David Seymour said the audience should not blame him for delays in a decision about the medical school. File picture. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
ACT leader David Seymour questioned business leaders focus on a local medical school in Waikato on Thursday.
During the election campaign, the National Party supported a proposed national third medical school at Waikato University.
But under ACT and National's coalition agreement, a full cost-benefit analysis on the school needed to be completed before it could go ahead.
Seymour faced several questions on the issue at a Waikato Chamber of Commerce lunchtime event, with many thinking the process is taking too long.
On behalf of the audience, chamber chief executive Don Good asked Seymour why, as a champion of competition, he seemed to be supportive of the current high-cost duopoly of only two medical schools in New Zealand.
In response, Seymour suggested the real question was whether it was the government's role to fund a third competitor.
Good joked they could be there all day if he asked all the audience questions related to the medical school (which were being received digitally).
But the interest from guests at the lunch did not seem to impress the minister.
"If this community has concluded that the path to salvation is the construction of a medical school, an additional department in the university, then there may actually be bigger and [more] deep-seated problems here than the lack of a medical school, quite frankly," Seymour said in response to the number of questions.
Seymour said the audience should not blame him for delays in a decision about the medical school.
"I would blame the person that made a promise that maybe is a bit harder to stack up than initially indicated. If you want to say, 'bugger it, we're going down the parochial route, each area of the country should be out for what they can get, regardless of cost benefit analysis,' well, that that is another approach, but New Zealand has been there before."
Good asked Seymour if he would release any alternative analysis he had that supported his public statement in August 2024 that he was "dissatisfied" with the official analysis.
He said if the minister of health released the official assumptions, then he would release the critique.
"We would agree with the government approving [the medical school] if the advocates could put up the case. We would challenge them to do it," Seymour said.
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