It’s hard to think of a minister who has done more damage to his own government in its inaugural year than Deputy Health Minister Casey Costello. While Labor is still licking its wounds, the Greens are obsessed with internal problems and are under investigation for alleged misuse of Te Pāti Māori census information
and the failure to submit annual financial statements, the New Zealand First MP could create an opposition party of his own by regularly managing to produce headlines containing the words “government”, “tobacco”, “industry” and “health”. almost all year.

In late January, RNZ reported that Costello had proposed freezing tobacco excise taxes. He claimed that the suggestion came from the authorities; Documents contradicting this quickly emerged. A month later he abandoned Labour’s Smoke Free Bill. In July, it reduced its excise rate on heated tobacco products at an estimated cost of $216 million.

He is in an open battle with the Department of Health and has struggled to explain the origins of a document he circulated to officials claiming “nicotine is as harmful as caffeine” and other arguments that seem unusually friendly to the tobacco industry.

He was forced to apologize for withholding information from public health researchers after the Chief Ombudsman found his office’s handling of Official Information Act requests was “unreasonable and unlawful”. The Prime Minister is now being dragged into defending Costello’s antics during Parliament’s Question Time.

Change avoided

Under normal circumstances, he would be removed from the portfolio so quickly that there would be burn marks on his office carpet and a politician-shaped gap behind his desk. But Costello is New Zealand’s First MP; It serves the pleasure not of the Prime Minister but of its leader, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters.

Peters lives by the idea that the best defense is a good offense, and even a bad offense can work in the short term. Labour’s health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall has conducted a sustained investigation into Costello, and Peters recently revealed in Parliament that Verrall’s sister-in-law was one of the ministry officials who had access to information on tobacco taxes, implying that she was the source of the taxes. leaks. Verrall’s relative notified Costello of the potential conflict of interest but later failed to notify Costello, the department said.

Wellington is a disgustingly clannish city: everyone is either married to or divorced from everyone else, leading to countless conflicts of interest. But Labor has hundreds of comrades based in the public sector; They happily leak information and brief the opposition and the media against the government they hate.

The government’s anger on this issue is partly justified: This is elected representation and is expected to be presented by politically neutral officials who are not secretly undermined by partisan activists. But public health officials called upon to develop pro-tobacco legislation will always be whistleblowers, and the Ombudsman’s criticism of Costello’s ministerial behavior confirms their decision to challenge their own ministers.

A Deputy Health Minister causing damage on the scale of Costello is an existential threat to the government.

an infected wound

Peters will be pleased with the controversy he has created; He once again turned the tables on his enemies. The National will be less excited if the media spotlight remains on Costello. Health is this government’s greatest weakness, and Costello is a shocking liability: a lurid media coverage bleeding from an open, infected wound.

The positive treatment of tobacco companies contrasts with the constant stream of news about patients dying in emergency rooms awaiting treatment, hospital closures overnight, staff shortages, massive budget blowouts. The failure to fund cancer drugs in the budget – quickly reversed – and the broken promise to fully fund the rebuilding of Dunedin Hospital were two of the government’s biggest unforced errors.

Health Minister Shane Reti is widely regarded as one of the most intelligent and respected politicians in parliament, but it is not clear that any of these qualities are an asset in the health portfolio, which often rewards politicians who use a combination of high aggression and low cunning.

The dire state of the Crown accounts, the government’s financial settings, the dysfunction at Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora and the enormous liability of our aging population make it impossible to continue funding the sector at its current capacity.

New Zealand’s health spending is high as a percentage of GDP relative to the rest of the OECD, but low in dollar terms because GDP per capita is below average. Reti has not yet indicated how he will address this issue.

Many of his fellow frontbench ministers – Chris Bishop, Erica Stanford, Nicola Willis, Simeon Brown – are activist ministers driving rapid policy change. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon shows keen interest in education and trade but appears indifferent to the health portfolio.

National’s actual policy appears to be one of controlled regression; gradual and passive degradation of the public health system. Conversely, even a slow deterioration would require massive injections of new financing to prevent a more rapid collapse.

It is unlikely that the public will warm up to this. Market research firm Ipsos’s “Issues Monitor” ranks health care as the second-biggest concern among voters (and No. 1 among the high-turnout senior voting demographic).

Labor is significantly ahead of National as the most trusted party on health. A Deputy Health Minister causing damage on the scale of Costello is an existential threat to the government.

But there he stands, sitting proudly in the front row, smiling broadly as Reti and Luxon repeatedly stand up to defend him.