Labour leader Chris Hipkins is unwavering on making Treaty considerations an expectation for Pharmac.
His Government required Pharmac to commit to embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Associate Health Minister David Seymour's removed it in his newly-released letter of expectation, calling it a distraction.
Hipkins told John MacDonald Pharmac was engaging more with Māori to improve health outcomes and reduce inequity.
He says Māori weren't accessing medicines at the same rate as non-Māori, and it's perfectly justified for Pharmac to do something about it.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Canterbury Mornings podcast with John McDonald
from News Talk ZB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Time to have a regular catch up with Opposition and
Labor leader Chris Hipkins. Going, Chris, good, we'll talk about
that sixty four million dollar consultants spend on three waters shortly.
First of all, have you had a tip off about
the CPI as opposition leader?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
No? No, no, it doesn't happen that way. Unfortunately we
find out the same time as everybody else. So I
think we'll all be waiting with beta breath.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
All right, So the governments released this draft of Missions
Plan which seems to be focused on trees, planning a
truck load of trees or a lot of truck loads
of trees and relying on new technology. What's your response
to it?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Ultimately, everything the government have done and say became the
government have increased our emissions rather than decreased them.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
How do you know that? Do you have a figure?
Do you know that.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I don't have the figure?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
You can't say that. You can't say it?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Then I haven't compiled them. Well, no I can, because
if you look at it. They canceled the clean car
discount and we went from one of the behold them.
But but you can't say I was going I was
just going to give you the evidence, John, But if
you don't want to hear at that's point, that's all right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I mean what you can, what you probably correctly say,
is that the government has introduced policies which have probably
increased emissions, because you can't say that that's a fact,
is it right.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Well, if you're buying an electric car, then that reduces
our emissions. If you're buying a ute, a diesel ute,
you're increasing our emissions. So we've seen a collapse in
the number of people buying electric cars and an increase
in the number of people buying diesel utes. So that
has increased our emissions. You know, that's just one example,
but across the board, a lot of the decisions that
(01:53):
they have taken, including you know, reducing investment in public
transport and so on, ultimately increase our emissions as a country.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
All rights. The emissions reduction record under your government just
remind us of that.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
We reduced our missions. Actually, towards the end of our
term in government, we achieved the first reductions in our emissions,
and I think that was that was a good thing.
There's still a lot more work to be done, but
we at least had the curve pointing in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
How much of that was as a result of the lockdowns?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
No, that I think that was outside of the lockdown.
So this is you know, the curve moving forward.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Chris, How can you say, O outside the locklow the
lockdown happened. How can you say it's outside the lockdown?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Well, because still a lot of our emissions were continued
during the lockdown period, So a lot of our big
industrial manufacturers continued, farming continued. You know, yes, there were
fewer transport emissions during that time, but overall, you know,
I don't think you could say that the lockdowns were
the reason that our emissions were reducing.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And that one of a couple did a lot of driving,
didn't I and the and and the hook is up north?
They a lot of driving.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
You're giving me PTSD John. I don't want to remember
all of those particular cases. I don't ever want to
talk about them very again.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Maybe do you remember do you remember your time as
police minister?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I do, indeed, I do, indeed, and I know that
my brief six months tenures.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Uh, And do you think the government. Do you think
the government was lumbered with something that that your government
left behindment came to those police negotiations.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
By the police pay negotiations, Yeah, I mean I think
that should have been I think that should have been
seatalks before now, and we reached that unfortunate period where
the latest offer was rejected right before the election. We
weren't in the position to make a new offer because
we were entering into the caretaker period where we couldn't
commit that level of expenditure on behalf of and you know,
(03:56):
potentially a new government. So I think there was So
I actually do think the current government and the Police
Commissioner have got a legitimate thing to say that those
negotiations were disrupted by the advent of the general election,
because there's no question that they were.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Let's talk about far macs. So that's directive from the
Associate Health Minister David Simour yesterday the FARMAC, who well
for several things, but one of them is to stop
considering the treaty waiting in its decision decision making process.
I was curious to see that your health spokesperson, ashe
Verral said in response to that yesterday, as she said
there will be a lot of missed opportunities for improving
(04:29):
the healthcare of New Zealanders without considering the treaty. What
does that mean?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We ultimately we have to recognize that Mardi health outcomes
are worse than the outcomes for non Mary And if
you look at the way far MEK have interpreted what
that means, you know, working with Mary is basically how
they've interpreted that clause in their current mandate. I mean
working with Mary around improving health outcomes from MARII I
think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So even though David Simol says I heard him on
the radio last night saying that his understanding that there
is no proof that far MAC has actually prioritized Maori
other people, So it would seem to be that at best,
the approach that your government endorsed or initiated didn't go
very far well.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I think what David Seymour was saying is that he
can't find proof of the conspiracy theories that some were
promoting before the election that Marty were getting access to
medical treatments that Non Mary were not being given access to.
There isn't any proof of that because it wasn't happening.
What we were seeing is that Mary were being engaged
more with by Farmak around the fact that they have
had inequitable, inequitable access to medicine. So Marty hadn't been
(05:39):
accessing medicines at the same rate as non Marty had,
and that was something that Farmak were doing something about.
I think that's perfectly justified.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You don't see it as being a distraction. He thought
the organization was distracted by this requirement.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, if you know that there's a segment of your
population who are getting inequitable and unfair access to medical treatment,
then actually, I don't think that dealing with that's a distraction.
I think that should be Pharmac's core business. Otherwise, we're saying, oh,
there's a section of our population who are more likely
to die, who are less likely to get the medical
treatment that they need, and we're not going to do
anything about it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So how do you explain then, how does that fit
with the decision by your government in twenty twenty one
to allow FARMAC to prioritize Mary and Pacific patients and
its funding of two game changing new diabetes drunks.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Ultimately, those would have been decisions that FARMAC made based
on the medical evidence of the populous segments of the
population that were more inclined to benefit from those.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Treatments, so they were prioritized.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
More so Maria and Pacific people were more likely to
have diabetes than clearly targeting to make sure that they
were getting access to that medication is a legitimate thing.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
What should the Grains do about Darling Tana?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I think she should. She should certainly have resigned from
Parliament by now, and I think if she doesn't, I'm
from parliament. I think the Greens would be perfectly within
their rights to invoke the Wacker jumping legislation and force
her out of parliament. She's left. She was elected as
a Green MP, she's elect to the Green Party, so
she shouldn't be an MP anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, I mean we all know they're entitled to do that.
What do you think they should do?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I think they should do it, absolutely. I think they
should do it. That's what that's why the law is there.
It's designed to stop situations like this where somebody is
elected as a list MP for a under one banner
then says I know I'm going to be an independent.
I'm leaving that party. They've got no mandate to be
an independent they were elected. In this case, Darling Tunna
was elected as a Green MP. Nobody voted for it. Well,
(07:46):
other than a handful of people in Tommickimikodo. People didn't
vote for her to be their local constituency MP. She
doesn't have an independent mandate independent of her party. She
should not be in parliament.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Let's get onto the sixty four million dollar question. How
can you defend this is the revelation the last twenty
four hours that the Labor government paid consultancy firms a
total of sixty four million dollars for work on the
Three Waters reforms which went nowhere. How can you justify
and defend that spend.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Well, they didn't go nowhere, John, They resulted in changes
to the law that were going to save ratepayers hundreds
of millions of dollars potentially billions of dollars and rates increases,
and the current government scrapped to them.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Now, well, that's going, that's gone nowhere. That's gone, that's
gone nowhere, then, hasn't it. You can't say it went
somewhere and then it's gone nowhere. Does it make sense
at all?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
No, the people that chose to write off that and
instead trends through the burden back onto ratepayers. Was the
current government, So they're the ones that wasted the money,
not the people who were trying to save the rate
payers money by reducing the increases in rates, which we
would have done.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So it's more correct to say the money was going
somewhere but eventually went nowhere.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, it was going somewhere until the current government decided
to change course and decided that they wanted ratepayers to
pay a much largish proportion of the burden for fixing
our order infrastructures, and they would have had to otherwise.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
How can you justify that spend anyway? Sixty four million
bucks on consultants? How can you justify it? Because ultimately
he was going to save ratepayers a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Up and down the country are facing massive rates increases
because the current government have decided to abandon the reform.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So can you not justify it as it were saying?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Absolutely, sometimes you have to spend a bit of money
to figure out what a more cost effective way of
delivering billions of dollars worth of infrastructure investment's going to be.
We have billions of dollars worth of water infrastructure investment
required making sure that we spend a little bit upfront
to make sure we're doing that efficiently and cost effectively.
They's a justified investment. This government, on the other hand,
(09:47):
have decided that we're not going to do that. We're
just going to lead it to councils. Everybody when they
receive their rates bills in the mail or of our
email these days and sees that their lates are going
up by a huge amount every year, should thank the
current government for that, because there was an alternative that
was going to result in much lower rates increases and
this government abandoned it.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So you don't feel bad about it about it at all.
You don't feel embarrassed about it at all.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I feel bad about the fact that people.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Do you feel bad about that? Do you feel embarrassed
about it? No?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
I feel I feel so that people who are seeing
their rates going up are being hard done by. And
I do think they're being hard done by because there
is an alternative this government chose to abandon except.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And say you we'll talk again in a fortnight.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
For more from Caterbory Mornings with John McDonald, listen live
to news talks. It'd be christ Church from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Canterbury Mornings podcast with John McDonald
from News Talk ZB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Time to have a regular catch up with Opposition and
Labor leader Chris Hipkins. Going, Chris, good, we'll talk about
that sixty four million dollar consultants spend on three waters shortly.
First of all, have you had a tip off about
the CPI as opposition leader?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
No? No, no, it doesn't happen that way. Unfortunately we
find out the same time as everybody else. So I
think we'll all be waiting with beta breath.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
All right, So the governments released this draft of Missions
Plan which seems to be focused on trees, planning a
truck load of trees or a lot of truck loads
of trees and relying on new technology. What's your response
to it?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Ultimately, everything the government have done and say became the
government have increased our emissions rather than decreased them.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
How do you know that? Do you have a figure?
Do you know that.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I don't have the figure?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
You can't say that. You can't say it?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Then I haven't compiled them. Well, no I can, because
if you look at it. They canceled the clean car
discount and we went from one of the behold them.
But but you can't say I was going I was
just going to give you the evidence, John, But if
you don't want to hear at that's point, that's all right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I mean what you can, what you probably correctly say,
is that the government has introduced policies which have probably
increased emissions, because you can't say that that's a fact,
is it right.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Well, if you're buying an electric car, then that reduces
our emissions. If you're buying a ute, a diesel ute,
you're increasing our emissions. So we've seen a collapse in
the number of people buying electric cars and an increase
in the number of people buying diesel utes. So that
has increased our emissions. You know, that's just one example,
but across the board, a lot of the decisions that
(01:53):
they have taken, including you know, reducing investment in public
transport and so on, ultimately increase our emissions as a country.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
All rights. The emissions reduction record under your government just
remind us of that.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
We reduced our missions. Actually, towards the end of our
term in government, we achieved the first reductions in our emissions,
and I think that was that was a good thing.
There's still a lot more work to be done, but
we at least had the curve pointing in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
How much of that was as a result of the lockdowns?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
No, that I think that was outside of the lockdown.
So this is you know, the curve moving forward.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Chris, How can you say, O outside the locklow the
lockdown happened. How can you say it's outside the lockdown?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Well, because still a lot of our emissions were continued
during the lockdown period, So a lot of our big
industrial manufacturers continued, farming continued. You know, yes, there were
fewer transport emissions during that time, but overall, you know,
I don't think you could say that the lockdowns were
the reason that our emissions were reducing.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And that one of a couple did a lot of driving,
didn't I and the and and the hook is up north?
They a lot of driving.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
You're giving me PTSD John. I don't want to remember
all of those particular cases. I don't ever want to
talk about them very again.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Maybe do you remember do you remember your time as
police minister?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I do, indeed, I do, indeed, and I know that
my brief six months tenures.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Uh, And do you think the government. Do you think
the government was lumbered with something that that your government
left behindment came to those police negotiations.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
By the police pay negotiations, Yeah, I mean I think
that should have been I think that should have been
seatalks before now, and we reached that unfortunate period where
the latest offer was rejected right before the election. We
weren't in the position to make a new offer because
we were entering into the caretaker period where we couldn't
commit that level of expenditure on behalf of and you know,
(03:56):
potentially a new government. So I think there was So
I actually do think the current government and the Police
Commissioner have got a legitimate thing to say that those
negotiations were disrupted by the advent of the general election,
because there's no question that they were.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Let's talk about far macs. So that's directive from the
Associate Health Minister David Simour yesterday the FARMAC, who well
for several things, but one of them is to stop
considering the treaty waiting in its decision decision making process.
I was curious to see that your health spokesperson, ashe
Verral said in response to that yesterday, as she said
there will be a lot of missed opportunities for improving
(04:29):
the healthcare of New Zealanders without considering the treaty. What
does that mean?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We ultimately we have to recognize that Mardi health outcomes
are worse than the outcomes for non Mary And if
you look at the way far MEK have interpreted what
that means, you know, working with Mary is basically how
they've interpreted that clause in their current mandate. I mean
working with Mary around improving health outcomes from MARII I
think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So even though David Simol says I heard him on
the radio last night saying that his understanding that there
is no proof that far MAC has actually prioritized Maori
other people, So it would seem to be that at best,
the approach that your government endorsed or initiated didn't go
very far well.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I think what David Seymour was saying is that he
can't find proof of the conspiracy theories that some were
promoting before the election that Marty were getting access to
medical treatments that Non Mary were not being given access to.
There isn't any proof of that because it wasn't happening.
What we were seeing is that Mary were being engaged
more with by Farmak around the fact that they have
had inequitable, inequitable access to medicine. So Marty hadn't been
(05:39):
accessing medicines at the same rate as non Marty had,
and that was something that Farmak were doing something about.
I think that's perfectly justified.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You don't see it as being a distraction. He thought
the organization was distracted by this requirement.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, if you know that there's a segment of your
population who are getting inequitable and unfair access to medical treatment,
then actually, I don't think that dealing with that's a distraction.
I think that should be Pharmac's core business. Otherwise, we're saying, oh,
there's a section of our population who are more likely
to die, who are less likely to get the medical
treatment that they need, and we're not going to do
anything about it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So how do you explain then, how does that fit
with the decision by your government in twenty twenty one
to allow FARMAC to prioritize Mary and Pacific patients and
its funding of two game changing new diabetes drunks.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Ultimately, those would have been decisions that FARMAC made based
on the medical evidence of the populous segments of the
population that were more inclined to benefit from those.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Treatments, so they were prioritized.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
More so Maria and Pacific people were more likely to
have diabetes than clearly targeting to make sure that they
were getting access to that medication is a legitimate thing.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
What should the Grains do about Darling Tana?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I think she should. She should certainly have resigned from
Parliament by now, and I think if she doesn't, I'm
from parliament. I think the Greens would be perfectly within
their rights to invoke the Wacker jumping legislation and force
her out of parliament. She's left. She was elected as
a Green MP, she's elect to the Green Party, so
she shouldn't be an MP anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, I mean we all know they're entitled to do that.
What do you think they should do?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I think they should do it, absolutely. I think they
should do it. That's what that's why the law is there.
It's designed to stop situations like this where somebody is
elected as a list MP for a under one banner
then says I know I'm going to be an independent.
I'm leaving that party. They've got no mandate to be
an independent they were elected. In this case, Darling Tunna
was elected as a Green MP. Nobody voted for it. Well,
(07:46):
other than a handful of people in Tommickimikodo. People didn't
vote for her to be their local constituency MP. She
doesn't have an independent mandate independent of her party. She
should not be in parliament.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Let's get onto the sixty four million dollar question. How
can you defend this is the revelation the last twenty
four hours that the Labor government paid consultancy firms a
total of sixty four million dollars for work on the
Three Waters reforms which went nowhere. How can you justify
and defend that spend.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Well, they didn't go nowhere, John, They resulted in changes
to the law that were going to save ratepayers hundreds
of millions of dollars potentially billions of dollars and rates increases,
and the current government scrapped to them.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Now, well, that's going, that's gone nowhere. That's gone, that's
gone nowhere, then, hasn't it. You can't say it went
somewhere and then it's gone nowhere. Does it make sense
at all?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
No, the people that chose to write off that and
instead trends through the burden back onto ratepayers. Was the
current government, So they're the ones that wasted the money,
not the people who were trying to save the rate
payers money by reducing the increases in rates, which we
would have done.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So it's more correct to say the money was going
somewhere but eventually went nowhere.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, it was going somewhere until the current government decided
to change course and decided that they wanted ratepayers to
pay a much largish proportion of the burden for fixing
our order infrastructures, and they would have had to otherwise.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
How can you justify that spend anyway? Sixty four million
bucks on consultants? How can you justify it? Because ultimately
he was going to save ratepayers a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Up and down the country are facing massive rates increases
because the current government have decided to abandon the reform.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So can you not justify it as it were saying?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Absolutely, sometimes you have to spend a bit of money
to figure out what a more cost effective way of
delivering billions of dollars worth of infrastructure investment's going to be.
We have billions of dollars worth of water infrastructure investment
required making sure that we spend a little bit upfront
to make sure we're doing that efficiently and cost effectively.
They's a justified investment. This government, on the other hand,
(09:47):
have decided that we're not going to do that. We're
just going to lead it to councils. Everybody when they
receive their rates bills in the mail or of our
email these days and sees that their lates are going
up by a huge amount every year, should thank the
current government for that, because there was an alternative that
was going to result in much lower rates increases and
this government abandoned it.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So you don't feel bad about it about it at all.
You don't feel embarrassed about it at all.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I feel bad about the fact that people.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Do you feel bad about that? Do you feel embarrassed
about it? No?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
I feel I feel so that people who are seeing
their rates going up are being hard done by. And
I do think they're being hard done by because there
is an alternative this government chose to abandon except.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And say you we'll talk again in a fortnight.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
For more from Caterbory Mornings with John McDonald, listen live
to news talks. It'd be christ Church from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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