Labour leader Chris Hipkins and health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Labour's leader has admitted he "forgot" his health spokesperson was set to release policy today, after being caught off guard when questioned about it.
Ayesha Verrall wrote an opinion article in NZ Doctor setting out the case for a new approach to funding GPs, which would see those decisions made by an independent body rather than the government.
"We need a different, better way of doing things to meet our patients' needs and ensure everyone can get care now and in the future," she wrote in Tuesday's issue.
"We would create an Independent Pricing Authority, which would be empowered to set sustainable prices based on data from practices on costs, staffing, patient need and service delivery, as well as sector-wide cost studies.
"Think of it as regular 'Sapere reports' that provide an evidence-based price for general practice care that Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora must pay.
"The authority we are proposing would develop and maintain the mechanism for pricing innovative service models, which includes the models necessary for servicing the highest need populations."
A separate article laid out the approach and the reaction from specialist GPs.
When heading into the debating chamber for Question Time, Labour's leader Chris Hipkins seemed caught unawares by the policy reveal.
"Ah you're going to have to wait - if you're interested in an announcement that we may or may not be making - you'll have to wait for the announcement," he said.
"The announcement has not yet been made publicly."
When the fact of the articles having been publicly published was raised with him, he admitted he was unaware of it.
"Ahhh, we have some health policy announcements to make shortly, I wasn't aware specifically of that letter ... the fact that I'm not aware of it, we have health policy coming, health policy's under development," he said.
He later returned to answer questions, saying Verrall had been unwell on Tuesday so was unavailable to answer questions on it, and he had simply mixed up which day the policy was meant to be released.
"Caught me slightly by surprise, I was expecting that health announcement to be tomorrow - but that was my timing that I had in the back of my mind, which was incorrect.
"I'll own that one. Yeah. She was away sick today so it wasn't flagged up right before I came down to speak to you earlier, I'm happy to own that one myself."
He said the policy was based on work the party started in government in 2022.
"A significant gap between the funding GP practices need to deliver service as normal had opened up over the period of about a decade. We'd been working on a mechanism to try and stop that from happening again in future.
"Unfortunately through a confluence of events Ayesha is unexpectedly away sick today, as that went out at midday today ... I was expecting it to be out later in the week."
He said it was a "reasonably small announcement that largely only GPs are going to be interested in ... I think what New Zealanders will be interested in is that we are taking action to address unaffordable primary care".
It had been given to NZ Doctor "well in advance," he said.
Senior National MP Chris Bishop said it was "some naughty behaviour" by Verrall.
"If that happened in the National Party there would probably be a severe telling off going on," he said.
He quickly turned to criticism of Labour's 'Future Fund' policy revealed the previous day.
"I don't think they know what they're doing at the moment, I mean yesterday we had this 11-page braindump of a policy, lots of nice photos and some nice pictures, not a lot of detail, looked like it had been written by ChatGPT.
"It turned out there was no numbers in it and then Barbara Edmonds came out and said there was a number, it was $200m, and then Chris Hipkins was saying it was in a previous version of the document - I mean, seriously - how are we expected to trust these guys, or how are New Zealanders expected to trust these guys and how are people meant to have any confidence or faith in them to run the country when they've got version control issues on their documents.
"The public should expect better."
RNZ has sought comment from Ayesha Verrall.
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