The tax cuts you’re getting are funding the Public Health Amputation

ByMartyn Bradbury

These borrowed Tax Cuts are NOT the solution to your cost of living crisis pain.

Instead of borrowing $14billion for tax cuts and cutting public services to create a $2.9b loop hole for the richest landlords to exploit, we should be investing in the people, public services and infrastructure.

What the fuck is that post of that $20 a week in your pocket when all the things National have cut are costing you $80 a week!!!

“For example, National’s example family gets $50 a week, but is spending at least $80 a week extra because of poor policy decisions to pay for the tax cut:

They get $50 a week from the tax cuts, but they’re paying at least $80 more per week – e.g. if they live in Auckland:

    • $50 on public transport for their children
    • $5 for most prescriptions

   · If they own a home, $25 more in rates and insurance
· If they don’t own a home, $31 more in rent and they lose the $5000 – $10,000 First Home Grant

That $20 a week they are borrowing for is being taken from public services and no where is that more obvious than in the manufactured crisis inside public health right now.

National scream this has cost more money than they budget for BUT THAT IS ONLY TRUE BECAUSE NATIONAL PURPOSELY UNDERFUNDED PUBLIC HEALTH!

Don’t believe me?

LOOK AT THE NUMBERS!

In the Budget, National allocated just 2.9% increase to health services but inflation was 3.3% and population growth 2.6% while an ageing population adds more to costs.

National gave 2.9% for health but we needed 8% to stand still, the electorate is not dumb enough to fall for National’s latest manufactured public service crisis to introduce more failed free market reforms are they?

Are they?

Brothers and sisters, I appreciate you had your anger at Jacinda for saving 20 000 lives during a once in a century pandemic manipulated into voting for this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government, but come on, you have enabled terrible people to do terrible things to the very pillars of our society.

Have you become so toxic in your pus filled echo chambers that you are openly excited about gaining some culture war revenge fantasy by allowing National, ACT and NZF hack and slash at public services just for the sheer glee of butchery over any actual vision for New Zealand?

You have allowed the donor class to re-write our laws in their favour at the cost of the common good because of pro-nouns?

You are enabling a plutocracy because the Weather is in Māori?

Is this what feeling alienated in your own home country because of your anti-vaxx views justifies does it?

Is this what the alienating Trans debate has justified is it?

Is this what your feral fears of da Maaaaaaaaaaaris secretly taking over Democracy argues for does it?

Maybe, just maybe this redneck cracker settler routine is on you, and allowing rich corporations to manipulate your petty bigotries so that they can collectively exploit us is the problem here?

There are issues and we can spend a lot of time arguing about those issues, but NOTHING, no woke mind virus, no cultural insecurity, no hashtag outrage Olympics justifies giving the Billionaire clique, the donor class and the Real Estate Pimps total influence over our destiny.

You are having your fear and anger and insecurities manipulated by the very rich all for $20 a week extra.

Come on, we are better than that and we deserve better than that.

We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations.

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34 Comments

  1. “Have you become so toxic in your pus filled echo chambers that you are openly excited about gaining some culture war revenge fantasy by allowing National, ACT and NZF hack and slash at public services just for the sheer glee of butchery over any actual vision for New Zealand?”

    This is the perfect summation for anyone thinking that corrupt National are improving health. Pus fill eco chambers.

  2. Very sad state of affairs in NZ at the present time .This government is stumbling from self made cockup to next self made cockup daily.
    As for the continuing race baiting ,while everyone is bleating about Maori taking water ,health and rolling up all the beaches and taking them home each day the country is being colonized by a new demographic arriving at the rate of 100k plus a year .
    In 10 years the red necks will be screaming that the Maoris let the country become colonized again .
    FFS Wake up NZ .

  3. Health, I will argue, has been purposely underfunded since the introduction of neoliberal policy in the early 1980’s. Least we are not as bad as England, but that is where we are heading – the complete privatization of healthcare, aka, the US health sham model.

    The current mob in now seem to be more gleeful at leading us down this privatization road, but ain’t no kiwi government ever tried to reverse this trend, let alone knock it on its head.

    1. The Greens are check out their health and ACC and disability policies.

  4. We are almost 10 months in with this awful government and I am waiting for them to actually start governing. All I have seen is slashing ,cutting and burning, racism on a scale like we have never seen before in the modern era, handouts to people that don’t need them, encouraging people to smoke while decimating our health system. We have an entitled holidaying so called PM who never answers a question and we are being dragged into a war we don’t actually need to be in. Children are in boot camps never mind the abuse in state care report. Our transport minister doesn’t even drive and he is dictating speed limits it would be a parody if it wasn’t so serious, how much is he costing the taxpayers with private drivers. Worst of all we have a complicit media now fearful of losing their jobs aiding and abetting by promoting the tax cuts.

  5. Whenever I bring up the subject of our variant of predatory late capitalism on the bandwagon of tehNeo-Libaralism Dogma, the standard knee-jerk reaction deflects by calling it a world wide phenomenon of our times. As if that made it any better. When I first immigrated to NZ in 1982, the country offered many advantages in lifestyle choices, chances for personal growth and social cohesion, which compensated more than adequately for ‘the price to pay’ in distance from family, friends, sophisticated culture – to name a few. For many years I could counter challenges, regarding the remoteness etc. when back home, with great confidence. Because NZ was a special place, de-coupled from many negative societal trends elsewhere. Over the years this balance has been tipped more and more, and it became more difficult to argue the case for NZ. Now NZ is very special again – for the class of Preditor Capitalists, since here they can get away with almost anything, regardless of the flavour of government. The only difference being if the fleecing of the classes below them can happen at “Turbo-” or “Supercharged” rates. The “record-setting’ exodus of skilled and able Kiwis is only one of many records NZ claims to her name (child poverty being one of many negative records in the OECD).
    With every year of seriously underfunding public services, infrastructure, health, education etc. the cost of getting back on track is growing exponentially and the timeframes for achieving any of those objectives extended at a similar scale. Any subsequent government wanting to correct some of these failures will be faced with massive budget challenges. These in turn will be exploited by the opposing parties for point scoring. Unless we manage to create a political class, and public buy-in, which genuinely aims for the “common good”, a healthy and reasonably fair and just society, NZ will continue the decline into a dystopian future with large divisions, violence, crime and destruction of the pristine natural resources. I see NZ and Australia frequently, and increasingly so, mentioned as the only “livable” places left after a nuclear war catastrophe.
    I would have to be incredibly naive to consider this a “great option”.
    I now anticipate the response, which most of us immigrants have heard more than once, “why don’t you leave if you don’t like it here?” The answer is very simple: I have invested a large part of my productive year into New Zealand. This was largely due to a strong sense of loyalty I felt to a country, which once provided great opportunities and a society with mainly good intentions. To remain here as a full member of the society, I had to prove my worth and swear allegiance to the crown. Quite different from the “ordinary” Kiwi, or 501er organised criminal.
    If I was 20 years younger, I would follow the exodus without hesitation.
    Right now, in the “Golden Years”, as they are commonly called, I feel mainly trapped on a ship in peril, which once promised a safe passage, while caught in a storm covering the whole ocean.

    1. as a born and bred kiwi I know how you feel .I have 3 grand kids living with me and hold grave fears for their futures .Under this government there appears to be not one .

    2. Thanks for your excellent explanation of what has changed over the years, it’s a pity that those who need the most educating about our problems are unlikely to ever read it or if they do read it their ability to understand it is so low that they will think that it supports whatever they believe.

  6. Didn’t Health Minister Shane Reti and the PM commit to maintaining frontline health services?

    Did they happen to mention those frontline positions being filled by a telehealth company?

    When question on this by RNZ, a spokesperson for Health Minister Shane Reti said it was an operational decision for Health New Zealand.

    How can they commit to maintaining frontline positions then turnaround and claim those decisions are an operational matter?

    You can’t claim to commit to something you have no say over.

  7. NActFirst have a plan to cut costs ,,,, and it’s nurses and staff from the Philippines …

    Cheap labour because TINA ,,,, there is no alternative for keeping a functioning heath system with the reduced funding in NActFirst’s privatise everything health model….

    Cheap labor to keep wages and costs down ,,, and (tax rorted) profits up…..

    … and the immigrants help keep rents and house prices up.

    It’s win win win for the NActFirst govt and their donors…..

    2. My dying mother when asked by two kiwi ambulance officers as to why she doesn’t want to go back into hospital gave one answer….” I can’t understand them”
      Born in 1939 in Thames hospital and will now die in a health system surrounded by foreigners. Thanks National for the years of underfunding our health system to the point we have health staff that struggle to understand English.

      1. That is the inevitable result of charging people for their training/education. The only rational response of a doctor/nurse after spending thousands for a qualification is to seek the highest wages to pay that debt back. Train for free & bond them to whatever number of years is appropriate & we would never have health worker shortages again.

  8. None of us will be better off. What they give with one hand, they will take with another. Degraded or abandoned services everywhere. How do the gullible idiots not see that?

      1. You are right gordon. I’ve never had any but I suspect blue glasses make everything look a bit sickly.

    1. “Locum doctors are usually paid between 3-5 times the amount of a permanent senior doctor. So on one hand permanent hiring is frozen, yet on the other hand, locums are permitted, even though they are vastly more expensive.”

      So Levy and co talk about overspend and how they are going to fix it, yet their solution (to date) results in more of this type of overspend noted above?

  11. https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350360974/tova-obrien-pm-expresses-confidence-his-health-minister-despite-several-red

    Surely if the PM has stated he has confidence in the health minister and hospitals are on a sorry state, working without doctors, then the country should have no confidence in the PM himself. Everything so far in Luxons term has shown that we should have no confidence in either him or his government. His chiding of the media shows his immaturity for this role.

  12. bloody hell we got a tax cut of $4.50 but my car insurance went up by 62% the same day so Im $20 plus behind the 8 ball even after the tax cut .Then there is the increase in rego for the same car .What a crock this government is .We need to repeal them ASAP

  13. How can a health minister who is an actual doctor sit back an allow a hospital to function without a doctor overnight. One has got to ask would he or anyone in the government allow their family members to be a patient in this hospital. Reti must resign. David Clarke was forced to resign for a much lesser sin.

  15. “We’ve already lost loads of doctors,” the recruitment worker said.

    The whole hiring process was being slowed from the top, they said – one job requested by a hiring manager on 9 June still had not been approved.

    Budget cuts are hampering recruitment of frontline health staff, despite promises from Te Whatu Ora’s new commissioner to the contrary.

    Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has declined to comment.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/523662/health-staff-recruitment-issues-if-it-costs-money-we-can-t-do-it

    1. The worst government in political history. The most important aspect of life is health, Nationals health policies are killing people.

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