Dear John,

Actively Responding to Auckland Council

As well as responding to Auckland Council’s on-line surveys and consultations, as an Auckland ratepayer/resident you can speak at Council meetings.

Before every Auckland Council or Local Board or Council Committee meeting there is a public forum and people can speak for 5 minutes or more depending on the rules. Anyone can use this opportunity to let all councillors know about the issue/s in their community and to push for what they want. Councillors can ask submitters questions and they can have the submission referred to full Council for a report back at preferably the next meeting. Sometimes the public may get an immediate answer but not usually. Nothing focuses Councillors’ minds better than a group of people submitting in support of an idea or request from their community.

Meeting dates can be found here. 

Race has no place in surgical decisions

I am in total agreement with National’s spokesperson for Health Dr Shane Reti, that race has no place in surgical priorities and the Government should immediately drop ethnicity as one of the criteria surgeons have been told to use to rank patients for surgery.

It is acknowledged that there has been historical inequity that has disadvantaged Māori and Pasifika people, but the idea that any government would deliberately rank ethnicities for priority for surgery is offensive, wrong and should ended immediately.

The way to improve Māori and Pasifika health is through better housing, better education and addressing the cost of living, not by disadvantaging others.

Dr Reti and other doctors have spoken out against ranking patients based on their ethnicity. They support surgeons who are alarmed and affronted by this priority tool implemented by Health New Zealand.

Since Health New Zealand was launched in July 2022, the amount of time that sick and injured New Zealanders are waiting for health care, has increased. The ‘’first specialist appointment” waitlist has gone from 37,239 people waiting to 56,051, in a year. Meanwhile “surgical” wait lists have increased by 25 per cent in nine months to 34,662 people waiting for a surgeon and surgery.

These problems do not lie with our hard working and dedicated front line healthcare staff. This responsibility lies solely with the Government’s new system which does not deliver more health resources or better outcomes for New Zealanders.

National has a plan to rebuild our health workforce. It will bring back targets and increase funding each and every year. It will ensure funding goes straight to our Healthcare system’s hard-working front line.

Putting the tax back on petrol

From 1 July the tax has gone back on petrol and pump prices have increased by about 29 cents per litre across the board.

The immediate effect of this has hit people at the pump but it will also cause increases in delivery costs. This will mean basics like bread and butter and milk and everything else will probably go up in price.

The Government has once again failed to consider the effects of its actions in firstly removing the tax, and now replacing the tax when Kiwi Families are already struggling to pay for their rents and groceries.

I agree with our Finance spokesperson Nicola Willis, that replacing the tax and returning to full fares on public transport at this time, will be painful as well as inflationary and that will keep interest rates high.

The fiscal policy proposed by Nicola Willis will remove the underlying drivers of inflation by restoring discipline to Government spending and helping Kiwis cope with living costs by delivering targeted income tax reductions to income earners. For example for a person earning the average income this will be at least $960 more in their household budget per year.

Adding to this, National will help drive New Zealand out of recession by backing businesses to grow and by enabling them to contribute more to our export earnings.

All the best,
Judith