Petition launched as concerns grow over eye health outsourcing
They said it was “business as usual.” It’s not.
Yesterday, Phil Pennington at Radio New Zealand reported that more eye surgeries and services are being lined up for long-term outsourcing to private providers.
There’s been no public announcement and no meaningful public engagement, as others have highlighted.
Louisa Wall has warned in her recent op-ed that this isn’t a neutral procurement process. It’s a policy shift away from public provision. This is not a supplementation plan but a substitution.
And health commentator Ian Powell has gone further, describing the proposal as “startling and significant” and warning it could amount to the first time a whole public hospital clinical service is effectively privatised at a national level.
This is a clear shift in direction for public healthcare in Aotearoa.
And so today we’re launching a petition with ASMS (Association of Salaried Medical Specialists), Tūwharetoa Iwi Māori Partnership Board, and Patient Voice Aotearoa to stop it, supported by ActionStation.
Under current plans, private providers could take on core parts of ophthalmology. Diagnostics, surgeries, even managing waitlists and patient pathways. This shifts core public hospital services to private providers.
Once core services move out, they are very hard to bring back.
Public hospitals aren’t just where people get treated. They’re where specialists are trained. Shift the work out, and you start stripping out the training ground at the same time.
It doesn’t fix the underlying problem. It just moves it somewhere else.
Communities already facing barriers to care will feel it first. Māori, Pacific, rural, disabled, low-income whānau. Private models aren’t built to carry equity. Public systems are.
This is bigger than eye health.
It’s about whether we keep stripping the public system for parts, or invest in it so it actually works for everyone.
If you’re concerned about the direction this is heading, you can add your name to the petition and help put this issue firmly into public view.
Kaitiaki Hauora is calling for:
Fund public health properly – so everyone gets care when they need it.
Honour Te Tiriti – ensuring Māori lead on equity in the health system.
Keep healthcare public – so care stays for people, not profit.