{"id":513244,"date":"2026-07-07T00:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T00:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/513244\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T00:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T00:44:16","slug":"still-room-to-expand-pharmacists-healthcare-services-labour-leader-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/513244\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Still room’ to expand pharmacists’ healthcare services, Labour leader says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour’s leader has hinted his party may expand pharmacists’ healthcare services, and hire more doctors and nurses.<\/p>\n

Chris Hipkins told Morning Report a Labour government would focus on preventative healthcare.<\/p>\n

He pointed to its campaign policies of three free GP visits and free prescriptions.<\/p>\n

“Free doctors’ visits is something that we want to do more of, and there’s still room, I think, to do more in the pharmacist care space,” he said.<\/p>\n

Hipkins said his party would also improve hospital infrastructure and grow the workforce.<\/p>\n

Hospitals were rundown<\/a> and the government cut the maintenance budget, he said.<\/p>\n

“We need to focus on making sure that the hospitals are fit for purpose and that they have the staffing that they need,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The government’s hiring freeze that they had in place for much of the first couple of years that they were in government’s done a lot of damage.”<\/p>\n

Hipkins would not reveal how many more hospital workers Labour would hire, if elected.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got a good workforce policy that we’ve had under development. We’ll set that out shortly,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour’s leader has hinted his party may expand pharmacists’ healthcare services, and hire more doctors and nurses. Chris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-513244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513244","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=513244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}