Health reforms will rob Whanganui of voice, National health spokesman Shane Reti says

National Party deputy leader Dr Shane Reti speaks about health in a public meeting at Whanganui's Heritage House. Photo / Bevan Conley

The Government's health restructure will stifle local voices, Opposition health spokesman and National Party deputy leader Shane Reti says.

Dr Reti was in Whanganui on Monday, where he spoke to National Party members, to a public meeting and to staff of Te Oranganui Iwi Health Authority.

The Government has announced plans to restructure the public health sector in New Zealand, scrapping 20 district health boards and replacing them with national bodies Health New Zealand and a Māori Health Authority.

That would rob regions like Whanganui of its voice, Reti said.

Different regions have different needs. Reti has twice been the MP for Whangarei and said Auckland's health system needs to cater for young university students, while Kerikeri has a lot of older people.

He believed the new structure proposed by Government was too central, and similar to the United Kingdom's National Health System (NHS). But as New Zealand's health becomes more centralised Britain's is moving back toward local control.

The district health board system isn't perfect, Reti said, and it did need to change but eight to 12 district health board-like entities would be better than one national one.

The best way to make sure people have equal access to services would be to standardise the way need was assessed, making it the same in every part of New Zealand, he said.

And he would like to bring back the national targets district health boards used to have - about waiting time in emergency departments, for example.

He agreed there was inequity in health provision for Māori but he said it could be better rectified by closer governance-level relationships with iwi and Māori, than with a separate Māori Health Authority.

"The fundamental premise for health has to be based on need, and Māori are the top of the need tree."

Reti said the Government's management of the Covid-19 pandemic has been good, but not great, and that the vaccination should be happening faster.

"Why are we at the bottom of the OECD when we were promised we were at the front of the queue? Our economic future will be predicated on how many people we have vaccinated."

He said the Government had been unwilling to give a herd immunisation threshold target.

"It needs 70 per cent, but they will not say so. They're afraid they will not reach the target."

Meeting with Te Oranganui staff, he planned to ask how they were doing and whether they had enough resource and workforce.

Māori providers will be needed, to reach and vaccinate Māori people, if New Zealand wants to reach 70 per cent immunisation, he said.