Jon Voight is right: NZ’s die-while-you wait health system creates “many deaths”

Protesting what he calls Barack Obama’s “obsession with trying to ram this health bill through to create a socialist America,” actor Jon Voight told thousands of anti-ObamaCare protestors in Washington recently:

    We would be no better off than the European countries and Canada and New Zealand who suffer greatly from a poor healthcare system. Their rationing system creates many deaths."

For my American readers who might think that’s hyperbole, that’s certainly true of New Zealand’s die-while-you-wait health “system.” Here’s some posts from NOT PC that demonstrate the point:

• They died of it
  Three Hawkes Bay people have died waiting for coronary bypass surgery . . .
  
• Cold comfort in die-while-you-wait hospitals
  . . .  figures were released revealing that up to one in eight patients at Wellington's hospitals "is the victim of a medical accident, error or mishap," and up to twenty-three patients of Wellington's Capital Coast Health were either killed or endured serious harm through inattention, incompetence and bungling. . . Capital Coast Health apologists issued the airy dismissal that "these problems occur everywhere" . . .
  
• The "human face" of New Zealand's socialist medical system
  The Herald has three more tales showing the "human face" of New Zealand's socialist medical system . . .
  
• Capital Coast: Not just a die-while-you-wait health system
  Following the death of a one-day old baby after her and her mother were released from Wellington hospital just six hours after giving birth, details have now been released under the Official Information Act showing that up to one in eight patients at Wellington's hospitals "is the victim of a medical accident, error or mishap," and up to twenty-three patients of Wellington's Capital Coast Health were either killed or endured serious harm through inattention, incompetence and bungling.
  Radio NZ story here. Dom Post story here.
  The information describes the standard of care at Capital Coast Health as "a shambles." An independent November audit stated that "crisis management was the normal operating environment at Wellington Hospital." And all while government spending on the government's health system has rocketed. The answer is clearly not more of our money.
  
• The Wellington solution
  "It must be wearing," says Stephen Franks, "to work in a spiritless atmosphere - hating management but being cynical about all solutions." Giving a talk to the Auckland Medico-Legal Association, he was told afterwards that “hospital productivity had probably dropped 20% as many medical professionals had given up going the extra mile to cover for system deficiencies.” And all this while govt spending on the govt's die-while-you-wait health system has rocketed.
  
• New ministers, same old failure
  . . . health spending has doubled in the last ten years while education spending has ballooned by 7% a year every year for the last ten years -- an enormous spending binge -- but with almost nothing to show for the deluge of taxpayer money beyond inflated public sector prices and emptier taxpayer pockets: all major health indicators for example have either held steady or declined as waiting lists have continued to climb, while all literacy studies show either decreases in functional literacy or only negligible improvements.
  
• Rationed health care is hardly health care at all
  The Government won't fund Herceptin, a an early-stage drug for breast cancer that has saved lives overseas. It won't fund Gardasil, a vaccine for cervical cancer that promises to save the lives of hundreds of NZ women every year. Hospital waiting lists get ever longer, and hospital salaries here less and less attractive compared to what can be earned elsewhere.
  Lives are being lost, and the people who are saving lives are not being given the tools to do the job. Such is the result of the rationing of health care, which is precisely how government health care is delivered.
  
• When more patients is a good thing
  . . . When this architect is hired by profit-making businesses to design their emergency rooms, his clients actually want him to attract more people inside. In their view, attracting more customers is a good thing, since more customers equals greater profits, and and increased ability to treat even more patients.
  Such are the incentives in private medicine.
  By contrast, when the government builds emergency rooms, more people are a nuisance. More patients equals an increasing strain on limited resources. More people in the emergency room is a problem.
  Such are the disincentives in state-run medicine.
  
• Lindsay Perigo: Wankers, wowsers, waiting lists and Islamofascists
  Ronald Reagan used to tell the story, though not to Mikhail Gorbachev, of the fellow in the late unlamented Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, who bought a car. He was told by a clerk behind a desk that delivery would be seven years three months and five days away. “Morning or afternoon?” asked the buyer. “Morning or afternoon?” echoed the clerk … what difference does it make when it’s seven years three months and five days away?” “Well,” said the buyer, “it has to be the afternoon. The plumber’s coming in the morning.”
  That’s about what it’s like now in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Aotearoa. No, you don’t have to wait for a plumber. You don’t have to queue for bread. There’s no toilet paper shortage. . .  But here in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Aotearoa, Nanny State runs the health system. What does she give us? Waiting lists. How does she reduce the waiting lists? By tearing them up! You don’t get your surgery but you’re no longer on a waiting list because Nanny says you’re not. She’s sent you back to your GP. Now isn’t that reassuring when you’ve got skin cancer. Fat lot of use your GP is there, but Nanny is saying you have to wait till your tumour is really big, by which time it’s more difficult to remove and will probably have metastasised. Nanny’s die-while-you-wait health system is also currently serving up chronic staff shortages and, of course, strikes. Be very … healthy.
  
• The culling fund
  ”People got so upset over a cull of a few hundred horses, yet relatively little protests over 35,000 humans being culled from hospital waiting lists last year. It is mind bloggling that Labour can literally throw billions and billions of dollars into this black hole [what you might call the 'Culling Fund'], and not get any significant improvement in terms of elective operations. No wonder so many people have private medical insurance.”
I wonder how many of you have private health insurance? (Yes, I do.) How do you feel about it? And how do you feel about paying twice -- once for your health insurance, and once for a die-while-you-wait health system which is slowly becoming a die-while-you-wait-to-get-on-their-list system.


• Life-saving private cancer unit opens in Auckland
  . . . contract cancer in Eastern Europe or the UK, for example, and your chances of survival are less than half; but contract cancer in the US, and your chances vault up to nearly two-thirds. The reason Brits are more likely to die? "Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists." Despite this being all too clear, little has been or can be done to speed up diagnosis or cut waiting times in the die-while-you-wait public system NZ shares with the UK. In other words, people have been dying for the sake of a failed ideology.
  
• Death by ideology
  People are dying because of a failed ideology, says MacDoctor - "an attitude that places ideology above patient care" . . .

Libz backs Voight on NZ’s socialised medicine

I”m very pleased to see my colleague and health professional Dr Richard McGrath come out in support of Jon Voight’s excoriation of New Zealand’s die-while-you-wait health system.

     “Voight, [the father of Angelina Jolie and star of] dozens of movies including Midnight Cowboy, Catch 22 and Deliverance, took to the streets beneath Capitol Hill with thousands of other activists.
They were protesting President Barack Obama's plans to restructure the American healthcare system.
    “The 70-year-old Oscar-winner addressed the crowd shouting, "We would be no better off than the European countries and Canada and New Zealand who suffer greatly from a poor healthcare system. Their rationing system creates many deaths."

Says Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath, a Masterton GP:

Libz Back Hollywood Star's Denunciation of Socialised Medicine
    The Libertarianz Party has endorsed recent comments from actor Jon Voight condemning socialised health care.
    Party leader, medical doctor Richard McGrath said: "Mr Voight is quite correct in his denunciation of the health systems in countries such as Canada and New Zealand. While attempting to provide universal cover to entire populations regardless of individual ability to pay, such systems undermine choice and provide rationed care, with no guarantee of timely treatment. Unfortunately, lots of people end up dying needlessly on public hospital waiting lists."
    "In socialised health care with funding collected through taxation, a person cannot withdraw from the government scheme. There is no portability in the system. People are locked in, even if there are alternatives out there that better suit them and their families."
    "The Libertarianz Party believes New Zealanders should be able to use their own money to purchase health insurance, or contribute to health plans based around voluntary co-operatives."
    "There should be no facility whereby Kiwis can help themselves to other people's money to treat conditions often brought on by poor lifestyle choices. This is unjust, and provides disincentive for people to take ownership of their health problems."
    "Health care need not be expensive if insurance cover for unexpected and catastrophic illness could be purchased by way of a tax break for all income earners, and people could nominate what level of surcharge they were prepared to pay for their care."
    "Just as not all of us can afford to drive a Rolls-Royce, not all of us can afford premium quality health care. If we accept that, then there is motivation for people to work harder and reprioritise their spending so they can more easily afford a higher level of care."
    "Health care is not a gift from heaven; it is a service provided by skilled professionals and support workers who have often made sacrifices to spend years in training, and who expect an income commensurate with the service they provide."
    "There is no innate right to receive subsidised health care, for this would have to be paid for by someone else who is given no choice in the matter. A right to health care enslaves doctors, nurses and others in the health industry. It is incompatible with the capitalist system of limited government, voluntary interaction, free trade and protection of individual rights."
    "I applaud the response to Mr Voight's comments by Sir Roger Douglas. As he suggests, in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, vast and increasing amounts of money have poured into the public health infrastructure with the aim of increasing affordability, reducing waste and increasing the quality and quantity of services. The diminishing returns on this investment are symptomatic of the failure of all socialist economies to allocate resources efficiently and justly through flexible pricing structures."
    "My party believes New Zealanders should be left free to organise their own health care. This would, for many, involve spreading financial risk by forming large co-operative groups or enrolling with insurers, so that catastrophic health situations can be managed."
    "The critical difference between this and the current system of taxpayer-funded public hospitals and subsidised primary care is that individuals can opt out when the service is unsatisfactory and take their money elsewhere."
    "Socialised medicine is a form of enslavement where people lose control of how their money is spent, and where health providers are so over-regulated that they become trapped, with private alternatives to the government-run system made near-impossible."
    "My party believes control of health care should be devolved gradually from politicians back to individuals, families and iwi. Our policies are consistent with this, and we will continue to push for privatisation of the health industry - in contrast to the National Party, who aim for continued nationalisation."

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Pigdogs, privatisation and the pliers

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath takes his regularly irreverent look at some of the past week’s headlines.

1. Dog mauling left woman looking like ‘blob of blood’ – A woman jogging down a country road near Putaruru is attacked and badly injured by a pack of eight pig hunting dogs. She has had the first of several operations to her mangled limbs and scalp. The female owner has now been arrested and charged. Assuming Margit Christensen was going about her lawful business, and that there was no reason for the dogs to attack her, the owner of the dogs should be held fully liable for the cost of the medical treatment and the police and ambulance callout (and the dogs should be shot forthwith). Ideally, if Ms Christensen had an insurance policy that covered all the costs associated with her treatment, her insurance company could then recover the amount paid out from the dogs’ owner.
Instead of this, the cost of treatment will be covered by the ACC insurance monopoly, whose premiums are paid at the point of a government gun. ACC will dictate what payments to the hospital are ‘appropriate’, and what help will be offered to Ms Christensen during her recovery. There is no capacity for New Zealanders to purchase a higher level of insurance cover from ACC by paying a higher premium – in the ACC monopoly, one size fits all. Policies are not individualized; New Zealanders are lumped into one amorphous collective, with no distinction made (among those who are not employed) for high or low risk lifestyles. No financial incentives exist for the private citizen who takes extra precautions in trying to keep out of harm’s way.
Just one more reason why accident insurance should be opened up to private competition.

2. ‘Government may support rights plan’ – Having said they will ratify the UN declaration on indigenous people’s (bogus) rights, the National Party are just beginning to realize what a draconian, backward document it is. At least Simon Power has stated that these imaginary rights are trumped by our constitutional framework and existing law. Which, thankfully, will render the UN declaration toothless. Looks like the Maori Party -- who announced rather prematurely that New Zealand would support the declaration (that the Clark government had so rightly opposed) -- is wagging the dog. If this declaration is ratified and ended up taking precedence over existing law, there would be a never-ceasing series of land occupations and multi-billion dollar compensation claims that would result in pitched battles and bloodshed.
One way to settle all outstanding Waitangi Treaty claims would simply be to issue shares in all Crown land currently under claim by Maori to individual Maori shareholders, not to tribal authorities or tribal leaders. Shareholders could purchase land to the value of their shareholding – first in gets the best land. Let them band together and create co-operative farms, vineyards, kumara patches – or whatever. The key to this is that once Crown land is transferred into private hands, the UN can’t touch it, or tell its owners what to do with it!

3. ‘Westpac looks set to follow BNZ and scrap penalty fees’ – In the minds of people like Jim Anderton and Chris Trotter our banks, oil companies and other multinational corporations form secret cartels that collude to fix prices, cut services and rip you and me off. Yet here we have banking giant Westpac having to cut fees because of that time-honoured price-chopping market place factor: competition. Now ANZ National and ASB are feeling the heat and inching closer to dropping their fees too. Looks like the grumbles from dissatisfied customers over the past year have made a difference. Marvellous what a bit of rivalry can do – while the banks fight it out among themselves, the winners will be you and I -- the customers.

4. ‘Man pulls out 13 of his own teeth with pliers’ – from the Daily Mail’s NHS horror file, another victim of the British public health system (along with an equal measure of self-neglect, to be fair). A 42 year old veteran of the British Army in Iraq says he tried to enrol with 30 dentists in East Yorkshire to get some treatment before giving up in frustration and repairing to the garden shed to perform a bit of DIY. This news article comes complete with picture of the amateur toothsmith, complete with gappy smile and thirteen presents for the Tooth Fairy.
Where even in New Zealand would anyone have to try thirty dentists before they could find one who would even see them? What dentist in their right mind would work for rock-bottom non-negotiable prices, while having to keep a small business afloat? Why do you think the goal of ‘equal access to all regardless of ability to pay’ means rationed die-while-you-wait care?

See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath

NOT PJ: Comics in the Clinics

A funny thing happened on the way to the hospital, explains Bernard Darnton…

We may have a die-while-you-wait health system but at least now in Canterbury you’ll die laughing. A “clown doctor” program begins at Christchurch Hospital in September.

I assume in these recession-bitten times that it’s cheaper than using normal doctors. Clown camp goes for six days and costs $475 whereas medical school goes on forever and costs an ulna and a tibia. If laughter truly is the best medicine we could expand the programme across the country and transfer all our hospitals’ assets into Clown Health Enterprises.

The Press reports that, “Clown doctors already operate in clown-care programmes worldwide.” I assume that’s “operate” in the general sense of “perform some kind of activity” rather than the more hospital-specific “cut people open and do intricate things to their internal organs.” The last thing you need when you’ve got a burst appendix is for the surgeon to turn your intestines into a balloon giraffe.

What are the clowns up to? (It’s a question we often ask here.) If they’re not performing facelifts to give people permanent smiles, what specialist medical care are these clowns providing?

The Press quotes Dr Thomas Petschner, who introduced the clowns to New Zealand, saying that the clowns’ aim was “to increase the wellbeing of the patients and to restore the healthy powers in the sick person.” Dr Petschner is also pioneering the use of clown translators.

When they’re not restoring the healthy powers, part of the clowns’ job is to “demystify painful or frightening procedures.” Maybe we should also get clown tax collectors. At the very least they’d be able to communicate easily with the clown accountants who run New Zealand’s finance companies.

If the clown doctor programme is successful I expect comedy-related treatment across the entire medical profession. Michèle A’Court would make a good anaesthetist. If I catch swine flu I demand a consultation with Mike King; I know I’ll be treated humanely before being slaughtered and sliced up for bacon. The whole thing could be topped off by appointing a clown as Minister of Health. This last idea may not be original.

Other industries could be transformed as well. The Greens could go one better than their “four wheels bad, two wheels good” policy and demand the transfer of all of New Zealand’s freight onto unicycles. Even accounting for the enormous shoes the industry’s footprint would become miniscule.

For the time being, the clown doctor programme is limited to entertaining sick children but the possibilities for putting clowns in charge of all parts of public life are endless. The results might not be any better than we get now but at least we’d know what we were in for.

* * Read Bernard Darnton’s column every Thursday here at NOT PC * *

Urgency! Urgency! Urgency! [update 2]

Wow! Isn’t this new National/ACT/Maori/Peter Dunne-Nothin Government hitting the ground running.  John Key has flown around the world in a plane.  He’s spoken to world leaders.  New ministers have got their heads down and their sleeves rolled up – they’ve been diving into their portfolios to get down to business.  And in its first out-of-the-blue “crisis,” new Foreign Minister Murray McCully took action to get those poor helpless travellers out of Thailand (well, you know, he would have taken action if we had an air force.) 

And now, parliament starts sitting again today!  Under urgency!

Shit, this a government that has things to do.  Things to do urgently.  They have an an action plan.  They’ve promised a first-hundred days of action that started back on November 19.  (Or today, depending on who you listen to.)

“Action Plan!”  “First Hundred Days of Action!”  “Urgency!” Sheesh, it almost leaves a feller breathless, don’t it?

  When you hear the words “action plan” and “first hundred days” you surely know you’re listening to spin.  At least, you would if you weren’t a press gallery buffoon like John Boy Armstrong.  What’s in this “27-point action plan” that requires so much urgency and comes accompanied with so much bluster? 

Anything about getting government off the necks of producers when it’s never been more urgent to do so?  Anything about slashing the fat from bloated government departments (hell, even slashing whole goddamn departments) so the dead weight of their unproductive carcasses can be taken off producers’ shoulders?  Anything at all about ceasing to pay no-hopers to breed, which would stop in its tracks the headlines of no-hopers killing those they’ve been paid to produce?

Of course not.  For the most part, they’re neither urgently necessary nor at all productive – just a politically-fuelled mixture of banal and batshit crazy that the sycophantic commentariat are lapping up like a little boy laps up his mother’s warm milk and oaties.  Let’s look at this “action plan” and see whether either urgency is justified, or “action” is a fair description (my comments are in italics).

On the economy :
• The introduction and passage of National's tax package into law before Christmas, with tax cuts beginning on 1 April 2009. 
    Derisory tax cuts that will be fully wiped out by hikes in ACC levies, and without any concomitant cuts in spending: which means taxpayers will have an extra borrowing bill to suck up, and producers will have to compete in the capital markets for the same credit as this government.
• Updating and publishing the economic and fiscal forecasts to gauge the true state of the government's books and determine the on-going effects of the international economic crisis.
    They’re going to urgently publish some more forecasts?  Gee.  Can’t wait.
• Appointing a Minister of Infrastructure and begin implementing National's infrastructure plan.
    They’re going to spend $7 billion more of your money.  While cutting taxes.  Which means they’re going to borrow money to bid up the prices of contractors and building materials at the very time these need to contract from their inflated heights in order to assist real recovery. Only to a politician (or to an economist in thrall to politicians) can this make sense. Another spending binge, just like the last spending binge – and we get to pick up the tab. Again.
• The introduction of an RMA reform bill to reduce the costs, delays, and uncertainties in the Act.
    Window dressing.  It’s just a few revisions to exempt the government from the RMA so it can get on with its multi-billon dollar ThingBig 2.0 public works programme, and a few others to allow “companies to win the right to take private land.”  Nothing to see here, nothing at all.
• The introduction and passage of National's transitional relief package into law to offer extra assistance to Kiwis who are worst hit by redundancy.
    More spending.  More welfare.  No change.
• Calling in public service chief executives and instruct them to undertake a line-by-line review of their department's spending.
    And this will save how much?

It’s pathetic isn’t it.  In the face of the world’s biggest economic calamity for decades, that was National’s “urgent” economic plan to address it: basically the same menu they had a year ago with extra spending to go.   More spending, more welfare, and some tax cuts that aren’t worth a damn.   Nothing to see here at all.  So what about the next seven points on the “action plan,” those promised to “fix” Laura N’Order:

• On Law and Order, that nice Mr Key says National will:
  • Introduce legislation to remove the right of the worst repeat violent offenders to be released on parole. 
      One point that’s worth a damn.
  • Introduce legislation to clamp down on criminal gangs and their drug trade.
      Populist tosh that, to the extent that it’s successful, should help to raise profits for the criminals who remain in the drug trade – and make lessening freedom of association for the rest of us all the easier whenever the government wants to.
  • Introduce legislation to toughen the bail laws to make it harder for criminals awaiting trial to get bail.
      Another point that’s worth a damn iff at the same time court waiting times are brought down so people whom the courts must still consider innocent don’t have to rot in jail while they wait for their docket to come up.
  • Introduce legislation to tackle increasing violent youth crime by bolstering the Youth Court with a range of new interventions and sentences.
      John Key's 'Plan Blue' is for the state to either coddle kids or shackle them -- or have them sent to boot camp.  None of which, I submit, requires urgency or will seriously address increasing violent youth crime.  But it will attract headlines, which is all this exercise is really about, eh.
  • Introduce legislation to require DNA testing for every person arrested for an imprisonable offence.
     This is abuse.  It’s as simple as that. Remember that an arrest is not a conviction.  An arrest used to mean you were still presumed to be innocent, remember?  Not any more.  As from now you will retain (for the moment) the right not to give evidence against yourself, but even before being convicted you will lose your right not to give the state bits of your body.  The National Party has had the presumption of innocence doctrine in its sights for some time. Such a long-held cornerstone of liberty against state power should not be overturned so easily, or at all.
  • Introduce legislation to give police the power to issue on-the-spot protection orders to help them protect victims of domestic violence.
      Window dressing that will empower unproven accusations to have the force of law.
  • Introduce legislation to compensate victims by levying criminals and putting the money into a Victims’ Compensation Scheme.
     More window dressing.  The amount proposed, just $50 per crime, will cost more to collect than it will ever amount to.  The principle with victim restitution should be that criminals should never be able to gain a value from their crimes, and should to the fullest extent possible be forced to make restitution for their crimes to their victim(s).  This is not even a first step towards establishing that principle.

So some good, some bad and a whole  lot of window dressing.  And nothing really that could justify the phrase “action plan.”  So what about the third component: education. Will they fix what’s being taught to young New Zealanders that means one-in-five leaves schools functionally illiterate and innumerate (just as they were when National was last in power)?  That has left some 800,000 NZ workers unable even to transfer printed information to an order form?  Will they begin to wean young NZers off the cradle-to-grave welfare expectations they imbibe in Nanny’s indoctrination centres?  Will they work towards taking power away from the Ministry and the teacher unions? Will they hell.  We’re looking at more testing, even more paperwork, and ever more bossyboots governance of successful educators by those who are provably unsuccessful.

In education, Nation will (“under urgency”!:
• Amend the Education Act 1989 so the Minister of Education can set agreed National Standards in literacy and numeracy.
   Like King Canute commanding the tides, National intends to command literacy and numeracy to rise without any plan to abandon the teaching methods that have so demonstrably caused the problem.
• Publish requirements for primary and intermediate schools to report to parents in plain English about how their child is doing compared to the set National Standards, and compared to other children their age.
   More paperwork for teachers over-burdened by the stuff.
• Begin work on allocating the additional $500 million capital investment in schools in preparation for our first Budget to start future-proofing our schools.
    More window dressing.  As Phil Rennie demonstrated, the Clark Government blew an extra $3.1 billion on education, a 26% real increase, with exactly nothing at all to show for it, showing convincingly that if throwing money at the factory schools could fix the problems of the factory schools, that would have already happened.  Clearly, National has learned nothing from the news.
• Introduce a "voluntary bonding" scheme which offers student loan debt write-offs to graduate teachers who agree to work in hard-to-staff communities or subjects.
    The payoff for National’s student election bribe.  Forcing the impecunious to pay for the education of those who will one day be wealthy.
• Amend the Education Act 1989 to increase the current fines for parents of truant children from $150 and $400 for first time and repeat offenders respectively, and allow the Ministry of Education to take prosecutions.
    Frankly, I’d be giving parents whose children don’t attend the factory schools a medal, not a fine.

So nothing there worth a damn either.  How about the next “sector”?  I bet you’re just champing at the bit to find out, aren’t you?  What “changes” will we see here that requires so much urgency.  Will we see a change to the attitude that places ideology above patient care?  To the  die-while-you-wait health system that perpetuates this attitude?  To a cut in the number of bureaucratic parasites that infest the government’s creaking hospital “system”?  Of course not.

In health, National will:
• Instruct the Ministry of Health and DHBs to halt the growth in health bureaucracy.
    Clearly the story of King Canute is required reading for National’s ministers.  “Instructing” bureaucrats to stop doing what bureaucrats without setting up a mechanism to do that  is like passing laws to stop the tides flooding the land without building flood walls to do the job.  Which means this is more window dressing.
• Open the books on the true state of hospital waiting lists and the crisis in services.
    The old political ploy: Point the finger for failure at the last government so you can buy time for your own stuff-ups to take hold.
• Fast-track funding for 24-hour Plunketline.
    Keeping their promise on populist vote-buying – hardly a matter requiring urgency.
• Instruct that a full 12-month course of Herceptin be publicly available.
    Keeping another promise on populist vote-buying.
• Begin implementing National's Tackling Waiting Lists plan.
   Another plan without detail that, like Tony Ryall’s command to emergency rooms, shows the effect of studying King Canute is having a resounding effect on National’s policy writers.  Look to see the same sort of command-and-fudge approach to waiting lists that the Clark Government used.
• Establish a "voluntary bonding scheme" offering student loan debt write-off to graduate doctors, nurses, and midwives agreeing to work in hard-to-staff communities or specialties.
    As above, this is the necessary payoff for National’s student election bribe.  Forcing the impecunious to pay for the education of those who will one day be wealthy – the result of abject timidity to remove the price controls that have made communities and specialities hard to staff.

John Key said at the release of this “action plan,” "Our commitment to move immediately to tackle the issues that matter demonstrates our determination to build a brighter future for all New Zealanders."

I invite you to consider how many of these 27 points genuinely tackle the issues that matter, whether there is really any need to move urgently on any of them (beyond the urgent need to look like “action men”), and what this shows about any genuine determination about “building a brighter future” for anyone but themselves and their cabinet colleagues.

The truth is that given the scale of the world's economic problems very few of those "points" could really be called "action" in the full meaning of that word, and those that appear so are either window dressing at best, or at worst they make Cullen’s tax-and-spend proclivities look conservative – at least he was up front about making you pay through the nose, instead of extracting the readies by stealth.

We are about to see two weeks of “urgency” – two weeks of much sound and fury that will signify nothing at all beyond the sound and the fury, and end in nothing much more than we had before.

Plus ca change.

UPDATE 1: The odour of capitulation in the National caucus must be all-enveloping.  Annie Fox points out that following the stabbing and killing of a Christchurch taxi driver former entrepreneur Stephen Joyce has now joined the ranks of the knee-jerk Nanny populists :

    "Transport Minister Steven Joyce will review the use of distress buttons, video cameras and safety screens to separate drivers and passengers."
    Does the government have rules on the use of buttons, cameras and screens? If they do have these rules then the only thing Joyce needs to do is get rid of them.
    But let's presume that they rules don't exist - why is the government wasting time and resources on this matter - surely it is the responsibility of the taxi driver what security he would like. Just like they decide if they are going to have a Navman or CD player or air freshener.

Absolutely right.  As she says, it didn’t take long for Joyce to become just another politician.

UPDATE 2:  Bob Jones has a brilliant idea for the National Party to keep the Maori Party on side and help solve the economic crisis:

- free breakfast in bed for Maoris - also solve looming unemployment problem with breakfast makers and deliverers. Maori Party now in bag for sure.

Death by ideology

People are dying because of a failed ideology, says MacDoctor - "an attitude that places ideology above patient care," and support for the failed public hospital system above any genuine concern with the die-while-you-wait figures that are the result. 

Libertarianz oppose the die-while-you-wait system. "Healthcare is far too important to be left in government hands," declared Libertarianz Health Spokesman and Masterton GP Richard McGrath yesterday as he reiterated the principles behind, and details of, his party's health policies.

The principles upon which all Libertarianz policy is founded are:

• Economic and personal freedom
• Individual responsibility
• Tolerance of other people's life choices
• Protection of people's equal rights by the government

The core tenets of Libertarianz health policy are:

• Distributing shares in state-owned health facilities to the communities that use them
• Tax relief – making the first $50k of earnings tax-free for 5 years, with no income tax thereafter - so that New Zealanders can purchase health insurance or make other arrangements for the costs of their health care
• Establishment of medical savings accounts, with gradual phasing out of automatic funding over 5 years
• Allowing private competitors to ACC and other state monopolies in the health bureaucracy to establish themselves in the marketplace, thus putting downward pressure on prices
• Abolition of statutory bodies such as the Medical Council, to be replaced by consumer groups more in-tune with the concerns of health service consumers
• Phased removal of subsidies from health care, in order to establish a level playing field for providers of alternative therapies

Sounds good to me. It's enough to make me vote Libertarianz.

Scandal shmandal

Neutron bombs, consulships in Monaco, treason, TVNZ and where John Key was in 1986.  Looking at what politicians and media consider important just nine days from an election, you wouldn't think the world economy is looking worse than at any time since the mid-thirties, would you.

I don't care at this stage about Winston Peters' baubles, his suspension, his censure by the Privileges Committee, what he said to Owen Glenn and when ...   At this stage all of that stuff is just sideshow without substance.

I don't care about Chinese immigrants donating to political parties -- except to the extent that the parties donated to are bloody thieves anyway, which of course we already know.

I don't care about who bought lunch for John Key when he was 26, or where he was working  -- or which drugs Matthew Hooton was killing his brain cells with at the same age -- and as "neutron bombs" go, even Russell Brown concedes this particular one was more fizzer than most.

I couldn't care less about how many shares Gerry Brownlee owns, or owned.  Frankly, I'm surprised he even knows how to buy them.

I don't care about Helen and Peter's marriage, and whether or not he can make a cup of tea -- either after sex, or before.

I don't care about who sacked whom at the Department of Conservation, or which scampi lawyer Ian Ewen-Street slept with.

I don't care about the frankly childish claims of "treason," or how "TVNZ has entered the 2008 General Election campaign on the side of the National Party," or the Herald has entered the campaign on the side of Hard Labour.

Here's what I do care about:

• I do care about the worldwide economic disaster and how NZ's politicians can make it worse.  I have no confidence at all that any of the major party politicians has the faintest idea how to confront it. All we can hope for it seems is they don't make things worse.  A vain hope, I suspect.
• I do care that at a time of "low unemployment" most of New Zealand's working middle class is now on welfare -- and happy about it -- and there are now 182,091 people  (and rising) receiving DPB and Invalids Benefits -- and this is before the full effects of the economic storm hits New Zealand (and before John Key's promise to cover the expenses and mortgage payments of all New Zealanders who lose their jobs in the current recession.)
• I do care that under constant nannying New Zealanders are turning more and more into sheeple.
• I do care that two in five young New Zealanders leave this country's factory schools functionally illiterate and all but innumerate.  And I care that good people like Anita McCall continue to die in the country's die-while-you-wait hospital system. And I'm dismayed that in the face of these calamities, both politicians and public seem utterly unwilling to confront the fundamental fact that socialised medicine and socialised medicine are a disaster, and they seem to think instead that the answer is Tony Ryall.
• I do care that New Zealanders' property rights have been taken away by the Resource Management Act and given wholesale over to town planners, and not one major party shows any intention of recognising them ever again.
• I do care that when the world's perfect economic storm is about to hit, both major parties, and most of the minor ones, want to shackle agriculture and industry for the sake of a climatic delusion.
• I do care that the Electoral Finance Act has taken free speech away, yet we've seen no indication from the party who says they plan to "replace" it what exactly they're going to replace it with.

There's more than enough happening right in front of our faces that needs to be addressed --stuff that genuinely affects all of us -- without going through people's garbage to find stuff that doesn't. Stuff that I just don't care about at all.

Life-saving private cancer unit opens in Auckland

Several of you reading this will have your lives saved by the new Mercy Hospital radiology unit that formally opens this week -- New Zealand's first private cancer treatment unit, which comes complete with two brand spanking new linear accelerators.  Story here at RadioNZ.

MercyAscot promises to start treatment within two weeks of diagnosis, a life-savin

g contrast with Auckland's public system in which it can take up to eight or even twelve weeks before starting treatment.

These are crucial weeks for patients survival prospects.

Research has made it abundantly clear that delays in starting cancer treatment is a leading indicator of survival chances -- contract cancer in Eastern Europe or the UK, for example, and your chances of survival are less than half; but contract cancer in the US, and your chances vault up to nearly two-thirds. The reason Brits are more likely to die? "Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists."

Despite this being all too clear, little has been or can be done to speed up diagnosis or cut waiting times in the die-while-you-wait public system NZ shares with the UK.

In other words, people have been dying for the sake of a failed ideology.  Thank goodness there's now a life-saver up the road.

UPDATE:  News in today of cancer patient Anita McCall, pictured below, who the public system simply "forgot" about.  Another New Zealander killed by this failed ideology:

    STUFF: Hospital 'forgot' about cancer patient
    A woman who died during cancer surgery after being forgotten about for more than a year in a hospital system could have beaten the disease if the blunder was not made, an inquest has found.
    Anita McCall, 48, died in Hutt Hospital in August 2006 as a result of complications during surgery.
    She was referred to the hospital by her GP in January 2005, for suspected haemorrhoids, but it was 13 months before she was seen by a specialist. By that stage rectal cancer had started to ravage her body.
    Coroner Garry Evans' findings come a week after the health and disability commissioner revealed details of three other patients who suffered serious health complaints after being "lost in the system"...

The "human face" of New Zealand's socialist medical system

The Herald has three more tales showing the "human face" of New Zealand's socialist medical system:

Patient 1 - Aug 2006: A suspected retinal detachment in Whangarei is referred to specialists at Auckland DHB.
Ten days later: No word from Auckland; patient asks Whangarei doctor to follow up. Auckland confirm they have the referral.
Feb 2007: Still no action from Auckland. Patient again asks doctor what is happening. By then the condition has worsened too much for the treatment.
Nov 2007: Patient's left eye is removed.

Patient 2 - Aug 2006: Patient found to have narrowing of arteries after a minor stroke.
Dec 2006: MidCentral DHB (Palmerston North) surgeon refers patient to a specialist at Capital and Coast DHB.
Oct 2007: Patient asks for update, discovers Capital and Coast has no record of the referral. Another referral made.
Nov 2007: Capital and Coast DHB has no record of second referral. Patient has a second, more serious stroke.

Patient 3 - May 2007: Patient discovers blood in his urine, tells GP. Tests indicate possibility of prostate cancer. Patient is referred to Counties Manukau DHB.
The health board misplaces the referral.
Six weeks after the referral was sent it is actioned. Patient prioritised as needing review in four to six weeks.
Oct 2007: Only after GP asks health board why nothing has happened is the patient reviewed. He is diagnosed with prostate cancer. It had already spread to his bone.

As Liberty Scott says, this "are not the sort of thing Michael Moore describes when he waxes lyrically about how socialised health care is so wonderful," but it is what characterises socialised medicine -- and I know several NOT PC readers with your own horror stories who can easily easily confirm these cases are not unique.

Can someone tell me why New Zealanders put up with being stolen from to fund this die-while-you-wait monstrousness.

Give the hospitals back!

                          

As long as the taxpayer is fleeced to fund the die-while-you-wait health system, there's little chance of anything better emerging.

And as long as the state runs the health system, it will feel entitled to tell you that you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't smoke this and you can't snort that.

The state's die-while-you-wait health system has to be ended -- personal freedom requires it; economic freedom requires it; and our own personal health demands it.

Libertarianz health spokesman Dr Richard McGrath explains how to wean the health system off the taxpayers' tit and take it totally and painlessly out of the state's hands in just five years, and give the hospitals back to those who paid for them: taxpayers.

 Head to Libz TV to watch Doc McGrath's five-minute presentation on the five-year privatisation programme.  Take your hospitals back!

How many dead rats will John Key make *you* swallow?

Near enough everyone by now is aware that John Key has been swallowing dead rats to make himself look the way he thinks an electable politician should look.  He's swallowed enough dead rats already to make a bishop sick.

Interest-free student loans to bribe university-age voters? Me too. KiwiSaver? Me too. Foreign policy? Me too. Welfare for Working families?  Me too. Waffling on about climate change and emissions trading? Me too. Privatisation?  Cap on GP's fees? Bulk funding for schools?  There's the faintest whiff of controversy? Oh, go on then, me too.

There is nothing National will not do for power, including abandoning whatever principles it ever had, and fooling every supporter it ever had about what it stands for and where it's really going. 

But I'm not really here this morning to remind of the dead rats that Flip Flop Boy has already swallowed, I'd like to point out, or remind you, about just a few of the dead rats he's going to insist that you swallow.  As Steve Pierson says at The Standard (yes, Virginia,The Standard), "It strikes me there is a disconnect between what prospective National voters expect it to do in government and what it has actually promised it would do." 

"Disconnect" is the kindest way to describe the gap between what most Blue Team voters expect, and what National will deliver -- the size of that gap is the measure of cynicism of National's campaigners. 

Think power prices are too high and National will know how to lower them? Think again -- it was them who signed up to Kyoto, and who introduced the RMA.

Think petrol prices are too high and expect National to slash the fuel tax? Hell, no - Maurice Wimpianson has already ruled that out. 

How about reversing the anti-smacking law?  Not a chance -- Flip Flop Boy has already ruled that out. 

'Fixing' law and order?  They've got no more clue than the Red Team what to do. 

'Fixing' the RMA?  Nick Smith couldn't even fix a good going-away dinner - and he should.

'Fixing' the economy?  Who are you kidding.

Or 'fixing' the Electoral Finance Act?  Have you any idea what they will actually introduce as a replacement, or how -- because they sure don't have a clue. 

Reversing Labour's Emissions Trading Scheme? The bastards have got their own anti-industrial wet dream they want to introduce.  

Think they'll fix the die-while-you-wait health system, or the state's factories of illiteracy laughingly called schools? Are you kidding -- the health and school systems are the ones they introduced.

Or make serious tax cuts -- the sort of tax cut that would leave a Treasurer crying?  Hell no. Not in a million fiscal quarters.

So why would you even considering voting for the bastards?  They still don't even know from one day to the next whether they're a party of compulsion or not. No wonder NZers are leaving in their droves, even with the expectation of a National Government come November.

As a commenter says at The Standard, watching National voters after the election will be like watching a friend who starts dating 'HotChickHot4U' off the internet, and she turns out to be a scam artist who ends up with half your house...  Self-delusion is not compulsory, it’s a choice. And if people can’t be bothered to try and find out what they’re getting, they get what they deserve."

How many dead rats can you swallow?  And why on earth would you want to?

Here's Monty Python.

UPDATE: "You vill play schport!" says Nanny Key.  Jawohl, Herr Neville!

Fifty-odd questions for National

By the time you read this post, I'll be holding up one end of the Libertarianz stand at Fieldays -- helping promoting reason, freedom and less government to an expected 150,000 punters strolling past our stand.

And since we'll be just three stands down the road from the National Party stand, we thought we should encourage passing punters to stop in and see them too, and ask any passing MPs some pointed questions.  In fact, for those so inclined, we'll be offering them some very pointed questions to ask.  Who better to ask them of, we thought?

And since we believe in fairness, we'll even give them advance notice of some of the very fair questions we've prepared for them ... 

Fifty-odd Fieldays questions for National

Q: RED TAPE: Which government departments will the National Party abolish to reduce government, in accordance with the stated aims of the National Party's constitution?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The Libertarianz unemployment policy is clear -- unemployment under Libertarianz would increase dramatically ... among bureaucrats, consultants and jobsworths. Start with the Ministries of Women's, Youth, Maori and Pacific Island Affairs, and NZ Rail and OSH, and then keep working on down ...

Q: SMACKING: At the anti-smacking rally outside parliament last year, National MPs stood up and said they were AGAINST the anti-smacking bill. One week later they all marched into parliament and voted FOR the Bill. Is there a word for that?
LIBERTARIANZ are opposed to the nationalisation of New Zealand children. Your children are YOUR children, not Sue Bradford’s – or John Key’s.

Q: RMA: You Introduced the Resource Management Act in 1991, and Simon Upton and Nick Smith oversaw it unchanged for eight years. Are you proud of that?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Private property rights provide the strongest possible protection for the environment and property owners. Libertarianz will repeal the fascistic Resource Management Act, and uncover the common law that decades of planning legislation have buried.

Q: COMPULSION: Is it true you are not a party of compulsion, as National's Kate Wilkinson said recently -- just before she was silenced for saying so?

Q: VOLUNTARISM: Do you support voluntary student union membership?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Supporting voluntarism on campus is a litmus test of freedom. If you don’t support students being allowed to choose with whom they associate, then what does that say about your support for freedom of choice.

Q: GLOBAL WARMING: You signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998. Are you still proud of that?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Emission reductions required under the Kyoto Protocol will throttle New Zealand industry and energy production. Libertarianz advocate immediate withdrawal from this anti-industrial handbrake on prosperity.

Q: LABOUR-LITE: Is there any law introduced by the Clark Government that you WOULD repeal? Anything at all to which you wouldn't say "Me too"?
LIBERTARIANZ says: ‘Me too’ government is rotten government. Policies should be based on principles, not platitudes.

Q: ELECTION BRIBES: National originally said it would oppose interest-free student loans "with every bone in its body." Now you SUPPORT them! Where are those bones now -- in particular the 33 vertebrae?
LIBERTARIANZ says stop taxing students, and they can pay their own way through their studies. And keep your promises.

Q: EDUCATION: Three years ago National said bulk funding was "the first step towards providing the flexible education system that parents wanted." You've now abandoned even this timid first step. Do you no longer believe in a flexible education system that serves parents and children better?
LIBERTARIANZ says the separation of school and state is urgently necessary to liberate youngsters from the factory schools that are failing in everything but politically correct indoctrination.

Q: FOREIGN OWNERSHIP: Why won't you immediately overturn the pathetic ban on foreign ownership of so called strategic assets that saw the sale of Auckland Airport shares to Canada Pensions made illegal by this Government?
LIBERTARIANZ says it's not the Government's job to intrude upon a willing seller and a willing buyer. A principled party would know this.

Q: WELFARE: Why won't you immediately overturn Labour's Welfare for Working Families programme that is turning so many of the country's middle class into welfare beneficiaries?
LIBERTARIANZ says the moral cannibalism of enforced welfare should be abolished immediately, and beneficiaries urgently reacquainted with the ethic of self-responsibility – as should the National Party.

Q: DEFENCE: Why has the National Party capitulated completely on defending New Zealand? Isn't it true that the National Party's defence policy is now best summarised by the title of our national anthem: 'God Defend New Zealand'?
LIBERTARIANZ says: A country worth defending must be able to defend itself. New Zealand's woeful defence capability must be urgently upgraded --meaning more frigates, more Orions, surveillance aircraft for border protection, and rebuilding the strike wing of the Air Force.

Q: MONEY: After eight years of Labour, we are paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ says the idea that governments can print money to create false prosperity must always be paid for in the long run.

Q: WAGES: The gap between NZ wages and those in Australia and around the world is getting bigger and bigger -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ says getting the government off your back and out of your business will light the blue touch paper of prosperity!

Q: MONEY: Grocery and petrol prices are going through the roof -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ says abolishing GST and ending the theft of motorists through hefty petrol taxes (nearly a dollar of every litre) will begin to make life affordable again.

Q: HOUSING: Every city around the world that has made town planners into kings has made housing seriously unaffordable for hardworking kids, whereas un-zoned cities like Houston are the most affordable places in the world to buy a house. What will you do to reduce the power of town planners in New Zealand?
LIBERTARIANZ says the rule of the town planners will only end with a stake through the heart of the Resource Management Act.

Q: EDUCATION: Ten years after Lockwood Smith introduced the NCEA, 300,000 Kiwi kids are functionally illiterate. Are you proud of that? And why is he still on your front bench?
LIBERTARIANZ says the separation of school and state is urgently necessary to liberate youngsters from the factory schools that are failing in everything but politically correct indoctrination.

Q: ENVIRONMENT: Why is Nick Smith more concerned with cutting greenhouse gas emissions and protecting Maui dolphins than he is in protecting hardworking New Zealanders who are losing their livelihoods by the throttling of industry and the closing down of fisheries? Isn't he in the wrong party?
LIBERTARIANZ says the environment is best protected with strong private property rights, not their destruction.

Q: GLOBAL WARMING: Why has National climbed on board the anti-industry bandwagon in calling for "strong action on climate change" – which means government action to stop private action. We know that socialism doesn't work at fifteen degrees, so why do Nick Smith and National think it will work at seventeen?
LIBERTARIANZ says New Zealand should drop the Emissions Trading Scheme forthwith, withdraw from Kyoto, and leave folk free to make their own choices on global warming.

Q: HEALTH: Even with billions of extra dollars poured into it, the die-while-you-wait health system hasn't improved -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ will end socialised medicine, allowing providers of all forms of prevention, treatment and therapy to compete in an open market. Tax relief leaves money in your pocket to spend for your own family's health care as you see fit.

Q: TAXES: Cutting taxes without cutting spending makes economic sense? Do you think anyone believes you when you say serious tax cuts don't require serious spending cuts to match?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Your money should be left in your pocket. A Libertarianz government will abolish all duties, tariffs, taxes and levies - except income tax, which as a transitional measure will be set at 25%, with an income threshold before payment of $50,000. And unlike National, Libertarianz has spending cuts to match.

Q: CRIME: We know that violent crime against innocent New Zealanders is continuing to soar -- how EXACTLY will you change that? Why will you not recognise the right of New Zealanders to defend themselves and their families?
LIBERTARIANZ says real crimes with genuine victims like rape, robbery, murder and theft should be vigorously pursued and the rights of these victims enforced and upheld. The NZ Bill of Rights should be amended to uphold your right to self-defence and the right to possess the means thereof.

Q: WELFARE: We know that when nearly 300,000 New Zealanders are dependent on welfare that it's a lie to say unemployment is at "record low levels" -- how EXACTLY will you change the endemic welfare dependence that is the legacy of both National and Labour policies?
LIBERTARIANZ says the moral cannibalism of enforced welfare should be abolished immediately, and beneficiaries urgently reacquainted with the ethic of self-responsibility – as should the National Party.

Q; DPB: After watching case after case of unwanted children being murdered by their own whanau, when will you abolish the system whereby hard-working New Zealanders are taxed to pay for no-hopers to breed?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Recipients should be given three years notice that the failed DPB scheme will end, at which time it should be terminated forthwith.

Q: COMPLIANCE COSTS: Every government since Jenny Shipley's has promised to "reduce the burden of compliance and bureaucracy," but not one has yet managed it. How EXACTLY will you?
LIBERTARIANZ says there must be a separation of state and business. We must get the government's agents out of your business and out of your life, and slash the regulations that give them access.

Q: PRIVATISATION: Why will you not terminate wasteful dreck like NZ Rail and Maori TV, and sell off profitable enterprises like TVNZ? What happened to the National Party's principles of favouring smaller government?
LIBERTARIANZ says: State assets should be given back to those whose money paid for them - taxpayers - as shares to be sold or retained as you choose.

Q: NANNY STATE: Nanny State is going berserk. How exactly will you reverse the soft fascism of Nanny's onslaught?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The urgency of getting Nanny State out of our homes, out of our workplaces, out of your children's minds and out of our pockets should be understood now even by the National Party.

Q: EDUCATION: Why won't National allow tax credits for people paying for private education?
LIBERTARIANZ says if you withdraw your children from the state's factory schools, you deserve a refund.

Q: HEALTH: Why won't National allow tax credits for people paying for private health insurance?
LIBERTARIANZ says if you withdraw your custom from the state's die-while-you-wait health system, you deserve a refund.

Q: ELECTORAL CORRUPTION: Where was National when Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton was suing Helen Clark for stealing nearly a million dollars of taxpayers' money to buy the last election?
LIBERTARIANZ says using taxpayers’ money to buy elections is corrupt, whoever is doing it.

Q: ENERGY: Will you repeal Labour's ten-year moratorium on the construction of new thermal power stations? Or would Nick Smith rather go hug a tree?
LIBERTARIANZ says the abolition of the Resource Management Act and withdrawal from Kyoto are urgently necessary to allow the long overdue construction of new, clean power generation.

Q: TRANSPORT: Why will you not sell off Michael Cullen's new train set so we're not in the hole even further for all its ongoing costs?
LIBERTARIANZ says all the government's white elephants should be sold off.

Q: PRIVATISATION: Why have you ruled out selling TVNZ, the power generators, all the SOEs and al the government's shares in Air New Zealand?
LIBERTARIANZ says all the government's assets should be sold off, or given as shares to long-term taxpayers.

Q: BUREAUCRACY: What will National do to make public servants our servants again, and not our masters?
LIBERTARIANZ says show them our unemployment policy -- unemployment under Libertarianz would increase dramatically ... among bureaucrats, consultants and jobsworths. Start with the Ministries of Women's, Youth, Maori and Pacific Island Affairs, and the Resource Management Act and OSH and work on down ...

Q: ANIMAL WELFARE: Why will you not rein in the maltreatment of farmers by the SPCA?
LIBERTARIANZ says a farmer's animals are his property, not the SPCA’s.

Q: RACISM: Don Brash stated that National believed in One Law For All. Does John Key?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Government should be colour blind. Law should be colour blind. There should be no favours based on race, colour, or 'treaty status.'

Q: RACISM: Why won't you abolish the Maori seats immediately? If it's right to do it in three years, why not now?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Mean what you say and say what you mean. Racist parliamentary seats should go the way of slavery and apartheid.

Q: WAITANGI: When will you end the corrupt Treaty Gravy Train and take power away from the corrupt Brown Table who are making millions from it?
LIBERTARIANZ says the politics of race and the myth of ‘partnership’ should be expunged from our legal system. Like good politics, good law is colour blind.

Q: GLOBAL WARMING: Why are you going to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme of your own?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Throttling industry with feel-good law is wrong -- just flat out wrong.

Q: FISHING: Why won't National repeal Jim Anderton's draconian ban on set-net fishing. Do you care more about Maui dolphins than you do about the families and livelihoods of New Zealand's fishermen?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Human beings come before fish. (And if dolphins were so smart, they'd stay away from set nets.)

Q. LABOUR-LITE: What's the chief difference between your team and the Red Team? Better suits?
LIBERTARIANZ says if you want to vote Labour out, then voting to put Labour-Lite in is just a wasted vote.

Q. TRADE: How come the Labour party is better at getting free trade deals than National ever has?
LIBERTARIANZ foreign policy can be written in two words: free trade.

Q. TRADE: How come Phil Goff & Helen Clark are better at arguing the case for free trade than John Key & Bill English?
LIBERTARIANZ foreign policy can be written in two words: free trade.

Q. WINSTON PETERS: Will National once again offer Winston the baubles of office just so you can govern?
LIBERTARIANZ says Winston’s tantrums are too high a price to pay. In Parliament Libertarianz would firmly commit to supporting every law that both advances freedom and contains no new coercion. Which rules out supporting Winston.

Q. GLOBAL WARMING: Why did John Key change his view on Global Warming? Was there new evidence we didn't hear about?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The warmist charade is another scaremongering fiction, just like the Y2K, Asian Bird Flu and Ice Age scares of yore – another case of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Q. Does the National Party Caucus beat the snot out of Nick Smith during morning break? If not, why not?

Q. FARMING: How come farmers have been better off under Labour? Please explain.

Q. ELECTRICITY: If Nuclear power was the right thing for NZ would National support it? If not, why not?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The abolition of the Resource Management Act and withdrawal from Kyoto are urgently necessary to allow the long overdue construction of new, clean power generation.

Q: ELECTRICITY: Good on Gerry Brownlee for taking the Clark Government to task for New Zealand’s shambles of an electricity supply. But what will National actually do that will make any difference to our supply shortage? And is he aware that it was National who signed the Kyoto protocol that makes new thermal power stations immoral, and introduced the Resource Management Act that makes building new power stations of any kind all but illegal?
LIBERTARIANZ says abolishing the Resource Management Act and withdrawing from Kyoto are urgently necessary to allow the long overdue construction of new, clean and reliable power generation.

Q. ECONOMY: Why has Labour out-performed National in terms of NZ economic growth rates each time they get into power? It’s not just luck, is it.
LIBERTARIANZ says: Failed policies of subsidies, ‘picking winners’ and micro-managing economics makes an economy insufficiently able to adapt to changing economic conditions. The only ‘managing’ governments should do is managing to keep themselves out of the way.

Q: LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Council rates are going through the roof! Why will you not repeal Local Government Act that Sandra Lee introduced to allow councils to charge like a wounded bull?
LIBERTARIANZ says all laws that allow politicians to put their hand in your pocket without your permission should be repealed.

Q: SUSTAINABILITY: Will you ban the word ‘sustainable’ from the government’s vocabulary?
LIBERTARIANZ says sacrificing our own prosperity to ‘future generations’ in the name of ‘sustainability’ is a con – it can only end in the poverty of both. Our grandchildren will not thank us for not building the dams, abattoirs, power stations, roads and houses today that will need in the future.

I'll let you know if we get any decent responses.

And if you'd like to contribute to help pay for the Libertarianz' stand, then we'd love to see the colour of your money.  :-)

Cold comfort in die-while-you-wait hospitals

While the amount taxpayers are forced to pay on the government's die-while-you-wait health system has increased by billions every year, the waiting and the dying has only got worse.

Just four weeks ago figures were released revealing that up to one in eight patients at Wellington's hospitals "is the victim of a medical accident, error or mishap," and up to twenty-three patients of Wellington's Capital Coast Health were either killed or endured serious harm through inattention, incompetence and bungling. [Radio NZ story here. Dom Post story here.]

At the time, Capital Coast Health apologists issued the airy dismissal that "these problems occur everywhere" -- made no less scary by the fact the apologists seemed to think this made it okay -- and just last week Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson warned that New Zealand hospitals are "unsafe."  He's right.  Just this morning we received some confirmation that incompetence that kills is both nationwide and endemic, in news that

Mistakes led to the deaths of or serious harm to 182 patients in public hospitals between July 2006 and June 2007.

This is not good.  Not good at all.  And all while government spending on the government's health system has rocketed. The answer is clearly not more of our money. Some more substantial change is needed.

Now, it's true that these problems do occur everywhere -- that is, everywhere the state attempts to handle the lion's share of a country's health care.

In Britain, for example, studies suggest these serious or "sentinel" events as they're called regularly affect up to one in ten patients, and that this figure is normal for a bureaucratically driven state-run hospital system. One in ten. Think about what that means for a moment. It's a level of incompetence that is life threatening for one in every ten patients that enter the portals of a government-run hospital.

Think about that next time it's you or a loved one entering that hospital.

Frighteningly, this is a level of failure -- of failure that leads to death -- that state health apologists consider acceptable, and with the more excuses for failure we hear, the more it's clear just how much failure has now come to be accepted as normal. The apologies and excuses offer no comfort at all that any motivation even exists to remedy the bungling that last year killed twenty-three people in Wellington's government hospitals forty people in government hospitals around the country.  Of the horrifying figures for example, minister David Cunliffe Health Minister David Cunliffe says "the numbers are small" and insists "New Zealand hospitals are among the safest in the world."

Cold comfort.

It's not just a die-while you wait system. These figures show there are good odds you'll die if you get there as well. Perhaps that's why fifty-six percent of New Zealanders surveyed recently told the Commonwealth Fund International Health Survey that the country's creaking health system needs "fundamental change." This isn't time to sit around and make excuses. It's not time to simply change the administrators and keep the same failed system. It's time for radical action.

Minister of Useless Journeys

Minister for Arrogance, Nationalisation and Health David Cunliffe is starting to sound like he's channeling former All Black coach John Mitchell.

"In our short history, we [New Zealanders have been on a journey." We are "journeying together towards maturity as a nation."  We're  "on a journey" to "shape a knowledge society" he told UNESCO.  Young people are "on a journey of reflection"; the economy is "on a journey"; and Telecom's copper network is on a journey.  He's even "on a bit of a journey" himself.  As a Dad.

It all smells like bullshit to me.

This morning, he told Radio NZ that the state health system which is in a shambles and for which he's responsible -- he's running the show, remember -- is also "on a journey."  Presumably he thinks that  explains  the recent high profle deaths?

Looks like we're all "on a journey."

It's a curious phrase to describe the state's unsafe die-while-you-wait health system, but if you examine the direction of that journey for the last ten years you'd have to say it's one of costing more, delivering less, and having people die because of it. 

Not really a "journey" anyone should want to buy into, really.  It's looking about as successful as the "journey" on which Mitch took the All Blacks four years ago.

They died of it

Three Hawkes Bay people have died waiting for coronary bypass surgery, and Health Minister David Cunliffe is calling for an "independent inquiry."  It doesn't require another viewing of 'Yes Minister' to realise that the chief reason for such an inquiry is not to uncover anything, but to divert attention from those truly culpable.

"There is no need for an independent inquiry into the deaths of the three Hawkes Bay people waiting for coronary bypass operations," says Libertarianz deputy and Wairarapa candidate Dr McGrath. The root cause is obvious.

Mr Cunliffe already knows the root cause of long surgical waiting lists.   It is the Sovietization of health care [in New Zealand] and the failure of subsequent governments to allow New Zealanders to fully fund and manage their health requirements...

Unless he publicly renounces socialism and moves to urgently deregulate and privatise the health industry, says McGrath, the incumbent minister of health must be held accountable for the die-while-you-wait health 'care,' and resign immediately.  It's not like it hasn't been obvious for some time.  Politicians take billions from NZers every year, and deliver in return a socialised system in which health care is rationed. 

These three people just died of it.

Twelve years ago, former Libertarianz Party leader Lindsay Perigo spoke of the die-while-you-wait health system. Since then, nothing has changed. There is still a shortage of qualified specialist staff in cardiac surgery and other services.

Under a private system, market forces mean hospitals would have to offer higher rates of pay and better conditions in order to attract staff - and rapidly - or risk financial ruin. Under a socialized system, hospitals respond to the demands of their customers with the trademark bureaucratic inertia we have come to expect in our public hospitals and health ministry.

As three Hawkes Bay families have now been made aware, this bureaucratic inertia is fatal. Or as Don Watkins says: "socialized medicine kills."

Nothing to see ... no principles, no ideas ... (updated)

John Key's National Party announced the first wave of their strategy for Election Year 2008 yesterday: they're going to outflank Labour on the left. In 2005 Don Brash's National party called interest-free student loans "an irresponsible election bribe."  Yesterday Key's Labour-Lite endorsed the irresponsible election bribe, and added a further ten percent.  Story here.

                            

2008: the year of the 'me-too' election.

UPDATE 1:  It's said that the interest-free student loans policy would be "too difficult to unpick."  Not at all.  As a few commenters here have suggested -- and as has been Libertarianz policy for some time -- all that's necessary is to sell the loan agreements off to whoever wants them, at whatever mark down bidders think is workable.  Let them "unpick" what should never have been knitted in the first place.

UPDATE 2: Speaking of centrist mush ... on the back of John Boy's nine questions to Helen the other day, SOLO's Lance Davey has ten right back at him.  Just to remind you, John Boy's original nine questions were:

1. Why, after eight years of Labour, are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world?
2. Why, under Labour, is the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world, getting bigger and bigger?
3. Why, under Labour, do we get a tax cut only in election year, when we really needed it years ago?
4. Why are grocery and petrol prices going through the roof?
5. Why can't our hardworking kids afford to buy their own house?
6. Why is one in five Kiwi kids leaving school with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills?
7. Why, when Labour claim they aspire to be carbon-neutral, do our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate?
8. Why hasn't the health system improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it?
9. Why is violent crime against innocent New Zealanders continuing to soar and why is Labour unable to do anything about it?

Good questions all, but as I pointed out the other day, John Boy has no more answers than Helen does -- so as Lance says, given National's well earned reputation as Labour-Lite let's ask:

1. Why, after eight years of Labour, have we heard National whine about high interest rates - but never once offer a plausible alternative solution?  Not once.
2. How exactly would the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world stop getting bigger and bigger under your stewardship, if all you are offering is Labour-Lite?
3. How will tax cuts be either affordable or practical under your regime, given how scared you are of the dreaded "P" word (privatisation), your unwillingness to countenance serious steps to roll back the welfare state, and no meaningful plans whatsoever to cut government spending beyond "attacking waste" -- which every opposition party since time began promises, but none ever elected ever achieves?
4. Do you recognise that with grocery and petrol prices already going through the roof, your stated goal to "reduce carbon emissions" to an even greater extent than Labour will send the price of groceries and petrol even further skyward?
5. Are you aware that in several recent reports the blame for high housing costs was laid squarely at the feet of over-regulation? Do you remember who it was that introduced the worst of these regulatory laws, the Resource Management Act?  Since you weren't in the country then, let me remind you: it was National. Or who administered it without change for nine years and two elections? Let me remind you again: it was National -- and, for five of those years, National's present environment spokesthing Nick Smith.  "Far reaching environmental legislation" Smith calls the RMA.
6. Do you realise that one in five Kiwi kids who left school under the last National Government left with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills as well?  Do you know that nothing tangible has changed on that score since your own sorry stewardship?  And why, under your own proposed regime, will four in five New Zealand children still be forced to endure indoctrination by the state at the factory schools responsible for NZers' grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills? And why are the so called 'educationalists' responsible for that tragedy not already on your hit list?
7. Why does National buy into the nonsense of man-made Global Warming anyway?
8. If the health system hasn't improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it, will National dare do the right thing and work to privatise health? Or will it keep flogging the same die-while-you-wait horse?
9. What would your government do, John, to fight the causes of violent crime?  With most of those responsible for violent crime having been scarred with illiteracy caused by the state's factory schools, what do you propose to do about that?  With the modern rise in violent crime having been largely congruent with the time that the unwanted children of DPB recipients came to adolescence, what do you propose to do about that? What do you propose to do about the police spending more time doing over innocent people for driving fast -- or smacking their kids -- or defending themselves against violence -- than they in addressing real crime?  For arresting and incarcerating more and more  New Zealanders guilty only of victim-less crimes, when so many real criminals and real crimes with real victims are left un-addressed?  What will you do about all the anti-individualist and quasi-socialist statist busybodies that infest your own party (people like Jaqui Dean, the daft bint crusading against any "think of the children" cause thrust under her ignorant, self-serving nose) and about all the soaring state interference at the personal level of what you can, can't, must and should not consume, do or think?  What will you do to end the nannying?
10. In short, what exactly will you do to work towards your party's purported goal of minimising the government and keeping them out of our lives?

Any further questions?  Any chance, do you think, of any plausible answers -- any at all -- either now or in the months to come?