District Health Boards need to pay specialists more, if New Zealand wants first world cancer treatment.

APEX, the union representing medical physicists, says we've become a school for other countries, training up physicists only to have them chase bigger pay cheques across the ditch.

Spokesman David Munro says physicists spend nine years training here.

But once they qualify, if there's an opportunity in Australia they take it.

"And where in the past that might have been expected for a couple of years then they'd return, generally now they're lost to NZ for good."

Munro says international radiation intervention standards are 45 percent - New Zealand's are around 37 percent, but we aren't training enough physicists to maintain that.

"We'd have to train three a year and we're not doing that.

"But if we were to lift to that higher level, the workforce report says we're going to need to train 30 before 2022."