Low-paid women health workers have paid for the Coalition Government’s Budget centrepiece - tax incentives for business, New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (NZNO) says.
Budget 2025 is largely funded through $12.8 billion saved by gutting the pay equity scheme and scuppering 33 claims, including 13 from NZNO members across the health system including in the care and support, Plunket, primary care and hospice sectors.
NZNO Primary Health Care Nurses College chair Tracey Morgan says the Coalition Government has "utterly failed" to address the crisis in primary and community care which is leaving New Zealanders unable to see their GPs when they need to.
"There is nothing in this Budget to fix the chronic staff shortages that last year resulted in 36% of general practices being unable to take new enrolments. The Government chose not to close the 10% wage gap forcing primary and community care nurses to leave their communities for better paid hospital jobs.
"That would have been a $52.3 million investment with research showing the benefits would have been 14-fold. Instead, the Coalition Government has enabled further privatisation of the health system by giving $164 million to mainly Australian-owned urgent care franchises most New Zealanders can’t afford to go to.
"There is also nothing in this Budget for iwi and Māori health providers who receive the lowest levels of funding in the health system," Tracey Morgan says.
NZNO president Anne Daniels says the Coalition Government’s estimates it can build new facilities or remediate old ones at four hospitals, increase inpatient beds across New Zealand and fund small-scale infrastructure projects for $1 billion is simply "magical thinking".
"The Finance Minister has found her unicorn after all. This is kicking the can down the road for a future government to acknowledge it can’t be done.
"There is no new operational spending for hospitals. The $1.37 billion for cost pressure funding announced in last year’s Budget is not enough to keep the lights on. Our health system is desperately understaffed, and there is no money here to escape the ongoing and entrenched hiring freeze in the sector.
"The health system is not over budget as the Government claims. It is under-funded and under-resourced. Patients need health investments based on their care needs, not an arbitrary bottom line.
"Nicola Willis was right. This is a no BS Budget - a no basic services Budget," Anne Daniels says.