Claire Trevett: Health crisis or not? Andrew Little has the worst job in politics now

OPINION:

The job of health minister has once again regained its lofty status as the most unenviable job in politics, after being relieved of it over the past few years by the Covid-19 Response Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

It's not an achievement the man who holds the job will be toasting.

Alas, poor Andrew Little's winter has consisted of first getting the flu, then getting Covid-19, and then being accused of presiding over a "crisis" he cannot admit to: the overload on the health system and the health workforce by the flu and Covid.

Little was once leader of the Opposition but possibly thinks this is worse.

The word crisis is not a word that governments like but it is beloved by opposition parties.

A crisis to a government is what Tinkerbell was in Peter Pan: if you simply refuse to believe in it, it won't exist.

Oppositions, on the other hand, will clap their hands off when asked to clap if they believe in a crisis.

This applies through the ages – back in 2016, the very same Andrew Little was repeatedly demanding the National Government admit to a crisis in housing.

National was just as stubbornly refusing to do so as Little is now refusing to concede a crisis in health. Little has acknowledged things are very tough - but will not call it a crisis.

Illustration / Guy Body

There is a never-ending parade of these crises. Of late, the Government has been playing whack-a-mole – the cost of living crisis, ram raids and gang crimes, now the next Covid-19 crisis – and the flow-on to the wider health system.

The symptoms of a crisis consist of demands a politician admit the crisis exists (a crisis by any other name apparently is not the same) and a flurry of calls and open letters from people and groups that are not easy to dismiss – such as doctors and nurses.

There are surveys of clinicians, and there is now even a petition for Little to be replaced as Health Minister – though it is unclear what that would actually achieve.

Little may have cause to feel like a bit of a fall-guy for the Government here.

He is the minister bearing the brunt of all the unfortunate but inevitable consequences of moves for the great reopening of New Zealand after two years of closed borders.

The PM has been overseas for weeks on end, selling New Zealand as being back in business - and Little is left here to deal with Covid-19 and flu flooding back into the country while nurses and other medical professionals are not.

A crisis or not, such situations invariably create an expectation on the Government to do something, along with questions as to why they did not do something earlier. That is especially the case here, given the Government itself warned this was coming in January.

Now people want instant results and they are impossible to deliver.

A small part of Little will be hoping spring arrives early, bringing a natural solution to the problem of winter ailments.

He can hardly admit to that, however.

Among his defences was partly blaming a nurse shortage problem on the nurses' union, accusing it of speaking with a "forked tongue" when it complained about the Government not doing enough to bolster the workforce.

He accused the NZ Nursing Organisation of adding to that problem by holding up better wages for nurses for backing out of signing its pay equity agreement over the issue of backpay.

Nurses, he said, would be earning more than $10,000 a year more by now if not for that. It is generally accepted better wages mean we keep more nurses here and can compete to attract more from overseas.

Health Minister Andrew Little. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Little may well have a point. The trouble is it looks to the wider public as if he is beating up on nurses. In a nurses versus minister battle at the moment, it's not hard to pick which will be the people's favourite.

Relief for Little is not imminent - Covid-19 numbers are still rising and expected to peak at the end of July – a peak that is expected to see double the number of cases of the 11,000 of the last few days and double the hospitalisations.

Opposition parties are also targeting what they think Little shouldn't have done. Number one on that list is that he shouldn't have reformed the health system in the middle of a pandemic and timed with winter.

Little, on the other hand, has pointed to those reforms being the answer to the problem – or at least to the old system for being the reason why the problem of winter could not be averted in time.

The current situation will be seen as the first big test of those reforms and Health NZ head Margie Apa was clearly well aware of that.

At a press briefing setting out measures to combat the Covid-19 surge, Apa emphasised that without the web of DHB processes, it was now much easier to co-ordinate within and across regions so others took the strain from the hardest-hit regions.

The biggest trust game in town in the near future is still Covid-19.

This week's announcement was Covid-19 Minister Ayesha Verrall's first major one in the new portfolio. She announced steps aimed at stopping people needing healthcare in the first place: widening anti-viral availability, and providing free masks and RATs to get people to test so they would isolate and not spread the virus elsewhere.

However, Verrall's response was also notable because of what it did not do.

One of the unfortunate consequences of crisis storms is they can push governments to do things that do not need to be done, simply to be seen to do something.

It would have been relatively easy to buckle to that clamour by reaching for the red setting, or slapping more rules in under orange.

Instead, Verrall said no. Her reason was it would make a marginal difference – gathering limits were aimed at preventing superspreader events and at the moment the entire country was a superspreader event. She was also sceptical about whether enough people would abide by tougher rules, saying they had to be justified.

Instead, the message was pretty clear. The Government will try to help people help themselves, but fatigue with Covid-19 restrictions means there is little more it can do that would be accepted.

As for its other not-crises, Police Minister Chris Hipkins has now set out law changes which are intended to make it easier for Police to act against gangs. It does at least send a signal he has been listening.

However, the main prong of the solution to the cost of living crisis will run out in a month's time – the petrol tax cuts. Although the extra cost of living allowance for those on incomes of less than $70,000 will start to kick in round then, it will do little to smooth the way for most people.

On the bright side for the Government, the cost of petrol appears to have dampened enthusiasm for mounting vehicular protest convoys to Parliament.