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Dear
John
--
This week, Jacinda Ardern finally fronted up and announced
the trans-Tasman safe travel bubble will open from 19 April 2021. This
isn’t a case of job done, however. This should be the first step in
the Government laying out its roadmap for how it plans to safely
reconnect New Zealand to the world.
National has been pushing
for a Pacific bubble, and we believe the Government should allow
quarantine-free travel from Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji into New Zealand,
alongside our realm countries. A Pacific bubble would have similar
benefits of reconnecting families, providing our Pacific neighbours
with much needed economic support, and ensuring our $6 billion
horticulture sector has enough RSE workers next season.
We’ve
also called for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the migrant issues
created by COVID-19 and New Zealand’s closed border, as well as
Immigration New Zealand’s policy settings and rules. Many of our
temporary visa holders have had their lives thrown into turmoil and an
inquiry would finally give a voice to the desperate migrants who feel
unheard and ignored by the Labour Government.
You can
read more here from Judith
Collins, David
Bennett, and Erica
Stanford.
Hipkins out to lunch on vaccinations
As it stands, New Zealand is second bottom in the OECD for the
number of COVID-19 vaccinations, and a leaked Ministry of Health
report shows we are nowhere near where the Government planned for us
to be back in January.
The leaked data shows that at this point
a cumulative total of 390,413 vaccines should have been administered,
but only 90,286 (or 23%) have been so far. On top of that, news out
this week that an unvaccinated border worker has been infected with
COVID-19 has helped reveal that the Government doesn’t know how many
border workers there are in New Zealand. Even though they claim to
have vaccinated 90% of them.
On the 10th of March
2021 Chris Hipkins said “Our plan is clear – first protect those most
at risk of picking up the virus in their workplace…”. In all their
planning on
this single page a3 document for the vaccine roll-out, it would
seem the Government never bothered to think they might actually need a
list of people to check-off as they were vaccinated. A month later,
they’re now doing that.
Coincidentally three of the four
necessary IT systems for our vaccine roll-out still aren’t ready, DHBs
are contracting their own booking system solutions with disastrous
results, the Government refuses to set a target for the percentage of
the population to be vaccinated, and we’re still unclear who will be
vaccinated when.
Finally, what ever happened to Labour’s
promise of a Smart Border? National has put forward five
steps for strengthening our border. Let’s get on with
it.
You can read more here from Chris
Bishop.
Mental Health report delayed and sanitised
It is unthinkable that health officials have been found to be
working behind the scenes to sanitise a mental health report because
it contains ‘negative’ statistics about suicides, waiting times and
even the number of people accessing specialised mental health
services. Quite frankly, it’s an utter disgrace to the integrity of
the public service, and a slap in the face to Kiwis desperately in
need of help.
It suggests Jacinda Ardern’s Government is afraid
of the truth: that the mental health system is in worse shape now than
it was when Labour took over in 2017. Wait times have increased in 17
of the 18 DHBs that provided data, with some as much as 50 per cent
longer in 2021, and that is simply not good enough.
These
reports are a way of benchmarking the investment put into mental
health and the results of those investments. They are crucial for
knowing whether the money spent on these services is having a
meaningful impact on the New Zealanders who need them.
Success
isn’t measured by the number of announcements a Government makes or
the amount of money it budgets. Neither of these things matter to
people suffering from mental health issues if they aren’t getting the
help they desperately need.
The Government won’t be able to do
right by Kiwis who are urgently in need of mental health support until
it takes an honest look at the problem.
You can watch
more on this from Matt Doocey here and read
more here from Judith Collins.
Boiler ban about international kudos rather than practical
climate policy
The Government has, once again, jumped the gun by announcing a ban
on new coal-fired boilers ahead of the independent Climate Change
Commission announcing its emissions reduction plan.
Jacinda
Ardern is due to attend a Leaders Summit on Climate Change at the end
of April, and perhaps this is another case of announcing a ban just so
she has something to talk about. It seems very similar to the rushed
oil and gas ban before she appeared at the UN Climate Summit, which
has seen coal use skyrocket, wholesale electricity costs quadruple,
and Megan Woods ask for advice on importing natural
gas.
Anyway, back to the Climate Commission. While they have
released a draft report, we see it as just that; a draft. There have
been a large number of submissions from expert organisations that have
raised concerns with how the Commission has modelled the New Zealand
economy. Among the 15,500 submissions received, concerns have been
raised by the likes of Contact Energy, Trust Power, DairyNZ, and
BusinessNZ.
The Government should wait for the Climate Change
Commission to finalise its analysis, and in the meantime let people
continue to respond to the very effective signal sent by the existing
emissions trading scheme.
We all want an Emissions Reduction
Plan that addresses the environmental challenges we face in New
Zealand, but in order to do this we must allow submitters and the
Commission enough time to reflect and respond to issues
raised.
National has made a submission on the plan, you
can read it here. We’ve also written to James Shaw calling for him
to extend the report-back time on the Climate Change Commission Report
from 31st May, to 31st of August. This would allow the Commission time
to update its economic modelling and provide more detail on the
policies it has recommended.
You can read more here
from Stuart
Smith and Barbara
Kuriger.
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