Pitched as more frontline nurses to staff wards and ease pressure on an overstretched system.

The Policy: National Nurses and Midwives Policy — 2023 Election →

What it does:

• The aim: grow the nursing workforce and fill vacancies.

The result — kept on headcount, but the system is mishandling the workforce:

• Numbers did rise: about 78,700 nurses held practising certificates by March 2024, up more than 9,000 on a year earlier, with roughly 3,000 added FTE — so on headcount the promise is kept (Health NZ).
• But it leaned on imported nurses while exporting our own: the internationally-qualified share rose from 36.4% to 42.6%, even as about 12,000 NZ-registered nurses signed up to work in Australia in a single year — a 53% jump — drawn by higher pay and better conditions (a 38-hour week versus 40, plus overtime and holiday rates) (The Conversation, Kaitiaki).
• The graduate paradox: at the very same time, Health NZ could not employ the graduates it had trained. Only about three in five new graduates were hired (against the usual 80–90%); roughly 720–770 were still job-hunting in early 2025; Christchurch Hospital hired 28% of applicants in 2025, down from 84% in 2023; and 62% of nursing students said they would look overseas if they could not get a job here. The Spinoff asked how a chronic shortage became "too many" (The Press, University of Auckland).
• Experienced migrant nurses get stuck in red tape: the OSCE that replaced the old CAP can cost about $3,500 per attempt, with registration, verification and travel often totalling $20,000–$30,000+, and researchers have documented internationally-recruited nurses left without positions or support — some unable to work as nurses while they wait.

The bonding debate, and the smart fixes:

• NZ runs a Voluntary Bonding Scheme (up to about $14,100 over five years for hard-to-staff roles), and National promised $22,500 off student loans for nurses who stay five years — but the NZNO notes that removing first-year fees-free leaves graduates with bigger loans, so the net effect is close to the status quo, and none of it eases the roughly 600 hours of unpaid placement that strain students during study (RNZ, Te Whatu Ora).
• The quick wins critics point to are unglamorous but cheap: employ the graduates we already train, speed up and subsidise registration for experienced migrant nurses, fix pay and conditions to retain staff, and support students during study — rather than halting graduate hiring during a shortage and leaning on costly overseas recruitment.

Verdict: more nurses on paper, so kept — but achieved by importing nurses while losing our own graduates to Australia and trapping experienced migrants in process; the fastest gains lie in employing and keeping the nurses New Zealand already has.