Up until the last election, National had the best grounding in communities around the country. It had the ability to mount a campaign based on the Government taking away your health board and relocating it into an ugly building filled with faceless bureaucrats – and Ashley Bloomfield – in Wellington.
Whether it has the resources or wherewithal in its numerically diminished state to do that now is an open question.
ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff
Ministers Aupito William Sio, Peeni Henare, Ayesha Verrall, and Health Minister Andrew Little. Health sector-related people were invited to the announcement by Little in the Beehive Banquet Hall at Parliament.