more than most, I don't mind a bad one either.

      As motivation for the reshuffle, howzabout not having a Health Minister with private health provider interests when you prepare our health system for privatisation?

      • Incognito 13.1.1

        Nah, I believe Reti just wasn’t ‘efficient’ enough – Luxon talked up Brown as “the right person to deliver “ruthless execution” in the health sector.”

        https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/539370/as-it-happened-luxon-announces-cabinet-reshuffle-shane-reti-loses-health-portfolio-to-simeon-brown

        Anyway, large parts of the NZ health system are already in private hands and privately run. This includes hospitals and large chunks of services that require expensive equipment that are ideal for niche operators. Even much of primary care (and Plunket and rest-homes and the likes) is run privately, as the following excerpt from a recent Editorial in New Zealand Doctor:

        Some commentators talk of the “privatisation” of the health sector as akin to a nasty infection, ignoring the fact that most health services are provided by private providers – GPs, nurse practitioners, midwives, physiotherapists, optometrists, audiologist, podiatrists and the rest.

        This talk of “privatisation” can mean, on the one hand, the growth of insurance and part charges, which make some health services available only to those who can afford to pay, and, on the other hand, increased ownership of health services by “corporates”, entities that carry the risk of a profit motive divorced from the clinical good.

        https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/opinion/policy-pivots-funding-follies-and-privatisation-perils

  14. powerman 14

    A bad poll from a friendly polster prompts Luxon to panic but not enough to ditch Colenso and Mckee they are safe no matter how stupid they are. The coalition hangs on to power at all costs.

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