Labour leader Chris Hipkins has admitted to being taken “by surprise” by questions about a party health policy that suddenly appeared in media with no fanfare.
Dr Ayesha Verrall, Labour’s health spokesperson, wrote an opinion piece on a policy to create an independent authority to set “sustainable prices” for general practices. This was published by NZ Doctor on Tuesday afternoon.
When the Herald asked Hipkins why the party was pursuing this authority, the Labour leader responded: “Ah, you are going to have to wait.”
“If you are interested in an announcement that we may or may not be making, you’ll have to wait.”
Although Verrall had shared the information with a media publication, Hipkins said “an announcement has not yet been made”.
“We have some health policy announcements to make shortly,” he said.
Asked what Verrall was doing giving information to NZ Doctor, Hipkins said: “The fact that I am not aware of it ... We have health policy coming.”
“The policy work has been under way. Health policy announcements, you can expect to see shortly.”
Later, Hipkins held a press conference to address his apparent confusion earlier.
“You caught me by surprise. I was expecting that health announcement to be tomorrow. But that was my timing that I had in the back of my head that was incorrect.”
He said the opinion piece had been given to NZ Doctor with the intent of it being published today and then Verrall speaking about it. But as Verrall was away sick today, she hadn’t been at Parliament to do so.
“Ayesha is not here today, which is probably one of the reasons why it wasn’t flagged up to me that it had gone out today. I had mentally locked that in for later in the week. It’s no big deal.”
He considered it a “relatively minor issue”.
“Every day there’s lots of things happening and I endeavour to be across of all of them. In this case, I was expecting this one to be later in the week.”
Hipkins also suggested most of the public won’t be interested in the party’s first health policy.
“It’s a reasonably small announcement obviously about an independent pricing mechanism that largely only GPs are going to be interested in and most of the rest of the population won’t be particularly interested in it.”
He said New Zealanders would be interested in “the fact that we are taking action to tackle the issues around unaffordable primary care”.
“I think what those New Zealanders will want to see is the proof in the pudding. They’ll want to see the actual outcomes. I think the GP practices will be particularly interested in this, hence it is being communicated directly to them.”
Hipkins said this was a small part of the party’s larger health policy.
No press release had been issued about the policy as it wasn’t a policy he expected “people outside of GP practices to be all that interested in”.
National’s senior MP Chris Bishop said it was “naughty behaviour by Ayesha Verrall” and if it occurred within his party, there would be a “severe telling-off going on”.
“I don’t think they know what they are doing at the moment,” he said before criticising the Labour policy announced yesterday.
Hipkins said Verrall wouldn’t be getting a telling-off. He maintained that the opinion piece going to NZ Doctor was “part of the plan”.
“I just hadn’t clocked that it would be today.”
In her opinion piece, Dr Verrall said it was becoming “harder and more expensive” to visit a GP or nurse in New Zealanders’ local community.
“A GP specialist said to me recently, ‘Middle New Zealanders can’t afford $70 to come back in a month for me to review their antihypertensives’. That is a real threat to many New Zealanders’ health today, and to the sustainability of our health system tomorrow.”
She said Labour was proposing “an independent pricing system for general practice to provide transparent, evidence-based pricing for general practice contracts, independently of annual government negotiation”.
This would set “sustainable prices based on data from practices on costs, staffing, patient need and service delivery, as well as sector-wide cost studies”.
“The authority would develop and maintain mechanisms for pricing innovative changes to service models. As services shift from hospital to community, funding should move with them.”
Jamie Ensor is a senior political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist this year for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.