Open mike 11/11/2023

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, November 11th, 2023 - 38 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

38 comments on “Open mike 11/11/2023 ”

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    • mikesh 1.1
      11 November 2023 at 10:01 am

      Why did shipley roll Bolger and desovle the nzf coalition deal?

      I think it may have been because she thought the party insufficiently neoliberal after his removal of the the architect of "mother of all budgets" from the finance portfolio, and his backdown on the issue of the removal of the superannuation surcharge. However I'm only guessing. I think though that the sacking of Winston Peters from cabinet was because he disagreed with the decision to sell Wellington Airport, though again I could be wrong.

      • Ad 1.1.1
        11 November 2023 at 10:29 am

        New Zealand First began as an explicitly anti-neoliberal party, and Shipley took the most extreme forms of corporatisation into deep selloffs into her business mates.

        From memory it was the corporatisation of Wellington Airport and partial selloff to Infratil that really put paid to it, but it could have been any of those tawdry late '90s deals.

        NZFirst was formed in 1993 and was the first MMP coalition government with Bolger in 1996. Their history is here:

        https://www.nzfirst.nz/about

        • mikesh 1.1.1.1
          11 November 2023 at 12:02 pm

          When everyone thinks Peters is going to support Labour he ends up supporting National. But when they think he will support National the opposite happens. How odd.

          Perhaps Hipkins' disowning of NZ1st was a cunning move to make everybody think that Peters would support National.

          • SPC 1.1.1.1.1
            11 November 2023 at 2:49 pm

            In 1993 and 1996 Peters campaigned with the opposition, but went with National in 1996 (becoming part of a Treasurer Finance and PM ord ab chao Triumvirate in a simple two party coalition) – this exposed his intention to provide a centrist balance.

            In 2005 he said he would do the same, but let the people decide which party would lead the government – going with the largest party (he may have picked it would be Labour).

            In 2017, he said nothing in advance (National made presumptions based on a previous election).

            In 2023, he said he would support a National led government. Hipkins merely believed him.

            Thus a career of 4 one term coalitions – 2 with each party.

            Peter Dunne was his imitator – 2002-2005 (Labour) and 2008-2017 (National).

            • Obtrectator 1.1.1.1.1.1
              11 November 2023 at 10:51 pm

              Dunne was just a bloody weathercock who coveted the baubles. Nothing principled about his choices.

  2. Ad 2
    11 November 2023 at 7:53 am

    Sparkly still dewy morn here in Wanaka and not a shred of central politics worth a thought.

    Beautiful day.

    • Hunter Thompson II 2.1
      15 November 2023 at 9:51 am

      Nice to hear you are enjoying life in Wanaka. No doubt some corporate jerk will try to destroy that.

      A friend once told me that developers are like dogs; they come in, sniff around, pee in all the corners and then depart, leaving a mess behind.

  3. Sanctuary 3
    11 November 2023 at 8:19 am

    Look, I'm no conspiracy theorist but has anyone else noticed the just sworn in PM looks a lot like the old one?

  4. ianmac 4
    11 November 2023 at 8:54 am

    Funny that. And he is called Chris as well. Weird.

    • Sanctuary 4.1
      11 November 2023 at 9:48 am

      The uniparty state! Agenda 23! LINO! NINO! The jab kills you, coronavirus is simultaneously a Chinese plot to destroy the west and no worse than a mild cold!

      • Anne 4.1.1
        11 November 2023 at 10:01 am

        Nah. You got that wrong. Dr Fauci gave the Wuhan Lab millions/billions of dollars to create a killer virus and release it into the population. Its the New World Order people what's to blame.

        That came directly from a reliable source in 2020/21. 😮

        • Barfly 4.1.1.1
          11 November 2023 at 2:22 pm

          well it's pretty kool that i can just reach out my hand and have my tools fly into it cos 'magnetic' but I still can't get the right radio station by twisting my ears no matter how hard I try …maybe another booster shot will help!

  5. miravox 5
    11 November 2023 at 10:08 am

    Behind the paywall and I can't remember the free reader app, but my goodness this is heartbreaking.

    It's up there with something I heard in the Pharmac review process a couple of years back, about pharmac staff hands up voting to decide which lucky patients were going to get their meds funded. The organisation just doesn't seem to see patients as people with lives to live.

    Maybe Steve Maharey should be considering his options along with Sara Fitt.

    http://New Pharmac emails ‘deeply offend’ cancer campaigner Malcolm Mulholland https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/new-pharmac-emails-deeply-offend-cancer-campaigner-malcolm-mulholland/7YGG3P3TVBCZNGBEGMTRB73JYA/

      • miravox 5.1.1
        11 November 2023 at 11:07 am

        Thanks!

      • Drowsy M. Kram 5.1.2
        11 November 2023 at 12:13 pm

        Pharmac usually only makes the news regarding drugs it doesn't or didn't fund.

        Pharmac Review – Final Report: Executive Summary [Feb 2022]
        Every country wrestles with the challenge of funding an ever-increasing array of new and expensive medicines. For 27 years in Aotearoa New Zealand that task has fallen to Pharmac, and with it the responsibility for managing the hugely sensitive trade-offs involved in securing pharmaceuticals for our hospitals, primary healthcare and ultimately consumers…

        It has been my privilege to lead the first review of how well Pharmac meets its objective of achieving the best health outcomes for all New Zealanders, within a capped budget.

        And there's the rub – a capped budget. To fund new medicines, something has to give. Pharmac staff "manage over $2 billion of government funding", so how might a NZ government achieve a doubling of Pharmac's budget? Maybe tax cuts are the answer.

        [excerpts from the Pharmac Review – Final Report: Executive Summary]
        It also operates in an environment where international pharmaceutical companies insist on confidential deals, involving complicated rebate and discount schemes, all designed to ensure countries and jurisdictions pay top dollar and cannot compare prices paid.
        …
        Investment in cancer medicines, which appears to favour non-Māori/non-Pacific populations and those living in urban areas, has been made at the expense of other treatments.
        …
        A pharmaceutical company’s core purpose is to develop, promote and profitably sell its pharmaceutical products. By contrast, Pharmac’s core purpose is to make an assessment across various and often competing products as to which pharmaceuticals should be bought, and at what price, to best meet the public health needs of New Zealanders while keeping within its fixed budget. Inevitably these two purposes lead to tension – a by-product of making trade-offs about which medicines to fund within a limited budget.

        There is no doubt New Zealand lags other countries in the provision of cancer medicines. Recent research shows the gap is widening, particularly between Australia and New Zealand. Pharmac is under increasing pressure from pharmaceutical companies, patients, advocacy groups, and the media to fund these ‘missing medicines’. However, these discussions on access rarely consider health benefits, risks, affordability, and the likely impact on population health outcomes.

        • Bearded Git 5.1.2.1
          11 November 2023 at 12:42 pm

          One wonders how close to the drug companies are the people criticising Pharmac. I think we should be told.

          In fact Pharmac seems to be focused on giving New Zealanders the best value for money health treatment it can under the financial cap it works under. Rich people don't have an issue of course-they can pay for any drug they want.

          Comparisons with the health system in Australia are stupid because Australia is so much richer. Australians earn an average salary of NZ$102k versus New Zealand $58k.

          https://simplenewzealand.com/salaries-in-new-zealand-vs-australia/

          I bet Luxon finds billions extra for defence but leaves the Pharmac budget at its current level.

        • miravox 5.1.2.2
          12 November 2023 at 10:18 am

          Pharmac had a review about the proces of funding medications. The Feb 2022 exec summary is here.

          The issue raised by Malcolm Mulholland in this instance is not about the funding as such, but hoe Pharmac sees patient advocates. And he has a point.

          I was at the meeting of NGOs in the review process (the meds the group of patinents I represent are not for rare disorders, but they are expensive). One of the weird things that was raised was how they choose between meds competient for the same $$, but for different patient groups – someone gave the example of Pharmac getting all it's staff into a room (a representative population was the justification – make of that what you will) and having a vote. The most popular got ranked higher. Whether this is true or not, the report noted in its section on decision-making (p9) that:

          We found Pharmac’s decision-making processes did not always follow its own internal guidance. Further, it could be more transparent and explicit, and could address equity considerations much more rigorously and directly.

          A summary of this section of the report shows that overall:

          • Pharmac’s decision-making errors and omissions could be increasing inequities. Factors for Consideration (in decision-making) were too wideranging with no formal means of evaluating how they had been applied.
          • It was difficult to assess whether they were being applied consistently across applications and over time.
          • even if the factors for consideration had been applied, they did not make a material difference to the outcome when the application was being ranked on the options for investment list.
          • there is a need for greater diversity of voices in the decision-making process including from its Consumer Advisory Committee

          In these circumstances patients and there representatives must advocate for themselves. The issue here, is how Pharmac is responding to that advocacy. Instead of responding to the report, and fixing their systems, Pharmac managent seems to have gotten a seige mentality, seeing these advocates as enemies. The report als says

          We also see the need for greater diversity of voices in the decision-making process including from its consumer advisory committee … There is room to improve communication, both with the public – the various stages of the assessment process are unclear to the members of the public who rely on Pharmac’s website for information – and with applicants.

          We remain concerned about Pharmac’s ability to express in clear terms the basis for its decisions and suggest it adopt a proactive release approach to its decisions, rather than waiting for Official Information Act requests.

          I was also involved in a direct-to-consumer information trial when a branded med was changed to a generic. The staff worked hard to get that right from info on its own website to collaboratiion with patient groups, pharmacists and prescribers. It went pretty well. So they can do it – but not with the attitude to patients and advocates that senior managment have expressed.

          Again – this issue is not about the budget. It's about the attitudes of senior management towards patients and their representatives.

    • Barfly 5.2
      11 November 2023 at 2:25 pm

      Economic rationing of expensive treatments has always and will always happen it sucks to be on the wrong end of it but there is no unlimited budget nor will there ever be.

  6. Adrian 6
    11 November 2023 at 11:37 am

    Tragic as it may be but a lot of "new " drugs do not have an efficacy that much better than existing ones that Pharmac funds but what they do have is a solid P.R. campaign behind them funded by big pharmaceutical companies to push their minor advantages allied to the astronomical costs associated with them. Maybe 10 alliterations of development down the road certain drugs will have an efficacy that makes them worth the money but the drug companies don't want to wait that long to cash in. It sounds like a scam but what can we do about it ?.

    • miravox 6.1
      12 November 2023 at 10:42 am

      The pharmac report gave options in terms of process. Eric Crampton (I know its the NZ Initiative, but they may have a point here) has focussed on Medsafe processes to speed up getting meds that work approved.

      Drug regulatory authorities do a lot of work on how well they're doing in terms of getting meds that are value for money, including Pharmac. It just appears that some countries do this better than others in terms of both drug selection and the time it takes to do that. NZ ranks low in approving new meds.

      Also what's the definition of "worth the money"? – and to who? obviously if an expensive new med does the same job as an exisitng med, the chance of it being funded should be pretty low, but on the other hand, is the system siloed? e.g. an expensive drug may enable people to live more independently and/or be more economically active, but if focussing on cost and efficacy within the health system, this is not necessarily incorporated into evaluation of efficacy.

  8. Grey Area 8
    11 November 2023 at 12:52 pm

    Is anyone having issues on a mobile? I can post a new message but can't reply. Opera and Chrome on Android – same result.

    I guess it’s related to the banner message about a mobile theme” I’ve just noticed?

  10. observer 10
    11 November 2023 at 2:32 pm

    This lie promise will only last a few more days, so bookmark it …

    From Luxon's press conference today –

    "What we are going to do is make sure we deliver income tax relief for lower [and] middle-income New Zealanders exactly as we went to the campaign with and that's what we are going to do," Luxon said.

    But when asked again about implementing the foreign buyers ban Luxon repeated himself.

    "Again, we are going to deliver income tax relief to lower, middle-income workers because that's what's important," Luxon replied.

    When asked for a third time, Luxon sounded like a broken record.

    "What I can gladly guarantee is that we're going to deliver tax relief for lower, middle-income New Zealanders exactly as we talked about," he said.

    (italics added)

    Christopher Luxon stands by tax relief but won't guarantee foreign buyers ban | Newshub

  12. joe90 12
    11 November 2023 at 10:00 pm

    Art and Stan knew.

  13. joe90 13
    11 November 2023 at 10:29 pm

    Superstitious bronze agers.

    .sharethis sharing button

    I had written an article about the belief among a large section of the Palestinians that the second half of the eight decade of the State of Israel would be the beginning of the end, but it became clear to me that the Israelis also hold, in one way or another, this belief, especially the leaders of the Israeli political elite who take this belief/obsession seriously.

    Perhaps the first one who spoke in this sense and invoked it from among the prime ministers of Israel was Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed that his stay as the Prime Minister is the only guarantee for Israel’s continuity after its eighth decade and exceeding a century, unlike the history of the Jews who did not have a State that lasted more than eight decades. Then, the speech of Naftali Bennett, the current Prime Minister of Israel, in his 2020 election campaign, in which he echoed the same sentiments and urged Jewish voters to stand behind the Blue and White coalition that he leads, in order to surmount the eighth decade safely and ensure the continuation of the State of Israel after its eightieth year. Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel, writes to confirm the same complex, the complex of fear for survival. It is important to keep in mind that the people mentioned are not just some rabbis who believe in religious superstitions that have no connection to reality but, rather, they are the political leaders of Israel.

    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220512-the-curse-of-the-eighth-decade-and-the-end-of-israel/

    https://mizrachi.org/hamizrachi/the-curse-of-the-eighth-decade/