The coalition has hired 2100 FTE nurses since coming to power.

Misleading
Simeon Brown
Submit a correction

A Q&A fact-check found;

  • Since September 2023 it is correct to say that more than 2,100 additional people have been employed in nursing roles
  • The previous Government was in place for some of that.

However, Jacks question, that was constantly dodged, was about FTE (full time equivalents), so not about people working part time or split-rolled. Jack (Jack's team(?)) did a dive into the numbers available on Health New Zealand's own Workforce dashboard;

[the dashboard] clearly shows there was a surge in the number of FTEs around the time the Govt changed, including a big surge in the first couple of months of this Govt. But then quite abruptly it stopped.

So, Health New Zealand's official Workforce Dashboard shows in the last 2 years the total number of Full Time Equivalent Nurses in New Zealand has increased by 54.

Numbers run by Kaitiaki Nursing New Zealand confirm this number.  They also point out that "a recruitment drive under the previous Government saw a whopping increase of 2496 nursing FTE between June 2023 (26,908) and March 2024(29,404)."

This means that in those 274 days the last Labour Govt was hiring just over 9 FTE Nurses a day while the Luxon Govt has cut this back to 1 FTE Nurse every 2 weeks.