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Public healthcare is a mess. And we're putting it on a billboard.

With the election fast approaching, we're making one final push to make sure public healthcare is front and centre when New Zealanders cast their votes.

And what better way to get the message across than putting it on a billboard?

We've booked five big digital billboards across three cities for the final week before the election, reminding New Zealanders that they deserve better from their public healthcare system.

You deserve better than a 12-hour wait in ED.

Leaking hospitals aren't fixing the basics.

And underneath both, a reminder to vote for health.

We've spent months listening to healthcare workers, patients and communities, investigating what's happening to our health system and sharing what we've learned.

Now we're taking those concerns beyond our usual audiences and putting them in front of thousands more New Zealanders.

Can you help us pay for the billboards?

If you can spare $10, $50 or whatever works for you, your donation will help cover the cost of getting these messages out in the final days before the election.

You can donate online by clicking here

Or you can donate directly to our bank account:

Account name:
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimai Incorporated
Account number:
38 – 9007 – 0894028 – 15
Reference:
Kaitiaki Hauora

And then there was the Roady..

From a new hospital building with impressive stairwells but little else, to a dentist regularly extracting large numbers of children's teeth, the Save Our Public Healthcare Roady uncovered some confronting realities.

Over two weeks in October, Malcolm Mulholland and Dr David Galler travelled from Bluff to Cape Reinga, hearing from healthcare workers, patients and communities about what's happening to our public healthcare system.

Much of what they heard confirmed what we've been saying for some time. But the scale of the problems, and the impact they're having on people's lives, was deeply troubling.

Exhausted healthcare workers, struggling rural services, barriers to accessing mental health care, and communities increasingly worried about losing the public health services they rely on.

We've pulled together the stories, experiences and recurring themes from the Roady in A Health System at Breaking Point. It's a pretty sobering picture of what's happening to public healthcare across Aotearoa.

And we've been busy elsewhere, too.

Remember that 54 nurses figure? The one that's been quoted everywhere in the media, shared across socials and raised in political debate? That came from Kaitiaki Hauora’s very own Dr Bill Rosenberg and Dr Jackie Cumming, who analysed official Health New Zealand figures and found a net increase of just 54 full-time equivalent nurses between March 2024 and March 2026.

With less than a week to go before the election, Health NZ hasn’t released its June figures (yes, it’s had four months) so we’re trying to get them so the public can see whether there has been any progress before voting ends.

It's a good example of why independent scrutiny of our public health system matters.

We put the political parties to the test. We asked parties likely to enter Parliament 11 questions about funding public healthcare properly, honouring Te Tiriti and keeping healthcare public.

Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Opportunity Party responded. National, ACT and NZ First didn't.

While the parties that responded largely supported our priorities, our analysis found some significant gaps between the promises being made and the funding needed to address the crisis in public healthcare.

See how the parties measured up and read our analysis

Healthcare workers' voices. More than 1,500 healthcare workers shared their experiences with us. We've turned their words into a poster campaign, and this week we're sharing those messages across social media.

World Patient Safety Day. In September, we and our members brought healthcare workers, patients and advocates together to discuss patient safety and what needs to change.

Standing up for Tararua. We supported communities speaking out about the future of their local health services, including the SOS meetings that brought hundreds of people together to demand answers.

Help us keep going

The election might be nearly here, but the problems facing our public healthcare system aren't going to disappear overnight.

We'll keep asking questions, challenging decisions, sharing the experiences of healthcare workers and patients, and pushing for a properly funded, publicly delivered health system.

But we need your support to keep doing it.

If you can make a donation, we'd be enormously grateful.

And if you can't donate, you can still help. Share our posts, forward this newsletter, talk to your friends and whānau about public healthcare, and encourage others to get involved.

Every bit helps.