Who Hired the Nurses? National and Labour Clash Over the Numbers
National deputy leader Nicola Willis and Labour deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni clashed on RNZ Morning Report's political panel over who hired New Zealand's recent intake of nurses. RNZ
Willis said Health New Zealand is recruiting 2,300 nurses who will be working in hospitals by Christmas. Sepuloni disputed National's claim to earlier growth.
Willis credited National with 2,100 more nurses hired between September 2023 and March 2024. Sepuloni said Labour recruited those nurses while it was in government. The coalition government was not sworn in until the end of November 2023. Much of the September to November period was under the previous government.
Labour points to later figures. It says from March 2024 to March 2026, just 54 extra nurses were hired, according to figures cited in the debate. In its August release titled 'Health system in crisis because of National's choices', Labour said National had spent two years claiming thousands of new nurses while the increase was 54. Willis did not concede the figure and pointed to the current recruitment round.
Health NZ said on 24 August it was recruiting for 2,378 roles. It said 475 nurses had accepted offers and were preparing to join the workforce. It said 459 New Zealand-trained graduates had been matched to roles across the country since July. The 2,300 figure cited by Willis sits within that recruitment pipeline. It is a recruitment process, not completed employment.
Other workforce measures cover a larger group. Think of it like a driver licence versus a job with one bus company. As of March 2024, there were around 78,700 nurses with practising certificates in New Zealand, according to Health NZ workforce planning analysis. Health New Zealand That number increased by over 9,000 between March 2023 and March 2024. That measure counts permission to practise, not Health NZ employment. It includes primary care, aged care and private sector nurses.
The government has made separate staffing commitments. It announced $20 million to boost emergency department staffing to enable hospitals to recruit additional doctors, nurses and support staff. Beehive In a pre-budget speech to Business North Harbour in May, it said with good budgeting it will hire more nurses, police officers and others in critical frontline roles. At local level, Health New Zealand started recruitment for more than 50 FTE additional nursing staff at North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals in response to demand on services. FTE means full-time equivalent roles. The prime minister had earlier said an extra 2,900 nurses had been recruited in the previous 12 months.
Labour has pledged to guarantee a job for graduate nurses. It says Willis is misleading on nurse job numbers. Pressure is also coming from outside Parliament. In July 2025, a group of health workers including specialists, GPs, nurses and paramedics signed an open letter to MPs asking them to waive private healthcare while in office. Since 2014, average salaries for nurses and midwives have increased by almost 70 percent, according to a government health forum speech.
The broader context here is familiar to health portfolio watchers. Workforce numbers move on different timelines. Recruitment decisions, graduate intakes and offer acceptances do not align neatly with swearing-in dates. Practising certificate data and Health NZ headcount answer different questions. For ministers, the incentive is to claim the intake. For oppositions, the incentive is to separate announcements from filled FTEs. The test for the current 2,378-role drive will be conversion into rostered staff by Christmas.
