The Immigration Minister's not putting a timeline on when he'll decide if the Government's controversial pathway to residency settings for nurses needs to change, instead saying he's keeping in contact with the health sector weekly.
While the Health Minister refuses to say the system is in a crisis, emergency department wait times have increased, according to data released by the National Party on Sunday. It comes amid significant strain on the sector from spiking COVID-19 infections, the return of the flu, and labour shortages.
There are thousands of nursing vacancies and many in the sector want the Government to change its new immigration settings to place migrant nurses on the straight-to-residency pathway. Currently, nurses must work in New Zealand for two years before gaining residency.
Both the former Immigration Minister, Kris Faafoi, and current Immigration Minister Michael Wood have said the Government wants to ensure migrant nurses stay in the profession. The Government has pointed to data showing that in 2020, 6 percent of migrant nurses left the profession compared to 4 percent of Kiwi nurses.
But Wood's also said he's "open" to adjusting the settings if the Government doesn't get the outcomes it wants.
"What I've said is that I will be keeping a very close eye on how that is rolling out," he told AM on Monday morning.
However, the minister wouldn't give a clear timeline for when he could make a decision on whether changes are necessary.
"I'm keeping in close touch with people in the health sector week by week at the moment to make sure that the settings are working as intended," Wood said.
"Let's be very clear as well. There is no easy fix to this, whatever the settings are exactly because there is a global shortage of health workers."
Wood said the new settings, which came into effect on July 4, are a "significant advance on what we previously had" and that New Zealand's criteria is "very appealing compared to other countries".
"Take Australia for example. If you want to get into Australia on the residency pathway, you've got to be under 45. For New Zealand, it's under 55. So there's a little bit of apples and oranges in some of the comparisons."
AM host Ryan Bridge suggested the Government should be making New Zealand "as sexy as we can be" to attract migrant nurses here.
"We do want to be an attractive place to come. We want to be a sexy place to come. I won't carry on with that rhetoric for too much longer," Wood replied, chuckling.
"But I think it is important to note as well, New Zealand is an attractive place for people to settle. We have people from all over the world who want to make this their home because it's a peaceful, beautiful first-world country.
"We need to be out there doing the recruitment. We have now got a pathway to residency for these people, but as I say, for me it's about the outcome and I'll be keeping a very close eye on that."
Wood acknowledged the increase in ED waiting times as the system deals with the "pressures of seasonal flu and COVID" and said the Government had worked over the last two years to strengthen the workforce despite border closures.
"We issued around about 5000 border exemptions for health workers, including about 2300 nurses while the borders were closed and most other workers weren't able to come in.
"We're now working really hard to try and get the settings right to be able to incentivise those workers to come in. Some of that will take a little bit of time, but it is a real priority for us."
While it is important to recruit workers from overseas, Wood said we also need to be training in New Zealand.
"That has been the failure in past years that there wasn't enough training of domestic workers going on. We're trying to do both of those things."
When the Government's immigration reset was announced, and the pathway to residency for nurses was unveiled, the likes of Family Planning, Plunket and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation called it "sexist", with mostly male-dominated jobs making it onto the fast-tracked list, while female-dominated roles needed to wait two years.
Last week, Newshub revealed there's been an increase in the number of reports of understaffing creating safety risks in aged care. When a patient is at risk due to staff shortages, nurses file a Section 31 notice with the Ministry of Health. So far in 2022, there have been 987 instances of that, compared to 260 in 2020 and 851 in 2021.
Health Minister Andrew Little acknowledged the "very severe circumstances" nurses are under but refused to call it a crisis. He said, "it doesn't matter what you call it, it's about what you do that matters the most and what we're doing is continuing that effort to recruit".
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern suggested last Monday that if the two-year wait for residency was a barrier to migrant nurses coming to New Zealand "perhaps they don't want to be a nurse in New Zealand".
