eN-Zed has a quiet crisis hiding in plain sight. We hold the grim distinction of having one of the highest melanoma incidence rates in the world; more than 8,000 diagnoses every single year, and the highest melanoma mortality rate globally. That’s not a statistic from a developing nation with limited resources. That’s us, you know, ‘greater than 50% tax eN-Zed’… a wealthy, modern country watching its citizens die from a treatable cancer while government spending goes elsewhere.
The good news is that better treatments exist. Medical oncologist and Melanoma NZ spokesperson Dr Gareth Rivalland has made clear that new melanoma medicines can increase the chance of completely eliminating a tumour before surgery from 50% to 60, and slash overall treatment time from nine months to just six weeks. That’s not a marginal improvement. That’s a transformational one, bringing eN-Zed into line with the international gold standard already available to our neighbours in Australia.
The bad news? Until recently, most eN-Zed ders couldn’t access these drugs unless they could afford to self-fund — which very few could.
So where is the money going?
According to the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union’s Bureaucrat Salary Leaderboard, public sector workers are now paid an average of $17,600 more per year than their private sector counterparts, the very taxpayers funding those salaries. And those salaries have been growing fast: public sector pay rose 21.37% between 2020 and 2025, nearly fifty percent faster than the 14.49% wage growth seen in the private sector over the same period. All while the government borrows $48 million every single day just to keep operating.
The figures for individual departments are revealing. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage, whose stated purpose is to “advise government on cultural matters”, has seen average salaries jump 31.64% since 2020, to $129,400 per person. The Ministry of Health’s back-office staff: not doctors, not nurses, not surgeons, but policy advisors and health managers, now earn an average of $138,200, up more than $33,000 per staffer since 2020. The Ministry for Women, another purely policy-advisory agency that delivers no frontline services whatsoever, pays its staff an average of $143,300. No fuel anxiety being felt by these people.
And the waste doesn’t stop at salaries. Government agencies have spent $2.9 million on a single rebrand (NZQA), with others burning through $270,000 and $170,000 on their own logo overhauls. One district council hid the true cost of a rebrand that came in at $116,899 — nearly double what ratepayers were originally told.
This is the backdrop against which cancer patients have been asked to self-fund life-saving treatment.
Pharmac is the answer, not the problem.
eN-Zed’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency evaluates medicines on the basis of evidence, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness — not politics, not ethnicity, not ideology. No whale song and kauri die back research here. It exists for one purpose: to get proven medicines to the people who need them, regardless of who they are or where they come from. That is what universal, taxpayer-funded healthcare is supposed to look like.
And critically, as Dr Rivalland has explained, funding better melanoma treatment doesn’t just save lives — it actually saves the health system money. Shorter treatment courses mean fewer hospital visits, freed-up beds, and specialists available to see more patients. The benefits flow in every direction at once.
As he put it: “To have a situation where you get to have a better, more effective treatment, and use less resources — obviously, that’s a win across the board.”
A win across the board. That is exactly what evidence-based, universally accessible healthcare funding delivers. Not a win for one group. Not a win contingent on your ancestry or the political priorities of the government of the day. A win for every eN-Zedder who gets sick and needs help.
The question every taxpayer should be asking
When a Ministry of Health that delivers no actual health services pays its back-office staff an average of $138,200 — up $33,000 in five years — while Pharmac struggles for funding to provide world-standard cancer treatment, something has gone seriously wrong with our priorities.
eN-Zedders pay their taxes for real services. For hospitals. For medicines. For the kind of healthcare system that means a melanoma diagnosis is something you survive, not something that kills you at a higher rate than anywhere else on earth. They are not paying taxes so that policy advisors can enjoy salaries fifty percent above private sector growth, or so that agencies can spend millions refreshing their logos.
The government has a choice to make. It can continue expanding a well-paid bureaucratic class producing policy documents and cultural advice. Or it can fund Pharmac properly — on the basis of science, need, and the simple principle that every eN-Zedder’s life is worth the same.
The melanoma statistics demand better. eN-Zedders deserve better. Fund the medicine.
eN-Zed 