New Zealand Post-Covid: What Positive Changes Do You Expect To See?

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#2454094 3-Apr-2020 21:50

Older people will show more empathy and consideration of the young people who haven't had any of the economic benefits that older people have had.

We have realistic discussions about affordability of superannuation compared to other benefits funded by working people. Before the usual suspects chime in super is funded by the consolidated fund so there is no "entitlement" to it.

Recognition that young people today aren't better or worse than they were in the past, they just have grown up in a world that is different to the one that existed 30 years ago. They are young people who haven't experiences yet.

BTW I'm closer to retirement age than the start of my working life...

antonknee

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#2454098 3-Apr-2020 21:58

Geektastic: There are 19 countries with zero cases. Surely that means we can’t be better than 20th?!

I believe they are taking into account the risk of those countries getting a case of COVID-19 and how prepared the ya re to respond (and the adequacy of that response). Some of the countries without any cases are very poor and/or war torn and/or with lacking health systems.

frankv

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#2454116 3-Apr-2020 23:19

floydbloke:
DHBs... (as opposed to admin and red tape, still can't figure out why we need 15 lots of administration of a population of only 4.5 million).

It's Public Service, so it has to be accountable, so there has to be red tape. Everything has to be recorded, so that if someone investigates in 20 years time, the information will be available. But that constant scrutiny has made the whole system super cautious; I've never worked anywhere as change-averse or commitee-loaded as a DHB.

To answer your question about why so many... (it's 23 btw, not 15)... that was the brainchild of Rogernomics. DHBs grew out of Crown Health Enterprises, which were supposed to compete with each other to encourage efficiency. And there was 2 sets of administrations in each DHB, the "funder" which wrote contracts and the "provider" which ran hospitals. Fortunately this lunacy has been gradually worked out of the system. Another aspect was that each CHE/DHB was free to set up their own IT systems, so there's probably a dozen different incompatible clinical records systems in use, let alone accounting, payroll, etc, etc. The DHBs have been working on overcoming this, but getting 23 DHBs to agree on anything is impossible. And the MoH is completely hopeless, so no leadership there. However most "regions" of about 5-6 DHBs each have systems to share clinical information.

I believe that Labour has some kind of plan to reform NZ's health system, but we'll have to wait to see what that is.

Kiwifruta

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#2454120 3-Apr-2020 23:42

antonknee:
Kiwifruta: N.Z. government reviews its relationship with the CCP.

Communist Party of China?

Chinese Communist Party.

Kiwifruta

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#2454121 3-Apr-2020 23:51

More people will save money for a rainy day, and use debt less to purchase things.

Tinkerisk

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#2454131 4-Apr-2020 00:03

kobiak:

I would certainly hope NZ's IT sector will grow. Giving the absolute nightmare situation going on in US/Europe, this is huge potential for NZ to become outsource hub for all the IT development. Remote location, fast internet, english speaking country, with high skill level (need to attract more) to build IT export services.

😊 ... what "absolute IT nightmare in EU" you are talking about?

- NET: FTTH, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs, ipPBX
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

Tinkerisk

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#2454133 4-Apr-2020 00:07

Citizen's digitalization has speeded up within' a week. Governments, companies and schools/universities suddenly have rolled out Clouds, WebMeetings and VideoStreaming.

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mattwnz

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#2454136 4-Apr-2020 00:26

Kiwifruta:

More people will save money for a rainy day, and use debt less to purchase things.

Probably won't happen, due to the interest rates being so low and cheap. If interest rates were say over 10% there would be far more incentive for people to borrow less, and they also wouldn't be able to borrow as much,as their wages wouldn't be able to service the interest as easily on a mortgage with a high interest rate.

bmt

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#2454190 4-Apr-2020 09:52

I'd like to think that all the spending that I can no longer do will carry on through. At the moment it is the standard bills, then literally the only other thing is groceries. Might need petrol at the end of 4 weeks. No more coffees, dining out, unnecessary purchases from the mall etc. Unfortunately this kind of spending is good for the economy and governments encourage it so can't see it becoming too widespread.

If you want a service to be efficient (in terms of production vs cost) it needs to run at (or very near) full capacity all the time. If you think about it, unused capacity is at best a lost opportunity to produce, and at worst an extra cost. Another strategy is to have queues of elective (I.e. optional or delayable) patients for every service. This way, any unplanned unused capacity can be soaked up doing elective treatments.

Think of it like a car engine: you can choose to have a large engine, which runs relatively inefficiently most of the time, but has plenty of power to spare for overtaking or climbing hills. Or you can have a small engine which is efficient most of the time (running nearer to full throttle most of the time) and therefore uses less fuel, but you have to change down at every hill (or into a headwind).

The health services have been pared away over the decades to minimize cost and maximize productivity. We are *very* fortunate that covid-19 has hit now rather than at peak flu season, when hospitals are always stretched. I think that the impending flu season was probably a strong motivation to dealing with covid-19 sooner rather than later. However, you can expect waiting lists for elective surgery (e..g. knee and hip replacements) to balloon out over the next few months. Or, in keeping with the government's goal to minimize waiting lists, the threshold for actually getting onto the waiting list to go up. So lots of people whose lives would be hugely improved by getting a joint replacement will not get their operations.

Without getting into too much detail, I work in a production industry and deal with "efficiencies" and "productivity". Something like running a resource at or close to capacity may seem like common sense but unfortunately it is not so simple and not guaranteed to provide the best outcome. Pencil pushers will pull their hair out if they simply look at an under-utilized resource but looking at the bigger picture this can actually end up with a superior outcome.

tdgeek

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#2454198 4-Apr-2020 10:11

bmt:

I'd like to think that all the spending that I can no longer do will carry on through. At the moment it is the standard bills, then literally the only other thing is groceries. Might need petrol at the end of 4 weeks. No more coffees, dining out, unnecessary purchases from the mall etc. Unfortunately this kind of spending is good for the economy and governments encourage it so can't see it becoming too widespread.

I think there will be a mini boom once the lockdown goes to Level 2, whenever that may happen. The Warehouse, Briscoes, bars, will do a roaring trade as many have unspent cash, and the need to get out of the house and see friends and family and unload the emotions of the recent past. Its probably not big, but it will help local businesses and peoples sanity.

KiwiSurfer

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#2454217 4-Apr-2020 10:47

mattwnz:

Hopefully it will show that we need at least a third big supermarket operator in NZ.

Do we have the population to support a third national operator sustainably? I recall The Warehouse tried to become a third supermarket operator with not much success and eventually rolled back their supermarket strategy. I suspect if a third operator does come in they'll just cherry pick the profitable areas resulting in a two tier system where some areas have lower prices than while the unfortunate (especially rural) may have to pay higher prices to cross-subsidy the more lucky people. Not sure if that's a better outcome IMHO.

frankv

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#2454223 4-Apr-2020 10:56

bmt:

Something like running a resource at or close to capacity may seem like common sense but unfortunately it is not so simple and not guaranteed to provide the best outcome. Pencil pushers will pull their hair out if they simply look at an under-utilized resource but looking at the bigger picture this can actually end up with a superior outcome.

I agree totally. But a lot of pencil pushers have spent a lot of time looking at Health. And inevitably that's had an effect on capacity planning.

Kiwifruta

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#2454264 4-Apr-2020 12:26

mattwnz:
Kiwifruta:

More people will save money for a rainy day, and use debt less to purchase things.

Probably won't happen, due to the interest rates being so low and cheap. If interest rates were say over 10% there would be far more incentive for people to borrow less, and they also wouldn't be able to borrow as much,as their wages wouldn't be able to service the interest as easily on a mortgage with a high interest rate.

In my (unregistered opinion), bank deposits are lousy investments but a great place to park money for contingency purposes.

antonknee

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#2454354 4-Apr-2020 13:01

KiwiSurfer:
mattwnz:

Hopefully it will show that we need at least a third big supermarket operator in NZ.

Do we have the population to support a third national operator sustainably? I recall The Warehouse tried to become a third supermarket operator with not much success and eventually rolled back their supermarket strategy. I suspect if a third operator does come in they'll just cherry pick the profitable areas resulting in a two tier system where some areas have lower prices than while the unfortunate (especially rural) may have to pay higher prices to cross-subsidy the more lucky people. Not sure if that's a better outcome IMHO.

The Warehouse did indeed try this. Believe they got up to three stores operating The Warehouse Extra offer (included full grocery). Sylvia Park used to be this - where Noel Leeming/Warehouse Stationery are now all used to be The Warehouse Extra, with grocery on one side and general merch offer on the offer.

Grocery is a tough market and the two incumbents are very strong competitors. I’ve heard variations of it was just too capital intensive (and low return on investment) for The Warehouse to continue; or the other supermarket players used their buying power/terms of trade with suppliers to shut The Warehouse out a bit.

Rikkitic

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#2454365 4-Apr-2020 13:26

Kiwifruta:

In my (unregistered opinion), bank deposits are lousy investments but a great place to park money for contingency purposes.

You mean like that bank in Cyprus that ate its customers' deposits? Don't our banks also have a clause like that?

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

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