Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, October 15th, 2007 - 51 comments
Categories: national -
Tags: national
Someone just sent me this. It’s an editorial from the Ashburton Guardian on Brian Connell’s firing resignation.
Particularly over matters of Electoral Finance the Nats have sought to position themselves as “defenders of free speech”. Perhaps more accurately: “free speech as long as it’s Brethren speech”. This editorial suggests that the protections the Nats would extend to the extreme religious right might not reach as far as some of their own MPs.
[Brian Connell] didn’t like the party line, spoke out and was tossed out. While Parliament’s debating chamber might frequently become like an out of control classroom, its members like ill disciplined students, the Connell suspension did not follow the school line.
…Brian Connell had a falling out with then party leader Don Brash. He did not abide by the classroom rules and he was suspended. His suspension was infinite. It didn’t matter that the teacher changed & Brash became Key, it didn’t matter that the origins of the original falling out were blurred by time, suspension subtly became expulsion.
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I’ve mentioned before that my partner works for the Waitemata DHB. Specifically she works in the school dental system.
I can guarantee you that they’re well short of dental therapists and what they have is not only stretched thin, but in some cases therapists who shouldn’t be practising have been retained.
There are no more therapists on the way. They can’t source them from the private sector because the pay is abysmal. Occasionally kids have been referred to actual private dentists, but the results have been even worse there because there are few quality controls in place.
Thanks, National.
Robinsod
This is a valid point. Tane has requested we don’t go on about this on this thread but I do want to continue this discussion.
My issue will be teacher/student ratio every time. If it takes additional state funding to bring the teacher/student ratio back to a level that works OR if it takes private investment to do the same – I don’t actually give a shit which way is tried as long as one of them is tried. I’m simply not convinced that health and education are being fixed. Cost increases in education can be addressed many ways… another point for later.
Nih – Excellent points.
That’s some pretty high minimum standards.
See, that’s where you and I differ. I don’t see high wages as a problem – you obviously do. But this isn’t a thread about the merits of unionism, so I’ll leave it there.
Nih
“There are no more on the way…” Labour Govt 8 years – who’s to blame?
“They can’t source them from the private sector because the pay is abysmal….” Labour Govt 8 years – who’s to blame?
“but the results have been even worse there because there are few quality controls in place….” Labour Govt 8 years – who’s to blame?
Nih, come on, all of these things can be addressed in 8 years, if you seriously believe they can’t then how the hell do you support a Govt on a 3 year term that claims it will ‘Fix something’ if you don’t expect them to achieve it in 8.
Tane
Sorry to go on. But what is the point in discussing/denigrating policies at all if something as simple as a significant wage increase for teachers is not expected after 8 years AND when the Govt has been running massive surpluses.
burt,
First of all I agree teachers should be paid more. If it were up to me teachers would get a pay jolt like the nurses did a few years back, but then I guess political reality is the killer.
I hate to sound all ‘labour good national bad’ as you so frequently put it, but the fact is the first people to complain about any major increases to teachers’ pay would be the National Party. Today they were complaining that public servants are paid too much. And just a few weeks ago they were against nurses getting even a 4% per annum pay rise.
http://www.jacquidean.co.nz/index.php?/archives/124-Nurses-Pay-Rise-Not-Good-News-for-Aged-Care-Sector.html
So any government is going to have to contend with that. If Labour had some balls I’m sure they could do it – the public want teachers to be paid more – but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. As usual, it’ll be up to the teachers themselves to work through their unions and get the public onside to push the government of the day into giving them a decent pay rise. There’s simply no other way.
Tane
From that link.
She is working on behalf of issues in her electorate, concerned about a lack of funding increases in a sector competing for the same resources.
You calling that bad is certainly “Labour Good – National Bad”. Not increasing funding to organisations competing for the same resources is simply robbing resources from one to supply another.
Yes I agree if Labour had balls it would have put quality standards and market salaries in places for dental therapists, and it would address school and all ‘nursing’ funding. It would cost a bit, but there is a big surplus and an unfulfilled 8 year old promise.
Burt, my god, we almost agree on something. This thread has obviously gone too far.
Seamonkey, I never claimed that the Labour Party didn’t do wrong. The Auditor General ruled against them and they paid back the cash. It’s got to be said that he also ruled against most of the other parties for stuff they’d all been doing for the last few elections – their overspending often wasn’t trivial but it was understandable. The AG’s the ref though, he made his decision, and parties had to live with it. Fair enough.
I put the EB stuff in quite a different category. It was a first for NZ in several respects.
Never before had a third party aimed to spend that much ($1.5m or so – more than most other parties) in such close negotiation with both a political party and the Chief Electoral Officer.
Never before had such spending been kept so secret – the EB used false names on their publications and did their best to remain anonymous right up until they were ‘outed’.
And never before had parliamentarians, as far as we know, worked so hard to keep their relationships with a third party so secret – going as far as to lie to the public repeatedly, point blank, about what they knew.
I don’t think anything I’ve said above is really in dispute. The argument really seems to come when people try to decide what the implications are with regard to proposed changes for our electoral funding rules. At that stage party politics seems often to cloud the issue.
For my part, I support a range of interconnected measures: more transparency (the public deserves to know where the money’s coming from), stricter rules regarding attribution of spending (the system shouldn’t be able to be swamped by third parties), better definitions of electoral advertising (parties should be clear of the rules and limits) and probably some form of state funding (for democracy to work messages need to get out somehow).
all_your_base
I put the overspending in quite a different category, It was a first for NZ in several respects.
Never before had a political party spend that much ($620K or so – more than most other parties)
Never before had such spending been kept so secret – the Labour party denied it, then pointed to all other parties as well who denied it. It took months before the AG delivered what Labour called a dubious call.
Never before had parliamentarians, as far as we know, worked so hard to keep their overspending under wraps by introducing retrospective validation rather than a commission of inquiry.
Never before has a civil court case between a PM and a private citisen been invalidated by retrospective legislation.
Any your last paragraph and the EFB do seem to be at odds with each other.
The time period for everything you mentioned to turn around is more than 10 years. We’re talking surgical training here. You want your therapists to have worked in the industry. The volume of patients they see is well above what a new therapist should be exposed to.
The problem I see is I blamed National and you came up with ‘proof’ for the opposite as a sort of reflex. National closed the dental therapy school and negotiated the contracts under which everyone working in the school dental therapy system is now struggling.
I just realised I’ve been being careful about what I say because it’s my girlfriend’s employer, but in fact it’s our government she’s working for. No more of that. They should be accountable.
The operating policies set for them aren’t decided upon by the top level of government, they’re set by the management body who are pretty far removed. They strike me as being run like a business, not a health service. While National was in government the therapists and assistants formed a union and negotiated for everyone at once since individuals were being absolutely screwed. This helped a little, but she has had to fight tooth and nail just to get what was laid out in her contract. The biggest obstacle in this system has been middle management. The team leaders are great, but above them it’s nothing but bullshit and people acting like public money is their own. I believe there have even been demands in the past that the system somehow turn a profit. In a budgeted system with no incoming external cash? Fucking ridiculous.
The reason I mention this is it still feels like National is in charge in those regards. I’m not pleased with the situation because it hasn’t been attended to, but it wouldn’t be any different under a National government. Everything there is already running as they’d have it.
Oh, no, wait. There’d be more referrals to external dentists. The same dentists who in the past have continually charged parents for already-paid-for services, effectively double-dipping. The same dentists whose work usually has to be fixed the following year. The same dentists who forget to prescribe anti-biotics which would alleviate most of the long term pain of dental work. Since I’ve already told you that some of the therapists suck, you can only imagine how bad the dentists they’re ridiculing are.
That’s privatisation of health for you. There isn’t such a thing as competition in an industry that the public is largely uneducated in. They can’t shop around for the best dentist. The situation is bad because where the dental industry isn’t private, it acts like it is anyway. Once again Labour haven’t corrected it, but National definitely won’t.
Incidentally, if any of you ever need to find a good dentist, just ask.
Dear Chaps.
Like your blog. Two suggestions.
1. Can you make your standard logo clickable so that it sends you to home or index?
2. Frequent mentions of DPF, bless his round little cheeks (I mean on his face), are probably not a good idea. It will simply inflate him (his ego) more.
regards
The Natural Party of Government
Hey guys – are you going to post about the arrests yesterday of “paramilitary” types? I realise that this thread is about something else, and having made accusations of threadjacking elsewhere, didn’t want to be a hypocrite! Does it merit its own thread?
natural party: thanks for the props. If you look at the tab on the top right of the page that says ‘blog’ you can click that and it’ll take you back home. Having said that, you’re not the first person who’s had this problem so it may be something to consider.
IV2: We may write something or may not. At this stage I don’t know if there are enough facts available to make any useful commentary. But hey, one of us might decide to do something at some stage. We don’t actually plan our posts in any great detail – it’s kind of first in, first served.
Seamonkey,
“When your party is trying to present a united front and you have one of your MPs slagging anything and everything off, of course you are going to tell him where to leap.”
But at what cost, an MP who has always put his constituents above his party is leaving because him speaking out against the Nats taking money from the EB meant him giving up any power he had. The Nats are achieving unity by merely suffocating the constituency MP’s. That’s not good.
Hi natural party of government. Yes, I like the idea of a clickable logo. Will sort it out as soon as I have a chance. Cheers.