The 'dream team' could endanger health.

They call themselves "the dream team", but the combination of John Key and Bill English leading the National Party is more like a nightmare for nurses and other health workers, should they ever become the Government.

Only two days into his new job, John Key was quoted on National Radio saying he wanted to see more private sector involvement, particularly in health. In The Independent in May, he said: "We could better use the private sector for elective surgery." (1) That's National Party speak for "privatisation of health, wage cuts for staff and user pays for patients."

Anyone who worked in the health sector during the 1990s knows exactly how damaging the privatisation agenda was. John Key wants to go back to those days. In those days, I worked as an organiser for NZNO and saw aged-care workers' incomes actually decrease over that time. Talking about the 1990s, it was during that same era that Bill English was the Minister of Health. As Minister, he presided over a health sector where nurses had to go on strike to achieve two percent wage increases and where they were prevented from negotiating a national agreement across the sector. He also promoted user pays in health and tried to introduce a system where private patients could "queue-hop" for surgery in public hospitals.

Add to this equation, John Key's obsession with cutting taxes (and therefore funding for public services, the most costly of which is health) and you can see how dangerous this duo would be for public health and those who rely on it. By contrast, labour has invested heavily in health and has delivered a significant "pay jolt" for public hospital nurses, via a national agreement. No contest really.

(1) Key, J. (2006) A growth issue. The Independent Financial Review, May 17, p10.

Sue Moroney, Labour Government MP and former NZNO organiser, Hamilton Reference