Culor. I'm Richard Martin in for Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Prime Minister Christopher Luxen has kicked off the political year with the first major reshuffle of his cabinet.
Going to be a lot more to say in the coming days and weeks ahead on our plan to unleash growth this year. Today I can announce that that fresh focus also means refreshing my team. In addition to her role as Minister of Finance. I'm really pleased that Nicola Willis will become Minister of Economic Growth.
Doctor Shane Ritti has lost health to Simeon Brown and has been bumped down cabinet rankings, while Melissa Lee has been stripped of all portfolios in favor of first term MP James Meaghan. Today on the Front Page, we're joined by m Zied Herald political editor Claire Trevette to discuss the big winners and losers. So first off, Claire, can you give us an overview of which portfolios of traded hands and who are national has a new job to do?
So the biggest moves, of course, was Shane Retty being dumped out of health and simm and Brown being put into health. That's the kind of one that scrabbed most of their attention so far. Beneath that was Nikola Willis being given a much more kind of I've called her the Grand Poobar of all things to do with money in the economy. She's got her economic growth portfolio added to her finance portfolio, which gives her more of a I guess helicopter view of the whole economic program that
the government is trying to drive. So it puts the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment or mb as it's easier to call it, under Nikola Willis's watch kind of boosts up that side of things as well as finance, which is mainly treasury, so they're kind of not really conflicting, but you might say complimentary sectors of the kind of fiscal management and economic management are now both under Willis's watch.
And that was the change that was mainly highlighted by Christopher Upsy, because he's very keen to highlight his own attempts to put a kind of laser focus on the economy, which is one of the biggest areas of problem for any government, and at the moment. In particular, it's one that the government can easily get on the back foot on as his health, to be honest, so he's trying to kind of bring fixits in for two of the biggest problems that they're facing the year. That meant Nichola
Willis lost her public service portfolio. She won't necessarily be unhappy about that because she's a Wellington based MP who stands in Wellington electorates and for the last year she's had to stand there and tell all the public servants of Wellington that they're going to be losing their jobs and there's cuts coming and all that kind of stuff,
So she won't be upset about that. That's gone to the very capable hands of Judith Collins and Simeon Brown has lost his beloved Potholes fund in the Transport portfolio that's gone to Chris Bishop, and Energy and Local Government have both gone to Simon Watts, who is something of the kind of I guess quiet achiever. His ranking hasn't changed, but he's been given those two pretty hefty portfolios, which is a reward for his competent handling of in his
first year. I guess as a Minister because he's performed pretty creditably in his previous ones, so those are kind of the big keynotes. There's one minister out, which is Melissa Ly. There was no real reason given for Melissaly losing the place. She was the only MP of of Asian descent in the cabinet and was Ethnic Communities Minister. She had been demoted from cabinet earlier because of lut since dissatisfaction with her handling of the media and broadcasting portfolio.
I was a little bit surprised by that move, to be honest, and I'm assuming it's performance based, but Lutson may have ongoing concerns about her performance, but he didn't spell that out to his credit. Maybe that was a bit of an optical move for I guess a government which has always struggled with questions around its diversity to do that. So a little bit risky making that move, but it hasn't got that much attention yet.
In twenty twenty five, health will also be a priority area for our government and last year Shane RITTI worked hard to reset the culture and also the performance of Health New Zealand. We established targets and we refresh the leadership of Health New Zealand, and I'm confident the organization is heading in a much better direction than it was
when we entered office. But I've also heard New Zealand's as concerns they expect to see even more progress key we's ensuring that they can access polity care they need when they need it, and so to deliver on that expectation, I've decided to appoint Simon Brown as Minister of Health.
So did Shane Ritty actually do a bad job as Health Minister? Or is it just him taking the fall for the issues that the health sector is facing anyway?
And I think it's really necessarily either of those. I don't think he did a bad job as such. He did an adequate job of some of it. It's in Christopher luxen Refe rained from putting it down to his performance as such. He kind of justified as saying, well, as circumstances change and as issues get more prominence, he looks at whether or not the right person's in the right job or not. Now, when Shane Betty was first appointed to that was the health sector looked a lot different.
The Government's found out a lot more since then, and big changes have happened to it. It has become a big issue for the government. All the headlines are on things like deficits and sacking the boards and less the levy warning of radical reform being needed. There's ongoing. It's always high in the public's mind. It's been creeping up the issues of most concerned to voters, and so he's decided that the time has come to put a more
political hardball in. I guess which he thinks is Simmy and Brown, because Simeon has proved to be a fairly quick and decisive actor in his transport and local government portfolios in particular. So it's kind of a big test for Simon Brown. He has given lucks and reason to put that test to him. Be interesting to see what he does, So we will wait and see. It's the first social kind of portfolio that Simeon has had. He's always had kind of economic portfolios, so it will kind
of round him out in that way. He's kept a vague foot in the door of the economic portfolios by kept getting state owned enterprises portfolio as well. She used to be with Paul Goldsmith, and I think that's predominantly so he still has some economic portfolio under him, and interestingly he's also maintained the jobbers minister for Auckland, which is predominantly because he's built a very constructive relationship with Auckland, where Wayne Brown.
Judith Collins and Chris Bishop as well are picking up quite a lot of slack in this announcement. With seven portfolios each, is that a bit too much for a minister to handle? Do you think it is?
It is quite a lot. It often depends on the portfolios. Bishop's a pretty big and there's a lot happening in all of them. He's lost his favorite portfolio, which is s bored in recreation, but he's kept an associateship. It's often the case, and it was the same with the former Labor government, that a handful of ministers get a massive workload and the rest of them don't get quite
so much of a workload. So he's picked up transport of course, which does dovetail in a bit with his infrastructure portfolio and also with housing when it comes to things like new housing developments and stuff like that. But yeah, that's quite a lot. Judith Collins is the most experienced minister that they have, so she will be fine some of her portfolios aren't that public facing, so she hasn't
got the same public pressure on her. The biggest one she's picked up is that public service one, and she's shared science, Technology and Innovation to Shane Theirs, which is one of his new portfolios. So they have kind of had something taken off their hands to fit in the
new portfolios that they've taken on. But it is a start contrast from some of the ones at the bottom of the cabinet ranking, such as Matt Doc who has had one, two, three portfolios taken off him and an associate portfolio and now as only Minister for Mental Health, and to be honest, the only reason he is still in cabinet is because he's the only South Island mp I suspect, So that's a clear sign that he is kind of Next time LUTs and moves, it's lightly Doc,
you'll slip out of cabinet. He's clearly not that enamored with Dooce's performance if he cannot trust him to have more than one portfolio.
I've also decided to appoint James Meager as a minister outside cabinet.
Prime minister with great power comes great responsibility and I know that you will discharge that responsibility as a man with great courage, conviction, conscientiousness and compassion.
He will take on responsibility for the Hunting and Fishing and Youth portfolios and become an Associate Minister of Transport. He'll also take on a newly created role of Minister for the South Island.
And then on the other hand, we've got a first term MP James Meager who's stepping up now are three portfolios and an associate. What can you tell us about him? Do you think he's sort of one of National's next big stars.
Yeah, James Megha's quite well known. He used to work in Parliament. He used to work for some ministers back in the day and so he kind of knows the ropes a little bit, which is always a bit of an advantage he's been given. He's been made Minister for the South Island, which is the other signal for Ducy that he could well be replaced by James Meager if Mega works well. He was chosen by Christopher Luxen to give one of the first two maiden speeches. The other
one was Katie Nimman. I suspect that when he was deciding who he would put in Luxeon was tossing up between James Mega and Katie Niman and opted for James because he was the South Island option and because he does have that previous experience in Parliament and they have only been in p's for a year, so that's kind
of probably where came into play. So he is also the chair of the Justice Select Committee, so he's had a chance to show that he's up to the job, you know, up to a fairly senior job because the Justice Select Committee has been one of the most tested over the last years the government's justice reforms have gone through. He will stay as chair as well as being the Minister for the Treaty Principal's Bill submissions because he's started all the work on that, so they didn't want to
disrupt all that at the last minute. So it's a good opportunity for him and I'm sure that he will be pretty quickly into Cabinet if he proves his stuff.
Any other surprises that we with mentioning about this reshuffle, Mark Mitchell getting ethnic Communities is an interesting choice.
Yeah, there is a little bit of logic in that. I mean, they didn't have anyone who hearted from the Asian communities or other ethnicities really to give it to, and it went to Mark from what I can gather, because he already deals relatively closely with those communities and his police portfolio or in order and crime is always a big issue at the meeting involving the Asian community,
so he already meets with them very regularly. He's also on Auckland Empey, which is where it's concentrated, and he pretty much goes to every event that there is happening, so it adds a bit of a load on him. He also picked up spored and recreation, which is quite a good one to have, to be honest, but he hasn't lost anything, so it's a bit of an increased workload.
It's not that great in terms of perception. I guess that there are no Asian politicians for that portfolio to go to, and he will be relying on the likes of their kind of backbench MP's Paula Garcia and Nancy Low to help him with that one. So it has caused a little bit of mirth, I have to admit, and so we'll see how he goes on that. But he's just a naturally chatty person and always turns up to things. So I guess the bonus. The bonus for those ethnic communities is the meant their minister is now
in cabinet again, whereas Melissaly was outside cabinet. So there's that too.
And so just to wrap it up just overall clear, do you think this is a winning reshuffle?
Well, we'll wait and see. I think that it's the right time to do it because he's had a year to assess whether or not which ministers are performing well in their portfolios and which aren't. And the ones who are performing well haven't changed that much. And that includes the Law and order groupings that includes Erica Stanford, the lights of those, they've been left to focus on what they're doing well Already. He's clearly attempting to address the
economy and health. It's a big test for sim and Brown. We'll see how that goes off. I suspect that Simeon will be He has said that his main focus will be improving waiting times for GPS and the time it takes for patients to get surgical treatments. That kind of thing takes time. Their issues, there are staff shortages and
stuff like that. So I suspect he will be also wanting to get a few quick runs on the board through things like the infrastructure spending in health like they rebuilt of Dunedin Hospital is rankled in the South Island for a long time now and they need to come up with a solution for that. That kind of stuff is what I suspect he'll be trying to get his kind of quick early hits on to show that he's effective.
But say, yeah, we'll see how it goes. It's kind of aimed at setting them up for the twenty twenty six election. I'm sure there'll be a few nips and tacks between then and now, but I wouldn't be expecting to see another massive reshuffle prior to election yere and other than if ministers decide that they're leaving in their twenty twenty six they'll get reshuffled out when they make
those decisions. But yeah, it's a medium sized reshuffle. I aimed at scratching some issues of concern for lux in health and economic growth and showing they're focusing on those areas. So we'll see how it goes.
Thanks for joining us, Claire, a pleasure. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at zidherld dot co dot nzied. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills. I'm Richard Martham. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.