June 24, 2024 • 10 mins
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's praising himself for finally getting there with the cancer drug funding.
The Government's committing $604 million to Pharmac, taken from next year's Budget.
It will cover the funding for 54 new medicines, including up to seven of 13 drugs the Government promised last year.
The cancer medicines funded would treat cancer of the lung, liver, skin, bowel, kidney, head and neck, and bladder. The Government has also promised some of the drugs would combat breast and blood cancers.
The 28 non-cancer-related drugs would address a range of conditions likely to include infections, respiratory conditions, osteoporosis, sexual health, dermatology, inflammatory conditions, and mental health.
The spend was double what National proposed in 2023.
Luxon told Mike Hosking that he's proud of the investment and ultimately for delivering more than promised initially.
He says it's different from what was proposed but he's more interested in the outcomes, and he's now surpassed them.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Prime Minister Chrystopal Laction's with us. Very good morning to you, Monnie, Mike.
How are you very well? Indeed, So what we're going
to do is continue with yesterday's post cabinet press conference,
and what I would like you to do is apologize
for the drug thing, and then I'm going to ask
you nine or ten more times to apologize and keep apologizing.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I mean, oh, look, I appreciate you, Mike. They actually
seeing through it all, which is I've delivered on a
promise and more than to pass what I promised. So yep,
it's a different process. Yeah, we got in there in
a different way. But the most important thing is you
and I both know people that are dealing with cancer
and just hope to give some people some hope, which
is great.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I think at the end of the day, despite their
best efforts, what we got from it was the realism.
I mean, you shouldn't have done what you did in
the thirteen and that was a mistake and all that
sort of thing. But in the end, we got better
than we thought and you can't argue with that. And
that's a lot of people being helped.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, I mean, it goes from several thousand people to
one hundred and seventy five thousand people in twenty six
new chance of treatments up to fifty four as part
of a package of fifty four more medicine. So you know, look,
I mean I think it is president. I think it's
quite a transflational investment. I think it's something you know,
as a politician, you know, Genie feel proud about this one. Yes,
it's different from what we propose, but actually I'm more
(01:12):
interested in the outcomes, and I promised those outcomes and
we've now surpassed those outcomes, which is good.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Are you settled on farmac or were you trying to
do something different with the original thirteen idea another words,
suggesting farmac, wasn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Look, I mean you know in opposition we were looking
at it saying, look, there's these thirteen cancer drugs that
we know would have some benefits to New Zealanders. There
exist in Australia more or less they should be here.
Let's find a pathway to get them to New Zealanders.
And then when we came to government it was like, well,
yes we could go outside Farmac to deliver them, but
actually we don't want you know, farming actually works quite
well in the sense of having to negotiate the prices
(01:49):
for these things as drugs as well as obviously determine
the efficacy of them, and so putting it back and
making sure it was in the pharmac process was important.
Ultimately we decided, but it just took a bit longer
than we anticipated. But I've got there, and I think
we've got a really good outcome, and I just you know,
just say to people, think about your friends and family
that are dealing with it. I'm thinking of three or
four people that I know going through cancer battles at
(02:09):
the moment, and you know this will make a big
difference to them. So, yep, the means is different. But
most importantly, we delivered on the promise in the commitment.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Exactly what you didn't answer to my satisfaction yesterday is
the six hundred and three million dollars you seem to
be thinking about. You'll find some savings here there. This
is your operating budget already coming under stress, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, it'll come out of budget twenty twenty five operating allowance.
There is some also contingency this year that have been
you know that we have you know, we'll use this
year as well. The other point I was trying to
make yesterday, which was that, you know, people seem to
think that, you know, our ongoing savings drive here on
government spending when it's over one hundred billion dollars, you know,
there needs to be an ongoing daily practice here of
(02:49):
just making sure that everything we're spending money on is
making an impact. And you know that is just an
ongoing piece of work I'm expecting to drive. You know,
we're already starting thinking about save more savings programs, you know,
and I'm expecting CEOs to manage those big budgets. You know,
we've put you know, sixteen point seven billion dollars investment
into health. You know, we've put big investments into education,
into police. You know, we want those organizations to make
(03:12):
sure all of that money is getting the results. That's
what I'm interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
But if you think about it in an ovation way,
technically speaking, what you announced yesterday, you don't have the
money for right here, right now, and you weren't planning
on that. That's correct, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, it's just that as we went through the budget process,
we realized we needed a bit more time to work
out the detail of how we're going to do it,
and you know, it's not unusual that we'd put the
provision against budget twenty twenty five. But we also have
a contingency money that will enable us to get up
and going and moving, and so it doesn't stop us
from pushing forward in October and getting these drugs starting
to come through. But you know, but also we've got
(03:49):
an ongoing savings program which we're determined to keep driving.
And you know that is it's a different mindset that
I'm trying to put into Wellington, which is, you know,
you've got a heap of government spending. You just can't
because we've had a program that we've always spent money on.
If it's not working in delivering results, stop it, you
knock it on the head and put it into something else.
And so it's a very different mindset versus just let
me get some new incremental money to add onto the
(04:11):
money that I've already got. I want these agencies to
think about the total investment that they've got going on
and actually asked questions of how to get more efficiency
out of that, not just the new money they get
it to budget.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
If you were frustrated with that. Yesterday what you were frustrated,
seemingly were your comments on the youth camps and this
ongoing commentary that we just whine about the fact that
we need to do what we've been doing forever. Is
that a Beltway intellectual left wing it doesn't work thing,
or have you missed something here and you're not convincing
(04:42):
New Zealander is that a youth camp might actually have
some effective results.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I has come at it looking saying, look the situation
wherein it's just unacceptable, right. I mean I was at
a jewelry store last year Pooja Jewelers good got hit
with a hammer over the weekend. He's now in hospital maturely.
When I visited yesterday morning, just say, man, we're sick
of this, right, I'm sick of that. You're sick of that.
We're all sick of it. And you can't sit there
and say, gave them fifty percent violent crime at thirty
(05:07):
three percent, ram raids up, you know, four times retail
primate one hundred percent and say everything's fine and Zealand
it's not fine, and it's not fair that the Zealanders
are not safe from their homes and business community. So
I'm sorry. You know, people can intellectualize and give me
their punditary and commentary about boot camps, but I Am
going to try and do things differently because we have
to get a different seat of outcomes. Just doing more
(05:28):
of the same and intellectualizing, having lovely debates and discussions
interesting to a point that it doesn't get the job done.
So I am going to do these military academies. We're
going to put a pilot in July. We've got a
blend of military involvement and principles as well as obviously
community support. We know we've got to do a better
job when these kids come out of these residential programs
that are on the right program, but then they go
back into the environments that actually take them back into
(05:50):
a bad pathway and I'm putting investment into that. So
you know, I just sort of like, you know, people
can say what they want, but at the end of
the day, you know we're going to get the job
done because one of the sick of three equpment made
is in are restored or an audit, and we have
to do that because people need to feel safe, and
you know, you and I live in Auckland and then
you go down to the Auckland CBD. Well, we're going
to have fifty one more costs by the July down
(06:10):
to the CBD on the beat doing what we want
them to do and be highly visible to crack down
on what is a pretty anti social behavior going on
down there. And people don't want to go into the
city anymore. So you know, you've got to do stuff.
You've got to try stuff, and I don't even care
whether it does or doesn't work. Ultimately, I am going
to try stuff to get a different set of outcomes.
So I thought of, Yeah, a bit of frustration you
today is you know, as people asking around you, questions
(06:32):
around it, but it's like, well, I'm sorry, but we're
going to do.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Stuff, can we Rayle? Have they let you down?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well? Yeah, I mean it's sort of not a great
thing that when you see that our terrier, you know,
trended like it was. You've got into a series of
investigations as to what happened here, and we've obviously got
had a big problem with respect to the i REX
project where massive cost by our and some practical considerations
around import infrastructure that sort of made that project untenable
and just doesn't work. What we have done is said, look,
(07:01):
you know, and you remember we picked this up in
the first couple of weeks in government. Is we've put
a minister of the Advisory Group in just three folk
that have looked at all the options about the procurement
of the new fairies. That report has just come to
shareholding ministers at the end of last week. They'll digest
that and we'll get a good option for that. But
we need the right ship on the right piece of
water to deal with the challenge that we've got.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Reported this morning that Nikola Willis went to them and said,
you're spending far too much on consultants. So you're aware
of that, yep. Right, So they're spending far too much
on consultants and they're still going backwards at a rate
of knots and stranding their ships. The chairman's already gone
on the board. Why do they have nine board members
for god's sake, how many board members do you need?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, all I just say on that front is, you know,
we'll work with them to get a reliable cockstraight crossing
and we're going to work with a refreshed board. And
so yes, the chairman has resigned last week and we've
accepted that and we need to refresh that board because
clearly the results aren't good enough.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
See, because part of the problem is so the plane,
I blame on you and the governments. You didn't spend
when you should have because it's political blah blah blah.
This is their fault. Should they be called out on it.
You've been let down by a company that should be
doing better. Is that fair?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, look, I think that's a fair challenge. I think
here we rail are responsible for the maintenance of their
current fleet. The asset life for those ferries is out
to twenty twenty nine from what I've seen, and it's
about making sure is that if if you're an airline
of other transport company or a fiery company, you've got
to make sure you've got the maintenance programs in place
to support those assets. That's that's quite normal that that
happens whether you've got trucks, planes, or ferries or boats.
(08:35):
So that is what they're responsible to make sure that
they are maintaining those vessels in the right way. What
we've which, yeah, well, and we've got to you know,
it's a critical piece of infrastructure. We get it, we
understand it. We've taken action to try and get procurement
of those ships into a number of options that we
want to see presented to us. And we've got to
get the right size, right ship on the on that
(08:56):
piece of order to do the job at hand. And
so I'm confident we can do it. But we are,
you know, we're working quite hard.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
On that super quick because I'm almost out of time.
This medical hiring thing, so they claim as there's a
medical hiring freeze for front liners. They say, no, there's not.
What they're now saying is that it's so difficult to
get a doctor in a hospital that the criteria is
so high it's virtually a freeze. What's the truth.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, Like I saw that sort of blow up people
talk about that last week. I can tell you, like
the recruitment for clinical roles is continue. It haven't actually
been frozen, as I understand because I was Shane Rigy
about that when I think you raise it at the
end of at the end of last week. But just
there is a move essentially from a national approval process
to one that's led by hospital leaders, which is actually
what you want because you want individual hospitals actually recruiting
(09:41):
for what they need to meet local needs. So there's
it's a bit confusing that one as to where people
are coming from. And we've also even seeven months, we've
made pretty progress on recruiting more nurses. I think there's
been about three two hundred people from Memory just in
April and May that have been hired to can Health
and Zeal. So yeah, it's a bit confused by that
one as to what issue is and what people are saying.
(10:02):
Because we know we've got workforce challenges, we've been moving
at pace trying and re crept more nurses in particular.
We haven't frozen anything we might have. I think Healthy
Zell has changed the process, but it's a better process
and anyways to get the right people in the right
role in the right place.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Appreciate your time, Christopher Lux and Prime Minister thirteen. To
wait for more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live
to news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
Prime Minister Chrystopal Laction's with us. Very good morning to you, Monnie, Mike.
How are you very well? Indeed, So what we're going
to do is continue with yesterday's post cabinet press conference,
and what I would like you to do is apologize
for the drug thing, and then I'm going to ask
you nine or ten more times to apologize and keep apologizing.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I mean, oh, look, I appreciate you, Mike. They actually
seeing through it all, which is I've delivered on a
promise and more than to pass what I promised. So yep,
it's a different process. Yeah, we got in there in
a different way. But the most important thing is you
and I both know people that are dealing with cancer
and just hope to give some people some hope, which
is great.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I think at the end of the day, despite their
best efforts, what we got from it was the realism.
I mean, you shouldn't have done what you did in
the thirteen and that was a mistake and all that
sort of thing. But in the end, we got better
than we thought and you can't argue with that. And
that's a lot of people being helped.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, I mean, it goes from several thousand people to
one hundred and seventy five thousand people in twenty six
new chance of treatments up to fifty four as part
of a package of fifty four more medicine. So you know, look,
I mean I think it is president. I think it's
quite a transflational investment. I think it's something you know,
as a politician, you know, Genie feel proud about this one. Yes,
it's different from what we propose, but actually I'm more
(01:12):
interested in the outcomes, and I promised those outcomes and
we've now surpassed those outcomes, which is good.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Are you settled on farmac or were you trying to
do something different with the original thirteen idea another words,
suggesting farmac, wasn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Look, I mean you know in opposition we were looking
at it saying, look, there's these thirteen cancer drugs that
we know would have some benefits to New Zealanders. There
exist in Australia more or less they should be here.
Let's find a pathway to get them to New Zealanders.
And then when we came to government it was like, well,
yes we could go outside Farmac to deliver them, but
actually we don't want you know, farming actually works quite
well in the sense of having to negotiate the prices
(01:49):
for these things as drugs as well as obviously determine
the efficacy of them, and so putting it back and
making sure it was in the pharmac process was important.
Ultimately we decided, but it just took a bit longer
than we anticipated. But I've got there, and I think
we've got a really good outcome, and I just you know,
just say to people, think about your friends and family
that are dealing with it. I'm thinking of three or
four people that I know going through cancer battles at
(02:09):
the moment, and you know this will make a big
difference to them. So, yep, the means is different. But
most importantly, we delivered on the promise in the commitment.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Exactly what you didn't answer to my satisfaction yesterday is
the six hundred and three million dollars you seem to
be thinking about. You'll find some savings here there. This
is your operating budget already coming under stress, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, it'll come out of budget twenty twenty five operating allowance.
There is some also contingency this year that have been
you know that we have you know, we'll use this
year as well. The other point I was trying to
make yesterday, which was that, you know, people seem to
think that, you know, our ongoing savings drive here on
government spending when it's over one hundred billion dollars, you know,
there needs to be an ongoing daily practice here of
(02:49):
just making sure that everything we're spending money on is
making an impact. And you know that is just an
ongoing piece of work I'm expecting to drive. You know,
we're already starting thinking about save more savings programs, you know,
and I'm expecting CEOs to manage those big budgets. You know,
we've put you know, sixteen point seven billion dollars investment
into health. You know, we've put big investments into education,
into police. You know, we want those organizations to make
(03:12):
sure all of that money is getting the results. That's
what I'm interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
But if you think about it in an ovation way,
technically speaking, what you announced yesterday, you don't have the
money for right here, right now, and you weren't planning
on that. That's correct, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, it's just that as we went through the budget process,
we realized we needed a bit more time to work
out the detail of how we're going to do it,
and you know, it's not unusual that we'd put the
provision against budget twenty twenty five. But we also have
a contingency money that will enable us to get up
and going and moving, and so it doesn't stop us
from pushing forward in October and getting these drugs starting
to come through. But you know, but also we've got
(03:49):
an ongoing savings program which we're determined to keep driving.
And you know that is it's a different mindset that
I'm trying to put into Wellington, which is, you know,
you've got a heap of government spending. You just can't
because we've had a program that we've always spent money on.
If it's not working in delivering results, stop it, you
knock it on the head and put it into something else.
And so it's a very different mindset versus just let
me get some new incremental money to add onto the
(04:11):
money that I've already got. I want these agencies to
think about the total investment that they've got going on
and actually asked questions of how to get more efficiency
out of that, not just the new money they get
it to budget.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
If you were frustrated with that. Yesterday what you were frustrated,
seemingly were your comments on the youth camps and this
ongoing commentary that we just whine about the fact that
we need to do what we've been doing forever. Is
that a Beltway intellectual left wing it doesn't work thing,
or have you missed something here and you're not convincing
(04:42):
New Zealander is that a youth camp might actually have
some effective results.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I has come at it looking saying, look the situation
wherein it's just unacceptable, right. I mean I was at
a jewelry store last year Pooja Jewelers good got hit
with a hammer over the weekend. He's now in hospital maturely.
When I visited yesterday morning, just say, man, we're sick
of this, right, I'm sick of that. You're sick of that.
We're all sick of it. And you can't sit there
and say, gave them fifty percent violent crime at thirty
(05:07):
three percent, ram raids up, you know, four times retail
primate one hundred percent and say everything's fine and Zealand
it's not fine, and it's not fair that the Zealanders
are not safe from their homes and business community. So
I'm sorry. You know, people can intellectualize and give me
their punditary and commentary about boot camps, but I Am
going to try and do things differently because we have
to get a different seat of outcomes. Just doing more
(05:28):
of the same and intellectualizing, having lovely debates and discussions
interesting to a point that it doesn't get the job done.
So I am going to do these military academies. We're
going to put a pilot in July. We've got a
blend of military involvement and principles as well as obviously
community support. We know we've got to do a better
job when these kids come out of these residential programs
that are on the right program, but then they go
back into the environments that actually take them back into
(05:50):
a bad pathway and I'm putting investment into that. So
you know, I just sort of like, you know, people
can say what they want, but at the end of
the day, you know we're going to get the job
done because one of the sick of three equpment made
is in are restored or an audit, and we have
to do that because people need to feel safe, and
you know, you and I live in Auckland and then
you go down to the Auckland CBD. Well, we're going
to have fifty one more costs by the July down
(06:10):
to the CBD on the beat doing what we want
them to do and be highly visible to crack down
on what is a pretty anti social behavior going on
down there. And people don't want to go into the
city anymore. So you know, you've got to do stuff.
You've got to try stuff, and I don't even care
whether it does or doesn't work. Ultimately, I am going
to try stuff to get a different set of outcomes.
So I thought of, Yeah, a bit of frustration you
today is you know, as people asking around you, questions
(06:32):
around it, but it's like, well, I'm sorry, but we're
going to do.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Stuff, can we Rayle? Have they let you down?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well? Yeah, I mean it's sort of not a great
thing that when you see that our terrier, you know,
trended like it was. You've got into a series of
investigations as to what happened here, and we've obviously got
had a big problem with respect to the i REX
project where massive cost by our and some practical considerations
around import infrastructure that sort of made that project untenable
and just doesn't work. What we have done is said, look,
(07:01):
you know, and you remember we picked this up in
the first couple of weeks in government. Is we've put
a minister of the Advisory Group in just three folk
that have looked at all the options about the procurement
of the new fairies. That report has just come to
shareholding ministers at the end of last week. They'll digest
that and we'll get a good option for that. But
we need the right ship on the right piece of
water to deal with the challenge that we've got.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Reported this morning that Nikola Willis went to them and said,
you're spending far too much on consultants. So you're aware
of that, yep. Right, So they're spending far too much
on consultants and they're still going backwards at a rate
of knots and stranding their ships. The chairman's already gone
on the board. Why do they have nine board members
for god's sake, how many board members do you need?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, all I just say on that front is, you know,
we'll work with them to get a reliable cockstraight crossing
and we're going to work with a refreshed board. And
so yes, the chairman has resigned last week and we've
accepted that and we need to refresh that board because
clearly the results aren't good enough.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
See, because part of the problem is so the plane,
I blame on you and the governments. You didn't spend
when you should have because it's political blah blah blah.
This is their fault. Should they be called out on it.
You've been let down by a company that should be
doing better. Is that fair?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, look, I think that's a fair challenge. I think
here we rail are responsible for the maintenance of their
current fleet. The asset life for those ferries is out
to twenty twenty nine from what I've seen, and it's
about making sure is that if if you're an airline
of other transport company or a fiery company, you've got
to make sure you've got the maintenance programs in place
to support those assets. That's that's quite normal that that
happens whether you've got trucks, planes, or ferries or boats.
(08:35):
So that is what they're responsible to make sure that
they are maintaining those vessels in the right way. What
we've which, yeah, well, and we've got to you know,
it's a critical piece of infrastructure. We get it, we
understand it. We've taken action to try and get procurement
of those ships into a number of options that we
want to see presented to us. And we've got to
get the right size, right ship on the on that
(08:56):
piece of order to do the job at hand. And
so I'm confident we can do it. But we are,
you know, we're working quite hard.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
On that super quick because I'm almost out of time.
This medical hiring thing, so they claim as there's a
medical hiring freeze for front liners. They say, no, there's not.
What they're now saying is that it's so difficult to
get a doctor in a hospital that the criteria is
so high it's virtually a freeze. What's the truth.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, Like I saw that sort of blow up people
talk about that last week. I can tell you, like
the recruitment for clinical roles is continue. It haven't actually
been frozen, as I understand because I was Shane Rigy
about that when I think you raise it at the
end of at the end of last week. But just
there is a move essentially from a national approval process
to one that's led by hospital leaders, which is actually
what you want because you want individual hospitals actually recruiting
(09:41):
for what they need to meet local needs. So there's
it's a bit confusing that one as to where people
are coming from. And we've also even seeven months, we've
made pretty progress on recruiting more nurses. I think there's
been about three two hundred people from Memory just in
April and May that have been hired to can Health
and Zeal. So yeah, it's a bit confused by that
one as to what issue is and what people are saying.
(10:02):
Because we know we've got workforce challenges, we've been moving
at pace trying and re crept more nurses in particular.
We haven't frozen anything we might have. I think Healthy
Zell has changed the process, but it's a better process
and anyways to get the right people in the right
role in the right place.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Appreciate your time, Christopher Lux and Prime Minister thirteen. To
wait for more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live
to news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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