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Dear John, Anzac Day 2021 It will be a great relief to many to return to the usual commemoration of ANZAC Day this year after the lockdown one we experienced last year. Sadly for some New Zealanders and Australians, the situation will still be a restricted Covid-19 one depending on where they are overseas. In particular, the heart-felt commemorations by different generations at Gallipoli are still not possible this year. Although it is now 103 years since the end of World War One, we are still one in remembering or commemorating Anzac Day in 2021. Who will you remember? Whoever it was, we will always be in their debt and we will uphold their memory because they helped to protect the life we enjoy in New Zealand today. It is always an honour to be at the Papakura Cenotaph for the Dawn Parade and to observe the Returned Soldiers of Papakura as they march. I will be glad to do this again this year. I will stand with my fellow citizens and call to mind those who did not return from Gallipoli or who were forever changed by it. We also remember those who suffered in World War Two and subsequent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and East Timor. On Anzac Day especially, and on every other day, we give thanks for their courage and selflessness in protecting their country and its citizens. “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.” ANZAC Day 2021- Lest we Forget ANZAC Parade times in Papakura on 25 April 2021 are 6am and 9am at the Cenotaph in Central Park, Papakura. Labour’s District Health Board (DHB) restructure As leader of the National Party I can say that we are very opposed to the health restructure that Labour has rolled out this week. Experts and commentators have also expressed surprise at the extent of the proposed restructure. This restructure was not mentioned in Labour’s pre-Election 2020 policy announcements at all. National’s health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti questions making a huge change like this when we are in the middle of a pandemic. It will be a costly change and already District Health Boards (DHBs) and their medical facilities are underfunded and lacking investment in staff and facilities. How can having bureaucrats in Wellington make all the decisions for the patients currently in Counties Manukau DHB or the Auckland DHB help reduce hospital waiting lists or help people get their operations more quickly? The restructure will severely affect the regions and smaller communities by diverting the millions that could be spent on frontline services, cancer drugs, surgeries, and more nurses to creating more bureaucracy in Wellington. Our regions and smaller communities will lose their voices and their autonomy and this will cost lives. The current programmes that DHB’s run to target health needs that are specific to a community, are crucial. In Counties Manukau for example there is a need to focus on and fund specific issues such as diabetes, heart disease and rheumatic fever but these targets will not apply to every area of New Zealand. Removing DHBs has been tried before – it didn’t work then and it won’t work now. The restructure is going to be huge and therefore incredibly expensive and even worse, slow. In addition, it seems the establishment of a separate Maori Health Authority will add the complication of a two-tiered funding system and administration costs, to our health system. My National colleagues and I think that the treatment you receive should depend on your need not your ethnicity. The Government needs to focus immediately, on improving frontline services like providing non-invasive cervical screening for women and speeding up our vaccine rollout, which is the second slowest in the OECD, to stop people dying. The Minister has a half-opened hospital in Christchurch with a big carpark and promised to build a hospital in Dunedin during their election 2020 campaign, so maybe exploring the consolidation of some functions across DHBs, like asset management would help here rather than wholesale scrapping of the DHBs. Our DHB’s need a generous approach to more funding and support to roll out badly needed programmes around New Zealand like for example mental health. A National government would retain the community and local voice through a DHB framework. It would work towards a better single, integrated health system and focus on sensible outcomes that deliver to all New Zealanders the healthcare, including mental healthcare, they need right now. Covid-19 Border Security Woe I am upset by the obvious system failure that surfaced when we were told in mid-April that a regular border security guard had not been tested for Covid-19 for five months. The public had been promised for months that all of the frontline border staff were being tested regularly every fortnight. And then it came out that this security guard was not the only one who was missing tests. Around 10 per cent of the border workforce had gone untested or their testing had gone unrecorded. MBIE officials are on record saying the system functions properly but only 300 out of 589 employers of border-facing staff use it. So obviously there was no real certainty there at all. I am relieved that it is now mandatory for all employers to get current proof of up to date COVID-19 testing from all staff working at MIQ facilities and the border, as well as sending that employees’ information to the national register. Another question the government has not answered clearly yet, is how many border staff have been vaccinated and how many have not? My response is that we need the Epidemic Response (ER) Committee to start up again because we need government to be open, transparent and delivering on its promises especially those around the security of our borders against Covid-19. National has applied to the Speaker of the House to reinstate the ER Committee. Best wishes to all for your ANZAC DAY WEEKEND,
Hon Judith
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