Andrew Dickens: We need more dentists

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · Oct 19, 2026 · 2m · transcript

There's an election promise to train more dentists in Otago – the first increase in training numbers in 10 years.

And if it comes to pass, you'll have to ask, why did this not happen earlier?

In John Key's day, economic policy supercharged our economy on the back of mass immigration and surging property prices.

But as our population rapidly grew, nobody stopped to have a hmm.

More people are going to need more dentists.

But as has been New Zealand's want for a long time now, we took the growth but did not invest in the services it demanded.

It's the same for doctors.

New Zealand has had only…