Nurse Practitioners Left Hanging for Months

I've got to say something because I don't see the media picking up on this, and I think the public has an interest in knowing.

Right now as I write this, 140 nurse practitioners have been left hanging. Normally their govt funding is guaranteed by July. But it's been months and still no word on government funding.

Leaving people hanging like this is dysfunctional. Uneconomical. Inefficient. Imprudent. Unwise.

75% of these nurse practitioners will go into community Health or mental health. Their work is desperately needed.

Virtually all of them have a job waiting for them. If they graduate.

To graduate, they must complete a multi-year training program…

To complete that program they must be allowed entry…

To be allowed entry their training positions must be funded…

And it's THAT funding that has been frozen.

And while this government can move with lightning speed to immediately give landlords $3 billion in tax benefits, and 16 billion for tax cuts that mostly target the well-off,

getting funding to absolutely essential public services is in the “sorry, the money's gone” basket.

[N.B., if you're one of the approximately 50% of New Zealand workers that earns $30 an hour or less, you're looking at around a princely $12 a week in tax cut. Classic Reverse Robinhood stuff; stealing from the poor to give to the rich.]

But I digress.

The point is we risk losing an entire chunk of an essential public workforce. This is just daft.

37 of these nurse practitioners are Rural. 20 Maori/Pacifica. They would have treated tens of thousands of patients annually. Yet they've been frozen. And some will have to say no and move on with their lives and take other career paths or move abroad.

We are better than this. We can do better than this.

Simply reverse the landlord tax breaks and will be able to pay for free dental care for every New Zealander as well as easily pay for these nurse practitioners.

There was no funding shortage: These were just bad choices this government has made (to the tune of 19 Billion dollars) to help the wealthy groups they value the most.

For them it's simply business, but for the non-wealthy it's a matter of healthier lives: something more important than corporate profits and political campaign donations.

Who knows what tomorrow's headline story will be, under this Austerity government?

If you can get access to it via a GP friend, I’d recommend following the NZDoctor magazine, they're doing the best job of chronicling the almost weekly defunding atrocities. On Substack MountainTui and Sapphi are also doing the investigative journalism which Corporate ad-funded media won't do.

We will need to work together, otherwise we'll just see more of this government's steamroller programme to

“Defund, Destabilise, Privatise”

essential public services in New Zealand.

--Gary Payinda