Media Release
5 December 2003

Operations For All

New Zealand First is urging the Labour government to drop its bizarre scheme that would see beneficiaries receive state funded private hospital treatment whilst the rest of the country queue up at under resourced public hospitals.

“Of course beneficiaries should receive timely operations and be given an early opportunity to return to the workforce but the same ‘cost’ arguments can be applied to the rest of the population. Priority for health care must be based on medical need and clinical factors and not according to socio-economic factors such as whether or not one is a beneficiary,” said New Zealand First leader Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“Waiting lists should be shortened as a result of patients being given operations and treatment rather than just being sent back to their GPs.

“If there is extra capacity available at our private hospitals then the public system should utilise that to the benefit of all New Zealanders, beneficiaries or not.

“This is one more example of a government without vision grasping at straws to cover its ineptitude and its failure to deliver adequate health services,” said Mr Peters.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On Why Fair Pay Agreements Should Be Embraced

Are Fair Pay Agreements (FPAs) truly the work of the devil? Given the vehement response to them last week by (a) employer groups and (b) by their parliamentary friends on the extreme right, you could be forgiven for thinking these FPA things will mean curtains for commerce as we’ve known it for the past 30 years. Believe me, they won’t. Less excitable types will regard FPAs as heralding only a mild shift towards a more centralised form of bargaining over wages and conditions, much akin to what other successful economies (eg Germany) have recognised for decades... More>>