Our health system really is in crisis

New Zealand’s health system is in crisis, with a severe shortage of nurses and midwives contributing to ballooning wait lists, delays accessing treatment, and dangerously overcrowded emergency departments.

We can’t stand by and allow our hard-working frontline to continue to burnout, and for sick and injured New Zealanders to languish on wait lists. A National government will encourage more New Zealanders to study nursing or midwifery and stay in the country.

To do this, National will pay nurses’ and midwives’ student loan repayments up to a total of $4500 a year for the first five years after graduating, provided they remain working in their profession in New Zealand. Covering student loan repayments for five years means a typical registered nurse or midwife would see an increase in their after-tax take-home pay of $87 a week.

Across a five-year period, they would be up to $22,500 better off.

National will also make New Zealand more competitive in the global competition for skilled workers by allowing qualified overseas nurses and midwives to come here on a sixmonth temporary visa, without a job offer, to look for work and to bring their immediate family members with them.

A relocation support scheme will offer up to 1000 qualified overseas nurses and midwives relocation grants worth up to $10,000 each to support their move to New Zealand. National will deliver more nurses and midwives so our hardworking frontline feel supported, and Kiwis can access the healthcare that they deserve.

Wild Whiskers Tauranga is calling for people to stop categorising cats into two groups of either friendly or feral, after some cats nearly came under gunfire.

WWT specialises in the rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming of stray and wild kittens under eight weeks old. The charity organisation spoke out on Facebook after a North Canterbury hunting competition was announced in April, calling for children under the age of 14 to shoot feral cats. Receiving nationwide backlash, the competition was canned.

Four groups

“There are actually four groups; companion, stray (lost/ abandoned), stray (managed eg: colony) and feral,” says WWT