Weekly Catchup w/ The Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez March: 12 March, 2025

Last Friday, Health Minister Simeon Brown announced a major overhaul to New Zealand’s public healthcare system.

Among the changes he announced were reinstating a board for Te Whatu Ora - Health NZ and partnering with the private sector to reduce the number of people on the backlog for elective surgeries, which would also see an additional investment of $50 million dollars between now and the end of June.

Earlier this week, the latest Taxpayers’ union Curia poll was released, showing that, for the first time since the general election, public favorability of Labour leader Chris Hipkins was higher than that of the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s.

And in this same period of time, The Greens recently launched a petition calling on the Government to extend visa-free travel to visitors from Pacific Island nations.

For their weekly catch up, Oto spoke to the Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez-March for the party’s take on all of these issues.