{"id":26714,"date":"2025-09-16T23:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T23:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/26714\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T23:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T23:31:09","slug":"nurses-turn-their-backs-on-health-minister-during-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/26714\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurses turn their backs on Health Minister during speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/4K0XWN5_shared_image_jfif\" width=\"1050\" height=\"485\" alt=\"Nurses Organisation delegates turn their back on Health Minister Simeon Brown during his speech to the NZNO conference in Wellington, 17 September 2025.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nNurses Organisation delegates turn their back on Health Minister Simeon Brown during his speech to the NZNO conference in Wellington.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Ruth Hill\n<\/p>\n<p>Nurses Organisation delegates have turned their back on Health Minister Simeon Brown during his address to their conference.<\/p>\n<p>Brown told the audience at Te Papa in Wellington that nurses&#8217; strike action was hurting patients.<\/p>\n<p>He said the government valued the work of nurses and urged the union to put patients first.<\/p>\n<p>The conference comes a fortnight after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/571980\/nurses-midwives-and-health-care-assistants-strike-for-second-day\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">36,000 nurses, midwives and health care assistants walked off the job for two days<\/a> demanding better pay and increased staffing.<\/p>\n<p>Striking nurses outside Brown&#8217;s electorate office on 2 September, the first day of the strike, were met by a sign plastered across his windows which said the union&#8217;s strike was disrupting more than 13,000 surgeries and appointments.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/4K1PJPE_Media_jfif\" width=\"1050\" height=\"787\" alt=\"Simeon Brown nurse strike\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nA sign on the Health Minister&#8217;s electorate office on 2 September.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Felix Walton\n<\/p>\n<p>The strikes followed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/568270\/over-36-000-nurses-midwives-to-strike-for-24-hours-on-wednesday\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nearly a year of deadlocked negotiations<\/a> between the union and Health NZ, which culminated in a 24-hour strike at the end of July.<\/p>\n<p>A new report by Infometrics for the nurses&#8217; union found hospitals were [https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/573261\/hospitals-short-an-average-of-587-nurses-every-shift-last-year-report short an average of 587 nurses every shift last year.<\/p>\n<p>The report released on Wednesday, titled &#8216;How many more nurses does New Zealand need?&#8217;, was based on Te Whatu Ora data from 1.69 million shifts between 2022 and 2024 in 59 public hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said the findings put paid to Te Whatu Ora&#8217;s claims that hospitals weren&#8217;t short-staffed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nurses Organisation delegates turn their back on Health Minister Simeon Brown during his speech to the NZNO conference&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[48,47,134,527,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-26714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}