Aotearoa has had a public health system since the First Labour Government in the 1930s. And for as long as it has existed, medical professionals have been speaking out about its failures, criticising cuts, and generally acting as a watchdog on government policy. This has been inconvenient to those governments, but the professional role of medical staff has always been respected, because it is recognised that - like academics - they have a duty to their patients and to the public.
...until now. Faced with a public health system collapsing due to systematic underfunding, National wants to silence medical professionals. Its Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill (which is primarily about imposing white supremacy) includes a clause classifying Health NZ staff as public servants, and requiring them to uphold the principle of political neutrality.
This is a complete novelty in Aotearoa. As noted above, medical staff in the public health system have never been classified this way. And this isn't about a change in status - DHBs have been legally "crown agents" since the 2004 reorganisation and reclassification of the wider public sector with the Crown Entities act 2004, and were effectively in that position since their foundation in 2000 (as were their Area Health Board, Regional Health Authority, Crown Health Enterprise, and Hospital and Health Service predecessors). Instead, the motive is obviously to gag critics of the regime.
You might think that this would engage the right to freedom of expression affirmed by the BORA - and you'd be right. But weirdly, the Ministry of Justice, who did the BORA vet on the bill, didn't think so - they don't mention it, even to say it is a justified limitation. Though possibly this is because, as usual, they "ha[d] not yet received a final version of the Bill" (which should raise questions about the quality of the Ministry's BORA vetting process, and the quality of the advice on this core constitutional responsibility...)
What might a BORA vet have looked like? In the case of ordinary public servants, we accept that political neutrality and consequent restrictions on publicly criticising the government of the day are a justified limitation, because a neutral public service is an important public purpose, and the restrictions are proportionate. But ordinary public servants don't have a professional obligation to protect the public of medical staff, or a decades-long tradition of doing so. And the latter is relevant - as the Attorney-General noted in her section 7 report on the voter suppression provisions of the regime's Electoral Amendment Bill:
Expectations based on longstanding legislative settings are salient to judging potential prejudice and proportionality.We have an expectation based on long-standing legislative settings that medical staff are free to act as critics of the public health system. They have been part of the wider state sector for nearly a century, and have always been free to speak. Restricting that right, when nothing meaningful has changed in terms of their status, therefore seems disproportionate.
The regime could have made a case that this change complies witht he BORA. The fact that they haven't even bothered speaks volumes. It must be rejected. If you'd like to speak up on it (or the other, racist changes in the bill), you can do so here.
