David Seymour: ACT Leader on the cost-benefit analysis of the new Waikato medical school

David Seymour's concerned about the rationale behind the new Waikato medical school. 

National campaigned on the idea of a new medical school with a greater focus on rural and primary healthcare. 

The ACT leader wrote to Health Minister Shane Reti saying he was dissatisfied with a cost-benefit analysis on the school, which must be presented according to the coalition agreement. 

Seymour told Mike Hosking they have to be sure this is the most efficient way to get doctors. 

He says they had not counted the cost of training specialists and they'd made a lot of assumptions. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I've got a question mark around the new proposed
medical school in Wykatto. It's a national party policy, of course,
but ACT to wonder about the maths and whether it
all adds up. The ACT leader David Seymour's with us
very good morning to you, Good morning makee. This is
not an argument around whether we need more doctors or not.
This is an argument around the cost of training them.
Is that fair or not?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, it's absolutely an argument around how you get more doctors.
But you've got to go through all of the questions
before you decide how to do that. So, for example,
would it make sense to increase the subsidies for GPS
as ACTS campaigned on to stop them leaving? Would it
help to change the funding formula which frustrates a lot
of doctors and itcdotally While many work every hour God

(00:41):
gives them, there's others who actually look at the formula
and so it makes sense to work fewer days per
week for lifestyle reasons. Would it make sense to expand
the two very good medical schools we've got before we
eat the fixed costs on creating a new one? And
this I think is a very good example of the
Coalition agreement working well Act to National have quite a

(01:03):
different view on this, but we've put together a process
for working through our differences and that is full cost
benefit analysis on what really is the best way to
get more doctors? Is it to plug the hole in
the bucket or is it to keep putting more water
in a very expensive water In this case.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Ken Auckland and the Tiger actually expand.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
They absolutely believe that they can. Logically, you know, they're
not necessarily large med schools by world standards, and what
limit is there anyway?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So can you materially put on a piece of paper
it costs X to training student at Auckland or the
Tigo versus why at a Tiger Wykato. Therefore it doesn't
make any sense or not.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, that's the job of the cost benefit analysis and
the government's commissioned people to do it. They had to
go at it. We pointed out that they hadn't actually
counted the cost of training specialists, only the costs of
training gps, which we thought was not quite right, and
they've made it lot of assumptions about whether or not
GP trained at Wykatta would be more likely to stay

(02:07):
in a rural area if we pointed out that Hamilton
is not actually a rural area anymore, and Auckland and
Otago have extensive training schemes where GPS train in the
community any way, including ironically in Hamilton. So you know,
you can go back and forth with all these arguments.
But if we're going to spend taxpayer money, and I

(02:29):
think one of 's jobs is to be well where
the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers technically our job is
to be a second pair of eyes on government spending,
especially in these times, then we've got to be sure
this is actually the best most efficient way to get
both fair Enough, if.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
The numbers don't stack up, they don't stack up. Having
said that this is a five them, have you been
recruited by a tiger in Auckland because they don't like
the five and broken?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
No. I got recruited by Auckland about twenty four years ago.
But you know I've been lobbied by all three universities.
Loyalty is not to any of the three. It's to
the taxpayer. If anything, I look at the way the
University of Auckland's behaving to valuing my degree with a
forty second in the world, where I was there now

(03:11):
were one hundred and fifty. Because of the unending crap
that they insist on teaching students instead of actual science
in academia, I'd probably be that past prejudiced. It would
be against aora ma No.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
You got me going now that course next year that
they're going to make you take in Maori. Why are
you part of a government that allows that bullocks to
come to pass?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Mainly because the government has pretty limited ability to influence universities,
the self governing entities. We are putting in place laws
that say they have to have a free speech policy.
I know Penny Simmonds, Minister for Tertiary is as quickly
as possible. She did nothing planting better people to the boards. Yeah, well,
you know she's only she's just about had a year.

(03:55):
But I just make the point to a lot of people.
You know, people say, why haven't you changed everything? If
this was Pyongyang, I would have. But as a New Zealander,
I actually want to live at a society with independent
institutions that can act on their own terms, with some
trust in society. Even if I don't agree with everything
that every institution's doing right now, So can we change it? Yep?

(04:18):
Can we change it right away? No? Would I want
to live in a society where a politician like me
could change every institution straight away. Definitely not good to
see it.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
David Seymour, Act Party Leader. By the way, if you
haven't followed, if you're on social media, it was alluded
to it yesterday, because I'm not on social media. Actor
now sticking up what they call the bridgewalk, And the
bridgewalk is when the politician leaves the offices and goes
to the Parliament and the media gather around them and
start firing off one hundred different questions. So Actor now
filming that as an exercise. And if you ever want
to see just how unhinged some of the media in

(04:48):
this country are, it's the stuff we'll never put on
the television at night, and you'll never actually hear until
you see that. Go watch some of them and shake
your head in dismay. For more from the Micast Breakfast,
listen live to News Talk Set B from six am weekdays,
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