Power Play - Government's Cancer Funding Announcement A Catch-up, Clean-Up Job

Tuesday, 25 June 2024, 5:02 pm
Article: RNZ

Craig McCulloch, Deputy Political Editor

"Isn't it fantastic?" Christopher Luxon says, through gritted teeth. "Isn't it great?"

The prime minister's tone betrays his frustration at the mixed response to his mammoth Pharmac boost, presumably as he imagines what could have been.

Under different circumstances, the announcement would have been met by unparalleled plaudits, unblemished by begrudging apologies or lingering angst.

Certainly, a funding injection of this magnitude - an unprecedented $604 million boost over four years - would typically warrant such a reaction.

Luxon and his colleagues have done their best to conjure up that spirit of celebration, on Monday describing the day variously as: wonderful, special, and excellent.

But it is impossible to ignore the woeful and confused process which led the coalition here.

The government was forced to scramble together the package after a swift public backlash to its failure to honour National's campaign promise to fund 13 specific cancer drugs in last month's Budget.

To make it right, ministers have dipped into next year's Budget in advance - buy now, pay later - a practice Luxon claimed on Tuesday was "quite normal".

It is anything but normal to do so just 25 days after this year's Budget was done and dusted.

This is clearly a catch-up, clean-up job.

As far as they go though, this is about as good as you get.

Undoubtedly, the supersize funding will make an enormous difference for many cancer patients, and many others too given the funding is expected to cover more than 50 medicines.

The sum is more than double what National had indicated during the election campaign and will deliver about four times as many treatments, nothing to scoff at.

The usual rejoinder to such clean-up exercises is: "Too little, too late."

In this case, the first leg - "too little" - clearly does not apply.

There is an argument - though few would make it - that this may actually be "too much" funding given the tough economic environment. That will not become clear until next year's Budget when voters can see what else was cut in order to make space for this spending.

The Pharmac investment will eat up a sizeable chunk of next year's $2.4 billion operating allowance - money set aside for new spending. Already about $1.4b has been allocated for separate health cost pressures, leaving just $1b left.

Treasury has warned that will not even be enough to cover inflation, meaning cuts will have to be found elsewhere in the public sector.

Not many people though would argue against the value of investing in life-prolonging medicines.

The "too late" criticism, however, still holds a lot of water.

It remains unclear what took National so long to work out how to deliver on its promise.

Luxon has suggested his party realised the difficulties with its policy only after coming to power and that it then took "a bit longer" than anticipated to find a solution.

That suggests a problem with priorities and a broader error of political judgement.

National MPs should have been alert to the importance of this particular promise given its life-and-death nature.

They should also have been aware of the potential consequences of overriding Pharmac's neutrality.

Right through the process, Pharmac minister and ACT leader David Seymour has been a vocal advocate for maintaining the agency's independence.

And at yesterday's announcement, he made a pointed comment about how the ultimate outcome was one that "respects the integrity of Pharmac", leaving unsaid the fact that National's original policy did not.

The one salve for the coalition is that the opposition parties have struggled to properly prosecute the matter.

As you would expect, Labour has zeroed in on the fraught process, calling on the PM to apologise for the anguish caused to people suffering from cancer.

But, as its leader Chris Hipkins acknowledged on Tuesday, Labour never boosted Pharmac's funding to this degree when it was in power, nor did it even promise to during the campaign.

That makes it hard for Labour to make too much traction here.

Cancer patients may be frustrated it took so long for National to front up with this funding, but they know Labour never promised to at all - not at this scale.

National will be hoping that that is what sticks in voters' minds, that the public remembers the eventual outcome and not the road to get there.

This week's announcement will go a long way to rebuilding the dent in National's credibility and trust, but the damage could have been avoided in the first place.

Oh, what could have been.

© Scoop Media

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