Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: We need more dentists

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Andrew Dickens: We need more dentists · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: So the New Zealand government will be increasing domestic dental
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  Speaker 1: training places at the University of Otago, they announced yesterday.
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  Speaker 1: They're going to train 12 more dentists. Here we go.
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  Speaker 1: It's going to move the cap from 60 to 72
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  Speaker 1: students a year starting in 2027. And I heard that
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  Speaker 1: news yesterday. I went, oh, look at that. We're training
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  Speaker 1: more dentists. That's good. This is the first increase in
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  Speaker 1: training numbers in a decade in 10 years. And we
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  Speaker 1: know we've got a dentist shortage. So when this happens,
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  Speaker 1: you have to say, actually, I have to say, why
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  Speaker 1: did this not happen earlier? And I say this about this,
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  Speaker 1: and I say this about doctors, and I say this
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  Speaker 1: about too much. Back in John Key's day, economic policy
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  Speaker 1: supercharged our economy on the back of mass immigration and
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  Speaker 1: surging property prices, right? But as our population rapidly grew,
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  Speaker 1: nobody stopped to have a hymn and think, hmm, more people.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to need more dentists. Let's start training them.
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  Speaker 1: More people. We're going to need more doctors. Let's start
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  Speaker 1: training them. But as has been New Zealand's want for
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  Speaker 1: a long time now, we took all the growth and
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  Speaker 1: the benefit from the immigration and the wealth that we
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  Speaker 1: felt from our houses, but we did not invest back
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  Speaker 1: into our economy and back into the services it demands.
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  Speaker 1: Like doctors and dentists. Doctors. Christopher Luxon was talking about
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  Speaker 1: doctors yesterday. So we only had two medical schools since
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  Speaker 1: the 1960s. And for about 20 years, successive governments have
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  Speaker 1: kept a very tight cap on medical student numbers. The
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  Speaker 1: cap was only substantially lifted in 2024 after years of
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  Speaker 1: warnings about doctors' shortages. Right, now we've got warnings about doctors' shortages.
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  Speaker 1: So Christopher was talking about the third medical school, which
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  Speaker 1: is going to be opened at the University of Waikato.
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  Speaker 1: That was announced in July 2025. They're starting to do it.
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  Speaker 1: The first intake is expected in 2028, with an initial
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  Speaker 1: intake of 120 students per year. Now, is this going
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  Speaker 1: to solve the crisis that you can see right in
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  Speaker 1: front of you? Are we going to have enough dentists?
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  Speaker 1: Are we going to have enough doctors? Why weren't we
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  Speaker 1: doing this 10 years ago? Why weren't we doing it
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  Speaker 1: 20 years ago? You know why? Because we chose not to.
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  Speaker 1: We chose to spend money in a different place, which
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  Speaker 1: smacked of short-termism. And that short-termism in New Zealand only
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  Speaker 1: costs us more than if we'd done it in the
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  Speaker 1: first place. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: listen live to Newstalk ZB from 5am weekdays or follow
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the podcast on iHeartRadio.