David Seymour is outlining a new direction for Pharmac.
The Acting Prime Minister and Associate Health Minister told Mike Hosking he'll be outlining new expectations for the Government's drug-funding agency this afternoon.
He's eager to see Pharmac take a more holistic view on how it can save taxpayers' money, with fewer hospital admissions, more people working, and fewer people on benefits.
He says the Treaty of Waitangi shouldn't affect something as technical and tangible as which drugs to buy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Running the country at the moment is David Seymour, who
that's good to see you. Mindingway a couple of things.
Just before the news, I was mentioning this Uber case
which has been in court, and I know you guys
are interested in it. Are you doing something about it?
Will you do something about it? Or are you going
to wait for the court to rule before you do
anything about it.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, Brook van Valden's our Minister for workplace Relations and
she's committed to making it clear that if you want
to be in a contract relationship, you're not going to
have that changed into employment somewhere down the track, because
if you say, look, you know you signed a contract now,
but it could be turned into employment with all those
obligations later on, basically means contractings meaningless. And for a
(00:38):
lot of people, including people and the likes of Uber,
contracting is actually a godsend because it allows you the
freedom to choose your own terms.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
So you're saying they're wasting their time in court.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I certainly would not say that, but I am saying
that we have a government that is committed to the
freedom to contract.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
If the court rules in their favor, though and flips it.
What are you going to do about it?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, have to actually see what the court ruling said
and then decide our next step. Obviously, we respect the
jurisdiction of the courts to make their own calls and
interpret the law as they see fit. But equally, as
an elected government and a parliament, we reserve the right
to ensure that our policies that people voted for are
put in place for New Zealanders to access, including the
(01:20):
freedom to contract.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, So as in your role as the boss
of Farmact today there's an announcement coming, what is it
and where's the trituy white tongue you fit into it?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So as the Minister, I can write a letter of
expectation to the board. I mean, Farmac's actually got its
own board. It's a bit independent, but ministers can write
these letters. And this letter says, look, you guys are
tremendous people. You're very qualified, you do an amazing job,
but over time your culture has become a bit defensive.
We'd like to see you more collaborative with clinicians and
patient groups and vendors of medical technology. It also says
(01:53):
we acknowledge previously that the Minister of Health Eischeverril said
you must embed the treaty and everything that you do.
My basic message is, I know she said that, but actually,
if embedding the treaty means that you treat every single
patient exactly the same based on need, then that's all Carpi.
But we don't need to mention it. If embedding the
(02:14):
Treaty means that you're going to treat people differently based
on who their ancestors were hundreds of years ago, we
don't want to know about it. Because we actually believe
in universal human rights.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Will they follow that well?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They are expected to the board will be responsible for
upholding the policies of the organization. We have a chair
in Paula Bennett that we appointed last month and she
is I think absolutely committed to following the directives from
the Minister and ultimately the Cabinet and government. So yes,
(02:46):
I expect they will.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
In your time as minister, what you what is embedding
the Treaty in a decision? I mean, you're out there
negotiating with a drug company to buy some pills or
potions or treatments. Where does the treaty come into that?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Frankly, I think the reason that we have pylons falling
over and firies crashing into beaches, and who knows what
else going on. Is that we've had enormous emphasis on
the intangible and not enough emphasis on the tangible. If
you look at the case of Transpower, they published very
high minded reports. I think it was something like to
(03:23):
hero Maldi, and that's wonderful, but you know what they
needed to do make sure that they screwed the nuts
in at the right.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Time, right. So there's nothing actually that you can cite
that far Mek had been doing having embedded the treaty
into their decision making process, that's manifestly changed anything at all.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Ultimately, you make a decision do we use the money
we have to fund this treatment or that treatment based
on the maths how many years of life can we save?
I have to say I'm eager to see far Mek
take a more holistic view of how can we save
the taxpayer money with fewer hospital admissions or more people working,
fewer people on benefits and so on, so that they're
(04:01):
taking a wider view. But it's still a mathematical formula
To answer your question in relation to it, does embedding
the treaty really change something? As technical and tangible as
choosing drugs. No, it certainly should not. I can't imagine
how it would. What I do notice is that they've
hired quite a number of people to fulfill this obligation
(04:21):
to the previous government, regardless of whether it's practical. I
expect that the board, led by Paula Bennett, will be
making sure that they're focused on how do we get
the treatments to the sick people as quickly as possible
for the money we have.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Should a few people get sacked in that sense because
you appoint the board, the board do them hiring and firing.
There are people clearly who've been adhering to the previous
administrations edicts that shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, I hate to seem like I'm weaseling out of it,
but it is actually up to the board. So you know,
I appoint them, I write them a letter. They basically
govern the thing, the chief executive and senior leadership team.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
In appointing the board, do you go, jeez, I'll be astonished,
paul if we don't see a bit of change there,
What do you reckon? And Paula goes, I think so too, David.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, if we had had a conversation like that, I
wouldn't be allowed to talk about it here, would I.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
The bill that you've got, is it a private members
bill on the Council and climate change?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah? So that's Mark Cameron, the hero of rural New
Zealand in Parliament and a tremendous guy. You may have seen.
He's had some tough times and it was ridden up
in the Herald last weekend. But you know, I think
Mark literally believes that every rural New Zealander is genetically
related to him and he will do anything to stand
up for a country. What he's produced as a member's
(05:39):
bill which has to be drawn from the ballot and
so on, But it basically says, look, councils don't need
to be considering climate messes under the RIMA because we
have a thing called the emissions Trading scheme. If you
want to emit carbon dioxide, you can, but there's a
cap number of units that you've got to buy, and
if you admit too many, of the price goes up.
So deal with it that way. Duplication by councils just
(06:00):
means more bureaucracy and Bioscity's one thing New Zealand ain't shut.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Off, So you've got to get it out of the ballot.
If you get it out of the ballot, do you
have the numbers off you canvasated at all or not.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Look, I don't know where Mark's up to and doing that,
but I suspect that you'd expect you get pretty good
support from New Zealand versus to National and that's a majority.
But I can't speak for them right now.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
You mentioned fairies how protracted and I know you won't
answer this, but because you seem super tense about it,
how protracted are the discussions with the Koreans about getting
out of that thing?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Well, yeah, you had it right before. I Well, look,
I mean, in fairness, you know, we've got some officials
who are there playing cards on behalf of the New
Zealand taxpayer with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
So I'm not going to sit there and tell the
world what I don't want you to.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But the writing was that the paperwork came out at
about the same time from Treasury saying you've got to
be careful about this, at about the same time Nicol
had sided it wasn't on. Is it possible we will
end up, whether you agree with the decision or not,
we will end up paying as much, if not more
to get out plus by new fairies than we would
have buy simply carrying.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
On not at all. There's a couple of issues that
need to be added to that listening. Number one is
that the harbor Master at Marlborough said that we're not
going to let these fairies because they're too wide to
go through the Tory channel. So that's the first thing
that you just actually can't make this stuff up. I mean,
I know people don't like us begging the previous government
and they want to know what we're going to do now,
(07:22):
But can I just say to your listeners, the previous
government wanted to buy fairies that the harbor Master would
not let doc at the place that they were brought
to go to being picked. In number two, they also
hadn't figured out how they were going to get the
trains on and off. They didn't have a price for that,
and it started off at a few hundred million. By
(07:45):
the time the good people of New Zealand voted them
out it was up to three point two billion. And
had they won another another term, I suspect they would
have got to the stage where it would have actually
been cheaper just to build a rail tunnel between the
two islands instead of what they.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Having read the paper between Kiwi Rail and the government,
how incompetent is Kiwi Rail to say this is the
final number, grant, don't worry about it, and then go
WAPs it's billions of dollars more. I mean that's on them,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Well, let me just divide it up. I mean, when
it comes to running a train service, I don't think
they're that bad. But that's the thing. It's Kiwi Rail,
it's not Kei. We build a port and once they
once they tried to get into the port building business,
turned out they were pretty incompetent. I mean, if you
want to if you wanted on a one to ten,
I'd probably give you about an eleven because they just
(08:33):
weren't set up to do that. And as I say,
they spent so much money trying to work out how
to get trains to drive off the land across earthquake
prone land onto a boat that you know, like I say,
they should have just started doing a tunnel exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
You enjoying this, By the way, this PM not this specifically,
but you know the running the country.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Thing, well, I'm a I'm a libertarian, so one of
the worst things that could happen to me is I
could actually become the government. I just want to point
out I don't actually think I'm running the country. Five
point three million New Zealanders running the country. We're running
the government, and that's just one organization in this country
that I think is far too large. It's up to
everyone else to get on and make the most of
(09:12):
their lives in this beautiful country.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Nice to see you, David Seemore, acting Prime Minister. 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.
Running the country at the moment is David Seymour, who
that's good to see you. Mindingway a couple of things.
Just before the news, I was mentioning this Uber case
which has been in court, and I know you guys
are interested in it. Are you doing something about it?
Will you do something about it? Or are you going
to wait for the court to rule before you do
anything about it.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, Brook van Valden's our Minister for workplace Relations and
she's committed to making it clear that if you want
to be in a contract relationship, you're not going to
have that changed into employment somewhere down the track, because
if you say, look, you know you signed a contract now,
but it could be turned into employment with all those
obligations later on, basically means contractings meaningless. And for a
(00:38):
lot of people, including people and the likes of Uber,
contracting is actually a godsend because it allows you the
freedom to choose your own terms.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
So you're saying they're wasting their time in court.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I certainly would not say that, but I am saying
that we have a government that is committed to the
freedom to contract.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
If the court rules in their favor, though and flips it.
What are you going to do about it?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, have to actually see what the court ruling said
and then decide our next step. Obviously, we respect the
jurisdiction of the courts to make their own calls and
interpret the law as they see fit. But equally, as
an elected government and a parliament, we reserve the right
to ensure that our policies that people voted for are
put in place for New Zealanders to access, including the
(01:20):
freedom to contract.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, So as in your role as the boss
of Farmact today there's an announcement coming, what is it
and where's the trituy white tongue you fit into it?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So as the Minister, I can write a letter of
expectation to the board. I mean, Farmac's actually got its
own board. It's a bit independent, but ministers can write
these letters. And this letter says, look, you guys are
tremendous people. You're very qualified, you do an amazing job,
but over time your culture has become a bit defensive.
We'd like to see you more collaborative with clinicians and
patient groups and vendors of medical technology. It also says
(01:53):
we acknowledge previously that the Minister of Health Eischeverril said
you must embed the treaty and everything that you do.
My basic message is, I know she said that, but actually,
if embedding the treaty means that you treat every single
patient exactly the same based on need, then that's all Carpi.
But we don't need to mention it. If embedding the
(02:14):
Treaty means that you're going to treat people differently based
on who their ancestors were hundreds of years ago, we
don't want to know about it. Because we actually believe
in universal human rights.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Will they follow that well?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They are expected to the board will be responsible for
upholding the policies of the organization. We have a chair
in Paula Bennett that we appointed last month and she
is I think absolutely committed to following the directives from
the Minister and ultimately the Cabinet and government. So yes,
(02:46):
I expect they will.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
In your time as minister, what you what is embedding
the Treaty in a decision? I mean, you're out there
negotiating with a drug company to buy some pills or
potions or treatments. Where does the treaty come into that?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Frankly, I think the reason that we have pylons falling
over and firies crashing into beaches, and who knows what
else going on. Is that we've had enormous emphasis on
the intangible and not enough emphasis on the tangible. If
you look at the case of Transpower, they published very
high minded reports. I think it was something like to
(03:23):
hero Maldi, and that's wonderful, but you know what they
needed to do make sure that they screwed the nuts
in at the right.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Time, right. So there's nothing actually that you can cite
that far Mek had been doing having embedded the treaty
into their decision making process, that's manifestly changed anything at all.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Ultimately, you make a decision do we use the money
we have to fund this treatment or that treatment based
on the maths how many years of life can we save?
I have to say I'm eager to see far Mek
take a more holistic view of how can we save
the taxpayer money with fewer hospital admissions or more people working,
fewer people on benefits and so on, so that they're
(04:01):
taking a wider view. But it's still a mathematical formula
To answer your question in relation to it, does embedding
the treaty really change something? As technical and tangible as
choosing drugs. No, it certainly should not. I can't imagine
how it would. What I do notice is that they've
hired quite a number of people to fulfill this obligation
(04:21):
to the previous government, regardless of whether it's practical. I
expect that the board, led by Paula Bennett, will be
making sure that they're focused on how do we get
the treatments to the sick people as quickly as possible
for the money we have.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Should a few people get sacked in that sense because
you appoint the board, the board do them hiring and firing.
There are people clearly who've been adhering to the previous
administrations edicts that shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, I hate to seem like I'm weaseling out of it,
but it is actually up to the board. So you know,
I appoint them, I write them a letter. They basically
govern the thing, the chief executive and senior leadership team.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
In appointing the board, do you go, jeez, I'll be astonished,
paul if we don't see a bit of change there,
What do you reckon? And Paula goes, I think so too, David.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, if we had had a conversation like that, I
wouldn't be allowed to talk about it here, would I.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
The bill that you've got, is it a private members
bill on the Council and climate change?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah? So that's Mark Cameron, the hero of rural New
Zealand in Parliament and a tremendous guy. You may have seen.
He's had some tough times and it was ridden up
in the Herald last weekend. But you know, I think
Mark literally believes that every rural New Zealander is genetically
related to him and he will do anything to stand
up for a country. What he's produced as a member's
(05:39):
bill which has to be drawn from the ballot and
so on, But it basically says, look, councils don't need
to be considering climate messes under the RIMA because we
have a thing called the emissions Trading scheme. If you
want to emit carbon dioxide, you can, but there's a
cap number of units that you've got to buy, and
if you admit too many, of the price goes up.
So deal with it that way. Duplication by councils just
(06:00):
means more bureaucracy and Bioscity's one thing New Zealand ain't shut.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Off, So you've got to get it out of the ballot.
If you get it out of the ballot, do you
have the numbers off you canvasated at all or not.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Look, I don't know where Mark's up to and doing that,
but I suspect that you'd expect you get pretty good
support from New Zealand versus to National and that's a majority.
But I can't speak for them right now.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
You mentioned fairies how protracted and I know you won't
answer this, but because you seem super tense about it,
how protracted are the discussions with the Koreans about getting
out of that thing?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Well, yeah, you had it right before. I Well, look,
I mean, in fairness, you know, we've got some officials
who are there playing cards on behalf of the New
Zealand taxpayer with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
So I'm not going to sit there and tell the
world what I don't want you to.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But the writing was that the paperwork came out at
about the same time from Treasury saying you've got to
be careful about this, at about the same time Nicol
had sided it wasn't on. Is it possible we will
end up, whether you agree with the decision or not,
we will end up paying as much, if not more
to get out plus by new fairies than we would
have buy simply carrying.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
On not at all. There's a couple of issues that
need to be added to that listening. Number one is
that the harbor Master at Marlborough said that we're not
going to let these fairies because they're too wide to
go through the Tory channel. So that's the first thing
that you just actually can't make this stuff up. I mean,
I know people don't like us begging the previous government
and they want to know what we're going to do now,
(07:22):
But can I just say to your listeners, the previous
government wanted to buy fairies that the harbor Master would
not let doc at the place that they were brought
to go to being picked. In number two, they also
hadn't figured out how they were going to get the
trains on and off. They didn't have a price for that,
and it started off at a few hundred million. By
(07:45):
the time the good people of New Zealand voted them
out it was up to three point two billion. And
had they won another another term, I suspect they would
have got to the stage where it would have actually
been cheaper just to build a rail tunnel between the
two islands instead of what they.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Having read the paper between Kiwi Rail and the government,
how incompetent is Kiwi Rail to say this is the
final number, grant, don't worry about it, and then go
WAPs it's billions of dollars more. I mean that's on them,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Well, let me just divide it up. I mean, when
it comes to running a train service, I don't think
they're that bad. But that's the thing. It's Kiwi Rail,
it's not Kei. We build a port and once they
once they tried to get into the port building business,
turned out they were pretty incompetent. I mean, if you
want to if you wanted on a one to ten,
I'd probably give you about an eleven because they just
(08:33):
weren't set up to do that. And as I say,
they spent so much money trying to work out how
to get trains to drive off the land across earthquake
prone land onto a boat that you know, like I say,
they should have just started doing a tunnel exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
You enjoying this, By the way, this PM not this specifically,
but you know the running the country.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Thing, well, I'm a I'm a libertarian, so one of
the worst things that could happen to me is I
could actually become the government. I just want to point
out I don't actually think I'm running the country. Five
point three million New Zealanders running the country. We're running
the government, and that's just one organization in this country
that I think is far too large. It's up to
everyone else to get on and make the most of
(09:12):
their lives in this beautiful country.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Nice to see you, David Seemore, acting Prime Minister. 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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