loading . . . Follow the money – it’s enough to buy surgeons tropical cruises In March, at the Government’s infrastructure investment summit in Auckland, Health Minister Simeon Brown laid out the challenges and opportunities.
About a fifth of all Government spending – $30 billion – is spent on health.
“Our health agency, Health New Zealand, is also grappling with outdated infrastructure that is inhibiting changes to models of care that improve patient outcomes and drive efficiencies,” Brown said.
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At the summit, the minister announced the Government was switching from constructing large, monolithic hospital buildings to staged, smaller facilities – starting with Nelson and Whangārei.
Private investors and developers were invited to become partners. (As Newsroom Pro editor Jonathan Milne reported at the time, there was “$6 trillion of capital sitting in that room”.)
“Patients are not focused on who owns the hospital where they will receive their surgery,” Brown said. “They just want – and rightly expect – to receive their care in a quality, fit-for-purpose building.”
In July, a potential partner emerged.
A letter released to Newsroom under the Official Information Act shows Andrew Head, the Sydney-based chief executive of Serco Asia Pacific, requested a meeting with Brown.
“It was great to meet you in March,” Head wrote, saying a meeting in Wellington would “build on the discussions we commenced earlier this year.”
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According to Brown’s diary, the 20-minute meeting took place on August 14. Briefing notes from officials were withheld by Brown’s office because they will soon be released publicly.
United Kingdom-based Serco is probably best-known in this country for running prisons – Kohuora Auckland South, and, notoriously, Mt Eden, until its contract was torn up after a fight club scandal. It also operates in defence, health and citizen services.
“We are committed to working in partnership with government agencies to deliver outcomes that are safe, effective, and community focused,” Head’s letter to Brown said.
“As Minister for Health looking to deliver more services to patients more efficiently, I would value the opportunity to share Serco’s experience in delivering operation partnerships overseas, including in healthcare.”
Health Minister Simeon Brown describes the country’s infrastructure needs at the Prime Minister’s Investment Summit in Auckland. Photo: Supplied
Serco employs more than 2000 doctors, nurses and allied health professionals across the Asia Pacific – but not in direct public healthcare. They deliver health services at Australian Defence Force bases, in “justice settings”, and run the Australian Government’s HealthDirect telehealth service.
Its involvement at tertiary hospitals is in facilities management.
Head told Brown Serco was positioned “uniquely” to “play an integral role advancing solutions to develop the health infrastructure required to meet growing demand”.
“I believe Serco’s experience could be of great value to the New Zealand Government looking to deliver better public services in a historically challenging area, more efficiently with private-sector know-how.”
What was discussed?
An anonymised statement provided by Serco’s Sydney office says: “The meeting in August with Minister Brown was a general introductory discussion with Serco’s Asia Pacific chief executive Andrew Head, who was in New Zealand at the time to support a charity event. The meeting provided an opportunity to share information about Serco’s work in New Zealand and Australia.”
Brown says: “No specific proposals were discussed, and no further action has been taken.”
Fleur Fitzsimons, national secretary of the Public Service Association union, says it’s unusual Serco was able to meet a minister “on a day they dictated”.
“This meeting rings alarm bells given the reputation of Serco in New Zealand and internationally, and the huge risks associated with privatisation of our health system,” she says.
(In 2013, a British parliamentary committee attacked Serco’s out-of-hours GP service in Cornwall, England, as substandard, accusing the company of falsifying figures.)
The Government is “grasping for private sector solutions”, she says, when it should be properly funding the public health system.
Privatisation doesn’t deliver better health outcomes, Fitzsimons says – “it just boosts the profits of private health providers at the expense of taxpayers”.
(In 2020, the BBC reported Serco’s profits would exceed expectations thanks to its coronavirus-related extensions to its British public health contracts.)
Green MP Francisco Hernandez, the party’s public services spokesperson, also says the meeting raises alarm bells – “for the increasing creep of privatisation into our public healthcare system”.
“We’ve already had the Minister for Health contract out elective surgeries to private, for-profit hospitals instead of properly funding and resourcing the public health care system to deliver these. Outsourcing is not going to address an inadequately funded health system, and further undermines it.”
Private company profits often come at the expense of worker pay and conditions, Hernandez says, pointing to private health laboratories, and the “corporatisation” of early childhood education.
“We only need to look at the experience in the United States, with the most expensive healthcare in the world to know that privatising our healthcare system is a road to disaster.”
Ayesha Verrall, Labour’s health spokesperson, says it’s difficult to have a view on the substance of a meeting without knowing what was discussed. The public health system must stay in public hands, she says.
“Privatisation erodes equity, weakens access, and strips away the accountability that comes with public ownership.”
(In March, around the infrastructure summit, finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds explained, explained and explained Labour’s nuanced stance on public-private partnerships.)
In September, Newsroom reported Health NZ scrapped its in-house artificial intelligence tool used for recording patient consultations in favour of commercial products.
Writing in Newsroom in June, columnist Ian Powell, a former executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, was critical of using private hospitals to reduce elective surgery wait times.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that Government funding decisions are strongly oriented towards the for-profit private health sector rather than addressing the critical needs of our health system.”
In May, Health NZ approved Tend Health to operate as a primary health organisation. https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/06/13/follow-the-money-its-enough-to-buy-surgeons-tropical-cruises/
