Labour selects Dr Gary Payinda to take on former Health Minister Dr Shane Reti
A high-profile emergency doctor has been selected to stand for the Labour Party against the incumbent Whāngarei MP, former Health Minister Dr Shane Reti.
Dr Gary Payinda said he felt compelled to do something about what he saw as the government’s ongoing attack on essential public services.
“I’ve been working in the public health sector 18 years, and understaffing and infrastructure problems come and go – but an assault on a broader array of public services is a new thing.
“We’ve got a government that’s bent on tearing up the social structure.”
Payinda said it was a wrench to consider leaving medicine.
“But there are some things that are more important than even treating one patient at a time – and that’s trying to protect thousands of patients, and tens of thousands of people, if I can get a chance to do that.”
Labour’s plans for three free GP visits a year would be “a game-changer” in healthcare, helping people before their conditions worsened and they ended up in hospital, he said.
“It’s a privilege to live and work in Northland, but over the past two years I’ve watched the National government drive inequity, undercut public health and make visiting the doctor more expensive and out of reach for many people.
Dr Gary Payinda is a principled public health champion whose perspective from the frontline is essential to the public debate.
Dr Shane Reti is a sell out who helps National brown wash their mutilation of public health. He was moved on because he wouldn’t amputate the way Simeon Brown can. He is an enormous disappointment to everyone who is a dr.
It shows Labour are gearing up politically with candidates worth their mustard while National scramble to prevent the humiliation of a one term Government.
Right wing Trolls be getting nervous now.
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Dr Gary will probably see a few right wing trolls turn up in ED with nervous breakdowns before the election
Dr Reti is not being utilised for his health expertise instead they have Dr Slim-me one aka Doctor Dolittle and he is doing very little which is why the public health systems is in the shit.
Dr. Payinda is all class and speaks with genuine passion and intelligence….National and The Coalition of Fuckwittery are so screwed….
So bad is their combined non-existent skillset at trying to run a country that they will be out at the next election.. ..gone for a very very vrry long time hopefully..
Luxon’s glib vacuous corporate speak may have fooled the deciders who gave him a shot at running a Government controlled monopoly and the billionaires who bought him a shot at running the country but people of N.Z. won’t be fooled again.
Such relentless poor decision making…giving Finance to the inexperienced one dimensional dinosauric know all know nothing non- thinker, Willis…what an absolute own goal that was…what a mess!
The whole miserable experiment of having a ‘corporate’ run a country like it’s some sort of company has failed yet again..
It failed under Key…it’s failing under Trump…
‘Corporate’ = con and the masses are finally waking up to it…the tide has turned…expect a blood bath in 12 months time.
Payinda’s had a lot to say for himself on social media about the evils and inequities of our health system. I agree with him too. But now he’s accepted Labour’s poisoned chalice (or the baubles of office) he’s going to have to become a lot more circumspect. There’s no way any Labour-led government will ever fund the public health system so it can do its job. The same applies to every other public good, such as education, welfare, wrokplace safety etc where underfunding and absence of regulation are known to result in poor health outcomes. Labour simply hasn’t got the guts to take modern capitalism on. I predict Payinda will experience rapid disillusion with Labour and post-democratic politics.
Yes of course I am a Labour Party supporter. Reason being that over many decades I have seen the destruction a National led government has inflicted upon those they deem as less than Merit-worthy citizens of this country eg the Low Incomes NZ workers in Deliberately Kept Low Income NZ; the level of homeless especially over the past now 2 years. The Broken Promises Galore that National has down to pat because to Keep a Pre-election promise eg No increase in GST etc.etc.etc is an Alien Concept for them.
I would much rather vote, if I lived in Whangarei, for Dr Gary Payinda than Shane Reti. At least Gary Payinda has been in an ED whereas I think Shane Reti was a just a GP and far away from the Cliff-face of Reality.
Gary Payinda has most likely seen Life and Death in its most rawest of forms. He knows what it’s like to be working in a workplace that has been most likely Deliberately Under-funded and seen and witnessed what happens.
I think Whangarei needs an MP who is there and in touch with the city and knows what the citizens there are going through.
It doesn’t need a National MP called Reti who was usurped by another National MP who has Absolutely NO experience or degree in Health/Medicine. But that is the way of National. That is it makes Ministers of portfolios that they have no experience or Degree of. I mean look at English Degree Holder Nicola Willis who through some weird bribery became finance minister???!!!
It’s not good that Peters has not yet left Parliament.
You should listen to the lionesses.