Peter Minten
Membership secretary
Whakatane Grey Power Association

Last Friday, the Beacon published two opinion articles, one from our local MP Dana Kirkpatrick and one from her shadow Labour East Coast MP Jo Luxton.  

Reading both articles gave to a lot to consider, especially about the health situation because as a committee member of the local Grey Power association, I am regular confronted with the real status of our health system.

Ms Kirkpatrick describes the solutions to be implemented by our Government to deal with the poor access to and long delays to receive adequate care.

The National party prescription is that if we increase investment on the supply side of care, the market will do its job. This has some merit, but it will only work if the demand for care doesn’t increase.

My prediction is that despite the investments, access to, and delays for care, will not improve. So why do I believe this?

Evidence presented by Mayor Victor Luca in many of his columns clearly show that expenditure per capita in New Zealand is similar to most other OECD countries, but why are the waiting lists for a number of treatments so long in New Zealand?

In most EU and Scandinavian countries, the wait for a hip replacement is 30 to 50 days, while in New Zealand it is up to 15 months.

In my opinion, the reason for such a big difference is the total demand for care in New Zealand is very high. So why is that?

Googling some OECD indicators are telling me the following:

n New Zealand has the second highest traffic accidents with injuries per 1,000,000 vehicles. This is data from 2022, so this was two years after the previous Labour Government implemented its blanket speed reductions.

The current Government has, after public consultation, reversed most of those, but general accepted science is the higher the speed, the bigger the mess.

n New Zealand has a population with the third highest body mass index (bmi). A high bmi increases the risk for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes 2, significantly leading to more demand for hospital care.

A far healthier and more active lifestyle would reduce it, but there are no supporting policies for that in New Zealand.

It is recognised that Denmark and The Netherlands have the healthiest populations within the OECD.

In both countries, more than 60 percent of all trips less than 5 kilometres are done either walking or bike riding.

Coincidence? There are shelves stacked with scientific evidence that this is not a coincidence.

n New Zealand’s failure to eradicate pneumatic fever. I quote from a study found on the National Library of Medicine: Of 32 OECD member countries, nine reported RF incidence rates after 1999. Highest rates were seen in indigenous Australians, and NZ Māori and Pacific peoples.

The list I have made is not comprehensive. There might be more reasons, but if we don’t design effective preventions, demand for care remains exceeding the supply, and therefore occupying a lot of beds.

On top of that, the number of beds available have been reduced over the past decades from 12 per 1000 residents to only 2.6 per 1000 residents.

Science and data should guide politicians to make the correct decisions and not the popular thinking about speed limits, sugar taxes and substandard housing.

Over to the other side of The House to see if Jo Luxton on behalf of Labour has something sensible to say.

First, Christopher Luxon is not taking money out of the pockets of women. He has only presided over a process which makes it far more difficult for most women to achieve some form of pay equity in the future.

What the effect on their renumeration is, is difficult to say.

After reading her article, Ms Luxton struggles to understand the difference between equal pay and pay equity.

For her, I clarify once more: Equal pay refers to the principle that individuals doing the same or substantially similar work should be paid the same, regardless of gender or other protected characteristics.

Pay equity, on the other hand, focuses on ensuring that individuals are paid equally for work of equal value, even if the jobs are different, by considering factors like skills, responsibilities, (physical) effort and the job environment (hectic, relaxed, pressured).

In a proper job evaluation scheme, those factors are properly assessed for each employment and mirrored against a failure effect template to determine what the consequences are of a mistake made by a person in that employment.

Several EU countries are using very comprehensive systems to develop renumeration schemes, and in some countries, both employees and employers are responsible for running a transparent implementation process and leave the politicians out of it.

In the UK, 77 percent of all the wages are set by a proper job evaluation system; in The Netherlands it is even 85 percent. Those countries base renumeration on the true value of a job and not by comparing it with other employments as the New Zealand Equal Pay Act tries to achieve.

I agree with Jo Luxton that women deserve renumeration based on the true value of their job but as long as politicians through the public purse, have an oversized finger in the pie, the struggle for women will continue.

But again, just like with the health situation, a lot of data and science is available to design a proper renumeration policy, so why is New Zealand not utilising it.

Again, are our politicians clever enough?