converser.nz

Category: This Is Christchurch

  • Does the NZ Government have any comprehensive policy on fixing the public health system?

    It seems appropriate at the moment for us to continue documenting the unfolding CDHB crisis and asking some hard questions relating to this. In our last post yesterday, the key question asked related to this actual issue. Simply put, the Government has to date failed to take any sort of lead and front up to…

  • NZ Pandemic Response Raises Questions Over Future Structure of Health System

    We’re still evolving what this site is about and how we will use it, but we are sticking for now with our plans that it won’t be a general political site, but that we will continue to use it to address a small selected range of issues that we feel are of key importance. The…

  • Canterbury District Health Board campaign increasing in public prominence

    This post is a followup to the last two posts we wrote which were also relevant to this subject. Our post of 18th August referred specifically to the relevance of proposed health sector reforms to the overall direction of government policy, and yesterday’s one was about the need to ensure that elected representation is maintained…

  • Local / Democratic Representation Important In Government Services

    Last time we talked about the Government’s “centralist authoritarian path” as described by Dr Ian Powell, former head of the senior doctors’ union ASMS, in the context of funding challenges at Canterbury District Health Board. As we know, in the year 2000, the Government set up the 20 District Health Boards to run local health…

  • Serious Health Sector Questions Raised By CDHB Funding Debacle

    In the news for the last few weeks has been the debacle over CDHB’s deficit. The issue is driven by underfunding of CDHB in recent years, and questions are due as to why the present Government has failed to address this matter, despite expectations. In fact, there is a much greater picture brewing over government…

  • A Tale Of Two Electricities

    This post is about electricity and how the Government has taken a cavalier approach to it in the last 30 years or so in NZ. Firstly in electrical safety, and secondly in the provision of electricity at a cost that people can afford. So let’s look at electrical safety. We can remember Consumer magazine reporting…

  • Mainstream Media Don’t Have A Monopoly On Freedom Of The Press

    There has been a great deal of reporting over the past week or two on a story involving two journalists being photographed meeting a former NZ First party president amid the alleged leaking of confidential party records to those same journalists. These photos were then published on a blog site called “The BFD”, which is…

  • Why NZ First Self Destructs

    NZ First is self destructing again. The reason they do this is because they piss people off. The reason they piss people off is their party is not a collective interest. It is based on self interest of each member, starting from the very top. The party is not democratic like other parties. Winston Peters…

  • Why Councils Are Risk Averse In Building Processes

    So this one is a little different, it’s defending councils against the allegations that they have ensnarled building processes in red tape. Anecdotally you can hear many concerns over what it costs to build a house or some commercial premises these days, and especially over the consents process with a local council and the fees…

  • Hamilton City CEO Calls For Local Electoral Reform

    An interesting op-ed appeared in the Stuff website yesterday, reporting on the call from Hamilton City’s CEO Richard Briggs for reform of local government elections (reported on Radio NZ three weeks ago). The Stuff article is written by three academic management specialists, so it’s refreshingly non-partisan in its approach. Briggs has stated his view that…