Leader Christopher Luxon revealed National’s health policy.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
National will offer incentives for nurses and midwives to study, if they enter a bonding scheme, requiring them to work in New Zealand for five years.
At the party’s Northern Region Conference in Auckland today, leader Christopher Luxon revealed his party’s health policy.
He said the health system was in crisis, and the key to solving the problem was retaining the workforce.
He said under National, the government would pay off $4500 a year from the student loans of nurses and midwives.
“To access the scheme, nurses and midwives will need to enter into a bonding agreement with the Government, where they commit to working in New Zealand for at least five years after they graduate,” he said in a statement.
Luxon said the scheme would be open to registered nurses and midwives who were already in the workforce and had graduated within the last five years, on a pro-rata basis.
He said National will also grant qualified overseas nurses and midwives a six-month temporary visa without a job offer to look for work.
Luxon said up to a 1000 qualified overseas nurses and midwives will be granted relocation worth up to $10,000 each to move to New Zealand.
Aged Care Association welcomes National’s health workforce policy
Aged Care Association chief executive Simon Wallace said the policy was well targeted and would support the aged care sector to recruit the nurses it desperately needed.
He said financial incentives were needed to encourage more New Zealanders to train as nurses and National’s policy did that.
“The immigration component of today’s announcement is also welcome. Giving the families of migrant nurses’ work and study rights is a huge boost for these workers, they can now settle in New Zealand right away,” he said.
Wallace said the sector was short of 1,200 nurses, almost a quarter of its nursing workforce.
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