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Speaker 1: It beggars belief these days when we report that it's hard to make money if you're a doctor, it's hard to make money if you have got a GP practice. It beggars belief that we don't have enough doctors in this country. Primary medical care is the most important care we can have. Forget your fancy specialists, forget your rock star surgeons. If a GP can spot and fix a problem as it begins, then you can save your life and you can save the nation a ton on costs down the line. So the health of our primary health sector should be of primary importance, but it hasn't been. We've added a million people through immigration over the past ten years, and we've also been creating new New Zealanders ourselves, while our numbers of doctors per head of population is plummeted. There's two ways to get new doctors right. One way is to find them and import them from overseas, but that is necessarily difficult because not every Tom Dick and Harry who say their doctors are in fact doctors. We've seen stories about that. The other way is to train them ourselves, and in that area, I believe we've been waefully short on the numbers. I do not know why you'd think our doctor trading would increase in line of population, but it hasn't for decades. And what about this University of Waikato new medical school which was an election policy. Remember it was built on top of a report completed by Steven Joyce's consultancy firm, which is basically Stephen in some researches, a consultancy report that was not cheap. It was pushed by the University of Waikato. It got supported by the people who became the government. We're supposed to have a new medical school in the Wykato in Hamilton. Well we are a year into the new administration and where are we at. We've got nothing. The medical unions are already coming out saying this is taking too long. The Prime Minister's only commented on it is that work is continuing on the business case and it will go to cabinet in the future. So where the hell does that mean? That is? But unofficially it is understood the project has been dogged with problems and is increasingly seen as unnecessary, costly, and worst of all, a bad idea. I'm sorry, A bad idea from Stephen Joyce. From a well paid consultant who knew Stephen Joyce has many good ideas, but maybe this one isn't so. But still, if we're wanting to train new doctors and we want to train them in a school, we were going to build a new one, but we're not building a new one, So what about raising the money the numbers? Elsewhere? Things are just not happening, And it's not nice when things just don't happen, because frankly, I'd like to go to a doctor, and when I do go to a doctor, I don't want to be told that you've only got fifteen minutes, but in fact, let's make that ten because I'm running late. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News Talks it be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.