Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Tuesday, 11 April 2023

Good afternoon, everybody. I hope you all had a good Easter break.

Growing our health workforce and addressing longstanding health workforce pressures has been a priority for the Government. We’re making much-needed changes to the way our health system is set up and operates, and it’s vital that we’ve got sufficient qualified people to deliver our record health investments and improve access to quality healthcare for New Zealanders. Since we’ve been in Government, we’ve made significant progress in growing the number of doctors and nurses in our workforce. We’re doubling the number of funded places on the nurse practitioner training programme to 100 places, and increasing the number of GPs being trained a year to 300, and that’s due to kick in by 2026. The scheme to bond rural health professionals is showing success, with more than 500 applicants since last year, and we’ve got a record number of Hauora Māori Scholarships, with 756 people in professional health training.

But despite this progress that we’ve been making and the strong focus that we’ve had on pay equity and lifting incomes for health workers across the board, we acknowledge more needs to be done, and that does include attracting more skills from overseas. We know that the world is currently facing a global health-worker shortage, so it is vital that New Zealand’s immigration settings are not seen as an unnecessary barrier to health workers wanting to make a life here in New Zealand.

We’ve been working hard to tip the balance further our way. Last December, the Government signalled we would take a wider approach to the Green List for the health sector. And since then, the Minister of Health has extensively canvassed the views of the sector. The changes I’m announcing today reflect that feedback.

Cabinet has agreed to add 32 new health sector roles to the Green List. Cabinet’s also agreed that 48 Green List health roles, including roles already on the Green List, will be on the straight to residence pathway. The new roles include enrolled nurses, nurse practitioners, dentists, dental technicians, MRI scanning technologists, optometrists, and pharmacists. They’ll join the likes of midwives and registered nurses, who were moved to the Green List straight to residence pathway in December. Since that decision was taken, we’ve received 3,600 health sector applications, including 1,400 nurses, 200 doctors and other specialists, and 95 GPs. In the same period, we’ve seen nearly 3,000 health professionals arriving in the country.

These settings are highly competitive globally and send a strong signal to health workers internationally that we are serious in rolling out the welcome mat. We know that moving countries is one of the biggest decisions anyone can make in their lives and in the lives of their families. With these changes, the aim is to provide additional certainty when they’re making those decisions, that they’ll be able to create a permanent home and great life here in New Zealand. And we’re moving quickly. While it’s clear that the news will take time to spread, the changes will start to apply in just seven weeks’ time, from 29 May.

I can also announce today some further changes to immigration settings to help ease pressure in the transport sector. In a similar way to decisions last December, when international bus and truck drivers were offered a time-limited residence pathway through an agreement with the transport sector, boat skippers and deckhands are also being added to that agreement. Our seaside cities’ ferries form an essential part of the public transport system, so it’s critical that ferry service operators have access to the workers to enhance the reliability of these services. This was highlighted most recently with coastal shipping providing an important lifeline to the East Coast regions affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. They’re critical to help keep supply lines running. The market rate for skippers is already above the median wage. Operators will need to continue to pay migrant-worker skippers the market rate, and migrant-worker deckhands will need to be paid at least the median wage.

Over the coming weeks, Immigration will be working with the sector to finalise the details, with the same expectation that the scheme will start from late May.

Finally, today, in other news, I can announce a minor reshuffle of Cabinet. Willow-Jean Prime will be joining the Cabinet, meaning, for the first time in New Zealand’s history, half of the people sitting around the Cabinet table will be women.

The economic development portfolio will be picked up by Barbara Edmonds, and the forestry portfolio will be picked up by Peeni Henare. Meka Whaitiri will continue in her role coordinating the cyclone recovery efforts in the Hawke’s Bay.

I’m also pleased to announce that I intend to appoint Rachel Brooking as a Minister outside of the Cabinet. She’ll pick up the oceans and fisheries portfolio, and associate roles in environment and in immigration.

Now happy to open it up for questions.

We foreshadowed these decisions back in December. We’ve worked through a process with the sector to identify the roles where they most need the additional support and where this extra pathway can be the most useful, bearing in mind that a number of jobs can already come into the country through other pathways that are already available, and have been for some time.

And look, we’ve continued to keep it under review and you will have seen, over the last year, that we’ve continued to make changes.

Yeah, ultimately, those are matter for the regulatory agencies to look into. We’ve got some clear laws around what they can and can’t do, and so, you know, ultimately, the regulatory agencies will need to follow up on that.

I wouldn’t rule out more work in that space. We know that, you know, the world has changed, and the whole issue of online gambling has changed significantly, and that is something where we will need to make sure our regulatory settings are moving to keep up with that.

Oh, sorry; I didn’t cover that one in my announcement. Yes, indeed. So the COVID-19 settings will remain the same for the next two months, and then we will consider them again within the next two months, and further decisions will follow on that. We’ve asked specifically for further advice on the issue of testing to return to work, so people may not need to isolate for that full period. We’ll consider that with the next round of potential changes.

Look, it’s a difficult balancing act, and I do want to acknowledge that we had to weigh a number of things quite carefully. At the moment, the isolation period serves not just to relieve pressure on the health system and result in fewer people being infected, but, actually, there is a labour market incentive for this as well; people with COVID-19 going to work potentially infect more people, and more people end up being off work sick as well. We see that in some sectors particularly. So if we look at some of the biggest pressure that we faced in the education system last year, that resulted in a number of teachers getting COVID-19, being off work; some schools not able, then, to offer their full range of classes; kids being rostered home and parents having to stay home to look after them. So we have to weigh up all of those factors in making these decisions.

Sorry, I don’t have that information.

We do consider those matters. I don’t have the exact list in front of me at the moment but, certainly, we are heading towards a point where COVID-19 will become normal. I would expect, certainly at the latest, by the end of the winter we’ll be into that zone. You will have seen us progressively removing COVID-19 restrictions. There are actually only a couple left. One is the mandatory isolation for people who have COVID, and the use of face coverings in health settings. Over than that, pretty much all of the other restrictions have gone now, and that’s happened over a period of time. We are kind of moving to that era where COVID-19 will just be another one of those things that the health system manages.

I’ll come to that.

We consider it on a rolling basis, but certainly my expectation is that we will reach the point where there isn’t a mandatory isolation period.

I have been invited; haven’t made a decision on that yet. As I’ve indicated a couple of times before, there’ve been a number of, you know, international commitments or international invitations, international opportunities that I am weighing up at the moment. I hope within the next week to be able to announce a travel programme. As I’ve indicated, it’s a big year domestically in New Zealand, including the fact that there’s another event here in October that I have an interest in, and so my international travel programme won’t be massive, and so I’m just working my way through that to make sure we get the balance right. Because I also did indicate that there are some strategically important things for New

Zealand: trade—and we’ve got two reasonably significant trade agreements where we’re aiming to get them over the final hurdles this year, and so that’s something that we weigh up in that, and I should be able to, in the next week or so, provide more details on that.

Look, I think we have to acknowledge that NATO plays a very important role in world security. We remain—as I’ve always said—independent in our foreign policy, and that will continue to be the case, but we will continue to work with like-minded countries. If you look at the situation in Ukraine, for example, we have a lot in common with members of NATO when it comes to our position on that particular conflict.

Yeah, look, I’m not announcing anything today, but New Zealand remains very supportive of Ukraine. We still believe, and continue to believe that the war is unjust; it’s an illegal invasion, and we continue to maintain the position that Russia should withdraw its aggression, and we’ll continue to support Ukraine. I haven’t got any specific announcements on that today though.

No, it’s not. I mean, I guess it was sort of a pre-emptive answer to a number of questions, which is if you’re keeping all these restrictions in place, what about the labour market considerations, and I would like to acknowledge that that goes both ways.

The COVID-19 rules require us to consider COVID-19, and that’s what we’ve done.

Pressure on the health system is absolutely a factor that we consider in making decisions around COVID-19—it always has been—but we will have to get to the point where the health system will need to be able to cope with COVID-19 as part of every other illness that the health system copes with.

Well, as I’ve just indicated, we’ve had a whole programme of work around increasing the capacity of the health system, and that includes the workforce, but we have to acknowledge that every health system around the globe has been struggling with COVID-19; it’s still one of the major causes of admission.

Well, I can only speak to New Zealand.

My understanding is that The Disinformation Project is not currently getting any funding from DPMC, that they were contracted to provide some analysis over the last couple of years, particularly related to COVID-19 disinformation.

I couldn’t give you a detailed answer on every Government agency, but DPMC being the one that I’m responsible for, certainly, the advice I’ve got is that they are not receiving any funding from them.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, the Government will continue to work with the health sector—the biggest provider being Te Whatu Ora—to look at how we can make sure we’re encouraging people to come to New Zealand. As you just seen through the numbers that I went through though, there is a strong interest in moving to New Zealand. New Zealand is a desirable place, but we’ve got to make sure that our immigration settings are competitive with what other countries are offering. This certainly makes us very competitive in terms of the immigration pathway, and then we’ll continue to work with health providers around how they make sure they are providing attractive offerings to people to want to come here.

Nice try. You’ll see the Budget in due course.

That’s also a very admirable try. I’m not going to announce any details of the Budget today.

No, the Government is still intending to progress those.

Yeah, they asked to meet with me not long after I became Prime Minister. I’ve worked with both of them previously, and I’ve had a good working relationship with both of them in my previous role. It was largely a kind of a meet and greet, and an acknowledgment of the fact that we can work together in this term of Parliament. They’ve asked to sort of be kept informed of legislative developments, particularly in the Māori space, and I’ve indicated that we’re happy to do that. It didn’t go beyond this term of Parliament, of course; that’s a matter for post-election.

No. We didn’t discuss anything of that nature.

You can expect to have some further announcements on that imminently. I’m not making those announcements today.

As I’ve indicated, you can expect some announcements shortly.

Yeah, ultimately, it slows the spread of COVID-19, and COVID-19 is still one of the major causes of people getting seriously ill in New Zealand at the moment, and so slowing that and resulting in having fewer people getting seriously ill is still the objective.

It’s an ongoing process. You know, the health system’s better prepared now than it was three years ago, and it will continue to improve.

Yes, I believe that it is, and actually—

Well, actually, one of the things that’s made a massive difference is the advance of science. Vaccination has played a significant role in the way we’ve been able to combat COVID-19.

One of the challenges that the health system faces is a workforce shortage, and you’ve just seen me making an announcement on one of the things that we can do to help with that.

I’ve not had any advice to that effect so far. There’s a process that we go through when something like this happens to identify whether there are any issues that would be of concern to New Zealand, and I’ll get advice on that in due course.

At an officials level, there will be conversations happening, as you would imagine. Nothing has come to me yet at this point.

There’s a process—I don’t want to get into all of the details of it, but there’s a process at an officials level, where they’ll be comparing notes about exactly what the information is that has been released and what, if anything, in there would be of concern to New Zealand. That process needs a little bit of time to run its course, and then, in due course, I would be notified if there was an area of concern for New Zealand.

As I’ve indicated, I’m not going to speculate on that.

I think it was a combination of both. So I think you all see the Government will be taking more of a team approach to communicating what we are doing around the future of water infrastructure. In terms of Nanaia Mahuta, I think that there were some really unfortunate elements of personalisation in that that Nanaia ended up having to deal with, largely by herself. I think we probably should have provided more support to her through that. We’re reflecting critically on that. I have made that observation to her as well. I think it was really unfortunate that she ended up copping the level of disgusting abuse that she did during that period.

I think the observation here is that all of the decisions we make as a Government are collective decisions. That’s the nature of the Cabinet system of government, and so we all need to make sure that we are supporting one another, and I think that probably we didn’t support Nanaia Mahuta as much as we should have in the conversation around water infrastructure.

No. It isn’t.

It’s a collective reflection.

Because fundamentally, it’s about water infrastructure and it’s about making sure that we’re dealing with the country’s water infrastructure deficit. Let’s call it what it is; it’s about making sure we have affordable water infrastructure improvements. There is a massive bill coming down the pipeline, if you’ll excuse the pun, in terms of upgrading our water infrastructure. That’s what these reforms are about.

Because I think it’s a term that’s become somewhat confused.

Water infrastructure is what we’re talking about.

Ultimately, that’s a decision for them. I’m not going to provide an ongoing commentary on comments that other leaders make on other countries.

There’s a process that we’ll need to go through in the event that we need to do that, to have those conversations. We haven’t done that.

There will be significant change in that policy but I’m not announcing that today.

As I indicated, I think, when I made the last set of reprioritisation decisions, the next big reprioritisation process is during the Budget. Every year there’s a reprioritisation process as part of the Budget, but then it becomes more of a business-as-usual reprioritisation process. Every year, Governments go through and reprioritise, and I think in the current economic environment we’re in at the moment, there is even more imperative to do that than normal. We’ve got to be making sure that we are directing our resources and our energy to where they are most needed.

Look, at this point there’s still a lot of moving parts in terms of our first Budget period and we’re working through those at the moment. Yes, we’ve made some policy changes, for example, around the biofuels obligation, but we’ve also had some upside as well, including the fact that we’ve had a much higher uptake of electric vehicles than we had anticipated when we set those initial Budgets. So we’re working through that at the moment in terms of reconciling where we think we’re going to get to in this first Budget period. And then we’ve got options as to how we deal with that in the event that we don’t hit that, including rolling that forward into the next Budget period, purchasing offshore—those are all options that we can work through in due course.

As I’ve indicated, there are some other things that at the moment aren’t considered in that analysis, including the fact that we’ve got other things—yes, we’ve done some things that—biofuels being the main one that has had an impact on the Budget, but there are also some upside things as well, including faster uptake of EV, and so on.

I think it means that we’re more closely representing the population.

I think it’s a good milestone to achieve. You know, we achieved 50:50 representation in Parliament in this parliamentary term—I think that’s a very welcome thing—and now we have that around the Cabinet table as well. And in fact, overall, there are more women in the executive than there are men, if you count the Ministers outside of Cabinet as well.

If you look at the portfolios that Willow-Jean currently holds—including relatively hefty health delegations, being the Minister of Conservation—it was a combination of her skills as a person and the portfolios that she currently holds. Willow’s got up to speed very quickly with the new portfolios that I gave her when I did the reshuffle—you know, it feels like a lot longer ago, but it was only a couple of months ago. I’m confident that she’ll be a very active contributor around the Cabinet table. I feel fortunate in the sense that there are a lot of choices, there are a lot of options there.

I’m confident that all Ministers are making themselves well familiar with the requirements of the Cabinet Manual.

I was going to say I chose the best person for the job; that’s always difficult because there are a number of other Ministers and MPs outside of Cabinet who would also like to have that opportunity. But it was not the factor that tipped it in favour of one person or another.

Clearly, I think it’s nice to have a Cabinet balance that reflects the population.

We are concerned about escalating tensions in the Strait, and we continue to maintain the position that we would prefer that there was a diplomatic solution to those escalating tensions.

I guess I would say, you know, if there’s a role that we can play diplomatically, then that’s something that New Zealand will always do its part diplomatically. But, ultimately, that’s the course of action that we would prefer to see happen.

Last couple of questions.

Sorry, what was your question?

Sorry, I don’t recall the particular comment that I might have made in that regard.

Look, I haven’t got a specific date on that. I think the nine months that I was referring to this morning was the length of time it took between the September earthquakes in Canterbury and first red-zoning decisions. So that was a nine-month period. Obviously, if we can make decisions around what happens with land use following the cyclone in a faster timetable than that, then we’ll seek to do that. I guess what I was wanting to do is illustrate that these are not overnight processes, that it will take some time to work through those options.

We keep this under regular review. As I’ve indicated, we’ll be reviewing it again within two months. So they can certainly expect to hear more from us during that time period.

All right. Thanks, everybody.