Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 21 July 2025

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Yesterday, I was in Auckland with the Minister of Economic Growth, Nicola Willis, and also our Minister of Infrastructure, Chris Bishop, to release an update on the Government’s ambitious infrastructure agenda. Between now and Christmas, $6 billion of Government-funded construction is due to get underway, including new roads, hospitals, schools, and high-tech labs. It’s an exciting list—initiatives like Ōtaki to north of Levin, and also the Melling interchange, worth billions of dollars, finally getting underway after years of delays and uncertainty, and for communities like Horowhenua and the Hutt, it’s an investment in their economic potential, unlocking growth for years to come. And it also means thousands of additional jobs in construction for a sector still feeling the impact of Labour’s high inflation and high interest rates.

This afternoon, I can announce an additional project expected to begin construction before the end of the year, with Cabinet having now approved a new postgraduate medical school at the University of Waikato, focused on primary care and rural health, training more homegrown doctors right here in New Zealand. This is a significant investment not just for our healthcare system but also for Hamilton and the wider Waikato region.

New Zealand simply isn’t training enough doctors to meet the future needs of our growing ageing population or to replace those doctors retiring, and that has to change. So we’re investing $32 billion a year in healthcare, one in every five taxpayers’ dollars now, and we know that access to care is still too difficult for too many people, and especially those in regional New Zealand. This new school is a practical step to change that, boosting our medical workforce, creating new educational opportunities in the Waikato, and helping deliver better care closer to home. And with that, I’ll hand over to Health Minister Simeon Brown to go through some of the details with you.

Well, thank you, Prime Minister, and primary care is the backbone of our health system. If we want better outcomes for patients, we need to ensure every New Zealander can see a doctor when they need to, no matter where they live. But right now, too many people are waiting too long for an appointment. We don’t have enough doctors and that’s putting pressure across the system, particularly in rural and regional areas. That’s why this Government is focused on rebuilding the health system from the ground up, delivering record investment, stronger accountability, and a serious plan to strengthen our workforce.

Today’s decision to establish a third medical school at the University of Waikato is a major step forward. It will offer a graduate entry programme with a strong focus on primary and rural health, areas where the need is greatest. Today’s decision will allow the University of Waikato to begin construction of new teaching facilities later this year and start planning for 120 clinical placements. The business case confirmed this model will deliver the greatest long-term benefit to New Zealand, not only by expanding our domestic training capacity but by directing it where it can make the biggest impact. This is about delivering doctors where they’re needed the most and training them in communities they will one day serve.

It’s also a huge win for the Waikato. This initiative will bring significant educational, economic and workforce benefits to the region. The Government is contributing $82.85 million towards establishing the school, alongside more than $150 million from the University of Waikato and philanthropic partners, a combined investment that will deliver new teaching facilities, academic jobs, clinical placements and long-term growth for Hamilton and surrounding communities.

The university has already shown strong leadership in this space, having introduced new programmes in nursing, midwifery and pharmacy. The addition of a medical school strengthens Waikato’s position as a centre of excellence in health education and research. The school’s graduate entry model supports a broader, more diverse intake, helping attract more students from rural and regional backgrounds, and providing a new flexible pathway into medicine.

Today’s announcement of 120 new doctor training places at Waikato, on top of the 100 additional medical training places that are being added over the term of this Government across the University of Auckland the University of Otago, strengthens our commitment to training the doctors this country needs. This is a major step forward and a major step toward a more sustainable, better-equipped system that meets the needs of patients, particularly in regional and rural communities. We’re delivering a health system that is more responsive, more sustainable, and more focused on delivering better access to timely, quality healthcare for all New Zealanders. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Simeon. That’s exactly the kind of forward-looking initiative we want to see, Government and universities working together to build future health workforce capability to grow the regions and also to deliver real healthcare results for New Zealanders. Along with the current Minister of Health, Simeon Brown, the Waikato Medical School is also, I think, a real credit to our former Health Minister, Shane Reti. He’s also our Minister of Universities. He’d be here today but he’s currently overseas, and I want to thank him for driving this project and advocating so strongly for it as well. It’s certainly a big win for the future of our health workforce, it’s a big win for the Waikato, and most importantly—most importantly—it’s a big win for patients.

Just my movements this week: I’m here in Wellington until Wednesday, and then on Thursday I’m in Tauranga, Friday I’m in regional Waikato, and back to Auckland for the weekend. And with that, we’re very happy to take your questions.

Well, again, with—sorry, I haven’t seen the statement. What—

Look, I mean this is a project that the National Party campaigned on in the election and as you’ve seen, you know, Cabinet’s come to a position to make sure that—and to endorse it today. What we’ve done over the last 18 months is to make sure that actually—we want to be reassured that the University of Waikato, given a large portion of this comes from philanthropy and also will ultimately be backstopped by the university themselves, we’ve spent a lot of time just making sure that they’re able to do that. So, you know, it’s gone through a business case process. We’re pleased with the results of that. But importantly, it’s about now stepping out and actually saying we know we have to build this homegrown capability. You know, Simeon and his team are doing a great job of opening up places to international doctors. It’s an “and, and, and” on health workforce and I’m really pleased we’ve got to where we’ve got to today.

Sorry, we made a Cabinet decision—as a Cabinet, as a Government—to say this is a project that we want to progress and go forward with. We obviously put it through a detailed business case, as was the plan, and we’ve come to a good result and a good outcome. Sorry, I’ll go to Craig.

So this was always going to be a partnership between the Government and the university and as I outlined, there’s about $150 million that the university is contributing. They have increased their contribution through this process, they have philanthropic supporters who are backing this in the Waikato, and the Government is adding $80 million on top of that to ensure that this is delivered so that we can have a third medical school. It’s a great outcome for New Zealand. It’s a great outcome for the Waikato.

So the cost is, I think, $230 million, I think—

$235 million, yeah.

—is the total cost of construction: the $80 million that we’re contributing and the $150 million from the university and philanthropic sources. That’s the process that the business case has taken us through to get to that cost. That’s what—and now we’ve agreed as a Cabinet to progress with this development.

That’s primarily going towards the establishment of the teaching spaces, the laboratories, and also establishing the space required in the regional communities for the clinical placements as well, so that funding will go towards that. And ultimately that has gone through a rigorous process to get to that number, which allows the first intake of students to now start in 2028.

Well, ultimately, Treasury’s been through this rigorously, and as has the Tertiary Education Commission. The Waikato—and you might have seen this morning the Waikato University’s financial position is very strong, it’s one of the strongest financial positions of the universities across New Zealand, and also there is significant philanthropic commitment towards this project, which has enabled to get to the position we’re in today. But look, this is a great day for the Waikato, it’s a great decision for that region, but also, as the Prime Minister said, a great day for training more doctors and ultimately for patients across New Zealand.

Well, I’d just say to you we go through a Government process. We had to evaluate this project. We wanted to be reassured that the Waikato University had the pledges and actually had the philanthropic support that this case relies upon. We wanted to make sure that their own financial balance sheet was in good shape, that they could actually backstop this and afford this so that the Government exposure is $80 million.

When you think about it, we’re going to train an extra 120 dollars—120 nurses—doctors each and every year, you know, through this school, which is fantastic. We’ve put another 100 places already into Auckland and Otago since we’ve come to, over the term of this Government. And what we’re doing is, you know, that cost of training doctors will be ongoing for a 10-year period, but equally, the capital cost associated with this is only costing the Crown $80 million. And that’s because we’ve reassured ourselves over the last 18 months that we don’t want to be in a white elephant situation where the philanthropy doesn’t come through or the university hasn’t got the financial firepower to backstop it, and that’s what we’ve been reassured about.

And you give me grief for mangling words from time to time, [Inaudible]. But listen, look, I’m not going to go into the individuals but suffice to say there is some serious commitment from some very generous people across the Waikato, that I think in due course I’ll let them reveal themselves.

Yeah, so, look—yeah, so let’s just—I mean, just to keep it really simple, we’re going to have an annual training set of places of 120 extra doctors, in addition to what we’ve already committed to this term, which kicks off from 2028. Obviously, it’s a four-year programme, it’s a postgraduate programme so those doctors are trained in a much quicker period of time with an emphasis on primary care and also on regional provincial healthcare, which is where we really want the emphasis to be. So that cost when you want to train 120 more doctors—and we need more doctors. We know we’ve got a retiring population of doctors, we know we’ve got an ageing population, a growing population—it makes sense. You’ve got to invest in doctors, period. Separate sort of piece, right?

Then you’re left with the capital costs or the establishment costs, which are about $235 million, and of that, $152 million is coming from Waikato, and they are confident, having reached out to their donors, that they’ve got really strong pledges to be able to support that. And we have also wanted to be reassured that those pledges are real. That’s why the Treasury work happened and why we’ve taken a little bit of time to work our way through it. And we’ve also wanted to be reassured that actually Waikato has the balance sheet to be able to backstop an investment as well, should that philanthropy not come through as fully as they planned. So therefore, the Government’s exposure is the $82 million.

The total sum of 235 is essentially being used for the teaching facilities, actually an accommodation wing for students, and as Simeon said, some training places out in the regions as well. So, you know, that’s what the establishment costs, essentially, of the enterprise are, is $235 million. The Government’s contributing $80 million. Waikato University and its donors are contributing $150 million.

Just as we’ve gone through the process, that’s what—you know, Waikato University has come back and said that’s what it can cost to build it, and so it’s no—there’s nothing—it’s just generally with the passing of time. We obviously had—you know, this has been a proposal that’s been looked at for some time over a number of years, as you’d be well aware of. It’s going back, you know, some time.

We came to the election campaign saying we wanted to do it. We think it’s entirely appropriate. When we look at the medical schools per head of population that we have in New Zealand versus Australia, you know, we’ve essentially got one medical school for 2.6 million Kiwis and in Australia they’ve got one medical school for 1.2 million Australians. So, you know, when you fast forward from now—10 years, 15 years from now—we’re going to look back on this as being a very good investment. And the danger is, you know, you can sit around, mucking around talking about it, or you can actually get on and do it so we get that benefit in those years in 2032 and onwards.

Just much more precise economic analysis of actually what it’s going to cost to do it.

Probably we’ve had a lot more resource go into it to be reassured ourselves, because we wanted to make sure that the Government wasn’t exposed beyond the $82 million.

No, no. No, no, no, no, not at all. No, not at all. The commitment is 120 doctors will be trained. Waikato University, as you know, has done a very good job on things like nursing and midwifery recently as well over the last few years. They are very, very determined to build that into their programme. We like the programme. It’s a four-year postgraduate programme versus the normal six years or so that it takes to get through medical school. And also, we like the orientation being actually to be in provincial rural New Zealand.

Yes.

Yes, we will.

Yes, we will be.

Well, we’ve asked, following Cabinet’s decision today we’ve asked for it to be prepared for proactive release. So as soon as that’s completed, we’ll be releasing it under the—as a proactive release.

But can I just say, can I just say, like I think in—you know, if you fast forward to 2035 and you’re looking back on this decision that we’re making today, I don’t think there’s going to be any debate about it. People are going to say, “Yes, that makes perfect sense”. And what we’re trying to do is we want to be much more strategic in the planning of infrastructure in this country. You know, we’ve gone through a whole cycle where we’ve had projects on, off, on, off, on, off, and we’re trying to lock and load for the future. And so this is a big investment in the future, knowing that we actually are going to have an ageing population, a growing population, a number of doctors retiring over the next five to 10 years. So, you know, we won’t regret this when we look back on it. We’ll say it was a pretty good decision, and I think that’s why we’re so excited about it. Sorry.

Well, I think the key thing about the programme here that is unique is going to be the fact that it is going to be attracting people who have already graduated. They may be nurses. They may be paramedics. They may come from a variety of different prior degrees or careers. And it provides them an opportunity to train as doctors and bring their experiences to the role. And so this is a—this is built on overseas models which look at the whole idea of training in place, staying in place, so that we can attract and retain people from a diverse range of backgrounds to enter the medical profession and then support the communities that they are part of.

Well, a quarter of the students who go to Waikato University are Māori so I expect there’ll be a large proportion of students who join this to be from Māori communities, and it’s going to be from more rural communities. So we are going to ultimately change the way admissions take place by opening it up through postgraduate degrees. You know, these could be nurses, these could be paramedics, these could be people from a range of different backgrounds who want to be doctors and support their communities, and the training will be back in their communities. So it’s all about training in place, staying in place, to support doctors to work in those communities in New Zealand.

Well, they’ll go through a process around—that’s a question ultimately you should put to the University of Waikato. They will have an admission policy that they will have to establish as part of this, but ultimately this is about the model and actually changing the way we train doctors in New Zealand.

No. I think you’re—

No.

—very clear our whole intention here is to support a third medical school, about attracting people from a diverse range of communities and changing the way we train doctors so we can encourage those doctors to actually work in those communities. It’s what the Queensland Government has done very successfully. It’s what other parts of Australia have focused on: train in place, stay in place.

Sorry, can I just add one more thing before [Inaudible] asks another question? The other thing I’d just say to you: just remember, you know, we’ve got anywhere from 200 to 300, maybe 350 students from New Zealand studying in Australian universities doing medicine. And once they go there and they do their studies there, yes, some of them will come back, but not all of them, and so the actual opportunity about creating more spaces and opening up more spaces for medical students—we’ve been trying to do that by expanding places, obviously, in Otago and also in Auckland, but obviously this is quite a big leap forward as we put another 120 slots into training each year.

No, no, no, no, no, no. No, it’s—

There’s a whole separate issue.

It honestly is about now it’s in the hands of the university to put together the programme that they think best delivers for what our objectives are, which is to actually open up more training spaces, but more importantly, to be able to deploy GPs into primary care and particularly into regional rural New Zealand, where we know the need is greatest.

Yes, we can, yes. The business case came back saying this is the best option. But importantly, we also think this is the right course forward, as we’ve been saying. When you’ve got a system in New Zealand today—and, you know, this is the history of New Zealand, is that when you think about our infrastructure planning, often we’re not thinking strategically about what we’re going to need into our future, and so things break down and then all of a sudden we’ve got a problem and we actually haven’t invested for the future in the right way. That’s what the infrastructure projects are about before Christmas. That’s what this is about. And so genuinely, it’s sitting there saying, if you’re going to have a rising population and you’ve got one medical school for 2.6 million people, when you look at the ratios of what happens in other parts of the world—we look at Australia, one medical school for every 1.2 million Australians. We need to be able to start to move in that place and make this investment.

[Inaudible].

Look, that’s work that’s going to—is underway, and there’s been a lot of work the University of Waikato has been doing around identifying clinical placements. There also is work that Health New Zealand will now be doing, subsequent to this decision, to work with all three universities around making sure we’re maximizing clinical placement capability and capacity across our health system so that we can train more doctors. That’s a big part of this to ensure that we’ve got that capacity.

Sorry, I’ll go to Thomas and I’ll come—

Well, that is a key part of the business case, is that the admissions criteria will be around graduate entry and it will be about ensuring that the people who come forward have demonstrated commitment to rural communities. And so that will be a key part of the admissions criteria—

And placements.

—to make sure that we are training in place, staying in place. That’s a key part of why this Government’s investing in it as part of the business case.

Yes, it looks at the model. Obviously there’s a model behind this, which has been developed by the university based on what’s seen in some Australian universities. But I think the question is quite different from the question we got earlier, which was around— I think the question was going towards MAPAS, which is a completely different issue.

No, no, no, no. And ultimately it looked at three different options. The first one was increasing the number of training places at existing universities; looking at developing different models from our existing universities; or creating—or the Waikato model, and it found that the Waikato model was the best of the three.

Well, we’re doing—ultimately this is the point: we are actually—we’re doing both under this Government. The business case found that this model plays a critical role in ensuring that we are supporting rural and primary healthcare, and the benefits of that are significant. But as a Government we are doing both. We’re investing in this new model. We’re investing in the Waikato. But we are also—over the term of this Government, 100 more doctor training places per year through the University of Auckland the University of Waikato— Otago.

Look, no, the key thing here is making sure that we are training in place to stay in place. So it’s ultimately about the model of ensuring that when they go have their clinical placements, they spend time in a rural community—

It’s in regions [Inaudible].

—they spend time in a primary care facility which will be in the same area. The model is designed to ensure that we are getting as—sorry.

So I’ll go to Audrey and then to Adam.

Both GPs and rural, provincial hospitals. So it’s designed to benefit both primary practice but also rural medicine. So our rural hospitals are some of the—and this is why looking for—having a model which attracts people from those communities and gives them an opportunity to become a doctor, and then gives them an opportunity to do their clinical placements in the communities that they’re from, the evidence—and this is where the business case points out a strong correlation between them then staying in those locations and giving back to their communities.

Yeah, what we’ve wanted to check—I mean I’ll let the university ultimately answer that. They’ve got strong pledges from the donors that they’ve got.

As I understand it, but again you need to talk with them about that as to how they see that mix coming. What we’ve wanted to be reassured about is, if the philanthropy and the donors don’t actually come through in the way that they hoped, that they actually will backstop the rest of it with their own balance sheet, which they’re quite capable of doing.

Yes, it’s in good financial position, essentially.

No, I mean—yeah, I’ll let Simeon answer it.

The Tertiary Education Commission has provided advice to the Minister for Universities on this matter, which shows that they have a very strong financial position and they have the opportunity to leverage their balance sheet to be able to make sure this is a success. So they obviously have a monitoring role over this. They’ve provided advice to the Minister of Universities which supports the decision the Cabinet has made today.

It supports the decision we’ve made today, and ultimately the balance of that funding is a decision, is a question I would encourage you to put to the University. But the Tertiary Education Commission has to look at all of the different courses and things that they do, and has given advice to say, “This is a university in a very strong financial position and able to make this investment”, which we have then backed up.

Well, I’d just say to you that’s what—that’s what we’ve tried to get—that’s what we’ve spent the time getting reassurance around. 1) How solid are the philanthropy donations and pledges that are in place? And they’re very solid, so that’s why the university is very comfortable. They’ve been talking to these donors for years about wanting to do this. There’s deep, deep commitment from a number of people, a number of organisations there that want to actually fund something like this, which is great, and that’s purely—you know, that’s partly how it’s happening.

The second part is we just want to be reassured should that not happen. We don’t want to just hang our whole basket on that. And actually the university has got plenty of capacity through the independent assessment to say, “Look, there is capacity with that university to do so”. And if you think about the University of Waikato and how it’s opened up new fronts recently around nursing and midwifery and all sorts of different things, you know, I think they’ve, you know, they’ve got good capacity to take it on.

Well, those are always decisions for universities. All I’m just saying to you is in the round, when you look at their financial ratios, they’re in good space to be able to do this as well as everything else that they do.

Well, look, I’ve learned in my four years, short four years in politics, that success can have many fathers and mothers, and if everyone’s feeling good about it in our Government, that’s fantastic. So, you know, what I’m proud about is, you know, the National Party campaigned very strongly on this and the Government’s, you know, fully supported and endorsed it, and that’s a really great outcome.

Well, you know, again, we expect any conflicts to be well-managed, as we expect in Government and other places, and as well as they are, I’m perfectly fine with that.

Look, I’m quite comfortable with them. As I said, we’ve got good conflict management in place and I expect them to be upheld in this case as well.

Well, I’d just say to you, look, there’s two bits of work going on. One is, yes, there’s the capital assessment, the capital limits assessment going on, as well as the risk assessments, as part of that work with the Reserve Bank. And, you know, it’s important work and we expect that to hopefully come through with an answer pretty shortly. But look, I’m very comfortable here that these conflicts can be well managed, and so, you know, let’s ignore—I just don’t have that concern.

Tom, how are you?

Good.

Yeah, well, look, I mean, from our point of view, what have we been trying to do? We’ve been trying to get inflation back within the Reserve Bank band, which is 1 to 3 percent. As you saw today, you know, it fluctuates, but as long as it’s within that band, that’s a good thing. Obviously, there’s domestic and international components of that. If you actually strip out the rate side of actual—the big takeaway from me, looking at the data, was that rates have actually increased 12 percent. If you strip rates out and they’re going at 12 percent, the rest of the economy’s, you know, prices are going up by about 2.3 percent. That’s what’s led from 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent. So that’s a good reminder to councils to get focused on their core business and, you know, that’s why Simeon—why Simon Watts is doing the work that we’ve asked him to do around rates caps as well.

But, you know, you know, from—I’d just say to you, like, 2.7 percent within our band of 1 to 3 percent, when we spent a long time outside that band—you remember under the Labour Government it hit 7.3 percent. And so, you know, we’re working hard because we—as I’ve said before, we’ve had to essentially, you know, make sure that we do the economic fundamentals well, which is get Government spending under control, bring down domestic inflation, so that we can lower interest rates, so that we can get the economy growing, so that we can get people in work.

And, you know, it’s a tough time for New Zealanders at the moment, there’s no doubt about it. But it’s years of high inflation, three years of a recession, and, you know, we’ve had some good growth in Q1. Certainly, it’s been challenged globally, as you’ve seen. You know, a lot of uncertainty sitting in the world, around the world. You would have seen other countries’ quarter two numbers start to come through.

But I think we’ve got the right plan. I know it’s been difficult, but this is a consequence. When you mismanage an economy, you spend more. You increase borrowing by three times. You end up with an interest bill of almost $9 to $10 billion a year, and we’ve got nothing to show for it in terms of better infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, or anything. So we’re fixing that mess. We own that. We own that now, and we’re fixing it.

And so I’m proud of the progress we’ve made to get inflation down to under the band of 3 percent and 1 percent to 3 percent, and obviously, you’ve seen interest rates come down as well, and that’s good because on an average interest rate, this is how it hurts regular New Zealanders. You know, high inflation drives high interest rates, and now with us lowering interest rates through managing inflation, we’ve now got $300 back into the pocket of a Kiwi with an average mortgage, and that’s all good stuff. So there’s a lot more to go and let’s be clear, I’m not trying to say we’re all there but, you know, we’re turning around a massive recession.

No, no, to be very clear about how you know rates work, you need to have fiscal policy working alongside monetary policy.

The former Reserve Bank Governor, you might remember, said you’ve got to have mates, you’ve got to have good mates. And so you can’t have a situation—

Well, as a Government, we’ve done what we’ve done fiscally to make sure that we’re bringing down domestic inflation and playing our part in it. The previous problem, if you remember, was we had Grant Robertson spending like billy-o, and Chris Hipkins, and we had, you know, Adrian Orr and the Reserve Bank printing cash. It drove a huge amount of domestic inflation. All of a sudden the Reserve Bank put the brakes on and all of a sudden—and Robertson and Hipkins kept spending like nothing, and so that’s what causes instability and causes inflation. We’ve done everything we can in a fiscal sense to control the bit that we can control. And equally, the partner to that is monetary policy. That’s what the Reserve Bank does as well. And the two working in concert to say, “Focus on inflation”—remember one of the first things we did is change, you know, the remit of the Reserve Bank to say, “You’ve got one target, which is get inflation under 3 percent”. So the two have to work together. You can’t have one without the other.

Look, we’ve got some work underway right now and there’s, you know, there’s a lot of complexity to it, but what’s unacceptable is to see council rates going up over 12.2 percent, I think, when you see the rest of inflation in New Zealand at 2.3 percent. And so our message— I have made the message pretty clear for the last 12 months to councils—is, “Get it together. Get your spending and your house in order. Focus on the basics, not the nice-to-do stuff, like the rest of us are doing, families, businesses, central governments trying to do across the country. We expect you to do the same.” And many of them are doing a good job on that. Others have a lot of work to do. But equally, now we’ll also move forward with a rates cap proposal as well.

Again, not something that’s come to Cabinet for a discussion yet. As you know, there’s quite a few complexities to work through. I’m letting—Simon Watts is working that through with a very good set of advisers that have had some experience of that in Australia where it’s been implemented, but obviously people who know local government pretty well here in New Zealand as well.

How are you? Kia ora. Did you have a good weekend? Good morning.

Yep.

Well, we met with a number of iwi leaders. We also met with a number of land trusts, for example. Again, as I’ve found through my conversations privately and the regular meetings I’ve had with iwi leaders independently of the big public forums and meetings, is that there’s a very good alignment. You know, up in Northland there’s a huge desire to actually grow and there is no reason why Northland can’t be extremely successful.

And when you look at the geography that they have—you know, they have geopower, they have water storage projects being built, we’ve got huge opportunities in kiwifruit which is, as you know, on absolute, on gangbusters at the moment all around the world—there’s huge opportunity, commercially and economically, for that region to do extremely well. We’ve got a massive investment with the infrastructure with the road going from Auckland to Whangārei so, you know, all the ingredients are starting to come together. But there is massive alignment between Government and the leaders that I spoke with, and I did a series of speed dating with different groups through the far north and north, and it was a very positive set of engagements.

Well, massive areas of alignment, you know, really massive areas of alignment of actually people up there who want to get on and actually, you know, actually take responsibility for driving their own economic growth and their own regional economic growth. So I came away really excited. And I’ve had a lot of ongoing conversations with different leaders across the region, and to actually meet actually some new generation of leaders that actually, really are determined to actually advance the region economically, because once—it’s the same issue that we’re dealing with as a Government, right, that the region wants to deal with and iwi want to deal with and other leaders up there, because essentially you’ve got to get the economic engine in place so that you create opportunity for your people so you can deliver better public services. It’s the same thing we’re doing at the national level as well. So no, I really enjoyed it. Great, great day.

I’m not going to go into individual conversations but suffice to say we met with a number of people across the piece, some representing iwi organisations that want to do settlements, others representing trusts that want to do commercial arrangements and look at opportunities that they see up there for investment, either co-investment or partnering with others around investment opportunities that exist there as well. So I was just really impressed with—that there is a movement and a generation of leaders up there—young and old, frankly— that actually want to move forward and they want to secure regional economic growth in a big way. And obviously the point is that, you know, a Treaty settlement enables that to happen.

I mean, you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time—you know, I can go down to Tainui and the deal they’ve done with Brookfield, a billion-dollar deal for an inland port. It’s only possible because of the settlement process. I was with three big iwi leaders dealing with one of the major global construction and infrastructure companies who came to visit New Zealand just two weeks ago and, you know, they are fantastic partners for big investment on core infrastructure that we want to get done, serious stuff in this country: hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars of stuff.

So, you know, I’m really encouraged that—you know, as I set the Infrastructure Summit up I wanted the Government to foreshadow where the investable opportunities were, I wanted iwi to talk about their involvement because if you’re going to do stuff in New Zealand you’ve got to be able to work with iwi and they’re some of our most sophisticated commercial operators, and then likewise, we had emerging sectors that we want to invest in as well.

It’s not working. I’ve got some serious concerns about it and very, you know, worrying concerns. When you talk to parents and teachers and principals, I think the concerns are very real. You know, the parents and teachers and principals I talk to are concerned about: does this qualification stack up, and is it comparable to kids that are getting the similar qualifications in Canada and Ireland and Australia and other parts of the world, or not? Is it actually teaching our kids the core educational components that they need to have in order enter the workforce and to be able to access higher-paying jobs? So, you know, as you know, a report came out over the weekend, that was released and obviously now the next step is everything’s on the table, and over the next few months the Minister will come back with some proposals.

Yeah, look, I’m not going to get ahead of Erica and the work that I’ve asked her to do because I don’t want to presuppose an outcome. But you are quite right that I think if you go talk to parents—I’ve had both my kids go through the system—it’s quite easy to assemble a bunch of credits and stuff that actually still means that you have difficulty doing some of the core stuff around mathematics and reading, you know, for example.

Well, what we’re—you know, there is nothing more important to New Zealand than education because how on earth are we supposed to access the many high-paying jobs that are out there in the world if we can’t attract them to come to New Zealand, because our kids aren’t well prepared to be able to take them on? We need engineers to build the road from Auckland to Whangārei. We need AI experts to be able to drive our economy into the future so—and we want our kids to realise their potential. So I think it’s quite right that we look at the whole of the NCEA. There’s no presupposed outcomes going in. We’re going to open it up and we’re going to fix it, and do it once and do it right, and it’s important that we do get it right and that means everything’s on the table.

Yeah, look, again, I’m just not going to go into—I know we’ll all have our different views about it and in fairness, you know, I want Erica to run a process that’s pretty—you know, I don’t want any preordained outcomes, I genuinely want her to identify what’s worked well. Her and I had spent a lot of time together in Opposition looking at things like structured literacy, structured mathematics, mobile phone bans, all those kinds of things, and we had looked at a lot of international research and did the work in Opposition to sort of understand what works in certainly, you know, year 1 to year 8.

This is now moving the focus into secondary school education, and I think all I’m just trying to signal is I’m not just up for a tweak, I’m up for actually a fundamental overhaul of the system, because what I’m not prepared to have is that kids in Canada or Ireland or Singapore or New South Wales, at 16 years old, a better educated than New Zealanders. That’s unacceptable to me.

Yes, so they looked at three options, as I said earlier, and looked at the cost and the benefits of the three options. One was increasing the number of doctor training places at existing medical schools, the University of Otago and the University of Auckland, but investing in a more rural-type programme, and the Waikato Medical School proposal.

Oh, look, I mean ultimately the business case will be released. As I said, we’re going to proactively release that shortly but the proposal that we’ve confirmed today came out most favourably.

Well the cost-benefit analysis, which is what we’ve been through, the rigorous process we’ve been through, identified that this had the greatest benefits. Ultimately, this has gone through that process, we’re going to proactively release that business case shortly, and ultimately, we are also increasing the number of training places at those universities by 100 over the course of this Government—

It’s this term.

—to make sure that we’re doing both an “and, and” rather than an “or”.

Oh, look, ultimately—

But also, Thomas, sorry just to interrupt, you know, you’ve got to remember we’re doing a whole new model here: postgraduate training, just like we see in the US, just like we see in Australia. And so it’s a four-year programme, so actually the marginal cost of training a doctor through Waikato is slightly cheaper than the six-year cost of, say, doing it, I imagine, through Otago and through, you know, through Auckland.

All I’m just saying to you is let’s just—the business case will be available, you’ll be able to go down the wormholes and look at it all. You’ll love it, it’ll be great. But the point is from our point of view, yes, there’s possibly lower marginal cost of training a doctor, yes, there’s $80 million worth of capital or establishment costs; but in the scheme of things, to be able to get 120 doctors for an $80 million spend on CAPEX—

And a new model.

—and a new model, not a bad deal.

No, no, no, that’s not fair. That’s not fair. We’ve told you that the business case is better doing this. We’ve done a business case. But I’d just say to you I stand in front of you all in scrums and you give me grief about, you know, what’s happening with workforce and doctors we don’t have in regional New Zealand. Well, we are doing something about it. You know, we can talk about it like the last lot and just talk it off, but actually we are doing it. You know, Simeon has actually opened up 100 places for international doctors here. We’ve had 180 oversubscribed. He’s expanded the list to 29 countries of people that can get qualified, that can get converted quicker into New Zealand. We are doing everything we can and all feet are on all accelerators at the same time. So I just know that this is important for us to get the homegrown pathway in place, but I just would say to you, honestly, we’re going to get to 2032 and look back and go, gee, there’s nothing—

So, Thomas, I don’t know where you’re getting that thought from. I’ve just told you the business case was more favourable for Waikato.

Yeah, well, the business case is more favourable for this particular proposal. It will be released. Ultimately, whether you’re training 120 doctors per year at Waikato or at the University of Auckland or Otago, there is obviously the ongoing cost of training those doctors. This is a four-year degree rather than a six-year degree. And also, and then the key thing here is we’re putting $80 million into supporting the university to establish this new school and the new training facilities. And as the Prime Minister says, people are going to look back and say, “That decision should have been made sooner”. It is transformational for the Waikato, it’s a transformation for medical training in New Zealand and this is, I think, a historical day in terms of the progress this Government is making on healthcare.

OK. Tom Day.

Yeah, really difficult and I fully—you know, Sounds Air is a good operator and, you know, I would also just say regional routes are incredibly difficult because they’re thin and they’re hard to make work economically. You know, ultimately, if there’s things that we can do in a regulatory sense, those are conversations they should have with the Minister, Minister Meager. But again, you know, I just acknowledge that it’s a tough day for people who are losing their jobs. I think it’s maybe 10 job losses, from what I’ve read. And, you know, I just know how difficult regional routes are, and to make those work you’ve got to make sure you get the foundational economics in place.

No, I’ll let James pick that up and talk to that issue but I’m just—I just want to acknowledge today, given the news is new, that, you know, regionally aligned services are difficult to run at the best of times and, you know, they’re a good operator and I think about those people today. But what we can do as Government is to make sure we’re doing everything we can to power up the tourism to actually make sure those routes are—actually, you know, have got traffic on them, that actually the work that we’re doing with Louise Upston to bring tourists to New Zealand is important.

What do you mean, sorry?

Yeah, they often do. Yeah, they often do.

I took Originair the other day.

Yeah, I’ve travelled on—yeah, yeah.

Look, it’s an issue for the New Zealand Defence Force as to how it organises its own resources. As you know, we’re putting $12 billion more into defence in the next four years. It’s a huge investment. So as to how they deploy between enlisted and civilian people, that’s up to them.

Well, what I’d say is that sitting here, a long way away from the conflict, as a small country, what we can do is put voice to it, and that’s what we have been doing. You know, we don’t think the Middle East is a stable, secure region or peaceful region with more military action. We want Hamas to release those hostages and they could do that tomorrow, and they haven’t, and they could and they should. Equally, we don’t want Israel occupying Gaza and that shouldn’t happen either. And thirdly, we didn’t want Iran with a nuclear weapon.

And so we want to see stability and security in that region. We want to see—obviously, the parties are going to solve it through dialogue and through diplomacy, not through more military action. Every day is tragic. I mean what we are seeing is just absolutely heartbreaking, right? It is beyond belief. But the point is, the parties and the regional actors need to get together, and they need to be able to come to the table because I’m telling you more military action, like we’ve been seeing, isn’t solving the problem.

And what we need to see is a peaceful Middle East but all we can do is advocate for that and, you know, we’re not one of the regional partners there. We are making the case very strongly. Where possible, we put more voice and volume to our position through partnering with other friends in like-minded countries, as you’ve seen recently around, for example, the sanctions that we’ve levelled against the two extremist Ministers that we think are actually acting illegally with West Bank settlements. You know, we don’t believe in that. We think that’s wrong. We think that is a contravention of international law.

So I’d just say to you, all we can do continue to exhort the players to actually, to stop the suffering that we are seeing on our TV screens and just—you just—I mean you feel for the people. But Hamas, release the hostages. Israel, yeah, we don’t need Israel in Gaza. And thirdly, we don’t want a nuclear Iran as a consequence either. So we need to have diplomacy and dialogue, not more military action. It doesn’t solve it.

Well, again, there are well-established processes. As you know, we support the ICC and we support, you know, our international multilateral bodies and the people that are on the ground to best make those assessments. But I’m not going to make that—I’m not going to make a sweeping statement from New Zealand when I’m not close to it and I haven’t seen. That is up for others to determine that are in the region, and I expect them to do that work.

But I’m just saying to you, at the macro, if you zoom out, what do we need? We need a clear pathway to a two-state solution where Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side, and for that to happen you’ve actually got to have diplomacy and dialogue because I’m telling you, this endless military action that’s now been going on for a long time—Hamas, release those hostages. Do it. Do it. Israel, actually, make sure you get out of Gaza. We don’t need military activity in Gaza. But they both have to make that happen, and unfortunately you’ve got to have both parties wanting to do it.

Well, again, you’ve seen us—we uphold international rules-based system and the law, and we support the international institutions that will make those assessments, whatever they may be. But I’m not going to get into a hypothetical sitting here, when I’m not in the region judging and having evidence of actually what has or hasn’t happened. I’m not meaning to say one way or another. I’m just saying to you, from New Zealand’s point of view, what we need to do is be able to respect whatever decisions those international bodies that we support make, and we will uphold those.

Yes, ultimately, there’ll be a—the long-term training will come at a— that decision will be around making sure that there’s 120 training from 2028. That is about making sure we increase the capacity. Today’s decision is about increasing—is about establishing the school and all of the establishment costs and then there’ll be a decision around making sure that we increase the number of training spaces, and this is part of the business case that was agreed today by Cabinet.

Ultimately, the business case is going to be released as part of the proactive release that we’ve—

Yeah, it’ll be a productive release of the business case.

Yeah.

Great.

Look, I mean Fonterra requested the meeting with the Minister. You know, she’s obviously doing a lot of work, I can tell you, behind the scenes around supermarket and improving—you know, seeing what we can do to increase competition in that sector. Inevitably, I’m sure it’s a chance for Fonterra to give their views around the supermarket sector as well. So, you know, what I’m focused on is making sure that we do everything we possibly can to make sure we get a much more competitive supermarket grocery sector in New Zealand and so—but, you know, I know there’s a meeting coming up with Fonterra. That’s quite normal. She’s meeting with large suppliers to get their sense of what’s happening in the marketplace as well, for them dealing with the retailers, in the same way that she’s been talking with the existing retailers as well. So we’ll see what happens.

They’re about $8.40 in New Zealand at the moment.

No, no, no. I can show you some if you want to see some. You’re obviously getting a bad deal because I think $8—

Yeah. Don’t you worry. It all depends on what size you’re talking about. Are you going 250 or 500?

Yeah.