Simeon Brown’s rise: From health fix-it minister to National campaign chief

Ask anyone who knows Simeon Brown if there is one word that sums him up and it is likely to be “focused”.

It is why Prime Minister Christopher Luxon reassigned him to the health portfolio, the Government’s biggest problem alongside the cost of living, in January last year.

Brown’s relative success in addressing that challenge is how it came to be that, when the National Party needed a hatchet job done on coalition partners, it was Brown who delivered it to the party conference at the weekend.

And his comparison of Act and New Zealand First to two squabbling children, albeit from someone with schoolboy looks, has received as much publicity as the KiwiSaver policy centrepiece of the conference.

Brown’s rise came at the expense of a colleague. Luxon decided in April to remove several jobs from putative rival Chris Bishop, campaign chair, Leader of the House and Sports Minister.

But he could be reasonably confident it would not be a big risk to make Brown campaign chair, clearly the most important of those roles in an election year.

Curiously, one thing about Brown’s level of focus is that it applies not just in the sense of concentrating on problems that need sorting.

It is a literal thing. He is so focused during our interview that he stares without blinking for minutes at a time. It is disarming.

He is not only laser-focused on the person he is talking to, he also talks a lot about being focused. In fact, he mentions the word 35 times during a 40-minute interview in his Beehive office.

But it is a frustrating interview. He is so focused on delivering key messages that he speaks almost entirely in slogans.

He is focused on “fixing the basics and building the future”.

So was he shocked to be made campaign chair?

“Whenever the Prime Minister calls me to ask me to do something, I say ‘yes’,” Brown said. “That’s always been my approach in politics.

“He’s asked me to do it to support him and to support the party to ensure we win in November. That’s what I’m focused on doing.”

It is only after the formal interview that he relaxes to reveal more of his personal side, to talk about his “superstar” wife, Rebecca, and four kids – two girls aged 7 and 5 and two boys aged 3 and 1 – and the fact he gets up at about 5am to do his reading and prepare for the day, and that he is usually starting to flag by about 9pm.

It is not a big surprise to learn that one of the games he plays with his girls is a staring competition.

Brown’s political career has been nurtured by his grandfather, Peter Best, a former Eketāhuna councillor who turned 90 last week.

Brown chaired the Manurewa Youth Council in 2012 and was elected to the Manurewa Local Board in 2013.

He has had a meteoric rise since he was first elected to Parliament at age 26 in 2017, replacing veteran MP Maurice Williamson in Pakūranga.

Brown’s timing has been impeccable: two terms in Opposition then straight into Cabinet ranked as his party’s No 5 (he is now No 4).

He has almost certainly been the minister who has outperformed most others on expectations.

He combines an ability to tackle highly complex policy areas with a populist streak.

In Opposition, the Mongrel Mob started a petition calling on then-leader Judith Collins to sack him as National’s police spokesman because he criticised a kura for closing for two days for a gang member’s tangi. He campaigned against consultants when he was responsible for the public service. And when he had transport, he focused on road cones and potholes.

He was initially given the portfolios of Transport, Energy and Local Government, which included getting rid of Three Waters reforms.

All were reallocated when he was given what could fairly be described as the “hospital pass” to step up to the Health portfolio.

He regained Energy this year at the same time he was made campaign chair to oversee the fast-track installation of an LNG terminal in New Plymouth, in the name of energy security for the country.

Such is Brown’s rise that he is occasionally mentioned as a possible future leader or deputy.

The reshuffle last April came at a time when Luxon’s leadership was being criticised both publicly and internally.

While Bishop had not organised a challenge, there was undoubtedly caucus discontent. Luxon’s decision removed him from two powerful positions within the party (campaign chair) and within the Government (House Leader).

It was a sign of Luxon asserting his leadership to prevent a challenge and rewarding staunch loyalists such as Brown, Louise Upston as House Leader and Mark Mitchell with Sport.

Luxon’s impromptu decision two weeks later to put his own leadership to the vote cemented his position.

Luxon had a good conference at the weekend with a strong policy launch on KiwiSaver, but so did Brown.

As campaign chairman, Brown was designated to remind delegates of the messages they should be pushing about their coalition partners, New Zealand First and Act.

“Don’t vote Act or New Zealand First thinking it helps National. It doesn’t.”

The squabbling children metaphor has irked Act leader David Seymour, with whom Brown works closely in health, and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

Luxon and deputy leader Nicola Willis zeroed in with their own messages boiling down to “don’t put it all at risk”.

Because Brown doesn’t have a crucial relationship with the prickly Peters, as Luxon and Willis do, the chairman could go further in a bid to promote distrust in New Zealand First.

A party vote for New Zealand First was a party vote for Helen Clark, Trevor Mallard and Phil Goff in 2005, Brown said.

A party vote for New Zealand First was a party vote for Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins and James Shaw in 2017.

“You want to take that risk again? I don’t.

“You just can’t trust them.”

That is the punchline that Luxon and Willis can’t say quite as bluntly.

Brown is a curious mix. He has a moderate temperament. You could even call him sweet-natured. Seymour described him this week as “cherubic”.

But when it comes to Brown’s politics, a switch is flicked. He is polarising and he plays hardball.

Brown is mildly amused at being described as polarising.

“I want people to know what I stand for and what I’m focused on.”

Whether it is answering questions in the House or at select committees, he is always ready to counterattack.

During last week’s scrutiny week, for example, former Labour Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall questioned him over what she described as an “F” for his five health targets to 2030: faster cancer treatment; improved immunisation rates for Māori children; shorter stays in emergency departments; shorter waiting times for a first specialist assessment; and shorter waiting times for elective treatment.

And while it is true that the milestones (smaller targets within a target) may have fallen short, the figures are all improvements on the previous year.

“I note that every single target went backwards under your watch,” snapped Brown at Verrall.

“You saw a reduction in delivery of services. You saw waitlists balloon. You saw wait times increase in our emergency departments. You saw fewer children being immunised at 2 years of age.”

Verrall suggested that Labour had done better with specialists, but he didn’t let up. “We are turning around the system. We have reinstated targets, we’ve seen wait times reduce, more children being fully immunised, we have seen progress where you saw failure.”

Verrall’s final response: “We saved 20,000 lives during Covid”.

The difficulty for Labour in targeting Brown in health is that his priorities are very similar to Labour’s focus – primary health care.

Many of the moves he has made over 18 months are designed to make it easier for patients to get access to GP appointments and to medicine, through liberalising rules for prescribing, through after-hours clinics, and 24/7 online digital health services.

“There’s no, there’s no silver bullet, but there are lots of initiatives that all collectively make a difference and that’s what we’re seeing,” he said.

He tells the National Party conference that 900 more doctors had been employed under the Government, and 2100 more nurses and they were helping to deliver more elective surgeries.

He does not care whether unions believe he is using the private health sector too much to clear public waiting lists.

“I don’t think the patient really cares,” he said.

“If they’re having a knee operation, they’re not looking up at the ceiling, lying on the operating table, wondering who owns the ceiling.

“They’re wanting to make sure they’re getting seen in a timely manner.

“My focus is on strengthening access to our public health system.”

The public health system had used private provision over many years to help get through waiting lists. The longer-term contracts he has encouraged with the private sector were about getting value for money out of those contracts.

Unions have little regard for Brown, and the feeling is reciprocated.

He said they have become “overly politicised”.

“I mean, you’ve got the PSA actively campaigning for Labour on their Facebook page.”

He may have been thinking of any number of press statements, including this one on Budget day: “This Budget makes it clearer than ever that this Government has to go, and the PSA will be making that choice clear at the election - if you want a public service, vote for change”.

He was widely criticised by professional groups last week when he failed to reappoint the leadership of the Medical Council over what he called “an ideological agenda”. It was an objection to their emphasis on cultural safety in medical practice.

Critics called it political interference.

Brown simply calls it a ministerial decision he was entitled to make and makes it clear that ministers will have greater rights across a range of regulatory bodies under a bill before the House, the Health Practitioner Competency Assurance Amendment Bill.

It will allow the Minister of Health to direct authorities to give effect to a Government policy that relates to their functions.

The Bill provides for the establishment of a ministerial committee that will be empowered to review and overturn regulators’ decisions when those decisions refuse or limit a practitioner’s registration or ability to practise.

“What I want to see from our regulatory authorities is how do we enable access to more patients.

“How do we enable our healthcare professionals to be operating at the top of their scopes?”

For example, the role of pharmacist and paramedic had been expanded to allow some prescribing.

“I want our healthcare professionals to be working at the top of their scope to deliver as much care as they can to patients.”

So has he got health under control?

“We inherited a system which had seen significant decline in performance and a huge increase in waiting times for patients.

“And we are turning that around. We are starting to see some good progress.”

Would he want health again if National gets back for a second term?

“Absolutely. It’s a challenging portfolio, but it’s one that you get the ability to really make a difference for New Zealanders.”

The priority for a second term would be to continue to reduce waiting times.

From July 1, one more health target would be launched: that 80% of people can access an appointment with a general practice provider within one week.

“The number one issue that people raise with me is the time it takes to get an appointment,” he said.

“That’s the focus.”