I attended the lunch and presentation by Simeon Brown MP for Pakuranga on Tuesday 4th of February at Trinity Wharf. The lunch event was hosted by local National Party MP’s Sam Uffindel for Tauranga, and Tom Rutherford for Bay Of Plenty.
Simeon Brown is minister for Auckland, Health, and State Owned Enterprises. Simeon was formerly minister for Energy, Transport, and Local Government.
Points from Simeon’s speech.
In 2024 the coalition government focused on the cost of living. The priority was to control and reduce government spending, bring interest rates down, and introduce tax breaks.
This year in 2025, the priority is economic growth. How do we grow the economy. Labour taxed and borrowed. National wants to keep taxes low, and make sure every dollar is well spent. National would like to encourage foreign investment and tourism, and create more opportunities for New Zealanders.
The coalition government is pushing ahead with stage 2 of Tauranga Northern Link, and State Highway 29 upgrades under the roads of national significance. They plan to fast track the Port extensions and get the consents approved.
Simeon has taken over the health portfolio from Dr Shane Reti. Simeon comments that the health system is full of amazing people, in both the public and private sector. There are major challenges.
Labour restructured the entire health system during the epidemic. They created one mega entity which controls the entire system from Wellington. The mega entity is not in touch with local communities, and is not performing. Simeon would like to return to a regionalised system where local communities have more say, and the system can respond more effectively.
GP wait times are too long. Emergency Department (ED) wait times are also too long. Vaccination rates have fallen. Simeon would like more emphasis on primary care. Prevention is better than cure.
The government is putting an extra sixteen billion dollars into health over the next four years. There is never enough money in health so he wants to make the system more efficient and get better value for money. He sees a big place for the private sector.
Regarding Nurses. There is no freeze on hiring nurses. The nurses recently negotiated a 30% pay increase over the next five years. Nurses now earn more than teachers. As a result more nurses are staying in their jobs and fewer nurses are leaving. Hence there are fewer job vacancies than normal and it is taking longer to employ all of the graduate nurses. The Health Department is looking at ways to get the graduate nurses into jobs as soon as possible.
For State Owned Enterprises, Simeon would like them to be more efficient. We need good people on the boards, and SOEs should make a profit where possible. There are some SOEs that should not be run by the government, He gave the example of Landcorp farms, and Quotable Value. Why does the government need to run Quotable Value?
The government will not be selling any SOE’s in this term because it does not have a mandate. For the next election, the government might campaign on selling non core SOEs like Quotable Value.
Simeon did not cover local government during his speech.
My Comments
Labour employed an extra 19,000 people in government departments. Many of these were additional staff to fill diversity quotas. National have reduced some of those staff numbers, but nowhere near all of them. Removing unnecessary staff is essential to reduce costs.
There is more and more use of the private sector in health. The private sector is more efficient and better managed. Why can’t the public sector be managed as well as the private sector? There is an unfortunate trend towards privatisation of the health sector. Perhaps the public health sector should be modelled on the private sector.
There is a huge need to trim government bureaucracy, and improve the efficiency of the public sector. The legislation also needs to be reformed. Current legislation puts huge unnecessary loads onto the public sector. The coalition government does not seem to want to change the legislation. They are trying to achieve operational efficiencies, but without looking at the structural problems.
The lunch was by ticket and fund raising for the National Party ($95 per head for a buffet lunch).
There were three reserved tables for the VIPs including: Mayor Tania Tapsell from Rotorua, and Mayor James Denyer from Western Bay (James partner Sarah Jane was expecting a baby on the day). Mahe was tied up but a representative from the Mayors office attended.
Nigel Tutt and Todd Muller attended along with a team from Priority One. Simeon Brown was seated next to Paul Adams.
Then we wonder why government ignores us?
As minister for Local Government, Simeon ignored the request from Tauranga residents to restrict the powers of the commissioners in the period prior to the election. The commissioners got up to quite a lot of mischief as a result. Tauranga ratepayers will be footing the bill for that.
Councillor Margaret Murray-Benge from Western Bay raised a question about fluoridation of water supplies with the observation that the decision should be handed back to local authorities rather than imposed by central government (Margaret attended the talk on fluoride toxicity by Michael Connett on Monday night). Simeon brushed it off like water off a ducks back.
Don’t expect local government or central government to listen. Michael Connett made the same observation (it does help if you can win in court).
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