As Kaitiaki launches its new podcast, Anna Garton, a primary palliative care facilitator and NZNO delegate says an aging population and insufficient funding will only make dying tougher.
Listen to the Kaitiaki podcast: Life, death and pay equity
In her job, she helps people who have had the diagnosis nobody wants to get — news that their life will be limited. Garton helps them through the journey that is their final months and sometimes years.
In a wide-ranging conversation she says New Zealanders are probably a bit shy about talking about death — and the Government is a bit shy about talking about pay equity.
On May 6, 2025, the Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden announced the Government was introducing and passing a law the same day that would cancel pay equity claims and force them to restart. At that point, 14 claims had been settled, and 33 were still underway.
The changes saved the Government $12.8 billion for Budget 2025.
Garton had just finished working with a patient when she heard the news that affected the 750 Hospice members that had made a claim.
It was, she told Kaitiaki, an “horrific day”. “So I got out of that patient meeting to find a flurry of messages, phone calls, emails, that were going ‘you’ll never guess what’s just happened’.”
‘We’ve done the mahi, we’ve done as much as we possibly can, we’ve followed the legal process . . . and we’ve been told ‘no’.’
The Hospice claim had been close to completion, but then in “one fell swoop” its potential was gone, she said.
Adding insult to injury, when NZNO resubmitted the claim it hit a brick wall at Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ, which has now refused to hand over comparator data needed under the new law.
“So we’re stuck,” Garton said. “We’ve done the mahi, we’ve done as much as we possibly can, we’ve followed the legal process . . . and we’ve been told ‘no’.”
Meanwhile the woman who’s worked for many years with Hospice has a warning over the future as the aging population hits its own wall of a nursing workforce without pay equity.
“We need to make our roles, our jobs attractive and we need to be able to retain the staff that we can. But we’re also finding that care’s gonna be rationalised. It’s happening already.”