National’s irksome incompetence is inexcusable

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, June 5th, 2024 - 11 comments
Categories: budget 2024, Christopher Luxon, election 2023, nicola willis, same old national, Shane Reti - Tags: , , , ,

By breaking its election promise to fund 13 new cancer treatments the members of National Party in the coalition government showed a profound lack of integrity and a distinct lack of commitment to follow through with doing the right thing.

The first quality of a politician is integrity.

The election promise was made to feel like a personal promise. This is the dual nature of political promises and pledges, they’re both political, at a party level, and personal, aimed directly at people to sway them to give their vote. And nothing is more personal than promising a cancer patient a lifeline. The fact that National made this insensitive calculating promise shows that they simply don’t care about the plight of others but only about garnering votes, directly and indirectly by the persuasive power of their compassion, and getting into power.

National now is hurting from its self-inflicted PR wound that cannot be stitched up and closed easily by their spin doctors. Let’s have a closer look at some of the feeble excuses that National has trotted out so far to cover up its momentous botch-up.

Fiscal cliff
Nicola Willis has discovered that funding for PHARMAC was time-limited, but rather than accepting this as normal government practice and a consequence of her own incompetence, she painted herself as some kind of self-imagined heroine on a rescue mission.

“In this Budget, we had to find $1.8 billion to rescue the funding of medicines that were left unfunded by the outgoing government,” she said. “Pharmac had been given what we call ‘cliff funding’ so it had been short-funded. So, as of June 1 this year, it would have run out of… money for listed medicines.

“So, our first job was to rescue those medicines and in future Budgets, we want to deliver on that commitment for more cancer drugs.”

The same nonsense was also parroted by Dr Shane Reti, undoubtedly singing from the same PR song sheet sticky-note.

Drug registration
National has managed to pull another rabbit out of the hat, some of the cancer drugs still need to be registered, allegedly.

Time is lives for those waiting on the funding. So, when can Kiwis expect it?

“Soon,” Dr Reti said.

“We’re looking to deploy the cancer drugs that we campaigned on. You’ll understand that some of them are still to be registered, so there’s some work to be done. But, we’re anticipating making announcements soon.

I started having a look on the Medsafe website, as this is the agency that’s responsible for new drug registrations in NZ, and it appears that most if not all of the 13 proposed cancer drugs have already been approved by Medsafe. So pull the other one, Dr Reti! In any case, National made its grandiose promise in August last year. So, nobody […] thought it should register those ‘unregistered’ drugs between then and now?? Please tell the plebs which of the drugs still need to be registered. Why not then fund the ones that are registered now? This is pathetic and insults our intelligence.

Whilst there were some issues signalled with funding of the new cancer drugs in the Briefing to the Incoming Minister of Health November 2023, none of it appeared to be related to those drugs still needing to be registered [cf. page 6 of the linked PDF].

Procurement
In my neck of the woods you make sure the funding is agreed, at least in principle, before you start the procurement process. This process is designed to evaluate all relevant available products or services and to ensure best value for money, in this case for all New Zealanders, not just cancer patients, as also cancer specialists emphasise. For (cancer) medicines this jobs falls to PHARMAC. But Chris Luxon puts the cart before the horse and now tries to blame procurement for not funding the 13 new cancer drugs.

However, on Monday, Luxon said it was the procurement process that was holding up the funding.

“It is taking a little bit more time than we wanted,” Luxon said.

Nobody’s buying it! There are too many articles to cite for this, even just today, but fortunately the pennies are dropping. How much time do you need, Mr Luxon? Is one term enough? It should be because that’s all you should be allowed.

Anyhow, how’s the government going to strong-arm PHARMAC into approving those treatments without the usual due process to satisfy political expediency? The Ministry of Health already raised this in the most diplomatic terms possible in December 2023:

Funding additional cancer drugs within Budget 2024 will have some challenges given the existing legislative settings and decision-making framework for the public funding of medicines. There are additional considerations to enable access to the cancer drugs such as from workforce and system capacity limitations. The initial advice will outline the issues and options to mitigate.

By sabotaging the procurement process led by PHARMAC Luxon has all but guaranteed a sub-optimal outcome.

Strong lobbying is highly likely to force National to backflip on its broken promise. Spare a thought for minor interest groups who don’t have a strong lobby voice by way of multiple charities and experts. Is it right and fair that they’re likely to be poorly served if at all? Nevertheless, the pressure from that particular lobby front will go away and fade from most people’s memories, as if nothing happened and no breach of integrity and accountability had ever occurred.

What should remain as a reminder to us is that this coalition government has no credibility to keep its promises, avoids accountability and taking responsibility for its own goals, and is likely to continue damaging our trust by playing on people’s feelings, fears, and emotions, unless or until the people of New Zealand put a stop to it and take back power to the people. Firstly, by making our representatives stick to their promises, and secondly, by telling our MPs what we need, rather than the other way round and them telling us what we want, supposedly. The only way things will change is when we have democracy in action and (pro)active democracy, not this passive lethargic charade, with the occasional reflexive outburst of momentary dissatisfaction and associated outpour of (negative) emotion in social and mainstream media, and this juvenile circus in Parliament and amateur band in the Beehive.

One final observation is that there’s been no blaming of or finger-pointing at its coalition partners by National for its screw-up, as far as I know. This might suggest that all three coalition parties were fine with dropping the election promise and that no hard-fought negotiating battles were at the heart of it. At the same time, though, I haven’t seen any Ministers from the other two coalition parties jump to the defence of National and its diabolically doomed decision. I’m no expert but I’d assume that Cabinet Collective Responsibility would also include Budget.

Cabinet is an intensely collective form of government: ministers discuss policy, consider options and jointly take responsibility for all cabinet decisions. Under the convention of collective responsibility, once cabinet reaches a decision, all ministers must support that decision and defend it in public. This applies whether or not ministers were present when the decision was taken, and regardless of their personal views on its merits. [my italics]

Looks like National is in a hole by itself and should crawl back under its rock.

11 comments on “National’s irksome incompetence is inexcusable ”

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  1. thinker 1
    5 June 2024 at 7:37 am

    I keep wondering:

    When a party isn't in government, it is in opposition, with the job of holding the incumbent government to account.

    So, where was National, when it was supposed to be the people's watchdog?

    How could it have been giving appropriate scrutiny, when it didn't even know which pharmaceuticals were funded and which weren't? And, apparently, that a whole bunch of them weren't registered?

    How could they have missed this apparent $1.8 billion hole such that it was a surprise now?

    This article is about pharmaceuticals, but the same goes for lots of things the now-government never knew about while in opposition.

    Maybe they were busy having long lunches at Bellamy's, which I notice wasn't part of Seymour's drive to save money by scaling back the menu to luncheon-meat sandwiches.

  2. SPC 2
    5 June 2024 at 8:50 am

    Willis and Reti are just following after Seymour who saved "food in schools" by providing $3 a meal food supplied by a central provider (a day old sandwich wrapped in plastic with a piece of fruit) rather than a locally provided hot meal ($8).

    An amount they could afford.

    He called the new meal nutritious and delicious. But if there is more waste he will just cancel the programme, another cost saving.

    It was National/COC that decided on a minimal allocation of new spending in their model, Labour had more allocated for new spending (thus could renew the school food programme).

  3. SPC 3
    5 June 2024 at 8:53 am

    Short version ACT required National to speed up restoring the landlord tax break, the party of euthanasia and excel spreadsheets.

  4. ianmac 4
    5 June 2024 at 8:54 am

    Well said Incognito. Thanks.

  5. Bearded Git 5
    5 June 2024 at 9:15 am

    The beauty of the cancer drugs issue is that the MSM has been full of it for several days with numerous people being interviewed on the radio saying "I voted for them because they promised to do this and now I don't trust them".

    It is a discrete issue easily grasped by the voting public and has done incalculable damage to the COC's image, just to save $71m a year. Luxon really has a tin-ear when it comes to politics.

    Another problem is that the government doesn't have much talent or ability among its ministers-listen to Mark Mitchell on RadioNZ this morning (link below) saying that there were now 60% more police on the beat in central Auckland since the COC took power. When Corin Dann asked what the original numbers were that the 60% was derived from he had no idea. So it could be 5 police have been increased to 8 for instance.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018941304/police-minister-on-safety-in-auckland-central

    Michell complains several times about how unbalanced RadioNZ’s report was. Look out for ministers refusing to be interviewed on RadioNZ.

    • Mike the Lefty 5.1
      5 June 2024 at 11:12 am

      Reflecting over my (many) years observing politics I have concluded that this government would win hands down the award for the least prepared new government ever to take power in New Zealand.

      With most previous governments, whether National or Labour-led there was always a kind of mood in the electorate for change when it happened, but that was positive change. The last election was irrevocably negative in its context and the negativity was calculated by its participants.

      You could say: what else could you expect from a coalition of rural conservatives, rich urban yuppies and conspiracy theorists? but the scale is astounding. Even Muldoon, at his worst, couldn't match the driving relentless negativity that has been the hallmark of the CoC so far.

      They have talked New Zealand to recession, economically and socially. They have stirred up racial division. They have poured scorn on hard fought environmental improvements in our industries and lifestyles. The country is in a feeble depressed state and so many people seem not to give a f.. about anything. The last time I can remember it being so bad was a year or so before the 1990 elections when we were counting down that days before we could get rid of the Rogernomes.

      But that was BEFORE the election, not after.

      It is not surprising that survey after survey paints gloomy pictures of our economy. Business confidence continues to be very low, unemployment climbing rapidly. Street crime, far from reducing from the actions of the new government, appears to be becoming worse. We appear to be in the grip of another outbreak of COVID (I am one of the victims as I write this).

      Folks, this country is a depressed state and it is in a depressed state because we have a three-headed monster governing us that revels in power whilst disdaining the necessary hard work that comes from being in charge. They are like infants in charge of Rolls Royces, way out of their depths.

    • Incognito 5.2
      5 June 2024 at 6:04 pm

      Indeed, it has received a lot of attention in MSM, and rightfully so, but you can already see it disappearing from focus; when you flog a horse (too) many times, it dies.

      Today (I wrote the OP yesterday), there are still a few notable mentions in MSM.

      Acting Prime Minister David Seymour says he did anticipate the backlash against the decision not to fund 13 cancer drugs, but that it was a political judgement from the National Party.

      […]

      Seymour said he has done nothing to oppose these drugs being funded.

      https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350298087/nz-politics-live-police-minister-wants-remove-three-strikes-policy-boy-racers [odd link, I know]

      The Spinoff has an informative article on how the debacle (for and by National) unfolded.

      https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/05-06-2024/the-full-timeline-of-nationals-broken-cancer-drugs-promise

      Even the NZ Herald still pays some attention to National’s Cancergate.

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/budget-2024-finance-minister-nicola-willis-defends-housing-and-public-sector-cuts-as-cancer-drugs-issue-dogs-government/S2GFUNNZNVC3PFKWUOXVVWKTXA/

      Tim Murphy over at Newsroom sums it up very nicely. And I fully expect Newsroom to keep a close eye on developments and follow up as/when required.

      https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/06/05/a-stage-3-case-of-political-opportunism/

      • Bearded Git 5.2.1
        6 June 2024 at 9:33 am

        Incog-that Murphy summary article is excellent as you say.

        This is over promising and not delivering at all. The people who will benefit from the 13 drugs and their friends and relations are of course livid. But such a stupid and obvious broken promise has annoyed the masses.

        As Murphy says, even the 13 drugs list is now in doubt because it is 3 years old and cancer treatment is moving rapidly. Chaos really. Luxon should have given more money to Pharmac and left it to them as experts. But Luxon hates the Labour instigated Pharmac of course.

  6. tWig 6
    5 June 2024 at 11:25 am

    Chewie and Pat of Big Hairy News discuss this issue. From 50 min onwards in their youtube show last night.

  7. adam 7
    5 June 2024 at 1:48 pm

    To use a term from crypto – this lot are bloody good at the rug pull.