19 February
The economy is booming, jobs are plentiful, and everything is rosy.
Except that it's not entirely correct. On the surface, things might seem ok, but when reports on our public hospitals in the capital city turn out like this, there is something rotten in the State of Denmark. And New Zealand.
As if things at Hutt Hospital weren't enough on their own, Wellington Hospital is no better. Unsanitary conditions, ripped chairs, cockroaches... these could be in some third-world dive, but they aren't.
Then, in a surprising nobody announcement, we find that the appalling Middlemore Hospital is still... appalling!
Why are our major hospitals in such awful condition?
The answer is obvious: money, or specifically, lack of it.
The National government has operated on a return-to-surplus-next-year at all costs routine, and this is what you get. Health & Education are suffering, along with benefits, all because the government is obsessed with returning the budget to surplus.
At the same time that they're throwing millions at the America's Cup, royal visits, and a multitude of other wasteful crap. It's exactly a fortnight since John Key was waving a half-billion dollar cheque book in front of Puhoi, but I see no sign of increasing health & education spending.
Yet this is the most-popular government for many years.
And people say voters are stupid....
Copyright © Alan Charman