Divisive how? What is the blog? And what does the coming covid enquiry consist of?
Politics NZ Politics
- Thread starter wizard of Tauranga
- Start date
John Nick
Contributor
My thoughts were about the covid responseHindsight?!? You think NZ politics is somehow exempt from all the philosophical writings on the democratic process? Especially the writings on two party political states. Its foresight. Its as predictable as the sunrise. Unless you think that Christopher "Dinosaurs Dont Exist" Luxon is some savvy political operator?!?
3 Pendulum Democracy: The Winner Takes All
Abstract. Pendulum democracy refers to the model of democracy in which political power alternates between two competing political parties or protagonists.academic.oup.com
- Thread starter
- #1,803
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but many issues were bought up at the time and ignored.My thoughts were about the covid response
I think we need learnings for any future pandemics rather than a ‘nothing to see here and forget it ever happened’.
If we are better prepared next time a lot of the issues will be dealt with smoothly with evidence based planning rather than the quick decisions we were having to make on the fly.
Which is why we ran the response we did, because we’re among the worst equipped in the developed world for icu units which is an indictment on both parties. Lack of funding for many years. Anyone who worked in the medical field was stretched and stressed as it was, and that was even those in far more equipped countries like america and england.
- Thread starter
- #1,805
So a thorough review would determine what we need going forward for intensive care; hospitals; nursing staff; for isolation facilities; how and when to effectively close our borders; etc; etc.
Eg. Was it beneficial to ban unvaccinated nurses in a pandemic? The risks vs rewards are much easier to plan in a review than in a panic during an actual pandemic.
It’s a chance to prioritise our health system and make it fit for purpose!
John Nick
Contributor
Any review would have the benefit of hindsight.
That's what my original post was all about
This dipshit was posting Leighton Baker posts from facebook to the covid thread at it's peak.
Posting random "blogs" from facebook without providing who the author is and thinking that's a good point... yeah nah.
This was the first election coming out of the pandemic. The pandemic highlighted the work needed in our health system. The borrowing to get us through the pandemic has had an impact on the economy.
The policies we were getting from any of the parties were more highlighted on the usual what will please everyone to get them voted in. In reality how many can we afford? Obviously telling everyone there will be no fantastic new policies while the cost of living is increasing isn't appealing to voters. What we need is responsible spending. Will we get that who knows.
The health system was barely raised during the election. We have one of the worst rates of obesity in the western world. That leads to pretty bad diseases like Type-2 diabetes. Along with improving the state of the hospitals and decreasing wait times we should be trying to improve the health of the nation.
The policies we were getting from any of the parties were more highlighted on the usual what will please everyone to get them voted in. In reality how many can we afford? Obviously telling everyone there will be no fantastic new policies while the cost of living is increasing isn't appealing to voters. What we need is responsible spending. Will we get that who knows.
The health system was barely raised during the election. We have one of the worst rates of obesity in the western world. That leads to pretty bad diseases like Type-2 diabetes. Along with improving the state of the hospitals and decreasing wait times we should be trying to improve the health of the nation.
There are also contributing factors that largely don’t get paid much attention too, like getting inept drugs in treating illnesses. We are one of only two countries in the whole world, the other being america that doesn’t have any competition in their healthcare provider. Ours being pharmac.
- Thread starter
- #1,810
Interesting article about some issues that I was unaware of:
Every government naturally accumulates some skeletons in its closets - you would too if you were in government for six or nine years. It’s the perk of an incoming administration to air those skeletons, giving it a tailwind as ministers get their feet under the desk.
The outgoing Labour administration commissioned research into the infrastructure deficit of our health system, arguing hospitals had been left to decay after “nine long years of neglect”.
The Prime Minister’s chief science advisor looked into the moral panic over methamphetamine contamination in rental properties, which had led to wrongful evictions of people from social housing, including Housing New Zealand housing (HNZ) This was something National had abetted, having presided over an onerously low contamination standard, and a “zero-tolerance” approach from HNZ.
Then there was the review of vehicle testing standards by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, which found it had not been adequately enforcing its regulatory function, particularly the way it enforced Warrant of Fitness (WoF) standards. The agency saw WoF-issuing garages as customers that it served rather than businesses that it regulated. The death of one man, who had been driving a vehicle that should not have passed a WoF, was linked to this approach.
The National-led Government before that used Treasury forecasts to argue they had inherited a “decade of deficits” thanks to the previous Labour-led Government.
The incoming National-led Government will no doubt try and do the same. Here are four obvious places they’re likely to start.
iRex
No, iRex isn’t a laptop for dinosaurs, it’s the name given to the Government’s project to replace the ailing Interislander ferries.
The project is a massively complicated undertaking, with two new ferries actually being the easiest part of the process. The new ferries will be built in South Korea and are due to arrive in 2025 and 2026.
Where things get complicated is that the ferries require new portside infrastructure to operate. This needs to be built in both Wellington and Picton. The casual observer will note that there appears to be little construction under way currently, and 2025, the year it would need to be ready for the first new ferry, is just round the corner.
The project was last estimated to cost $1.45 billion, including the $551 million cost of the ferries themselves, but the talk around Wellington is that this has blown out considerably.
Treasury’s Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (Prefu) added the project to its “fiscal risks” list and warned that “estimates for the landside costs have increased significantly since initial funding”.
The Labour Government has been quiet about just what these cost estimates could be, Prime Minister Chis Hipkins saying there were “active conversations” about the cost pressures.
When asked about rumours of cost increases, Hipkins replied with a smile: “Your sources are quite good.”
Expect the incoming transport or state-owned enterprises (the ferries are owned by KiwiRail) to make a song and dance about the cost increases under Labour’s watch.
National and its partner(s) will have no choice but to fund the increase or risk them becoming the setting of sometime-Wellingtonian James Cameron’s next blockbuster. But National will be sure to make Labour pay politically for any increased cost it is forced to fund.
NZ Upgrade
Labour unveiled the NZ Upgrade project in January 2020, when it was trailing National in the polls. The $12b scheme funded hospital and school upgrades, but the lion’s share of the funding (just under half) went to funding politically-important roads.
Labour must now be regretting it. Not only did the Upgrade programme not matter a jot to the outcome of the 2020 election, but it soon became a victim of Covid-induced infrastructure cost inflation, and allegations Labour had badly mismanaged the projects.
By 2021, the cost of the roads in the scheme had nearly doubled, requiring the Government to axe some plans and tip in an additional $1.9b.
But just two years later, the projects are once again under pressure. Budget documents showed concerns about the funding of the projects, and another project warned that one road, the Ōtaki to North of Levin highway, which has already nearly doubled in cost since 2020, may need to be pared back considerably in order to be delivered within budget.
National loves these roads. In fact, the reason Labour greenlit them to begin with is that National’s then-transport spokesman Jami-Lee Ross ran a very effective campaign for them back in 2018. The new Government won’t want them dumped, but it will want someone to blame for how much they cost - and opening the books on the roads could provide a helpful distraction for the party’s own transport package, which has been criticised for undercosting. Waka Kotahi’s early cost estimates for National’s transport package will be needed before the next transport budget kicks in on July 1 next year.
Expect plenty of political finger-pointing over whose blowouts are the worst in the meantime.
Kainga ora
Kāinga Ora, an agency that didn’t exist when Labour came to office, has been one of its success stories, being at the centre of the 13,000 additional public housing places Labour delivered since taking office.
It’s done this by taking on a lot of debt, however.
A leaked paper from June last year warned that spiralling construction costs had led to a debt blowout that might not see the increase in debt repaid over the next 60 years.
The paper warned that Kāinga Ora’s debt would peak at $28.9b in 2033 before it began to be repaid, and that the new debt will not be repaid by 2081, when $8.9b will still be outstanding.
Since then, Kāinga Ora has had a funding injection in the 2023 Budget and has changed the way it issued debt to save money. It will now issue debt through Treasury’s New Zealand Debt Management, rather than on its own.
Nevertheless, questions swirl about its sustainability and National is keen to open the books and let in a little sunlight.
Of course, any findings of poor financial management would help to create a political pretext for taking Kāinga Ora’s foot off the accelerator when it comes to public housing construction. National has matched Labour’s building pledge to 2025 but could not commit to funding beyond that, which would mean the public housing build programme grinding to a halt unless a solution were found.
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www.nzherald.co.nz
The new Government wants to reveal the skeletons in the old Government’s closet
As soon as the ministers of the National-Act-(maybe)-New Zealand First Government settle into their Beehive offices, they’ll embark on a PR exercise to convince the public it made the right choice at the election.Every government naturally accumulates some skeletons in its closets - you would too if you were in government for six or nine years. It’s the perk of an incoming administration to air those skeletons, giving it a tailwind as ministers get their feet under the desk.
The outgoing Labour administration commissioned research into the infrastructure deficit of our health system, arguing hospitals had been left to decay after “nine long years of neglect”.
The Prime Minister’s chief science advisor looked into the moral panic over methamphetamine contamination in rental properties, which had led to wrongful evictions of people from social housing, including Housing New Zealand housing (HNZ) This was something National had abetted, having presided over an onerously low contamination standard, and a “zero-tolerance” approach from HNZ.
Then there was the review of vehicle testing standards by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, which found it had not been adequately enforcing its regulatory function, particularly the way it enforced Warrant of Fitness (WoF) standards. The agency saw WoF-issuing garages as customers that it served rather than businesses that it regulated. The death of one man, who had been driving a vehicle that should not have passed a WoF, was linked to this approach.
The National-led Government before that used Treasury forecasts to argue they had inherited a “decade of deficits” thanks to the previous Labour-led Government.
The incoming National-led Government will no doubt try and do the same. Here are four obvious places they’re likely to start.
iRex
No, iRex isn’t a laptop for dinosaurs, it’s the name given to the Government’s project to replace the ailing Interislander ferries.
The project is a massively complicated undertaking, with two new ferries actually being the easiest part of the process. The new ferries will be built in South Korea and are due to arrive in 2025 and 2026.
Where things get complicated is that the ferries require new portside infrastructure to operate. This needs to be built in both Wellington and Picton. The casual observer will note that there appears to be little construction under way currently, and 2025, the year it would need to be ready for the first new ferry, is just round the corner.
The project was last estimated to cost $1.45 billion, including the $551 million cost of the ferries themselves, but the talk around Wellington is that this has blown out considerably.
Treasury’s Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (Prefu) added the project to its “fiscal risks” list and warned that “estimates for the landside costs have increased significantly since initial funding”.
The Labour Government has been quiet about just what these cost estimates could be, Prime Minister Chis Hipkins saying there were “active conversations” about the cost pressures.
When asked about rumours of cost increases, Hipkins replied with a smile: “Your sources are quite good.”
Expect the incoming transport or state-owned enterprises (the ferries are owned by KiwiRail) to make a song and dance about the cost increases under Labour’s watch.
National and its partner(s) will have no choice but to fund the increase or risk them becoming the setting of sometime-Wellingtonian James Cameron’s next blockbuster. But National will be sure to make Labour pay politically for any increased cost it is forced to fund.
NZ Upgrade
Labour unveiled the NZ Upgrade project in January 2020, when it was trailing National in the polls. The $12b scheme funded hospital and school upgrades, but the lion’s share of the funding (just under half) went to funding politically-important roads.
Labour must now be regretting it. Not only did the Upgrade programme not matter a jot to the outcome of the 2020 election, but it soon became a victim of Covid-induced infrastructure cost inflation, and allegations Labour had badly mismanaged the projects.
By 2021, the cost of the roads in the scheme had nearly doubled, requiring the Government to axe some plans and tip in an additional $1.9b.
But just two years later, the projects are once again under pressure. Budget documents showed concerns about the funding of the projects, and another project warned that one road, the Ōtaki to North of Levin highway, which has already nearly doubled in cost since 2020, may need to be pared back considerably in order to be delivered within budget.
National loves these roads. In fact, the reason Labour greenlit them to begin with is that National’s then-transport spokesman Jami-Lee Ross ran a very effective campaign for them back in 2018. The new Government won’t want them dumped, but it will want someone to blame for how much they cost - and opening the books on the roads could provide a helpful distraction for the party’s own transport package, which has been criticised for undercosting. Waka Kotahi’s early cost estimates for National’s transport package will be needed before the next transport budget kicks in on July 1 next year.
Expect plenty of political finger-pointing over whose blowouts are the worst in the meantime.
Kainga ora
Kāinga Ora, an agency that didn’t exist when Labour came to office, has been one of its success stories, being at the centre of the 13,000 additional public housing places Labour delivered since taking office.
It’s done this by taking on a lot of debt, however.
A leaked paper from June last year warned that spiralling construction costs had led to a debt blowout that might not see the increase in debt repaid over the next 60 years.
The paper warned that Kāinga Ora’s debt would peak at $28.9b in 2033 before it began to be repaid, and that the new debt will not be repaid by 2081, when $8.9b will still be outstanding.
Since then, Kāinga Ora has had a funding injection in the 2023 Budget and has changed the way it issued debt to save money. It will now issue debt through Treasury’s New Zealand Debt Management, rather than on its own.
Nevertheless, questions swirl about its sustainability and National is keen to open the books and let in a little sunlight.
Of course, any findings of poor financial management would help to create a political pretext for taking Kāinga Ora’s foot off the accelerator when it comes to public housing construction. National has matched Labour’s building pledge to 2025 but could not commit to funding beyond that, which would mean the public housing build programme grinding to a halt unless a solution were found.
The new Government wants to reveal the skeletons in the old Government’s closet
National will open Labour's closet, revealing the skeletons inside.
www.nzherald.co.nz
In Aus don’t forget effective removal of checkouts with human packing your groceries
It’s now scan and pack it yourself mr customer and there ain’t no discount for the supermarkets cost reduction.
Although well publicised is an increase in theft. Items not being scanned by the free labour/ customer and put straight in the bag.
And oh paying 25 c each for a recycled paper bag in which the sides and handles come apart if packed with more than 1.5 kg
Thanks Coles/Woolies.
My local supermarket has a few checkout operators who since covid refuse to pack anything unless they absolutely have to. The younger staff help.
I don't mind packing my own groceries. A lot of the time it helps as some of them go into a different fridge once they get home. The problem is more when you are still stacking you groceries onto the conveyor belt while they just shove you groceries to the side. This then holds up the next person. One operator shoves groceries to make room while customers pack. At this point the customer hasn't paid so it is still the stores product. Sometimes it's even close to damaging some of it.
Then we go back to my home town and it's the exact opposite. The staff are friendly, another staff member comes and helps pack.
I don't mind packing my own groceries. A lot of the time it helps as some of them go into a different fridge once they get home. The problem is more when you are still stacking you groceries onto the conveyor belt while they just shove you groceries to the side. This then holds up the next person. One operator shoves groceries to make room while customers pack. At this point the customer hasn't paid so it is still the stores product. Sometimes it's even close to damaging some of it.
Then we go back to my home town and it's the exact opposite. The staff are friendly, another staff member comes and helps pack.
Auckland do nothing and Hawkes Bay eh
- Thread starter
- #1,814
Supermarket shopping is frustrating! Especially on old peoples Tuesday when I used to go.
Now I just send my wife! Takes care of the whole packing bags thing as well
I still have to unload and carry up the stairs at home though.
Matiunz
Contributor
It’s the same in all big box retail (Kmart,big W, target, Bunnings) same in NZ too with the likes of Warehouse etc- even seen them in many petrol stations. Can only think of Decathlon where I haven’t see the option of a manned checkout as an option, given the choice the vast majority will go to a self serve checkout. Theft is an issue as is the annoyance of “item not scanned” but there would have been viability studies and the stock loss will be less than the labour cost by some margin I’d imagine. Manned checkout efficiency is horrendous most will have idle times at more than half their shift so can’t blame businesses for wanting to reduce costs - labour is the biggest controllable.
The charging of bags is to reduce land fill and the reduction has been immense. Agree the quality is lacking compared to plastic- same vein I despise paper straws for the same reason
- Thread starter
- #1,816
Noticed while in Australia lots of restaurants have the scannable QR code on the table and you order from there rather than wait service.
Seen in small time in NZ, still with table service but it’s everywhere on the Gold Coast
Matiunz
Contributor
Yeah a lot of places particularly more of your “pub feed” type places seem to have it. Don’t mind it your food seems to come quicker and you order when you are ready rather than when a server notices you.
Rick O’Shay
Contributor
Call for the Maitre DWhat wouldBruce do?
