The 3rd health target is for 95% of ED patients to be admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours. This is a critically important one that saves lives.
From 2015 to 2017 it was at around 92%. Over the next five years it fell to a terrible 70.9%, and in the transition year to 68.8%.
This may be one of the hardest ones to turn around, but one of the most important ones.
I blogged yesterday on how Labour’s Associate Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Damien O’Connor, retweeted a tweet that Hamas had every right to do what they did on October 7th which is the day they murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped over 1,000 Israeli civilians.
The media treatment of this has been incredibly light. Don’t get me wrong – NZ Herald, Stuff and Radio NZ did run stories on it – but simply reporting that there has been criticism, and that the tweet has been deleted.
There has been no apology, and no statement from the leadership denouncing his views. So we must assume that the official position of the Labour Party is that they agree with O’Connor that the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of 1,000 Israeli civilians was justified – but that O’Connor shouldn’t have stated his belief publicly.
There was no coverage of this by TVNZ. There have been no editorials or op eds condemning what O’Connor retweeted. There has been no hunting him down on camera to demand him to clarify his views. There has been no asking other Labour MPs if they agree with him. There has been no questions (that I can see reported) to the leadership asking if they will sack him, whether his views are the views of Labour etc.
Now compare this to a recent incident where an attendee at a Matamata quiz night, where the theme was black and white, turned up in blackface. No one there objected, but someone got offended by a photo on their Facebook page. How it is inadvisable to wear blackface, so a story could be warranted but look carefully at the story:
A Waikato RSA is under fire after a community member turned up to a quiz night at its club rooms in blackface, then the club told people who objected, “it’s humour”.
Matamata RSA president Dennis Greaves told the Herald there was nothing offensive about the guest’s costume.
“It was a fun night and we had lots of people painted in white faces. Is there any disagreement with people turning up in white faces?”
Greaves said he saw no need to speak to the person who was wearing black paint on their face.
“To us, we’re a small community and to us, it was not offensive.
“It is only people with nothing better to do than to pick on stuff like this which is not really warranting worrying about it,” he said.
“The Matamata RSA do not see it as an issue because it was a fun night and that was all that was intended. There was no racial slur or anything like that.
“It was a black and white night and it was up to them how they come dressed.”
Now the story at this point was fine. It reported some people online were offended by the local RSA stood by the quiz night, But look at the next sentence:
The Herald has also sought comment from the national RSA body.
This is when they go from reporting news to creating it. This is what the media do if they agree with the complainants – they escalate it in the hope of finding a pressure point, and it worked. The next day:
The Matamata RSA has apologised “unreservedly” for any offence caused afterphotos emerged of a man at a quiz night in a minstrel costume, days after it said there was no harm in wearing the outfit to a fancy dress event.
So in this case the media kept on with the story, until they achieved the desired backdown. But with Damien O’Connor supporting murder, rape, torture and kidnapping they drop the story after one day.
Now compare the difference between the two situations.
And again the media wonder why trust keeps declining.
The second health target is to get the two year immunisation rate back up to 95%.
As you can see the rate was very close to 95% under National. It dipped slightly in the transition year to 91.9%. Then it plummeted from 2020 to 2024 to 77.9%. A huge job ahead to get it back to where it was.
The immunisation rate is now so low, that we arguably no longer have herd immunity to some of those childhood diseases.
ACT released:
ACT has obtained a copy of AUT’s policy for funding researcher travel, which allocates 30 percent more points to travel applications for researchers who identify as Māori, and 20 percent more for Pasifika.
“This policy will put some academics at a disadvantage relative to others, simply because they have the ‘wrong’ ancestry,” says ACT Tertiary Education and Skills spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar.
It is important to note this policy applies entirely on the ancestry of the staff member, and not on the topic. They could be a lecturer in mathematics, and they would get a 30% loading due to their ethnicity.
Another way of looking at this is that researchers who are European and Asian get a 23% penalty for their ancestry.
The Spinoff has a lengthy story on how $500,000 of taxpayers money was given by MCH to Narrative Muse, a digital arts recommendation platform for books, movies and TV. So what has been the outcome of the $500,000:
Tech startups often don’t succeed, but that is why investors should invest in them, not taxpayers.
Damien O’Connor is Labour’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson and he retweeted an assertion that Hamas had every right to do what they did on October 7th. This of course is the day they murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped over 1,000 Israeli civilians.
This view should disqualify him from being a spokesperson for Labour on Foreign Affairs.
Over this week I am going to blog the data on the five health targets the Government has set for the health system. Each of them tells a very interesting story when we look at the data for the last nine years.
All data comes from the fact sheets published by Health NZ.
The target is 90% of cancer patients start treatment within 31 days. As you can see it went from 83.8% to 88.5% by June 2017. In the transition year it was static at 88.6%. Then over the next five years it dropped to 84.9%. In the latest transition year it dipped down to 84.2%.
ACT MP Parmjeet Parmar writes:
From next year, the University of Auckland will require all first-year students to complete a ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ course covering the Treaty of Waitangi and traditional Māori knowledge systems. …
Finally, the course risks a dangerous uniformity of perspective on Treaty issues.
Whatever you may think about the current Treaty principles debate, it’s clear these issues are controversial and politically contested.
Having a small group of academics in consultation with local iwi prepare a course on Treaty issues will leave graduates with a narrow, one-sided view of the history of the Treaty and its implications for our rights and democracy.
I would go as far as calling the planned courses a form of indoctrination.
As a university student learning about the scientific method, I was taught that knowledge is contestable.
This is actually a huge threat to academic freedom and freedom of thought on campus.
In most disciplines, you will come across a variety of views on the issue. Takes economics – you’ll have some lecturers who are Keynesian, some who are monetarist, some who teach Milton Friedman etc etc. Over the course of your degree you will be exposed to different views on economics. The same will apply in law to a degree, philosophy etc etc.
But here the University as an institution is going to state an institutional view of the Treaty of Waitangi, that will be mandatory for every student to attend, and take on board if they want to get a degree. There will be no diversity of views taught to student s through the mandatory paper. And it is inconceivable that any individual academic or course would dare to have a view that was at odds with the mandatory paper. To do so would get them cancelled.
So this is a very big deal. Mandatory papers should be for fundamental stuff such as ethics, plagiarism etc – not a highly controversial and contested political issue.
The latest Ipsos UK poll finds net favourability, in order, is:
Such a huge variation between the most popular and least popular.
Almost amusing Labour feigning outrage over the Dunedin Hospital rebuild, when you look at the history of it.
In August 2017, National announced a rebuild with a projected cost of $1.2 to $1.4 billion, with it to be open between 2024 and 2027.
A week later new Labour Leader Jacinda Ardern announced they would start work on it so quickly, if elected, construction would start by 2020. This turned out to be a promise like Auckland Light Rail and Kiwibuild.
Three years later, Labour announced a preferred design in September 2020, with a decision on the business case in February 2021. Key details were 89,000 sqm (down from 105,000), the new hospital will provide approximately 421 beds (352 in current), including 30 ICU beds, and 16 theatres.
In June 2022, construction finally began – two years after Labour promised. Cost was now $1.47 billion.
In December 2022 there was a budget blowout and Labour cut one ward, two theatres and 450 workspaces.
By April 2023, the cost was $1.68 billion, and opening delayed until 2029.
By March 2024, it was $1.88 billion. In May 2024 it was reported to have reached over $2 billion and the latest estimate is it might reach $3 billion.
So not only did Labour fail to meet their own promise of starting construction by 2020, they also left the project in a state that it won’t be complete until 2029 – two to five years later than National had planned. And they oversaw cost blowouts which saw even them have to scale the rebuild back – and now they complain that the current Government isn”;”t going to write a blank cheque for it.
Stuff reports:
Key details about the operation remain unclear, including whether Israel intercepted and sabotaged an existing pager shipment or executed a scheme in which Israeli intelligence entities actually manufactured or assembled devices packed with explosives.
The New York Times reported this week that Israeli intelligence both built the devices and created front companies to deceive Hezbollah.
If the NY Times is correct, Israel not only managed to wound several thousand terrorist bent on their destruction, but sold Hezbollah the pagers, so actually made a profit from it!
So all the useful idiots who donate to Hezbollah, actually had their money go to Israel who appears to be the major supplier of tech to their avowed enemy.
If this was a film, you’d think it was unbelievable.
Joel McManus writes:
It was a mess, and it speaks to the core of Whanau’s greatest weakness: she has terrible political instincts. …
Ironically, the airport sale may not have been needed at all if Whanau had been willing to scrap the $330m Town Hall repairs – or at least pause them until the central government came to the party or another funding source could be found.
That would have been sensible. I am sure there is not shortage of local MPs who would have sponsored a local bill allowing the Town Hall to be demolished.
There are some parallels to another left-leaning politician with a history of saying weird stuff and making unforced errors: Joe Biden. While members of the Democratic Party felt deep loyalties to the US president, it eventually became clear that he was an electoral liability who needed to be replaced by a different candidate. Green Party members in Wellington must surely start asking the same question.
Normally a Mayor would be happy to be compared to the US President, but in this case I doubt it!
CNN reports:
Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s and other fast-food chains have loomed as job killers since they were first rolled out 25 years ago. But nobody predicted what actually happened. …
Instead, touchscreen kiosks have added extra work for kitchen staff and pushed customers to order more food than they do at the cash register. The kiosks show the unintended consequences of technology in fast-food and retail settings, including self-checkout. Chains are now experimenting with artificial intelligence at drive-thru lanes, and the experience with kiosks holds lessons for them.
Today, instead of replacing workers, companies deploy kiosks to transfer labor to other tasks like handing off pickup orders, help increase sales, easily adjust prices and speed up service.
This makes sense to me. I always use a kiosk as I like to be able to browse what is available, without the pressure of having a staff member waiting for me. I often end up ordering more. So this creates more work for the store, and staff who once used to take orders, are now in the kitchen etc.
It its a good reminder that we shouldn’t fear automation and/or AI. It will impact jobs, but it will create jobs also.
Link here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=534247402295436
Tried to embed and failed.
Audio below – courtesy of “Ghost”.
The Herald reported:
The Green Party is clear to expel Darleen Tana from Parliament after the High Court declined Tana’s application for judicial review.
The decision paves the way for party delegates to meet and decide whether to use the waka-jumping law to oust Tana from Parliament, where she now sits as an independent MP.
This is as I predicted. It seems highly likely that the Greens will vote to expel her.
Personally I still want the law scrapped. If parties select dud candidates, they should bear the consequences of their laxity rather than being able to just shuffle them off.
Chris Bishop and Simon Court announced:
Two new laws will be developed to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA), with the enjoyment of property rights as their guiding principle, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Parliamentary Under-Secretary Simon Court say.
“The RMA was passed with good intentions in 1991 but has proved a failure in practice.
Finally, there is hope. It has been clear for decades the RMA is extremely flawed. The only thing worse than the RMA was Labour’s replacement law in 2023 which was so terrible it made the RMA look great.
The 10 core design features on the new laws are:
The ones in bold are those especially important. If they can turn these principles or design features into law, that will be a very good thing.
Winston Peters announced:
New Zealand has voted for a United Nations resolution on Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian Territory with some caveats, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.
“New Zealand’s yes vote is fundamentally a signal of our strong support for international law and the need for a two-state solution,” Mr Peters says.
The resolution is here. These are some of the countries that didn’t vote for it as they say it as unbalanced:
So we didn’t vote with them, but we did vote with China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria and Zimbabwe!
The Free Press reports:
For a quarter of a century, generations of young Spence women adored our “Madame Proto.” She spearheaded school trips to China and Japan, launched a language and culture institute, revived the Model United Nations Club, advised the yearbook staff, developed a debate team, and offered special “salon” classes to parents and alumnae. Part Vietnamese, part Greek, and part French, she speaks five languages. When I was at Spence from 2006 to 2019, there was no teacher I admired more. She was the only faculty member in the language department to receive three yearbook dedications and four recorded money donations to the school in her name.
But in February, she was fired.
Why?
Protopappas’s firing stems from a May 2023 incident that took place in her Advanced French class, which was being taken by eight Spence seniors. Out of the blue, according to the complaint, one student asked, “Why did France ban the hijab?”
Protopappas said she responded by thanking the student and then giving the class some background about why the French law banning hijabs and all other visible religious symbols in public K-12 schools was in accordance with the country’s belief in secularism, or laïcité. She said she invited the class to consider the pros and cons of this law, which came into being after a nationwide debate in which some Muslim women advocated to protect young students from family pressures to wear the veil.
She answered a question, and asked the students to consider the pros and cons of a law. Disgraceful. No wonder she had to go.
Louise Upston announced:
The Government is investing $16.8 million over the next four years to extend the Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) Longitudinal Study.
GUiNZ is New Zealand’s largest longitudinal study of child health and wellbeing and has followed the lives of more than 6000 children born in 2009 and 2010, and their families. The study is led by the University of Auckland.
“The study’s work to date has been valuable for helping design services and policies to improve the lives of New Zealand families, and I want to see this work continue,” Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says.
These longitudinal studies are the platinum level of research. The data they give is so incredibly valuable. They allow spending to help those most in need to be well targeted.
Personally I would take at least 50% of the money spent on health research about telling people what to do (banning dairies etc) and give it all to these longitudinal studies.