Election 2023: National Party health policy to pay student loans of nurses and midwives - if they stay for five years

National leader Christopher Luxon has released new policy to pitch in up to $4500 a year towards the student loans of newly qualified nurses and midwives in return for bonding them to working in New Zealand for at least five years.

It is one of a range of measures National has released today to try to address worker shortages in the health sector. Others include allowing nurses to come on six-month visas to look for a job in cases where they do not have a job offer in hand and offering relocation grants to up to 1000 nurses coming from overseas.

Its policy would see the government pitch in up to $4500 a year for the first five years of the careers of nurses and midwives - a move National calculates would increase their take-home pay by $87 a week and make them $22,500 better off over those five years.

In return, nurses and midwives would have to sign a bonding agreement to commit to working in New Zealand for at least five years. It would also be open to nurses and midwives who had recently graduated in the past five years on a pro-rata basis. For example, a nurse who graduated three years before the policy came into effect would qualify for it for two years.

The current voluntary bonding scheme for nurses is only open to those who work in hard-to-staff areas, such as mental health and aged care, and in a handful of regions such as the West Coast.

Luxon made the announcement at the White Cross Lunn Avenue in Mt Wellington. White Cross CEO Dr Alastair Sullivan said any announcement that supported the training and retention of nurses and midwives was to be welcomed. However, he said more was needed.

“It’s one thing to make a partial announcement to support nurses. I do think they need to have all their studies to be funded and free and more attractive bonding arrangements to stay in New Zealand. I am aware of nurses [in Australia] being offered retention bonuses of up to A$20,000, so the announcement today in that context isn’t that attractive for a young nurse.”

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said National’s offering would not be enough to attract more nurses into the profession.

“We know the most effective way to grow our nursing workforce is to pay our nurses fairly.”

She said the previous National government had only given nurses pay rises totalling 15 per cent over its nine years. Under Labour since 2017, graduate nurse base salaries had risen 35 per cent from $49,400 to $66,700 and the top step base salary for Registered Nurses had risen 43 per cent from $66,700 to $95,300.

That put nurses on similar base salaries to those in Australia.

National has costed the policy at about $189.6 million over its first four years (about $47 million a year) which it says it would fund out of the savings it intends to make from cutting the contractors and consultants in the government sector.

Luxon said National would have further announcements to make on retention for medical professionals including nurses. This was aimed at helping the health sector retain early-career nurses and midwives at a time of high global competition for them.

“New Zealand does not train enough nurses or midwives to address this shortage, and the ones we do train are being aggressively recruited to move overseas.”

National is also proposing incentives to get more overseas nurses and midwives into New Zealand, including allowing them to come on a six-month temporary visa without a job offer to look for work. They would also be able to bring immediate family members with them.

It will also set up a relocation support scheme, paying grants of up to $10,000 to cover the relocation costs of up to 1000 nurses and midwives from overseas - expected to cost $10 million a year.

“Nurses and midwives are at the frontline of our collapsing health system and are bearing the brunt of the shortage. Having to work long shifts without enough staff is driving stress, anxiety and burnout. Something needs to urgently change,” Luxon said.

Luxon said Labour had been too busy restructuring the health system to pay enough attention to the front line and had been too slow to put nurses on to the immigration straight-to-residency Green List category.

The Government added nurses and some other medical professions to that last December - well after it first came up with the category in May.