Beware political propaganda: statistics are pointing to Grant Robertson never protecting “Lives and Livelihoods”

• Rob MacCulloch writes –

Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.

As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ now ranks as one of the slowest growing economies in the world, unemployment is rising and inflation has been galloping away for years now, over half of which is home-grown – not from external factors.

Matt Doocey doubles down on trans “healthcare”

• Citizen Science writes – 

Last week saw two significant developments in the debate over the treatment of trans-identifying children and young people – the release in Britain of the final report of Dr Hilary Cass’s review into gender healthcare, and here in New Zealand, the news that the Ministry of Health has contracted trans lobbyists PATHA (Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa) to update our own guidelines for the care of gender confused youth. 

Minister for Youth and Mental Health Matt Doocey was interviewed about it on radio, accompanied by Labour MP Megan Woods. I cannot ever recall two MPs from different sides of the House literally going along together to sing from the same song sheet to the media.

How centralised should our health system be?

The Government says it will give localities more control over healthcare decisions. But how?   

• Brian Easton writes – 

New Zealand’s political reflex is that any problem can be resolved by further centralisation. Students will be officially banned from having cell phones at school from Term 2. The decision could have been left to individual schools. Each knows a lot more about local circumstances than the Minister of Education does (or I do). But the New Zealand way is a central directive.   

Puff! And before you can get through a packet of 20, Parliament will have stubbed out parts of Labour’s smoke-free law

Buzz from the Beehive

Health dominated the government’s announcements over the past 24 hour or so, at the same time as Parliament was debating legislation to abolish the Maori Health Authority and repeal parts of the previous government’s planned changes to regulate smoked tobacco.

Health Minister Shane Reti brandished a report from the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) report released today. It had been commissioned by the previous government to provide an independent assessment on health reform implementation.

Reti says a significant number of the problems uncovered by the MAC stem from a lack of Ministerial oversight and political incompetence.

BRIAN EASTON: Puffing policy

Public policy towards tobacco consumption remains politically sensitive.

• Brian Easton writes –

In 1983, a young researcher was told by a medium-level Treasury official that Treasury policy was to abandon excise duties on tobacco. The senior Treasury economist that I consulted, famed for his commonsense, snorted ‘we need the money’. He explained that no-excise-duty was the ambition of a couple of very ideological Treasury officials – later we would call them ‘Rogernomes’ or ‘neoliberals’ – who objected to state intervention.

I recount this incident to remind you that tobacco policy has an ideological dimension as well as being affected by lobbying from the commercial tobacco interests, which are not particularly ideological but pursue their self-interest. A ‘Socialists for Ciggies’ lobby would be generously funded too. (One may suspect the funding of favourable lobby groups tobacco interests is because they do not want New Zealand successes to set an international example.)

GRAHAM ADAMS: Puberty blocker use surges in NZ

Professor raises questions about soaring rates

• Graham Adams writes – 

Last month, at the beginning of Trans Awareness Week, an article by Professor Charlotte Paul investigating the risks associated with puberty blockers was published in North & South magazine.

North & South’s first issue appeared in 1986 and — apart from a hiatus in 2020 after Bauer Media closed its New Zealand arm — it has been published continuously for 37 years, with a stellar history of investigative journalism over that time.

DAVID FARRAR: Hysterical bullshit

Radio NZ reports:

Te Pāti Māori’s co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has accused the new government of “deliberate .. systemic genocide” over its policies to roll back the smokefree policy and the Māori Health Authority.

The left love hysterical language. If you oppose racial quotas in laws, you are a racist. And now if you sack 400 bureaucrats you are genocidal.

BRIAN EASTON: The bottom of policy development

Did you think the incoming government promised to extend bowel screening to 50-59 year olds? The promise was more limited – and more feasible.

• Brian Easton writes –

National’s Manifesto promised:

Bowel cancer is the second highest cause of cancer death in New Zealand, while we have one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world. More than 3,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year and over 1,200 will die from the disease. Screening is one of the most effective ways to find bowel cancer early before it spreads. The National Bowel Screening Programme is available for eligible men and women aged 60 to 74. National will immediately commission work on a business case for progressively lowering the bowel cancer screening age to 50.

No way to run a government

It must have seemed a good idea back in May 2021, when Britain’s then-PM Boris Johnson announced an inquiry into the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic to learn lessons for the future.

Sweden’s commission issued its third and final report in February 2022.  Britain’s kicked off in June this year.

Now with the protagonists savaging each other in public, fuelled by the release of a stream of toxic internal WhatsApp messages, it’s looking like the lessons are not those anticipated.

ERIC CRAMPTON: Certified

• Eric Crampton writes –

If a drug or medical device has already gone through the regulatory gauntlet at the FDA and Australia, or in the UK and Canada, or the EU and Taiwan, or Switzerland and Singapore, does it seem all that likely that Medsafe’s going to find anything that everyone else missed?

Sure, Medsafe has ‘expedited’ processes for drugs already approved elsewhere. But those processes still impose cost – particularly time cost on pharmaceutical companies’ regulatory affairs teams.

And five million middling-income people at the far end of the world just don’t hit the priority queue.