Thursday 10 October 2024

Gut Feelings.

Vox Populi: It is worth noting that if Auckland’s public health services were forced to undergo cutbacks of the same severity as Dunedin’s, and if the city’s Mayor and its daily newspaper were able to call the same percentage of its citizens onto the streets, then the ensuing demonstrations would number in excess of 400,000 protesters. No New Zealand government has ever survived such levels of public distress and anger.

IF YOU BELIEVE Talbot Mills “internal polling” for the Labour Party, the probability of a one-term National Government is rising. Made available to Sunday Star-Times journalist Henry Cooke, the Talbot Mills data reportedly shows the “Left Bloc” positioned just two percentage points behind the “Right Bloc”.

To which supporters of the National-Act-NZ First coalition government will doubtless (and quite justifiably) respond with a curt “Yeah, right.” Poll data should not be taken seriously before all of it is released – not just the numbers guaranteed to grab a headline.

Even so, it is telling that this carefully staged release of information was permitted to form the basis of a news story. When it comes to assessing the mood of the electorate, most political journalists place considerable store upon what their “gut” is telling them. That a seasoned journalist was prepared to run with Labour’s self-serving, but strictly limited, release of confidential polling-data suggests strongly there’s a “feeling” that the coalition is in trouble, and it’s spreading. Now would not be a good time to dismiss the whispers of journalistic intuition out-of-hand.

The outpouring of anger in Dunedin, where 35,000 citizens, a number approximating a quarter of the city’s entire population, marched down George Street on Saturday afternoon (28/9/24) will do nothing to still this journalistic apprehension of impending electoral doom.

It is doubtful that Dunedin has ever witnessed a protest march so large. In the absence of a government reversal, such public fury must surely portend a serious drop in National’s Party Vote. Not just in Dunedin (which has always been a staunchly Labour city) but in electorates all the way from Waitaki to Invercargill. Two whole provinces rely upon the services of Dunedin Hospital. If National refuses to bend on this issue, then Otago and Southland voters may feel compelled to break it.

Even more sobering, is the news that the Coalition’s retrenchment in Dunedin may only be the beginning of a savage government cost-cutting programme. According to the Deputy-Secretary of the Treasury, Dominick Stephens, reining-in the Government’s projected deficit is likely to require cuts on a scale “unprecedented in recent history”. In response to Stephen’s comments, Richard Harman, the editor of the Politik website, is predicting that Finance Minister Nicola Willis will soon be tasked with pulling together a second “Mother of All Budgets”.

Harman’s reference to the then National Party finance minister, Ruth Richardson’s, devastating first budget, delivered on 30 July 1991, is telling. Because, the electoral consequences of the Jim Bolger-led National Government’s austerity measures were dire.

The year before the Mother of All Budgets, National had crushed its incumbent Labour rival by a popular vote margin of 13 percentage points. Two years later, in 1993, National’s vote would crash from 48.7 percent to just 35.05 percent.

Between them, the parties openly opposing National in 1993: Labour, the Alliance, NZ First; secured 61.28 percent of the popular vote. Only because the opposition vote was split three ways was National able to secure a second term. Bolger, himself, avoided going down in history as the leader of National’s first one-term government largely on account of the distortions of New Zealand’s First-Past-the-Post electoral system. Interestingly, 1993 was also the year that FPP fell to MMP. The new, proportional, system of representation emerged triumphant from the referendum held concurrently with the General Election.

If the Treasury’s Deputy-Secretary is right, and the ever-widening government deficit inspires two years of agonising cost-cutting, then the present recession-like conditions can only worsen. More businesses will shut their doors, unemployment will rise, consumer-spending will shrink, and the tax-take will fall – necessitating even harsher cuts in government spending. By that point, the fate of Dunedin Hospital will have been repeated many times over.

It is worth noting that if Auckland’s public health services were forced to undergo cutbacks of the same severity as Dunedin’s, and if the city’s Mayor and its daily newspaper were able to call the same percentage of its citizens onto the streets, then the ensuing demonstrations would number in excess of 400,000 protesters. No New Zealand government has ever survived such levels of public distress and anger.

In such circumstances it would be most unwise to present the voters of 2026 with a referendum offering them the option of extending the term of a New Zealand Parliament from three years to four. The great Kiwi maxim regarding the parliamentary term – already confirmed emphatically in two previous referenda, one in 1967, the other in 1990 – states that “Three years is too short for a good government, but too long for a bad one.” And a National-led government seen to be imposing measures more extreme that Ruth Richardson’s Mother of All Budgets would likely be branded a very bad government indeed.

New Zealand history buffs might even be called upon to remind their fellow citizens of the infamous “stolen year”. Had New Zealand’s usual three-year election cycle been in operation in 1934, then November of that year would have featured a general election. That it did not was on account of the conservative coalition government of the day being unwilling to put its handling of the Great Depression to the electoral test. Indeed, after the nationwide riots that convulsed New Zealand’s major cities in 1932, the country’s farmers’-and-businessmen’s government was in mortal fear of what the scheduled election might produce.

Accordingly, the Government first equipped itself with the Public Safety Conservation Act, which empowered the Governor-General, upon the advice of the Cabinet, to declare a State of Emergency under which the government might be given extraordinary powers to keep the populace under control. Just how extensive those powers could be was revealed in 1951, when the National Party’s first Prime Minister, Sid Holland, made use of the Act to crush the Watersiders’ Union. The conservative Coalition Government’s second step was to use its parliamentary majority to extend its own life by a year.

It was not a popular decision. As New Zealand historian, Tony Simpson, notes in his book The Sugarbag Years:

When the election loomed up in 1934, the government postponed it for a year, hoping that things would be better by 1935. If anything, the ‘stolen year’, as it was called, made matters worse for them. People resented it, and the Labour promises of widespread social change made an irresistible appeal to the electorate. The stage was set, the fuse was lit, and on that fateful night in 1935, it all went off with a bang that was heard around the world.

Economic recession, made more intense and socially destructive by a cost-cutting government, cannot help giving rise to the notion that the government in question’s lease on life may not be a long one. When the burden of that cost-cutting is widely perceived to be unfair, and public anger intensifies, it is hardly surprising that political journalists begin feeling in their gut all those familiar twinges that presage the defeat of the cost-cutters and the victory of the street-marchers.

Perhaps Christopher Luxon should put aside his biographies of businessmen, and pick up Tony Simpson’s The Sugarbag Years. Who knows, he just might experience a few intuitions of his own?


This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 30 September 2024.

29 comments:

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Jesus H Christ! This is what I would call zombie economics, I don't know if that's an official designation, but austerity doesn't work but it's always being brought back to life by eejits.


Whole books have been written about how it doesn't work, the World Bank has finally come to the realisation – after ruining the economies of many underdeveloped countries – that it doesn't work.

https://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s13244.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526835

And still these nongs keep resurrecting the idea. Britain went through more than 10 years of austerity under the Tories. Didn't do the slightest bit of good. It took us years to get back the economic production we lost under Roger Douglas's austerity. Austerity made the great depression worse.

And here we go again., Businesses are going broke in central Wellington because the governments fired a load of public servants – to the sound of conservatives celebrating. I wonder how many of these small business owners voted National? I thought it was only working class people who voted against their own interests.
Ah well, it may well be a one term government – with a bit of luck.

Brendan McNeill said...

Chris

While it is true that half of New Zealand’s population is below average intelligence, it is highly unlikely they have all forgotten the glaring incompetence, and dare I say arrogance of the last Labour / Greens Government. Add Te Pati Maori into the coalition and even the most ardent Labour voter would likely baulk at the prospect.

I doubt the National / ACT / NZ First coalition is without political instincts. It is possible they have misjudged the level of anger; heaven knows Labour severely misjudged the electorate when it came to three waters, co-governance combined with an invented Crown partnership with Maori.

And yes, living within our means is a novel concept for many on the Left of politics who have grown accustomed to spending other people’s money. I don’t think people realise just how fragile our infrastructure has become, and how limited our ability to fix it with the public purse.

Little Keith said...

I'd consider a left or at least a progressive left woke possibilty above a snowballs chance in hell had Labour taken a honest cold hard review of itself and acknowledged how wrong it got practically everything and begun rebuilding. But it dares not. The best Hipkins can offer is they failed to communicate their achievements. So they remain, completely delusional.

And my gut feeling is the current government is actually delivering what most want, in a straight jacketed incremental type of way.

Dunedin is right to be pissed about their hospital. The upgrade plans were in place as far back as 2016, only to be shelved because Labour promised far bigger and far better. Excepting, that is, for Labour's default inability to deliver anything of substance. It was the first of many health system failures under Labour, following on from the 1.8 billion dollar mental health debacle that had nothing to show, the centralised bureaucratic nightmare of Te Whato Ora and the race based segregated parallel health system. Move over 1930's Alabama.

The people from our south deserve far better. But what can a country whose broke do? Especially after we've written off a 100 plus million dollar naval ship, and counting that we cannot realistically replace either.

And then there's Te Pati Māori, that one assumes would form part of a left coalition. Kiss this country good bye if that hateful destructive group ever get near power, especially combined with the Greens social justice absurdity.

All that poll showed is Labour have zero in the tank. Not surprisingly given they think they lost because voters were too stupid to re-elect them back again.

And yet just for a month or so, Labour stood a reasonable chance after the maligned Ardern era suddenly ended and the false hope Hipkins was a far more clever force who had finally read the room.

He proved he wasn't and hadn't. He was part of the problem. And the big difference between Labour 1990 and now is Labour put some pretty impressive runs on the board transforming NZ back then, like neoliberalism or not, but something, I think, a lot of people liked, but for the appalling infighting in Labour at that time. It publically tore itself to pieces.

But now in 2024 is a unified no dissent allowed Labour Party, that achieved so little for the vast majority of the public, Dunedin Hospital a note worthy example. Except to say it took race relations down a very dark cul de sac and now has to juke the stats hoping to remain relevant.

Anonymous said...

Cloth capped Laurie and Les in the back room of the old Robbie can say what they like, because they buy their own beer.
Previous generations survived harder times than this. Dour Low Scot natures may have assisted those older generations, but how easily this curdles to counterproductive resentment if the genes stay similar but character declines.
Hard times are from bad luck and also unwise choices. Patients flow from other areas to Dunedin because they have to, not from choice.
Bad luck for Dunedin that it was once to a big frog in the pond and is now relatively small. The unwise part, far back, sharing blame with Invercargill, way way back to have pulled the plug on a rail line between them before turn of the prev century, because of fear of competition. Thereby limiting its future. Parochialism.
Looking for Big Mommy Government to save you has not and will not help Dunedin. That’s the modern part of the unwisdom that Dunedin owns.
Should, God forbid, Labour ever get in again, nothing said above will be different.

The golden light coming at a slant through Prussian blue and grey clouds across Knox church just after a rain sticks in the mind.
Do you lot appreciate the beauty?

AB said...

"Perhaps Christopher Luxon should put aside his biographies of businessmen, and pick up Tony Simpson’s The Sugarbag Years."

If Mr Luxon actually reads the biographies of businessmen, we already know he is very likely unfit to be PM.

new view said...

I suspect Chris is correct with his analysis . Put simply, for National and it's coalition to get re elected several things need to happen. The standard of living of every NZr needs to improve. The country needs to be living within it's means and our Health and Education systems need to improve dramatically. The two looming red flags are the government is still spending more than it is taking in tax, but most importantly the health system with its staff shortages and infrastructure shortcuts will, and are, going down like a lead balloon with the public. The government has given the opposition a large stick to continuously poke it with, reminding them and us every week that the Tax cuts to the middle NZ and the concessions to landlords are unaffordable ,and that money could be building a new Dunedin Hospital and buy the new ferries etc. I don't happen to agree with the opposition. The tax adjustments were long overdue but a Labour govt would never have done it even in better times. Dunedin Hospital replacement has become hopelessly expensive as was the Ferry replacement. NZrs like their cake, even when we can't afford it, so they will punish National for their sensible (IMO) decision making. If we don't get suitable Ferry replacements and a satisfactory hospital rebuild is not started before the next election, I believe National and it's partners will lose that election. My question will then be, you saw what Labour did last time. What will have changed. What will they promise us. How short are our memories. How stupid are we.

swordfish said...

Quote from Chris: "IF YOU BELIEVE Talbot Mills “internal polling” for the Labour Party, the probability of a one-term National Government is rising... the Talbot Mills data reportedly shows the “Left Bloc” positioned just two percentage points behind the “Right Bloc" ... That a seasoned journalist was prepared to run with Labour’s self-serving, but strictly limited, release of confidential polling-data suggests strongly there’s a “feeling” that the coalition is in trouble, and it’s spreading. Now would not be a good time to dismiss the whispers of journalistic intuition out-of-hand ... this journalistic apprehension of impending electoral doom."

Can't say I see any sign of the tide turning at the moment.

Here are the Govt's percentage point leads over the Oppo in the most recent polls (rounded for simplicity & with the date being the mid-point of the fieldwork)

Roy Morgan (11 Aug) Govt by 10 points
TV1 (12 Aug) Govt by 6 points
Talbot Mills (5 Sep) Govt by 5 points
Roy Morgan (8 Sep) Govt by 14 points
Curia (9 Sep) Govt by 12 points
Curia (5 Oct) Govt by 8 points

Not much change ... just the usual statistical noise ... the rarely-released Labour TM Internal looking more & more like an outlier.

It seems the Oppo drew roughly level around April/May this year ... but the Govt's opened a clear margin again since then.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't you rather save cost and re-alocate funds to where it's needed than trying to appease an activist press and financially illiterate leftists?
New Zealand doesn't have the tax base to afford all the nice things some want. Naturally, we can wait for labour and their radical extremist mates to get back in and continue with the credit card economy that's so popular with them. Spend first, then brag about how much you spent on unnecessary pet projects, before you realize that you have to borrow money to pay for interest, never mind paying off the principal.
As per NZ Herald from 23 July 2023, our national debt was $790 billion. That's around $151000 per capita. That's the debt of a newborn child has when it takes its first breath.
I'm sorry, but I have to be convinced with some solid arguments that this is a great outlook for anyone in New Zealand.
Speaking of financial illiteracy. We can do what Russell Norman suggested and print more money. John Key laughed him out of parliament, and rightly so. Adrian Orr showed us so well how far unrestrained money printing gets us.
The previous crowd congratulated themselves and with much shoulder-patting they sailed off into distance and took up well paid positions and left their mess for someone else to sort out.
Now, I'm from Southland and our hospital and all other health services are shite on a good day. But no whining activist or hobby socialist can change my mind that throwing money around to keep us happy is a good idea.
And, please, 1.3 to 2.5 billion bucks for a hospital is ludicrous. Especially when the Germans can build a 22500 square metre inpatient building with ICU care and lecture hall for nurses training, and a 31000 square metre car park building for 74.5 million euros. Built in 2021.
I don't think a hospital will change the mood of too many voters after one term when the abject incompetence of the previous labour government is ever so fresh in voters' memory.

P.S.: I'm a great fan of yours, Chris Trotter. Just not of your economic wisdom.

John Hurley said...

That a seasoned journalist was prepared to run with Labour’s self-serving, but strictly limited, release of confidential polling-data suggests strongly there’s a “feeling” that the coalition is in trouble, and it’s spreading. Now would not be a good time to dismiss the whispers of journalistic intuition out-of-hand.
...............
The big issue though isn’t National/ Labour but a societal model.
We were a nation. If the nation was a boat, the lower decks would let you know when water was coming in. Under the present model of not quite nation, the lower decks are (also) off shore.
However these lower decks are unlimited in number.
Using a lifeboat analogy we are looking at the problem from different ends of a binocular. Flying up to Auckland I look down but I don’t see emptiness I see land with roads and (somewhere) a farm house, I think “someone owns that and it isn’t me”. John Key flys his $1m helicopter to the golf course and looks down: (journalist) “there are some big houses down there” (JK) “yes it’s interesting to see what’s here” (it’s just opportunity to own to him). John Key says migrants are good (“you think what it takes to uproot and come here”) but “there may have to be a bit of density”. He means throw the working class (which I define as the bottom rung) under the carpet. The horrible flag section where a house is placed on the back of a section in a poor neighbourhood. Bishops “granny flat” could be a struggling families hell hole. They don’t care because look how many migrants lives they are improving This is the result of Labour’s goal in 1984 when it (behind closed doors) made “far-reaching decisions” about the “cultural makeup of Ne Zealand”.
The Greens (for their part) forsook human ecology (“some cultures have more children than others” – Keith Locke).
Bishop can bang on about granny flats as though he is Mr Fix-it but the left-wing media are silent (unless frogs are involved). Joel McManus says young humans now days want to live in cities “as big as you like”. Meanwhile Paul Spoonley is still puzzled as to why New Zealander’s attitudes to immigration are the outlier despite Satchi and Satchi’s 1996 brains advertisement (a process he was involved in) and:

As with debates about biculturalism, the media play a critical role in determining the nature of public discussion and private/public understanding. Along with certain institutions, especially the education system, the media provide one of the most important, and possibly the most important, point of contact. The media, in all its diverse forms – print, radio, television, electronic – is a key institution in the creation and distribution of images and messages about our community(ies). Those significant others in our community, in the absence of in-depth personal contact or experience, will be described and explained to us via the media.It helps confirm who we are as individuals and members of various communities. As the demographic make-up of New Zealand has changed since the late 1980s, the media have played a critical role in exploring what this means for all of us.

It’s almost as though, the latter, is a violation of an academics fiduciary duty: he is advocating bias?

Winston Peters and New Zealand First : Politicising Immigration
In reviewing the decade, and the coverage of immigration issues in the print media, it is the dominant role played by Winston Peters in defining and generating debate which stands out in the New Zealand context. It is particularly noticeable during the 1996 and 2002 election campaigns. There are some aspects which characterise both Winston Peters’ contribution and the relationship of many in the media to him.
The first aspect is the politicisation of immigration.

42 said...

Although NZ has gone through peaks and troughs with immigration, the current trend is looking more like abandoning ship, a distressed vessel clearly plenty see no hope for. Some of those driven souls take their much needed vitality and skills elsewhere, for good. That too will be praying on government minds. That's 100% contributing taxpayers, gone for good.

Paul Henry publicly doubted whether this time NZ could pick herself up yet again, such is the damage of the past few years. Good question!

But know this. Labour have not just drunk the Kool Aid, they've drowned in it. They now falsly believe sovereignty was never surrendered by Maori, in the treaties 1984 revisionist history to suit radical power hungry Maori. You think Dunedin Hospital is bad, well, if we go down the progressive path just one teency weency more time, NZ, or should I say, "Aotearoa" and Dunedin Hospital woes will become symbolically synonymous. Those of us left behind best be hoping Labours poll manipulation is plain wrong!

Because protest all you like, there will be nothing and no one who matters left to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Alias said...

"While it is true that half of New Zealand’s population is below average intelligence......"

Brilliant deduction, although I suspect Christopher Luxon and the coalition won't like that description of their supporters.

Tom Hunter said...

It's a funny sort of "austerity" that sees the State in Britain larger than ever after 14 years of Tory rule, with the associated tax burdens also the heaviest since WWII.

In the times of both Thatcher (and here in NZ), the objective was not "austerity" (which is yet another made-up Lefty sound bite), but getting the government out of running businesses. For a while it did reduce State spending and size but that was a byproduct of the main aim. Call it "restructuring" or "privatisation" but not "austerity".

And across the Western world we're just coming off a period where the State blew vast amounts of money into the economy and succeeded only in hurting people with inflation. A sugar high that was always going to end.

Meanwhile over in Argentina there's a real austerity program going on:
Tens of thousands of state workers were cut as were more than half of government ministries, including the Ministry of Culture, as well as the Ministries of Labor, Social Development, Health, and Education (which Milei dubbed “the Ministry of Indoctrination”). Numerous government subsidies were eliminated, and the value of the peso was cut in half.

Those actions were both preceded and followed by the usual arguments:
Critics warned that these measures would be disastrous, and many took it for granted that the remedies would deepen Argentina’s recession.
...
“A deep recession will also take place,” Werner wrote, “as the fiscal consolidation kicks in and as the decline in household income depresses consumption and uncertainty weighs on investment.”

Felix Salmon, the chief financial correspondent at Axios, concurred, comparing Milei’s policies to “a wrecking ball.” “Milei’s budget cuts will cause a plunge in household income, as well as a deep recession,"


Instead the economy is growing again, and faster than even Milei's supporters hoped for, plus inflation has been cut from hundreds of % to double digit annual rate - still bad but way better than before.

You can read the rest of the article which details the theoretical failures of Keynesian theory in making these predictions, as well as its practical failures in nations:
In the Keynesian school of economics, it’s taken as gospel that government spending fuels economic growth. This is why you’ll find so many Keynesians who argue that even destructive phenomena like war and hurricanes are actually good for the economy, because they stimulate government spending.

This was the argument economist Paul Krugman made several years ago when he said that an alien invasion, real or fake, would be good for the economy, since it would mobilize a massive amount of military spending, similar to World War II.

The idea is simple: government spending is good even if it’s producing goods that are unnecessary, such as weapons created for an alien invasion that is not even real.

The idea that Argentina would be slashing government spending during a recession runs counter to Keynesian orthodoxy, which teaches that recessions are precisely when “fiscal stimulus” is needed the most, since negative economic conditions often result in a predictable market failure: a decline in spending.

The Barron said...

"Big Mommy Government"???
Putting the Americanism aside, perhaps you should examine the full history and I challenge you to find any decade in which Southland and Otago did not disproportionately contribute to the GDP in the positive. The health systems in every other region has been partly built on the wealth of the south
I remain in favour of the Labour reforms for a far more unified and coordinated nation health system, with the ability for Maori to effectively take the lead on health delivery to Maori.
However, the tripartite coalition favour post-code health lottery. Why wouldn't they when they know their financial backers are urban and the provinces are just a means to an end.
There were communities in rural Southland or Otago where the local community hostipal was where you were born, and the hospice facility was where you saw your last days looking out on the hills your family and friends had toiled. Labour and National closed them in the '80s & '90s, with the promise that your regional hostipal would meet all needs. The rural electorate slavishly voted blue no matter the betrayal. The traditional farming families sold the farms, and Wiakato dairy farmers took over many with profit above community, Afrikaans accents were as common as scones at farmer meetings.
It is difficult to imagine custodian patriarchs of the National party like Tallboys or Gordon comprehending how there political prodigy could betray these regions.

John Hurley said...

People used to be hung drawn and quartered for selling out to foreigners; now they are knighted.
https://nopunchespulled.com/2024/10/09/the-admirable-matthew-hooton/comment-page-1

pdm said...

Surely anyone that thinks Labour is around 30% of the Party Vote is dreaming.

Roy Morgan with them on 23% seems much more realistic.

I have said elsewhere that Labour's big problem next election will be if most or maybe even all of the Maori seats come back to them. On a Party Vote of say between 25%/30% and assuming they retain their current (diehard) Electorate Seats they are not going to get many in on the list which will surely cause an internal `dog fight' of epic proportions.

Particularly as they are lacking strong competent leadership at present and no matter who takes over from Hipkins it is hard to see that changing.

BlisteringAttack said...

As a university quarter landlord and Otago alumnus, I have observed over the decades the economic decline of Dunedin. Take out the university from Dunedin and you have something like the backwater of Invercargill. Ideally, the Dunedin hospital should be largely the size & function of the one at Kew in Invercargill. Not a $3B white elephant.

The Barron said...

Austerity is a neo-liberal economic theory, not a made-up lefty sound bite. If it now can be used as you describe, is only because of its total failure and discredit when it went from theory to implementation.

The Barron said...

Kew hospital has limited capacity. When Otago and Southland hospital boards were merged in 2010 to form the Southern District Health Board, it was for the purpose of ensuring primary health care at Invercargill or Alexandra, with specialist care in Dunedin, which was also the teaching hospital. Te Whatu Ora, was to give more of a national focus for specialized care.
So your call for a Dunedin hospital of the 'size and function ' of Kew, means no specialized health care for the south, or teaching hospital for the south island.

BlisteringAttack said...

No teaching hospital in the South Island? I have a Med student tenant that will be off for his 4th year Med placement at Christchurch hospital next year. He also said that Hagley Oval is across the road from the hospital. Test cricket is another attraction the backwater of Dunedin can't offer.

John Hurley said...

According to Asia NZ Foundation the majority (52%) think immigration from Asia will be positive, although there is a 20 point difference between those of Asian and those of European/Maori heritage.
I mean good heavens: might there not be a margin of error and a verdict there?
Might it not be that this is really just a revolution by elite interests (your Oxford educated Auckland University/ property investor/ economist/ Upper Class/ Economy Surfers)? Could it be that popular opinion is suppressed? Do not the powerful media people publicly scold "racists"?

The Barron said...

Last I saw the Otago Oval was a test venue. One of the great sporting moments I was there for was Chatfield batting us to victory in 1984 /85 against Pakistan at Carisbrook. I admit to also being fond of my time at Lancaster Park in 1986 /87 when Snedden ripped through the Windies.
Anyway, misspoke on teaching hospital instead of medical school.
Your knowledge and views of health delivery in the South still falls short of even being half-baked.
I am sure those south of the Waitaki supported ChCh against cuts to the Women's hospital. It is a shame when the health needs of your neighbours is compromised for parochial or party political reason.

Anonymous said...

Mr The Barron. Your points are all excellently made from the viewpoint of a frog wishing itself the biggest, however small and dirty the pond must be to make it so.
Big Mommy Government does not appeal to you as a name although it does in fact.

Kevin said...

especially to The Barron: you will not get more or better in health, without a bigger and better economy. You will not get a bigger and better economy with NZ run as it has been. Big Mommy Government (which term seems to get your attention, which can't be a bad thing) using health as mechanism in a political economy that was set before the Indian Mutiny, is the problem. Hating on this or that party is just the flip side of a vinyl that has been overplayed. NZ has grown too big, and health is far far too complicated for such pretence.
What do the supposed thoughts of the long dead, who unlike you held some responsibility in their far distant day, have to do with this?

The Barron said...

The "long dead" paid into development of NZ with the view that the quality of health care would be continuous as they grew old, and for their children, grandchildren and generations to come.
It is simply corrupt that the relative primary, tertiary, disability and aged care is inadequate and misdirected.

It is a shame people like Kevin have naturalised the suffering of their neighbours.

Kevin said...

Mr The Barron, in reply to yours of 16 October: it is pleasing to read your acknowledgment of the dire effects of parochialism, although you don't seem to understand it is mainly self harming. My reference regarding parochialism re. Dunedin was to this point. It is all water under the Leith bridge, although it seems you, from your freq references to ancient times and mind reading of the dead, do not agree with Heraclitus. Read Professor Hunter's opinion in the ODT regarding history - 40 years of it in the Belly of the Beast, and he gets it. You don't.
How I wish to find (or had kept) the words of Right Honorable H Clark well before she was Minister let alone PM, that Health was a 'Control Agency' of some value to the Political Economy (note I do not play political favourites: The Right Hon Bill English was an especially egregious and poor practitioner of this) - can't find it now although it is highly relevant to those waking up to how Health has been used by politics. It could even wake you up.
NZ is too big for the old ways suited to the innocently ignorant, is no longer that ignorant, and too small for this kind of Control thinking - Dear Leader has followed the trail marked by Big Hel to the WHO. Oh, the Commissars will fight hard for this. But they will lose. There was Medicine before there was Health, and there was Hippocrates before there were these sort.

Anonymous said...

Mr The Barron, once more in reply to you if I may. Would it be wrong to say that you like purple prose, and ancient memories? Consider the beginning of John Masefields poem:
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Innocence persisted in becomes ignorance. Ignorance is what has allowed the Cleopatras of our age, such as PM Clark and her engenue Dear Leader, to be conveyed in state to higher better things. I thought, beginning my work 42 years ago, my job was to look after patients. No one said it was to pull an oar for that sort.
No one expects the apes and peacocks to know better, but I do think you should wake up and realise you are the cargo.

The Barron said...

Nostalgia aint what it used to be. Comments amaze me when we have a Deputy Prime Minister that has a career based on telling people "we could do it once, there is no reason we cannot do it again."

In terms of health care provision, New Zealand has the population of Melbourne. It would be incomprehensible to imagine someone in Footscray, St. Kilda or Mooney Valley having significantly different waiting times for cancer care. The idea that we have post code life expectancy and care provision in this country is appalling. Similarly, that significant regional areas would be denuded of medical specialist and expert care for the illnesses, disabilities and needs.

I have read those that have raised fiscal restrictions. Of course, these will always exist. It is a matter of a reasonable government directing resources to where the needs demand. Those in our society have a right to life and a quality of life. At the heart of this is the right to health care that takes care of the needs provided by equivalent first word jurisdictions, and an expectation that government provision is equally distributed towards need, regardless of post-code.

There is nothing parochial in this. It has been decades since I was resident in the south. I make the same pleas for Whangarei, the West Coast and Hastings. I believe that Maori should have the significant role in directing health care towards Maori. The government should be ensuring a budget that is collected to meet needs, not an obsession to restrict taxation, then cut services.

Those that founded and expanded our health system did not believe that the nation they were building would give less relative resources to the well-being of those to come. We should not naturalise it.

Kevin said...

There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. And even if that were not so, Isaiah Berlin's one noted contribution to the Philosophical corpus is that of Irreconcilable Goods - pick one thing, you exclude some other.
If you believe in The Good Old Days, a written professional memoir of a long dead RN who set up Nursing in NZ describes begging the Government of day for vehicles for rural District nursing. Which they got - tiny Austins. 6. For the whole country. Which could not get up the muddy lanes. So at next allocation they got 2 ton trucks, which the RNs were not strong enough to wrestle with the steering wheel. There will never be perfect. And I do believe those days had features we now lack - simplicity, earnest and honest governance (gaze going no higher than the professional bodies), and a populace who if uncredentialled did not contain the same proportion of the unwilling to see.
Farinata degli Uberti, visited by Dante and Virgil in Hell, shares the ability of all those in Inferno, to see the past and the future, but not the present. There are those among us who see none of the 3.

Anonymous said...

A curious thing but connected (just) with the thrust of this article.
Thomas Carlyle and the younger also brilliant but v different Englishman John Stuart Mill were friends and correspondents - Carlyle had either the French Revolution or John Knox and the Reformation as works to progress, the philosophic differences between them possibly pushed Carlyle in the direction he famously went.
NZ, Valhalla of accountants and the Promised Land for Utilitarians, fell for Mills, intellectually. And finds itself, like the Qajar dynasty of old Persia, up a v long creek without an intellectual paddle. Led by panoplied but degraded minions of a dusty provenance.

Dunedin, settlers of his kind, which could have followed Carlyle in spirit, hard though that would have been and is probably impossible now, is the scar left by a Utilitarian boil that burst some time ago.

Carlyle had a positive ( if unpleasant to some as though that matters) faith, Mills had probability.
Mills thought virtue led necessarily to happiness, Carlyle insisted on Entsagen ( renunciation of personal happiness as essential to noble action).

Well, NZ. You have chosen to worship Mills.
Dunedin, you watched your Moses go to a Promised Land that you cannot follow.