What will happen to National now?

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#3023766 19-Jan-2023 12:37

GV27:

My guess is a pre-occupation with being able to say you've boosted spending on X without any real culture of understanding or expectation what an actual tangible outcome or result would be. Centralisation (3 Waters, Health, Polytechs, RNZ etc) fits this perfectly. The gains are supposedly there to be had over a long-enough period of time, but the blow-outs are always in the here and now. That's a bet you have to make, because you're ultimately choosing that over frontline service improvements. Again, look at the hold up at getting nurses through migration on a preferential basis. I can only assume that if that was actually important, it would have happened a lot faster than it did, and not after many had given up or by-passed us for Australia or Canada.

And that probably is something you can get away with in the world of Polytechs, but nurses and doctors have a habit of piping up when ED room have twelve hour waits and GPs are overwhelmed, both in terms of workload and finances.

Very fair points. Generally centralisation is a good thing. However the DHB system has been terrible for a long long time, its terrible to keep it and terrible to centralise it, it appears. So many things have been terrible for a long time, as they are costly, and complicated. No one can fix all of them, not unless there was a nationwide buy in. The buy in is there obviously as long as it doesn't affect me... But keen to see the tangible polices both parties have to offer this year. Tangible, which = accountable. Not ideological

GV27

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#3023875 19-Jan-2023 13:15

tdgeek:

Very fair points. Generally centralisation is a good thing. However the DHB system has been terrible for a long long time, its terrible to keep it and terrible to centralise it, it appears. So many things have been terrible for a long time, as they are costly, and complicated. No one can fix all of them, not unless there was a nationwide buy in. The buy in is there obviously as long as it doesn't affect me... But keen to see the tangible polices both parties have to offer this year. Tangible, which = accountable. Not ideological

My partner is young and requires an exploratory procedure her age doesn't qualify her for automatically, so she is waiting from a notification from 'the system'.

I've told her to get her Karen on as there's too many stories about fit young people missing out on something that would have uncovered something serious until it's too late. I have zero faith in the health system outside of the extremely specific people I deal with regarding my own ongoing conditions.

My metric is simple. More people seem, treated and services provided. The budget savings from IT system agglomeration over a 10 year time frame do not really concern me if the political capital and resource within the Ministries are spent on that, instead of addressing the front-line and referral issues.

The 'Cancer Control Agency' that was set up after National started getting some traction with bowel screening failures and issues doesn't seem to have anything published post-2020 that I can readily find.

BlakJak

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#3025220 21-Jan-2023 16:18

Not sure why 'Cancer Control Agency' is in speech marks. Te Aho is a thing. It's a departmental agency within the Ministry of Health (has it's own CE and it's own mission).

There's a finite number of people in the health system and there's been a severe constraint in bringing in offshore expertise in recent years. It will take time to turn things around. In the meantime we struggle on; a struggle I know through personal experience (and cost) as a consumer of health services specifically.

Importantly though, the problems in this area took time to develop, so there's no political 'throat to choke', though i'm sure both parties will enjoy pointing the finger at each other.

No signature to see here, move along...

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#3026862 25-Jan-2023 09:38

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/01/gerry-brownlee-apologises-to-prime-minister-after-his-account-likes-tweet-calling-jacinda-ardern-tyrant.html

I hope Brownlee's staffer (assuming it indeed wasn't him) that did this gets a major earful, at minimum. This is appalling.

GV27

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#3026886 25-Jan-2023 10:23

BlakJak:

There's a finite number of people in the health system and there's been a severe constraint in bringing in offshore expertise in recent years. It will take time to turn things around. In the meantime we struggle on; a struggle I know through personal experience (and cost) as a consumer of health services specifically.

Importantly though, the problems in this area took time to develop, so there's no political 'throat to choke', though i'm sure both parties will enjoy pointing the finger at each other.

'Struggling on' is a lot easier to accept as a necessary evil if things aren't unwinding at a rate of knots.

No one is saying 'fixing things will be easy!' - the fact that it's going to be hard doesn't mean we should accept things getting any worse. Nor does a slow-building problem mean you have to wait forever for a solution to work out.

Between frontline medical care and the future of Pharmac, we need to be a bit more upfront about what it would take to restore our health system to what people expect it to be. And that's before you get into the preventative side of community healthcare, which is really where you start saving money and resources over time.

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#3038903 19-Feb-2023 09:43

GV27: No one is saying 'fixing things will be easy!' - the fact that it's going to be hard doesn't mean we should accept things getting any worse. Nor does a slow-building problem mean you have to wait forever for a solution to work out.

Between frontline medical care and the future of Pharmac, we need to be a bit more upfront about what it would take to restore our health system to what people expect it to be. And that's before you get into the preventative side of community healthcare, which is really where you start saving money and resources over time.

The thing I don't get with your response is it fails to even comprehend any of the systemic cuts / capping of finances that occurred under National.

Chat with anyone who was a nurse or in public hospitals and they will say the cuts were brutal, and National were indicating significant tax cuts to keep the voters happy.. So that can only mean one thing to central government services.

New Zealand NEEDS to have a very serious conversation about what level of services we expect as citizens from central government, how that will be achieved primarily via tax and the fact we are a low wage economy primarily fueled by the farming industry and house prices where the gap from minimum to median wage is not that significant in comparison with other developed countries so the majority of tax burden falls on the highest wage earners to help maintain the society we all want to live in.

All of this is happening while National just play petty nonsense with dog whistle politics to keep the temporarily embarrassed millionaires voting for policies that means that any future generations that don't have house owning parents have little to no chance to own property and having 50% of our population living in tenuous rental situations will mean that our brightest will always leave for better pay and opportunities overseas.

I think National's problem is best summed up yesterday in this tweet: https://twitter.com/HaydenDonnell/status/1626729034276290560

Either NZ central government has a debt crisis or it doesn't (it doesn't). Stop the nonsense petty politics saying our debt is getting out of control. Focus on building houses and raising taxes to pay for that building than cutting taxes and then saying that services also need to be cut.

quickymart

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#3039032 19-Feb-2023 14:28

Heather Du Plessis Allan had an interesting take on Luxon/Hipkins and how the cyclone is bad for National (paywalled): https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/heather-du-plessis-allan-why-hipkins-could-be-a-tough-chris-to-beat/NEW64JAEINFRDEW5KAEGBMWUOQ/

(in part): For National the political calculation is miserable. Chris Luxon is irrelevant. He will be starved of air time as long as this Cyclone keeps serving up images of unbelievable destruction and heart-breaking accounts of loss.

National already knows it has to sit tight for a couple of months until the cyclone coverage is replaced by a normal news cycle. But knowing something and then maintaining the discipline to stick to that are two different things. A fortnight of no real coverage can feel like forever.

This will get harder for National. Labour’s polls will probably climb, National’s will probably fall. They’ll get antsy behind closed doors.

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tdgeek

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#3039083 19-Feb-2023 18:15

quickymart:

Heather Du Plessis Allan had an interesting take on Luxon/Hipkins and how the cyclone is bad for National (paywalled): https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/heather-du-plessis-allan-why-hipkins-could-be-a-tough-chris-to-beat/NEW64JAEINFRDEW5KAEGBMWUOQ/

(in part): For National the political calculation is miserable. Chris Luxon is irrelevant. He will be starved of air time as long as this Cyclone keeps serving up images of unbelievable destruction and heart-breaking accounts of loss.

National already knows it has to sit tight for a couple of months until the cyclone coverage is replaced by a normal news cycle. But knowing something and then maintaining the discipline to stick to that are two different things. A fortnight of no real coverage can feel like forever.

This will get harder for National. Labour’s polls will probably climb, National’s will probably fall. They’ll get antsy behind closed doors.

Yes, that will happen as its about emotion. Luxon has stated that climate change mitigation needs to hepper, whether they support the next Labour Govt or whether Labour support the next National Govt. Yes, its all words from either side but the world as in NZ has changed. We all might whine about health, education, taxes or tax cuts, bit its changed. Unless we feel that weather events this year was bad luck, in which case it hasnt changed.

Election year so yes, factor the news bites.

ezbee

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#3039092 19-Feb-2023 19:13

National and the Cyclone News Hole.

Though reverse could also be true if you have some policy positions that support Cyclone resiliance.
You could monompolise page 1.

On the other side of that that would be spending promises which would conflict with tax cuts.

Its similar with Healthcare, you can make general statements, on efficently.
But changing hospitals to airline quality or less, food etc has been done.
You are back to where does money come from to deliver more expensive drugs, more services,
and upgrade any rotting facilities.

That where is the three letter word that 'shall not be mentioned' comes in again.

Of course suggestions like paying out Cyclone wage subsidies, like for covid.
Land rectificaion and compensation for Farmers lost assets and income,
rebuilding bridges and roads to remote settlements to keep them viable all costs money.
Many of these people have been at forefront of movement to downsize Government and ability to spend.

But you can't say where it comes from.

tdgeek

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#3039097 19-Feb-2023 19:27

ezbee:

National and the Cyclone News Hole.

Though reverse could also be true if you have some policy positions that support Cyclone resiliance.
You could monompolise page 1.

On the other side of that that would be spending promises which would conflict with tax cuts.

Its similar with Healthcare, you can make general statements, on efficently.
But changing hospitals to airline quality or less, food etc has been done.
You are back to where does money come from to deliver more expensive drugs, more services,
and upgrade any rotting facilities.

That where is the three letter word that 'shall not be mentioned' comes in again.

Of course suggestions like paying out Cyclone wage subsidies, like for covid.
Land rectificaion and compensation for Farmers lost assets and income,
rebuilding bridges and roads to remote settlements to keep them viable all costs money.
Many of these people have been at forefront of movement to downsize Government and ability to spend.

But you can't say where it comes from.

100%. The end game is it has to come from somewhere, and then, someone(s) miss out. There is a lengthy list of stuff we need to do, now added to via the last few weeks. Cannot have new taxes, we want tax cuts. Cannot add to debt, so we cannot actually do anything?

GV27

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#3039871 21-Feb-2023 08:03

tdgeek:

100%. The end game is it has to come from somewhere, and then, someone(s) miss out. There is a lengthy list of stuff we need to do, now added to via the last few weeks. Cannot have new taxes, we want tax cuts. Cannot add to debt, so we cannot actually do anything?

It depends. If we retrench and rebuild, we could end-up with more resilient infrastructure that doesn't go offline as often or require as much maintenance.

If we commit ourselves to rebuilding the region, then the question needs to be asked - what else needs to be done? No good hobbling together roads and other services on a piecemeal basis with the same vulnerabilities we have now.

There has long been vague commitments to restoring things like rail services and so on to the Hawkes Bay. Given the tracks are stuffed anyway, it might be time to make some decisions on that kind of stuff.

tdgeek

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#3039888 21-Feb-2023 08:57

GV27:

It depends. If we retrench and rebuild, we could end-up with more resilient infrastructure that doesn't go offline as often or require as much maintenance.

If we commit ourselves to rebuilding the region, then the question needs to be asked - what else needs to be done? No good hobbling together roads and other services on a piecemeal basis with the same vulnerabilities we have now.

There has long been vague commitments to restoring things like rail services and so on to the Hawkes Bay. Given the tracks are stuffed anyway, it might be time to make some decisions on that kind of stuff.

Makes sense. We also have other areas in NZ that are vulnerable, i.e. Alpine Fault, that covers Fiordland to Wellington and a couple of hundred km either side. Tsunami risk from offshore Wellington or Chile. Other flood possible areas that could have been hit hard had the last storm shifted. Where do we start? We could go down a wholesale infrastructure rebuild/reset

sir1963

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#3040006 21-Feb-2023 13:07

National MP Maureen Pugh repeatedly refuses to say she believes in man-made climate change

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/02/national-mp-maureen-pugh-repeatedly-refuses-to-say-she-believes-in-man-made-climate-change.html

"Asked if she believed in climate change caused by human actions, Pugh said she hadn't seen evidence. "

Oops, that bad optics given an election year and what has just happened.

sir1963

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#3040010 21-Feb-2023 13:15

sir1963: National MP Maureen Pugh repeatedly refuses to say she believes in man-made climate change

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/02/national-mp-maureen-pugh-repeatedly-refuses-to-say-she-believes-in-man-made-climate-change.html

"Asked if she believed in climate change caused by human actions, Pugh said she hadn't seen evidence. "

Oops, that bad optics given an election year and what has just happened.

ARRGGGHHHH..... I must be getting old if I miss opportunities like this

I could have said she " Pugh Pughed the idea"

tdgeek

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#3040050 21-Feb-2023 14:02

National Party MP Maureen Pugh says she regrets her comments that were "unclear" and "led some to think I am questioning the causes of climate change".

The evidence must have been emailed by Nicola...

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