Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, May 22nd, 2008 - 42 comments
Categories: economy, education, election 2008, Environment, families, health, housing, Media, national, same old national -
Tags: granny, herald, judith collins, national, policy, tax cuts
The Herald and National have started attacking every piece of government spending as pork-barrelling. Here’s some of what they’re calling ‘wasteful, needless spending’:
$750 million of new health spending ($160 million for elective services) -Pork
$700 million for Fast Forward Fund, food and pastoral sector research -Pork
$665 million to buy the national rail operations – Pork
$446 million for community organisations – Pork
$171.6 million in operational funding to schools – Pork
$164.2 million for cervical cancer immunisation -Pork
$150 million a year to keep young people in school or training until 18 – Pork
$72.1 million over 10 years to clean up Rotorua lakes – Pork
$46.5 million for home-based support for injured people – Pork
$35 million for a shared-equity pilot scheme for homebuyers – Pork
$22.4 million over four years for state house insulation – Pork
Of course, none of this is pork: it is money going where is is needed, not for electoral gain. No doubt there are legitimate targets out there (Winston Peters’ $9m subsidy for the racing industry springs to mind), but what National and the Herald are doing here is running a radical right-wing argument whereby every piece of spending, from R&D research to insulating homes for the poor, is a waste of money. National’s education spokesperson Anne Tolley even came out yesterday and attacked more money for kids’ education as ‘pork’.
So what does this all mean? If National says it’s pork, they obviously wouldn’t spend it themselves. So, we begin to see what a National government would do:
No more money for health. No money for R&D. No flood protection. No money for transport. No insulation for the poor. No more money for education. No money for search and rescue. No cancer immunisation. No lakes cleanup. No hand-up for young home buyers.
But, of course, plenty of real pork – huge tax cuts for the rich.
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Scoopit!
Joker: Why don’t the families say to themselves “the state has let us down and our relative is being treated inhumanely let us club together and get this person into private care’.
This is what saddens me most about the way the press has aided and abetted (or at the very least not scrutinised) National’s vapid, disgusting, “New Zealand Sucks” campaign.
Well-meaning “jokers” throughout this beautiful country now worry needlessly about our first-class public services thanks to the relentless, baseless, propaganda barrage that emanates from the tories and their hate-filled lackeys.
Joker: think for a minute. Do you know any private hospital that could have provided Eve’s husband with emergency care at 1.00am? Or 24hr palliative care for his aunt? Private hospitals slurp the profitable cream while bludging off the state to provide the essential acute and back-up services.
And despite Eve’s unfortunate experience, our state does pretty well on the whole. As rOb has posted many times, this unimpeachable international body rates us as the second-best health system in the world: and at about a third of the cost per head of the (private) US system (which rates last).
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/1027_Davis_mirror_mirror_
international_update_final.pdf?section=4039
I did not want this to be a bleeding heart comment, I was just shocked as I am used to state of the art equipped state owned hospitals in Holland were there are special rooms with special lighting an privacy for those who are dying with room for their families etc. so for me this was a major culture shock. I think it should not be so that only those who can afford to die in private care should be given dignity. People who worked their whole lives for the betterment of their fellow human beings at the detriment of their own wallet should not have to pay for dignity. This is a reasonably wealthy country and it should be able to show some compassion. it is not all about money or it shouldn’t be.
Additionally as I said I have seen better emergency rooms in backward little villages in Italy of all places which I can assure is a lot poorer than NZ. They just set a higher priority on good socialised health care. Just like the French. I’ve had to get some there to a hospital and it is amazing how people take care of you at absolutely no cost. Bosnia another example. You walk into a doctors office and within minutes you walk out with a good diagnosis and medication and again for free. The doctors even speak English. Try finding one that speaks Serbian here. Greece is another country were on every poxy little island there is socialised healthcare.
By the way the lady in question was not my aunt but my husbands, and I love my-in-laws but they are your typical we are not worth a lot salt of the earth people they wouldn’t even think of standing up to a system and besides all of them are on state benefits and very meagre benefits since they were all either ministers or nurses, and you know you’ll never get rich with those jobs. My husband and I were also not in the position to help that way.
Oh by the way, the travelling while living in Europe was done over many years and lot’s of holidays. It is easy if you have car.
5 hours and you are in Paris for example.
Mat P
There are rare exceptions but no generally speaking private insurers do not rebate the government for any publicly funded healthcare used.
Eve
If you are ever in the same situation again the hospices around NZ provide very good palliative care services for patients and their relatives the major base hospitals have never been very good at providing a similar service.
Anne Tolley, oh yes, I remember her, she and hubby were keen on establishing a pokie machine business in one of the poorer suburbs of Napier, Pirimai actually, a few years ago, with no success.
aladin
Thank you HS, I will keep it in mind, but she was one of those tough old birds that basically just keeled over and was brought in via emergency so there was not time. The family was allowed to be there for her around the clock and we had an amazing three days together caring for her, she was a single lady and much loved by her extended family.
HS – it seems, then, that ACT want public hospitals (and taxpayers, by extention) to subsidise private healthcare. What an odd situation to agitiate for.