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Newsroom has been doing some decent work at a detail level recently but Stuff and NZ Herald are still shy of headlining some news that casts the government in a bad light. They published this piece which is an amazing story:
The background is that the government bullshitted about saliva testing to an advisory group, as reported by Stuff a month ago:
"This year the Ministry of Health falsely claimed saliva testing objectives had been completed in its report to the Covid-19 independent continuous review, improvement and advice group after the February Auckland outbreak, an act which earned it a swift rebuke when the group looked into the issue in June.
“There is no clear timeline for saliva testing to be introduced into routine practice,” says a report from the group, written by Philip Hill and Debbie Ryan. “Indeed, this recommendation should not be labelled as completed, as saliva testing has not been properly introduced into practice.”
Emails and memos released under the Official Information Act reveal that issues around the ministry’s chosen saliva test, along with problems around how it went about checking the accuracy of the tests, are the big reasons for the delay.
Staff from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) struggled to come up with paired samples to check saliva testing independently, because New Zealand had such low numbers of Covid-19 patients.”
They then ran a procurement process which looked at Rako Science, which was the only organisation in the country that had a validated saliva test. They had offered it to the government for a $60m tender fee. Instead of giving it to them they awarded a contract to a competitor, Asia Pacific Healthcare, which didn’t have a product at all for the same price.
Now the government is proposing legislation that will effectively take over Rako’s labs and IP, because of course APHC don’t have a product. They’re also planning to screw Rako on the price.
Why they didn’t give the contract to a company that had a viable solution is beyond me, but it seems wrong to award a contract to a competitor the expropriate Rako’s IP and give it to the competitor. The consequences of this for companies’ R&D may be major.
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That reads really poorly as in really really poorly. I remember hearing someone from Rako talking about their test - maybe a year ago.... It is consistent with Labour's 'if it isn't our idea it's a dumb idea' ethos whereas every astute politician knows that if it isn't your idea but it's good you simply appropriate it.
I'm not sure the media in the main gets saliva testing though. They seem to confuse it with rapid antigen testing which it is not.
It's no faster than the traditional stick a swivel stick up your nose as it has to go through the same testing procedure, which I'm sure everyone here realises but the general public don't seem to.
Rapid antigen hasn't been appropriate while we have been running an elimination policy as it misses about 105 of cases. If the genie is out of the bottle however....
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Been listening to lots of Steve Jobs quotes recently with it having been the tenth anniversary of his death.
A famous one is about the world being built by people no smarter than you.
With this current government, and the current version of National, but particularly the government, can’t help but think George Carlin was closer.
Think of how dumb the average person is and half the people are dumber than that. In NZ, that half is running the country.
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@kirwan said in NZ Politics:
Indefensible in short.
It's not entirely unknown to requisition supplies in times of emergency - I certainly remember requisitions following the Canterbury earthquakes by Civil Defence, and the USA has legislation for war time which it was using for Covid. That said, this smacks of trying to salvage a terrible decision after the realisation dawned of how terrible it actually was.
Here are a few highlights of Labour's term(s) to date - I'm sure some of these aren't popular here, but they did get done:
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Cancelled National Parties tax bracket moves and increased Working for Families and Accommodation Supplements substantially
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Added a new tax bracket for the very high income earners
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Bright line test extended
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Property losses ringfenced
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Property interest deduction reduced
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Overseas investment in property mostly banned
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Increased benefit rates by the most seen in a generation (still work to do of course)
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Indexed benefits to average wage increases rather than CPI
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Introduced Winter Energy Payment
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Free lunches in schools
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Increased Student Allowances
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Fees free scheme (1st year at tertiary institutes, free apprenticeships)
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Restored adult night class funding
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Kainga Ora building more than 2,000 houses/year
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Improved tenancy legislation by eliminating no-fault terminations by landlords
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Credit contract reform
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Increased minimum wage to $20
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Extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks (from 18)
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Increased sick leave to 10 days p.a.
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Matariki
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Improved Employment Relations Act – union delegates now specifically protected, collective agreements must include pay, 90 day trial removed for medium and large employers, breaks reinstated
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Pay equity legislation and settlements e.g. social workers, admin workers, teacher aides, nurses and ECE teachers coming, others in the pipelines
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Feebates for electric cars
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Reduction in prisoner numbers by over 15%
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Restored voting rights for prisoners with less than 3 year sentences (I think that's a net positive, but acknowledge that others will disagree)
That's some off the top of my head, there are others. For all the Covid doom and gloom (and there is plenty of weakness to judge them harshly on), we have close to the lowest Covid death rate in the world and a negative excess mortality rate, so they must have got something right somewhere.
I'm not sure how to handle the public service being slow and bureaucratic - that's what they do, but it's also a feature of large organisations generally, it's not unique to government departments. There's something about large numbers of people that creates annoyingly large amounts of middle management of one sort or another that just turns processes into molasses. Any attempts to cull managers always seem to result in reviews later which create more management positions...
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Not sure if this goes in here or Covid, relevant to both I guess (the article dated this from last year post our first L4 lockdown)
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@taniwharugby Imagine that at 1pm in place of one of the usual press conferences...
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Looks like we have a free trade agreement (in principle) - https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126744981/uknz-free-trade-agreement-reached-promising-zerotariffs-and-970m-economic-boost . Good to see.
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@taniwharugby and from another article on the subject;
"If you are more conspiracy minded – and plenty are on this issue – you’ll see the new entities, which will have strong iwi representation, as a cover for transferring ownership, or control, or cashflow to Māori. A sharing of resources with a Treaty partner, but without any mandate from the people to do so and without the consent of the ratepayers and water users who have built up the assets"
Further evidence of seperation of our country by racial lines.
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@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
The Dictatorship continues...
This is not what they should be concentrating on right now
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@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
If I was sneaky? Yeah!
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@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
Well, there is a reason why they release stuff on the Friday of a long weekend.
As for what they are concentrating on, Collins asked Cindy in parliament if we had enough ICU beds to handle the Covid crisis and Herr Highness answered with "yes".
So panic over, nothing more needed to be done here.
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@kirwan said in NZ Politics:
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
Well, there is a reason why they release stuff on the Friday of a long weekend.
As for what they are concentrating on, Collins asked Cindy in parliament if we had enough ICU beds to handle the Covid crisis and Herr Highness answered with "yes".
So panic over, nothing more needed to be done here.
If we have enough what the hell are we doing still under house arrest!??!
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@canefan said in NZ Politics:
@kirwan said in NZ Politics:
@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:
@canefan actually, probably the best time to ram through something like this!
Well, there is a reason why they release stuff on the Friday of a long weekend.
As for what they are concentrating on, Collins asked Cindy in parliament if we had enough ICU beds to handle the Covid crisis and Herr Highness answered with "yes".
So panic over, nothing more needed to be done here.
If we have enough what the hell are we doing still under house arrest!??!
"It's not a matter of running out, it's a matter of whether or not we are in a position where we need to have a little less demand."
I guess it applies to ICU beds as well as vaccines.
NZ Politics