The Police have compulsory arbitration for pay disputes

Chris Hipkins is trying to make an issue of the fact that the offer from the Police Commissioner has not been accepted by the Police Association.

Hipkins will know full well that there is a compulsory arbitration procedure for Police pay claims, and that if the Government is making an inadequate offer, it will only result in the Police Association offer being accepted.

The arbitration process is very unusual. It doesn’t involve compromise. The arbitrator either selects the Commissioner’s offer or the Policer Association’s offer.

What this means is that there is an incentive for both sides to be realistic.

Let’s say inflation is at 6%. If the Government offers 1% and the Association wants 8%, then the Association will win. If the Government offers 5% and the Association wants 12%, the Commissioner will win.

This is different to most other arbitrations where it is a compromise. There you may get bad faith offers of say 1% and 12%, as they will be hoping this will mean any compromise is as low or high as possible.

So if the Government’s offer really is so inadequate, then that is great for the Police Association. It greatly increases their chances of having their claim accepted.

The arbitration factors include “the recruitment and retention of suitably qualified Police employees” and doesn’t include affordability or ability to pay, so I’d say it is likely the Police Association will prevail.

More corporate welfare for Ruapehu

The Herald reports:

The operator of the Whakapapa skifield has received another Government bailout, but Regional Development Minister Shane Jones insists it is the last one.

Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million of financial support to Ruapehu Alpine Lifts(RAL), Jones announced today.

It also pledged to provide $3.05m in equity and loan funding to enable the sale of the Tūroa skifield assets to Pure Tūroa Ltd (PTL), a company owned by property developer Cam Robertson and businessman Greg Hickman.

For the last 17 months the insolvent, not-for-profit operator RAL has been kept afloat with $20m of taxpayer money.

I hope it is the last one, but I am not optimistic.

At the very most, the Government should have provided some one off assistance for say three months while buyers were found. $20 million of corporate welfare over 17 months is obscene, and I say that as someone who has skied at Mt Ruapehu since I was around five years old.

Ghahraman pleads guilty

1 News reports:

The former Green Party MP was charged with four counts of shoplifting related to three incidents in Auckland and one in Wellington. 

Two incidents relate to Ponsonby retailer Scotties Boutique on December 21 and 23, 2023.

One relates to Wellington retailer Cre8iveworkx after an incident on October 22, 2023, while the fourth charge, laid late last month, allegedly place at Standard Issue in Auckland’s Newmarket on December 22.

The total of the items taken was revised to $8917.

Ghahraman entered the guilty pleas at the Auckland District Court today.

This means it is just sentencing in June. The maximum sentence is three months jail for theft up to $500, one year jail for up to $1,000 and seven years jail for over $1,000.

1st time offenders often get a pre-charge warning and second time offenders diversion. This is more complicated as it is the first time Ghahraman has been charged, but it covers four different thefts, with a fairly high total value.

A fine or community service is most likely I would say, or even a suspended sentence.

Only 14% of those charged with theft escape conviction but have the charges proved, and even smaller 4% get discharged without conviction. So Ghahraman would be very privileged to get that.

I note in the Herald article, that someone who was acting as private security for Ghahraman was shining his torch at photographers to try and spoil any photos they took. This, in my view, is not a good look in terms of contrition.

Five thoughts from the UK on civil service impartiality

An interesting blog post by a former UK civil servant and special advisor:

I’d also note that the vast majority of civil servants I worked with, both as a civil servant and as a SpAd, were committed to impartiality. …

Concerns are rising about civil service impartiality – just look at the regular headlines in the Telegraph or the Daily Mail or, for some more thoughtful articles, see here here, or here, which set out some good reasons for this. When one side starts losing faith – rightly or wrongly – with an institution that is meant to be impartial, that causes real problems for that institution’s ability to continue to exist in that form. Like Caesar’s Wife, an impartial institution must be above approach. Those who care most about civil service impartiality should be in the forefront of addressing and rectifying these concerns.

He lists five areas of concern:

  1. Poor performance. he suggests that “there should be a formal means whereby Ministers could raise performance concerns about officials with their Permanent Secretary, and request that the person be reassigned. Such a power would be used rarely – similar to when a Permanent Secretary requests a formal written direction – but, when used, would normally be considered and resolved swiftly.”
  2. Recognising certain issues are politically contentious. “There is an urgent need to address the insistence by the civil service that certain matters – e.g. on gender and race – are somehow ‘non-political’. Regardless of your views on these issues, it is undeniably the case that questions around sex, gender, self-ID and women’s sports; or on race, privilege, statues, heritage and curriculum are highly politically contentious, regularly splashed on the front pages of newspapers, covered by the broadcast news and hotly debated in Parliament. Yet in the civil service, very one-sided positions on these are fully embedded within training courses, HR policies, within ‘staff support groups’ or in statements made by senior leaders. Sometimes these directly contradict the policies or positions that have been set out by Ministers.”
  3. The embedding of campaigning, activist groups in the public sector. This typically takes place through membership of diversity schemes, such as the Stonewall Diversity Scheme. This is a fundamental problem when civil servants must advise impartially on sensitive matters – such as transgender prisoners or self-ID in schools – where there are contested views in society. It is not enough to say that these schemes are only about internal HR policies. If staff have been taught, through training, lunchtime talks and so on, a one-sided view of an issue, and if their HR policies reflect that view, and suggest that anyone challenging may be subject to disciplinary action, how can they possibly submit impartial advice that considers the issues in a fair and balanced way?
  4. Group-Think The IFG report is right to say that group think is (mostly) a bigger concern than explicit bias. But with education polarisation increasingly the biggest divide in UK politics, this poses real challenges for an organisation that by necessity draws heavily from the highly educated. Essentially, in some areas most civil servants will have views which do not represent the nation as a whole, but only a particular slice of it.
  5. The use of accusations to bring down those with opposing political views.

They’re all valid issues, both in the UK and also I would say in NZ.

Five good health targets

Shane Reti announced five health targets:

  • Faster cancer treatment – 90 per cent of patients to receive cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat.   
  • Improved immunisation for kids  95 per cent of children to be fully immunised at 24 months of age. 
  • Shorter stays in emergency departments – 95 per cent of patients to be admitted, discharged or transferred from an ED within six hours.  
  • Shorter wait times for first specialist assessment – 95 per cent of patients to wait less than four months for an FSA.    
  • Shorter wait times for treatment – 95 per cent of patients to wait less than four months for elective treatment.

These will be challenging to achieve. Almost every health indicator got far worse under Labour after they abandoned meaningful health targets. But we shouldn’t accept the status quo. Governments should be judged on actual outcomes, not on how much money they spend.

I will blog regular updates on the quarterly data released measuring actual performance against the targets.

“Sexuality” education in NZ.

Despite promises from the new government to quickly review/replace these bizarre documents it appears that this remains the current official document in NZ that school Boards of Trustees must implement.

 “Relationship and Sexuality” education in Years 1 – 8 

This features statements such as:

In English, ākonga can:

• critically explore how the diversity of families, schools, and communities is represented in texts

• explore and critique the representation of gender roles and relationships in texts

• co-construct ground rules for engaging in critical discussions about text content

• create oral, visual, or written texts about the roles and relationships within their whānau or family

• engage in dialogue and debate in the context of provocative online posts linked to relationships, gender, and sexuality

In science, ākonga can:

• consider how biological sex has been constructed and measured over time and what this means in relation to people who have variations in sex characteristics

• consider variations in puberty, including the role of hormone blockers

This is for children between 5 and 12 years old (Year 1 – 8). There is no way they are going to be allowed to be kids. They get the worries of the adult world thrust down upon them and, for the record, I have always felt the sex and sexuality education belongs in the home.

What happens in NZ is that when a topic like this comes up a range of self-interest idealogues put their hands up and the Ministry calls them “experts” and gives them carte blanche. Families/parents and/or representatives of those pillars of society are most certainly not welcome to express their views.

The most insidious part of these documents was to spread the content through every learning area so that the ability for parents to withdraw their children was significantly negated.

Here is just one example of how the NZ documents are a disaster:

“Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones

Puberty blockers (gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues) are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness.

From the age of 16, teenagers who’ve been on hormone blockers for at least 12 months may be given cross-sex hormones, also known as gender-affirming hormones.

These hormones cause some irreversible changes, such as:

  • breast development (caused by taking oestrogen)
  • breaking or deepening of the voice (caused by taking testosterone)

Long-term cross-sex hormone treatment may cause temporary or even permanent infertility.

However, as cross-sex hormones affect people differently, they should not be considered a reliable form of contraception.

There is some uncertainty about the risks of long-term cross-sex hormone treatment.

Children, young people and their families are strongly discouraged from getting puberty blockers or gender affirming hormones from unregulated sources or online providers that are not regulated by UK regulatory bodies.” (www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/)”

Parents must be the key agents of all things to do with sex/sexuality in NZ. The State/Ministry has no role to play. Time for parents to be in touch with the Minister on this.

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/
www.wood2water.co.nz
www.russellinfo.co.nz

They tried to ban the V-J Day kiss photo

Amazing – they tried to ban one of the most iconic photos of history. They backed down after this tweet exposed what they did.

Now its Spirit Whales!

James Macpherson writes:

Work on Australia’s most expensive resources project has been halted because of the danger it poses to Spirit Whales.

Woodside Energy Group has been ordered to halt work on a $16b gas project off the coast of Western Australia that, if completed, will power 8.5 million homes for the next 30 years.

But the Federal Court ordered work to stop after hearing evidence the area was home to mythical whales.

The Spirit Whales, according to Indigenous fables, tell the fish of the sea what to eat, when to mate and where to migrate.

If the gas project was to go ahead, the Spirit Whales would be endangered. And if the Spirit Whales were killed, none of the creatures of the sea would know what do to.

How do the fish survive in countries without spirit whales?

And Judge Craig Colvin, whilst not confirming or denying that Spirit Whales existed, ruled that Woodside had a duty to consider “cultural harm” caused by their project.

Now what I think that means is that whilst absolutely no-one believes that Spirit Whales exist, it would be against the law to upset the wild fantasies of a woman who imagines she talks to whales. 

Because the woman is Indigenous.

And evidently Indigenous fantasies must be indulged, as a mark of respect.

So myths and fantasies must be considered in projects.

The worst Employment Court decision ever

The Court of Appeal has overturned a decision of the Employment Court which was arguably the stupidest judicial decision in recent times.

Basically the Employment Court had decided that the minimum wage laws set a fortnightly minimum wage, not an hourly minimum wage and that part-time staff had to be paid a minimum wage of 80 hours a fortnight, even if they only worked one day a fortnight.

Yes this so called specialist court decided that someone who works one day a fortnight must be paid the same minimum wage as someone who works ten days a fortnight. It’s a decision that is staggering in its dismissal of both the clear intent of the law, but the nonsensical impact it would have on employers.

The Court of Appeal has thankfully overturned the decision, but the fact it was made in the first place undermines the credibility of the Employment Court as a specialist court.

Might be time to look at abolishing it, and instead have cases go through district and high courts.

Student media should keep their parliamentary accreditation

The Spinoff reports:

Student journalists will be missing from parliament’s press gallery for the foreseeable future, owing to a decision by speaker of the house Gerry Brownlee. 

For the past two decades, student journalists under the umbrella of the Aotearoa Student Press Association have had accredited entry to the press gallery – parliament’s office of political journalists – allowing them direct access to government and opposition MPs. …

The speaker’s office did not respond to The Spinoff’s request for comment, but Brownlee told NZME that student journalists don’t come to parliament often enough to warrant bypassing security measures by using a swipe card.

He said he was currently working through a review of who had swipe-card access to parliament, and hadn’t said a “blanket no” to ASPA, just that at the moment he wasn’t issuing any access cards.

If the student journalists come in more than two or three times a year, then they should have accredited entry. We want Parliament to be more accessible to people, not less accessible.

UPDATE: They have been given a three month pass

Paula Bennett on Kainga Ora

Paula Bennett writes:

It may be a small percentage of Kāinga Ora tenants that are making other people’s lives hell but those that are should be dealt with swiftly and in the best interest of others.

It is obvious that they should be evicted for the safety of neighbours but they should also be evicted because they don’t respect the property and there are plenty of others who will.

There are more than 25,000 people on the Social Housing waitlist. This is far too many and at another time when we don’t have such a shortage of housing we should have the discussion of how many people the State should provide housing for.

Every gang member who is kept on terrorising their neighbours is blocking someone else from that state house who won’t.

There has to be some form of self-responsibility and consequences for actions. And one of those actions should be eviction – as National said it would do last year.

This was the status quo until Labour changed it in 2017. It was a disastrous experiment.

If you don’t want to be evicted then it is quite simple. Don’t terrorise and threaten your neighbours and treat the home with respect.

A state-funded cheap home is not yours by right and if you are lucky enough to be in one then you should take responsibility for your actions.

It’s not that hard!

Biden is least popular WWII President

Here’s is the net approval ratings for Presidents after 1,140 days in office.

  1. Eisenhower +61%
  2. Nixon +24%
  3. Reagan +18%
  4. Carter +17%
  5. Clinton +12%
  6. Bush (GW) +5%
  7. Obama +3%
  8. Bush (GHW) -10%
  9. Trump -11%
  10. Biden -18%

So no other President has been this low in March of election year, let alone a successful one.

Another sensible change

Mark Mitchell announced:

The coalition Government has taken the first steps to ensure prisoners on remand can access the rehabilitation and reintegration support they need to turn their lives around, says Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell.  

“The number of people on remand has increased by 146 per cent over the past 10 years. With almost 45 per cent of the prison population now on remand, the corrections system needs to adapt to support their needs so we can reduce re-offending and keep the public safe.

“That’s why, as part of this Government’s 100-day plan, we are taking steps to make it explicit in the Corrections Act 2004 that prisoners who are on remand and convicted of a crime will be provided with rehabilitation that helps address the causes of their offending.

Basically the current law doesn’t allow rehabilitation to be provided to prisoners on remand because they are awaiting trial or sentencing. This is pretty nuts as all prisoners should be able to access rehabilitation courses.

Not sure why it needed a change of Government to make it happen, but glad it is.

The most effective politician in America retires

Erick Erickson writes:

Unlike a lot of conservatives gleefully cheering on Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he will step down as Senate Republican Leader in November, after the election, I actually paid a price for vocally opposing McConnell. In 2014, I used my platform at RedState to back Matt Bevin’s race against McConnell. I was one year into my contract at Fox News. Roger Ailes told me to stop bashing McConnell or stop going on Fox. I was sidelined at Fox for the next two years. And McConnell beat Bevin.

I learned Mitch McConnell does not care. He does not care because he was busy putting points on the board.

As conservative agitators, rarely were I and my side in the win column against McConnell. Much of the rage directed at McConnell since noon yesterday and before has a lot to do with that — McConnell kept winning, and he didn’t care.

McConnell did not care about my complaints or your complaints. He did not care about those who vilified him or his own popularity. He did not care that Republicans would attack him on the campaign trail and denounce him on TV. He did not care that Democrats made McConnell the most disliked national politician in America. Real Clear Politics’ political average for McConnell has him with a 21% national approval rating — lower than any other national political figure, including Kamala Harris.

But Mitch McConnell does not care. He is elected by the people of Kentucky who have been returning him to the Senate more than any other senator in the commonwealth’s 232 year history. He cares about Kentucky, not national opinion polls.

Mitch McConnell does not care that Republicans or Democrats dislike him.

McConnell not caring about those things made him dangerously successful at his job. He had to care about a majority of the Republicans in the United States Senate, not you or me.

As an appropriator, he knew how to cobble together deals and build coalitions. He took that skill to the Republican Leader’s office. He often sacrificed things we conservatives wanted to instead make life comfortable for Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, or any number of other liberal to moderate Republicans who sometimes then made deals that conservatives hated.

They kept McConnell in charge and, in turn, McConnell kept the GOP mostly in the majority and, through that, blocked Democrat judges and rapidly confirmed Republican judges.

Mitch McConnell did not care about your or my temper tantrums and demands because he has long understood that a Republican majority, for better or worse, had the power to block the administrative state and build a judiciary that has no term limits or elections for its members. He has cared very deeply about that.

Whether you or I care for McConnell does not matter. You can say any Republican would have done what McConnell did, but you would have to ignore a series of Republican Senate Leaders before McConnell who did not ram through judges at breakneck pace and wage jihad against bureaucratic appointees. McConnell was willing to cut the throats Trent Lott and Bill Frist would never dream of cutting. The populist bros like to mock the Marquess of Queensberry Rules they think everybody is playing by. McConnell pants’d the Marquess and gave him a swirly before the populist bros were out of diapers.

McConnell was fixated on keeping the GOP in the majority in the Senate, and using the power that gave them to deliver. People’s views on McConnell will be shaped by whether or not you agree with his policies, but almost no one denies he was incredibly effective – some say the most effective post WWII Senator in the US.

With the GOP likely to regain the Senate this year, it will be very interesting to see who replaces him.

Finally, we designate Hamas as a terrorist organisation

Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters announced:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have announced today the designation of Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist entity.

“The terrorist attacks by Hamas in October 2023 were brutal and we have unequivocally condemned them,” Mr Luxon says. 

Following these attacks, then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins commissioned advice from officials about designating the entirety of Hamas – which has now been received. 

Mr Peters says New Zealand has designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity since 2010.

“But what happened on 7 October reinforces we can no longer distinguish between the military and political wings of Hamas. The organisation as a whole bears responsibility for these horrific terrorist attacks.”

The distinction was always tenuous. It is good NZ now recognises the reality.

They also announced:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have announced travel bans on a number of extremist Israeli settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“New Zealand is seriously concerned by the significant increase in extremist violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinian populations in recent months. This is particularly destabilising in what is already a major crisis,” Mr Luxon says.

“New Zealand has taken this step to signal clearly that this behaviour is unacceptable”, Mr Peters says.

“We are imposing travel bans on a number of people known to have committed violent acts. These individuals will not be able to travel to New Zealand.

This seems very reasonable also. Those who commit illegal violent acts should not be welcome in NZ.

Nate Silver on the bias of Google’s Gemini

Nate Silver has a lengthy and excellent piece on how the problem with Google’s Gemini is political, not technical. A few examples he cites:

  • Gemini wouldn’t say if Elon Musk’s tweets were better or worse than Hitler
  • Gemini will say Nazism is worse than socialism, but won’t say if Nazism is worse than capitalism
  • Gemini won’t argue in favour of having four or more children but will argue in favour of having no children

I use many Google products, but Gemini will not be one of them anytime soon.

Helping Kids Make Healthy Choices

A guest post by PaulL.

I read in the Herald that the public health lobbyists are concerned that the previous government didn’t act to ban fizzy drinks and juices in schools, and the new government isn’t particularly interested in it.

I especially liked this quote from Tinetti that it is:

disappointing to hear the Government isn’t progressing work to help kids make healthy choices at school

To me, you’re not helping kids to make choices if you’re taking their choices away. You’re restricting what options they have so that they don’t learn to make choices at all.

Really this is about not selling fizzy drinks or juices in the school tuck shop. The problem is that these things are perfectly fine as a treat (which is what the tuck shop should be for), they’re not fine every day. A small number of kids are having them every day, so the proposed solution is to ban them for every kid.

It’s a particularly Orwellian turn of phrase, and very much betrays the thinking that pervades Labour.

Is Cathedral Cove impassable?

The track to Cathedral Cove has been closed for over a year. DOC says that the track is impassable, and is so dangerous that it will take years to reopen it (until the Minister got involved, and now they are saying it may open by this summer).

But locals in Hahei have told me that the track damage is quite minor, and in fact one local said:

Hi, walked cathedral cove 6 times(fitness) two weeks ago.

Apart from having to walk around 5  DOC fences and initially over a 2.4 wooden wall the track was in great order.

EXCEPT  for a 12 meter slip that we walked up and around. Plus where DOC dropped 3 trees over the track which we walked under(safely) Have got photos but not very techy.

My fencing son with mate could clear the trees and post the slip area for railed steps in two days. Rails with a builder helping another day.

So who is right. Is the track impassable as DOC says or passable as locals say?

Well in the best traditions of investigative journalism I decided to find out first hand. So on Saturday I attempted to get to Cathedral Cove on foot, rather than pay $80 for a five minute water taxi.

Starts off with a lovely stroll along the beach.

The start of the track. Marked as dangerous with multiple hazards.

A lovely walk so far.

We’re at a high hazard area. That pink mark indicates the path has a small crack in it. Luckily with the right gear we managed to get past it.

Now we had a real challenge. At around six stages DOC has put up barriers to stop people risking their lives by walking on this incredibly dangerous track. As you can see, you have to walk a few metres down the bank to get past the fence.

Here we have some trees across the path. But these are not trees that came down in Cyclone Gabrielle. They were chopped down by DOC later on. If you wanted to you could remove them in a few hours, but actually kids (and me) love making their way through them.

Here at one of the lookouts there is a crack in the surface. But it is well off to the side of the main path.

As you can see the track is extremely hazardous. I was fortunate I am up to date with my medical insurance.

The second to last DOC fence or barrier. This one is more formidable as you have to squeeze around the left of it, adding around 10 seconds to the duration.

Finally, after we are 90% of the way there we come across something that would be risky. You definitely wouldn’t want to carry on that way.

Fortunately there is a very safe and easy path a few metres to the left of the slip. Around a 20 second detour.

As we descend to the Cove, the steps need a bit of a tidy up, but are perfectly adequate.

Finally just before the cove, we have a final barrier, because the steps down have washed away. You could easily put a couple of ropes there, or a ladder, or even new steps. But even without those it is trivial to get down safely – can actually use the barrier to lower yourself down.

And I’m at Cathedral Cove.

The track was far less challenging that some of the tramping tracks in the Remutakas. They also have slips, where you have to detour around. It’s not rocket science.

The test for me is whether I would be comfortable taking my four and seven year old on the track. I actually do get quite paranoid about dangers to them. If walking along a rural road, I constantly look for a fence or tree I could try and throw them over should a car skid out of control. So I take their safety seriously.

Absolutely without hesitation I would take them on the Cathedral Cove track in its current state. In fact they have done much more challenging tracks in the Remutakas. At no stage on the walk, was there a portion where you felt if there was some sudden erosion you might end up down a cliff. It is a lovely wonderful walk, and it is a travesty it has been closed for over a year.

The local who e-mailed me saying a couple of people could fix it in three days was, if anything, over-estimating the time. The only two things you really need to do are rope off the slip area near the end, and mark the detour, and do some steps at the end of the track. There was absolutely nothing else that was a challenge.

All tracks have risks of slips, but they are weather dependent. You could simply close the track three or four days a year when the weather is terrible, rather than have it closed for two years.

Perfect is the enemy of good, and this is a very good track. It is a beautiful walk, and a stunning destination. It’s sad that so many people have missed out being able to access it. The announcement that they plan to reopen it by next summer should be a limit, not a target. If they had the will, it could be opened within a week.

If you do walk the track, once it reopens, I recommend also doing a side track to a lookout. Stunning views. Was so pleased that some locals invited me along to walk the track (officially we walked next to the track, as only the track is closed, not the area around it which is public land) and am already planning a return trip with the kids.

After I got back to the bach, also did around 600 metres swim along Hahei Beach out to a buoy and back twice. Water was surprisingly warm for March.

Maori need outcomes, not bureaucracy

Shane Reti writes:

I want to start by reiterating that I believe we all have the same dream for the health system: we all want to address health inequities, we all want to shorten waiting lists, and we all want a workforce that isn’t overstretched and that has the right skills to respond effectively to all our diverse populations. …

This Government is totally focused on outcomes. The question we ask about any policy is: will it improve outcomes? Will it mean people get better care? Will it mean people get faster care? Will it mean people will get the care that suits their circumstances, including cultural competency?

My dream for the health system isn’t about bureaucratic structures and endless plans and reports; it’s about identifying need and responding to it.

For health: we can choose form or function; I choose function.

We can choose activism or actions; I choose actions.

We can choose outrage or outcomes; I choose outcomes.

Such a good contrast.

A good step with Medsafe and Pharmacy

David Seymour announced:

Pharmac is changing its process so it can assess a funding application at the same time Medsafe is assessing the application for regulatory approval. This means that medicines will be able to be considered for funding sooner in New Zealand.

“Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’re speeding up the process so more people have access to the medicines they need, faster,” says Associate Health Minister David Seymour.

“Currently Pharmac waits until Medsafe has completed its assessment before it starts a funding assessment. Doing both at the same time will mean medicines are assessed sooner.  

“It’s a common-sense efficiency that costs nothing but helps Kiwis in need. It can shave up to nine months off the approval process. 

This seems very common sense, and you wonder why it took a new Government to do this.

But there are further changes that can be made. Having Medsafe duplicate the work of much much larger overseas regulators does not add value to NZ. We should have a policy that any drug deemed safe by two reputable overseas regulators is automatically authorised in NZ, unless there is an appeal. So Medsafe would only deal with rare appeals, rather than having to duplicate work on every drug and medicine.