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New Zealand education minister takes charge of health portfolio

Image: Stuartyeates [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Hipkins now responsible for three major portfolios after health minister’s resignation

New Zealand’s education minister Chris Hipkins has been appointed caretaker health minister following the resignation of David Clark last week over his handling of Covid-19 quarantine restrictions.

Hipkins remains education minister and is also state services minister, so he will be responsible for three major portfolios in the months leading up to the NZ general election on 19 September.

As well as overseeing NZ’s response to the global pandemic, he is also midway through implementing an ambitious national education reform programme aimed at improving vocational training.

Clark resigned on 2 July following a public backlash over his attempt to blame Ashley Bloomfield, NZ’s popular director-general of health, for quarantine system failures that led to new cases of Covid-19.

At a news conference, Clark claimed that Bloomfield was taking responsibility for these failures. “The director-general has accepted that the protocol wasn’t being followed,” he told journalists. “He has accepted responsibility for that and has set about putting it right.”

A video clip of the conference showed Bloomfield’s shocked reaction to these remarks and was widely shared on social media.

Bloomfield, a University of Auckland medical graduate, has held a number of executive positions in public health administration. He has appeared at briefings with prime minister Jacinda Ardern throughout the pandemic and is seen as the public face of the government’s lockdown strategy. His popularity has been reflected in songs, poems, internet memes and online sites selling merchandise including Bloomfield coffee mugs, T-shirts and keyrings.

After Clark’s remarks, a collection was launched on social media to buy flowers for Bloomfield and raised more than $1,280. Bloomfield thanked the donors but asked that the funds be donated to a domestic violence charity.

Ardern accepted Clark’s resignation and described Hipkins as the minister “best placed to take the health portfolio forward”.

“David has come to the conclusion his presence in the role is creating an unhelpful distraction from the government’s ongoing response to Covid-19 and wider health reforms,” she said in a government statement.

Hipkins will oversee the health portfolio until the September election and is already dealing with its complex challenges following reports of a massive privacy breach of government data on Covid-19 cases in NZ.

NZ media outlets have reported seeing the personal details of 18 people who were quarantined as Covid-19 cases. Hipkins has apologised to those who have had their details leaked and has indicated that criminal charges will result if the leak is found to be “malicious or deliberate”.