The sacking of Health Minister Shane Reti yesterday had an air of panic about it.
A media advisory inviting journalists to a Sunday afternoon press conference at Premier House went out on Saturday night.
Caucus members did not learn that even that was happening until yesterday morning.
Reti’s fate was surely sealed when National’s pollster, David Farrar, in a poll for the Taxpayers’ Union published on Friday, showed that health was now established as the third biggest concern for voters after the cost of living.
The same poll showed Labour ahead of National for the first time since 1999.
The ironic thing about the announcement was that most political observers would have seen it as inevitable from the day Prime Minister Christopher Luxon appointed Lester Levy as Health Commissioner.
Not only was that appointment a clear vote of no confidence in Reti, but it soon raised the question of who the real Minister was, Reti or Levy (who had easy access to the Prime Minister).
But Levy’s appointment soon showed that the health problems were more intractable than either Luxon or Reti had tried to pretend.
Last September, Levy told a Select Committee that Health NZ was an “incomplete amalgamation” of the 20 former District Health Boards.
“We do have duplication, triplication, quadruplication,” he said. “There are still the legacy effects of these organisations coming together.”
By late last year, just over two years after the DHBs were supposed to have merged, they had not even established a single banking system for the whole entity.
Reti was a classic example of what happens when someone is made a Minister in an area where they have previously worked outside Parliament. The risk is always that they cannot see the wood for the trees and that they approach the portfolio from the bottom up rather than developing a top-down overview.
He believed in going to the frontline. In 2023, he was widely criticised for travelling with ambulance crews to over 19 emergency departments to try and establish why ED waiting times were so long.
Nevertheless, the sacking is a massive demotion for Reti, who was National’s deputy leader in 2020.
Luxon tried to be as fulsome as he could in his praise of Reti yesterday, but the praise was tempered with a more realistic prescription for what he wants from Health Minister Simeon Brown.
“As I look at wanting to turbocharge the delivery of health outcomes, that’s where I say he’s got the right skill set for what we need going forward,” he said.
“And it’s just how I organise and run my team. The prominence of issues will change, and the context will change. And it’s about putting the right people on the right assignment at the right time. And I’ll continue to do that.”
But he may have given Brown an impossible brief.
“What I want him doing is to make sure that parents today who’ve got a sick three-year-old can get them into a GP in a much more timely way than two weeks,” he said.
“What I want to make sure is that if your parents need a knee replacement or hip replacement, they can get that job done quickly so they can get back to improving their quality of life.”
Meeting those targets will require more doctors and, as far as primary health care is concerned, a much-improved funding model.
That will mean more money for a system which, at the last count (the Government’s financial statements for this financial year to the end of October), was $320 million over budget.
The other big demotion yesterday was Melissa Lee, who lost her remaining Ministerial portfolios of Ethnic Affairs and Economic Development.
Her career has gone steadily downwards since she was appointed a Minister in 2023. First, Luxon kicked her out of the Cabinet because she failed to produce a broadcasting policy (a claim she rejects), and now she is out altogether.
She is a list MP, and she would seem vulnerable to a much lower position than she had last campaign, which suggests that she may well retire.
But the optics of that are not good for National.
As New Zealand’s only Korean MP and one of only three Asian MPs in the National caucus, her demotion sends a negative signal about National to the sizable Korean community.
The Cabinet reshuffle itself makes sense.
Simeon Brown has proved himself in his local government, energy and transport roles, showing that he can quickly come to grips with complex issues and is not afraid to make tough decisions.
Nicola Willis will become Minister of Economic Growth, which means she can draw the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment closer to the Treasury.
“It’s a new portfolio because economic development is constrained to its current mandate,” she said.
“The economic growth portfolio that the Prime Minister has given me will give me deep into responsibility for the Ministry for Business Innovation in Employment,” she said yesterday.
“But beyond that, I now have a mandate to lead a group of ministers across Government with a singular focus: how do we grow the economy faster?
“And I intend to set very clear expectations for when changes will be delivered, how we will prioritise and make sure the government resources are going where they can make the biggest move.”
The move, however, will raise tension between Willis’s Finance portfolio with its emphasis on fiscal policy and the new growth portfolio, which may well come under pressure for Government investment and help for new industries.
Chris Bishop was the logical person to appoint Minister of Transport even though it appears to mean that he is no longer the Minister of Sport and Recreation, albeit that he keeps as an associate role.
However, Transport will easily fit in with his RMA and infrastructure roles.
Louise Upston has taken over deputy leader of the House from Bishop. She has been a Senior Whip and has been in Parliament for 16 years.
Mark Mitchell becomes Minister of Sport and Recreation.
Simon Watts has made an impressive start in Cabinet in both his Climate Change and Revenue roles, so it is no surprise to see him get the politically sensitive local government role.
He was a local government spokesperson in opposition.
Judith Collins has lost Science, which has gone to Reti along with Universities, which has been split from Penny Simmonds’s Tertiary Education portfolio. Collins has instead picked up the much more heavyweight Minister for the Public Service.
Matt Doocey, whose ministerial career has been low-key, has lost Tourism to Social Development Minister Louise Upston, which would seem more like a mark against Doocey than an endorsement of Upston.
The new Minister is James Meager. He will assume his role as Minister for Hunting and Fishing and Minister for the South Island once the committee he chairs has completed its hearings on the Treaty Principles Bill.
Meager an affable Maori lawyer who has also worked in the Beehive is clearly on an upward trajectory within National.
Luxon will now be hoping that he has staved off potential concerns from some of his backbenchers worried about the polling showing how much the economy is now the overwhelming issue.
He will find out when he faces his Caucus for their first 2025 meeting in Hamilton on Wednesday.
