David Seymour's concerned about the rationale behind the new Waikato medical school.
National campaigned on the idea of a new medical school with a greater focus on rural and primary healthcare.
The ACT leader wrote to Health Minister Shane Reti saying he was dissatisfied with a cost-benefit analysis on the school, which must be presented according to the coalition agreement.
Seymour told Mike Hosking they have to be sure this is the most efficient way to get doctors.
He says they had not counted the cost of training specialists and they'd made a lot of assumptions.
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So I've got a question mark around the new proposed medical school in Wykatto. It's a national party policy, of course, but ACT to wonder about the maths and whether it all adds up. The ACT leader David Seymour's with us very good morning to you, Good morning makee. This is not an argument around whether we need more doctors or not. This is an argument around the cost of training them. Is that fair or not?
Yeah, it's absolutely an argument around how you get more doctors. But you've got to go through all of the questions before you decide how to do that. So, for example, would it make sense to increase the subsidies for GPS as ACTS campaigned on to stop them leaving? Would it help to change the funding formula which frustrates a lot of doctors and itcdotally While many work every hour God gives them, there's others who actually look at the formula and so it makes sense to work fewer days per week for lifestyle reasons. Would it make sense to expand the two very good medical schools we've got before we eat the fixed costs on creating a new one? And this I think is a very good example of the Coalition agreement working well Act to National have quite a different view on this, but we've put together a process for working through our differences and that is full cost benefit analysis on what really is the best way to get more doctors? Is it to plug the hole in the bucket or is it to keep putting more water in a very expensive water In this case.
Ken Auckland and the Tiger actually expand.
They absolutely believe that they can. Logically, you know, they're not necessarily large med schools by world standards, and what limit is there anyway?
So can you materially put on a piece of paper it costs X to training student at Auckland or the Tigo versus why at a Tiger Wykato. Therefore it doesn't make any sense or not.
Well, that's the job of the cost benefit analysis and the government's commissioned people to do it. They had to go at it. We pointed out that they hadn't actually counted the cost of training specialists, only the costs of training gps, which we thought was not quite right, and they've made it lot of assumptions about whether or not GP trained at Wykatta would be more likely to stay in a rural area if we pointed out that Hamilton is not actually a rural area anymore, and Auckland and Otago have extensive training schemes where GPS train in the community any way, including ironically in Hamilton. So you know, you can go back and forth with all these arguments. But if we're going to spend taxpayer money, and I think one of 's jobs is to be well where the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers technically our job is to be a second pair of eyes on government spending, especially in these times, then we've got to be sure this is actually the best most efficient way to get both fair Enough, if.
The numbers don't stack up, they don't stack up. Having said that this is a five them, have you been recruited by a tiger in Auckland because they don't like the five and broken?
No. I got recruited by Auckland about twenty four years ago. But you know I've been lobbied by all three universities. Loyalty is not to any of the three. It's to the taxpayer. If anything, I look at the way the University of Auckland's behaving to valuing my degree with a forty second in the world, where I was there now were one hundred and fifty. Because of the unending crap that they insist on teaching students instead of actual science in academia, I'd probably be that past prejudiced. It would be against aora ma No.
You got me going now that course next year that they're going to make you take in Maori. Why are you part of a government that allows that bullocks to come to pass?
Mainly because the government has pretty limited ability to influence universities, the self governing entities. We are putting in place laws that say they have to have a free speech policy. I know Penny Simmonds, Minister for Tertiary is as quickly as possible. She did nothing planting better people to the boards. Yeah, well, you know she's only she's just about had a year. But I just make the point to a lot of people. You know, people say, why haven't you changed everything? If this was Pyongyang, I would have. But as a New Zealander, I actually want to live at a society with independent institutions that can act on their own terms, with some trust in society. Even if I don't agree with everything that every institution's doing right now, So can we change it? Yep? Can we change it right away? No? Would I want to live in a society where a politician like me could change every institution straight away. Definitely not good to see it.
David Seymour, Act Party Leader. By the way, if you haven't followed, if you're on social media, it was alluded to it yesterday, because I'm not on social media. Actor now sticking up what they call the bridgewalk, And the bridgewalk is when the politician leaves the offices and goes to the Parliament and the media gather around them and start firing off one hundred different questions. So Actor now filming that as an exercise. And if you ever want to see just how unhinged some of the media in this country are, it's the stuff we'll never put on the television at night, and you'll never actually hear until you see that. Go watch some of them and shake your head in dismay. For more from the Micast Breakfast, listen live to News Talk Set B from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.