Andrew Dickens: We need more dentists

There's an election promise to train more dentists in Otago – the first increase in training numbers in 10 years.  

And if it comes to pass, you'll have to ask, why did this not happen earlier? 

In John Key's day, economic policy supercharged our economy on the back of mass immigration and surging property prices.  

But as our population rapidly grew, nobody stopped to have a hmm.  

More people are going to need more dentists.  

But as has been New Zealand's want for a long time now, we took the growth but did not invest in the services it demanded.  

It's the same for doctors.  

New Zealand has had only two medical schools since the 1960s, and for about 20 years successive governments kept a fairly tight cap on medical student numbers. 

The cap was only substantially lifted in 2024 after years of warnings about doctor shortages.  

The New Zealand Government has approved a third medical school, to be based at the New Zealand Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Waikato. 

The decision was announced in July 2025 and work is now underway to establish the school. 

The first intake is expected in 2028, with an initial intake of 120 students per year.  

If we have a shortage of qualified medical staff, it has been entirely of our own choosing and has smacked of short termism that will only cost us more than if we had done it in the first place.