Bill English announced:

Prime Minister Bill English today signalled National’s intention to work with support partners – United Future and ACT – in this year’s General Election. …

“We are encouraging National supporters to give their electorate vote to ACT candidate, David Seymour, in Epsom, and United Future candidate, Peter Dunne, in Ohariu – and their party vote to National.

“To be clear, we want to increase our party votes in those electorates and that’s what our National Party candidates will be working hard to do.

Marks for being upfront. Voters still have a choice of course. National is standing candidates. National supporters can vote for the National candidate if they so wish, or vote for the candidate of a coalition partner.

Metiria Turei wrote in Stuff:

Section 70A requires single parents to name the father of their child, or risk losing their benefit.

This particular sanction is currently being handed down to 14,000 single parents, almost all of whom are mums. They are having up to $28 per week per child taken off them. The victims of this punitive and nasty law are the more than 17,000 kids who are then being deprived of that money – money that could be spent on food, or school books, or for paying the power bill so they can keep the heater on in their bedroom this winter.

Turei assumes they get less money by not naming the father. In most cases they get more money. The deadbeat Dads want the taxpayers to pay for theie children instead of then. So they pay the mothers say $50 a week to not name them (meaning they end up say $22 a week better off) and that means IRD can’t deduct child support from their wages, which can be well over $100 a week.

Why anyone believes that children should be punished for their parents’ choices is beyond me.

They are not being punished. The Dads are just trying to avoid any responsibility for their own children. That is not something we should encourage.

And why is taking money from a mother and her kids the only option if the state wants to track down the father? 

Because the mother is the ionly person who can name the father, unless Turei is suggesting every male adult in NZ should be DNA tested to determine paternity.

Aside from that, the reasons women may choose not to name the father of their child are myriad and complex.

For many, it’s because that person was physically violent or emotionally abusive towards them. They have made the decision to cut contact with that person, for their own safety and that of their baby’s.

This is where Turei basically lies. The policy has exemptions for situations where the father is violent or abusive, or rape is involved etc. She knows this. There is no sanction for not naming the father if it is a safety issue. The sanction is for the cases where the father is just trying to have the taxpayer pay all the costs of his children.

Surely, the sheer numbers of people who are being punished under 70A – and countless other sanctions – shows that the system that was designed to help people is failing miserably and is in need of an overhaul.

Nope. It shows the sanction is not high enough to make it worthwhile to name the father. It means the father just has to offer more than $28 a week to avoid being named.

Single mums on benefits should be no more required to name the father of their child than those women who work – that is, they shouldn’t.

Turei thinks that welfare shiuld be a lifetime entitlement with no responsibilities. I disagree. If you want the taxpayer to pay the cost of your children, the least you can do is tell us (unless a safety issue) who the father is so that he can pay some of the costs also. It is called responsibility.

The Greens are against there being any responsibilities if you are on welfare. They want to abolish work testing so peiople can remain on welfare for life. It is an appalling

MSD has released their annual income report based on Stats NZ and other data. The findings are very different to what many would have you believe. A summary:

• median household incomes rose 3% in real terms last year
• median household incomes have risen 3% (real) on average every year since 2011
• New Zealand’s net gains from HES 2009 to HES 2016 are better overall than for many OECD countries (we had better income growth than most)
• The share of income received by the top 1% has declined slightly from a peak of 9% in the mid 1990s and is lower than most OECD countries
• There is no evidence of any sustained rise or fall in BHC household income inequality in the last 10-15 years (90:10 ratio) or the last 20 years (Gini for 99% plus top 1% share) or the last 25 years (top 1% share from tax records).
• in 2015 households in the top decile paid one third (35%) of all income tax collected, and received 5% of all transfers
• single-earner families with two children can earn up to around $60,000 pa before they pay any net tax
• Around half of all households with children receive more in welfare benefits and tax credits than they pay in income tax
• the total income tax paid by each of the bottom four deciles is less than the total transfers received
• On average over HES 2015 and 2016 29% of households had high OTIs – that is, housing costs of more than 30% of their disposable (after tax) income. There has been little change in this rate since HES 2009.
• There is no evidence of any rise in recent years in low-income (income poverty) trends using anchored line measures, either BHC or AHC. The trends are either flat or falling, depending on the start point or measure used.
• For the standard or less severe hardship measure, the impacts of the GFC and the recovery are very clear, with the rate first rising to 13% in HES 2011 then falling to 7-8% over the last two surveys, lower than before the GFC (10%).
• There is no evidence of any increasing depth of relative income poverty over the last two decades

The report has a wealth of data about which NZers are doing okay and which ones are struggling. And few would dispute that some families are struggling. But it is very clear that overall incomes are increasing in real terms, and inequality is at best static and even dropping according to some measures.

Stuff reports:

Labour’s Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis has promised he’ll resign before the two charter schools in his Northland electorate are closed. He says it’s an easy promise to make because the schools will only change in name.

So Davis is saying Labour’s policy is merely to rename them.  That’s what he tells the many parents in his electorate who are benefiting from them. But is that what Labour’s policy really is?

Under a Labour-led government charter schools will be repealed and the party’s education spokesman Chris Hipkins said the options on the table for those schools would be anything from “closure to integration into the state school system”.

It is the charter school model that allowed these schools to open. If they could operate as an integrated school they would have opened years ago. So behind the spin Hipkins is saying they will close.

A commitment to keep charter schools open was also made in May by Labour list candidate Willie Jackson, who was heavily involved with Te Kura Maori o Waatea, a charter school based in South Auckland.

At the time Labour leader Andrew Little made it clear those schools would close under Labour and there was no hint of changes to the special character school model – nor was it mentioned in the party’s education manifesto released on Friday.

So Davis and Jackson say one thing and Hipkins and Little another. Can you trust them?

On Monday, responding to Davis’ pledge to resign over them, Hipkins said “tweaks” would be made so there weren’t any “unnecessary barriers” for new special character schools.

That could include allowing schools to have more than one special character, which would make it easier for some Maori and Pacifica-targeted schools, he said.

Asked whether those changes were needed for some charter schools to be able to stay open, Hipkins said: “quite possibly, but that wouldn’t be the driver of the change”.

Tinkering is not the issue. What is special about the charter school model is it allows the schools to receive all their funds in one pool, and decide for themselves how much to spending on buildings, on IT, on teachers, on equipment etc. Labour will never ever agree to this.

Stuff reports:

Greens co-leader Metiria Turei is under the spotlight for not looking for work while committing benefit fraud but spending time running for political parties. …

It’s now been revealed that Turei wasn’t working while studying for her law degree but was campaigning for two different political parties.

Yep. She could have been earning some money honestly. She had time to run for Parliament, so she could have had time for a part-time job. But instead she *chose* to steal from taxpayers. This was not something forced on her.

In 1993 she stood for the McGillicuddy Serious Party and in the 1996 election she campaigned for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party.

Standing for Parliament and campaigning takes time.

“(Campaigning) took a little bit of time but this is the thing, people are entitled to have a decent life and I want every beneficiary to have enough money to be financially secure.”

So now we get to her real views. Taxpayers should not just fund her to be a mother, but also fund her enough so she doesn’t need to work and instead can have fun campaigning for political parties.

This is of course consistent with their policy to get rid of all work testing for benefits. They think taxpayers should fund people to be on welfare for as long as they want to with no requirement at all to seek work to help support themselves.

Stuff reports:

The Advertising Standards Authority is considering whether to investigate two complaints made over the billboards of Labour’s candidate for the Tukituki electorate, Anna Lorck.

The complaints have been laid because her billboard says “Your Local MP”, when she is not an MP.

An ASA spokeswoman said the complaints were received on Saturday and Monday. 

This is a no brainer. It is clearly deceptive and misleading.

Richard Dawkins responds to a decision to univite him because of what he has said on Islam. He points out:

If you had consulted me, or if you had done even rudimentary fact-checking, you would have concluded that I have never used abusive speech against Islam. I have called IslamISM “vile” but surely you, of all people, understand that Islamism is not the same as Islam. I have criticised the ridiculous pseudoscientific claims made by Islamic apologists (“the sun sets in a marsh” etc), and the opposition of Islamic “scholars” to evolution and other scientific truths. I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief. Far from attacking Muslims, I understand — as perhaps you do not — that Muslims themselves are the prime victims of the oppressive cruelties of Islamism, especially Muslim women.

I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that. Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?

The double standard is often in play. There is no limit to how fiercelty you can criticise Christianity. But even mild criticisms of Islam or Islamism can see you called racist, bigoted etc etc.

The Herald reports:

The New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association (NZMEA) has come out in favour of the government’s possible backtrack on immigration changes.

In April, Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse unveiled a ‘Kiwis first’ immigration policy which made it harder for firms to hire overseas, with new restrictions on temporary work visas for anyone earning less than the median wage. The government then planned to categorise high and low-skilled temporary work visas depending on how much a person earns, introduce a three-year limit for how long low-skilled workers can stay, and impose a one-year stand-down period.

The planned crackdown on temporary work visas came six months after the government raised the bar on the skilled migrant visa, with record immigration a hot topic in the forthcoming election.

In an interview on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report this morning, Prime Minister Bill English said he “wouldn’t describe it as a u-turn”, but confirmed that proposed changes to skilled migrant visa conditions are under review following complaints from businesses and the regions.

The NZ economy is adding 11,500 jobs a month or 66 jobs per working week hour. Migrants are not taking jobs from Kiwis. They are filling jobs that employers can’t find anyone else to do.

Even the very modest changes made by National have seen employers saying they are unable to fill jobs. That constrains the economy, and is bad for everyone. The more radical proposals from Labour and NZ First to slash net migration by 75% to 90% willquite simply crash the economy.

The Herald reports:

An offender with more than 110 convictions for sex with underage girls, indecent sex acts, fraud, theft and assault was recently paroled to a suburban Whangarei address.

The unit Darren Albert Jolly was allowed to move to was within a kilometre from a children’s health camp, a daycare centre, two primary schools and a high school.

This sounds shocking but most urban residences will be within a km of schools or ECE centres. I’d estimate we live within a km of five schools and ECE centres. It would be near impossible not to be within a km of an ECE centre in a city.

Jolly (aged 52) is flagged as a high-risk sex offender with 12 standard and 13 special prison release conditions that ban him from computers and going near schools, parks and playgrounds.

 

He is known to have breached those conditions 20 times.

The issue then I would have thought is why is he on parole at all?

One of his more recent breach of ESO conditions, in 2015 in Dunedin, involved the use of a smartphone, with police observing him using it for an hour in a Wi-Fi area.

Other breaches include him cutting off his monitoring device and leaving the paroled address.

So shouldn’t he be recalled if he keeps breaching?

The Herald reports:

Charlie Gard’s parents have ended their legal fight over treatment for the terminally-ill baby. …

Armstrong said Charlie’s parents had made a decision following the latest medical reports and scans.

Armstrong said damage to Charlie’s muscle and tissue was irreversible.

“The parents’ worst fears have been confirmed,” he said. “It is now too late to treat Charlie.”

You can only have the deepest empathy and sympathy for the parents, who desperately wanted to believe there was hope, even when the doctors concluded there wasn’t.

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said their “hearts go out” to the family in the tragic case. However they backed their earlier decision that not to treat Charlie based on the “irreversible neurological damage” he had suffered, meaning they believed any chance of therapy improving his condition “had departed.”

The hospital also noted its “surprise and disappointment” that the doctor who provided evidence for a last minute intervention, Dr Michio Hirano, stated in court on 13 July he had not visited the hospital to examine Charlie, read his notes or seen his brain scans.

“Further, GOSH was concerned to hear the Professor state, for the first time, while in the witness box, that he retains a financial interest in some of the NBT compounds he proposed prescribing for Charlie.

I’m less sympathethic to people who gave the parents false hope.

Michael Reddell blogs:

But today I wanted to focus on the one chapter that really caught my attention, by Kate McMillan, a senior lecturer in politics at Victoria.  Her chapter bears the title “Fairness and the borders around political community”, and isn’t really about immigration, per se, at all.   Rather she focuses on something I’d never known before, that New Zealand is very unusual internationally in when we allow new arrivals to vote.

Only five countries in the world have provisions allowing resident non-citizens to vote: Malawi, Chile, Ecuador and Uruguay –  none known these days for taking many immigrants –  and New Zealand.   In most countries, only citizens get the right to vote in national elections (there is a much wider range of rules for local elections in many countries). 

Pleased to see someone else highlight this. I have blogged on this from time to time over the last decade. I am a strong believer that we should only allow citizens to vote (but grandfather in all existing eligible voters).

The reasons for doing so is to in fact promote citizenship. There are so few differences between the rights of permament residents and citizens creating weak incentives for residents to become citizens.

I think citizenship is important. It makes a country your home, rather than just the place you reside. We should promote it more. It increases social cohesion. Restricting the right to vote in national elections to citizens would be a good step along the way.

McMillan highlights further how unusual our voting rights rules are.  In those other four countries that allow non-citizen residents to vote in national elections all require residents to have lived in the country for at least as long as they would have to have lived there to be entitled to take out citizenship before they are allowed to vote.  (Unless you are Peter Thiel or Gabs Makhlouf), people have to spend five years here before they are entitled to apply for citizenship. 

So we actually have the most liberal regime in the world for allowing non-citizens to vote. You can qualify to vote after just one year in NZ.

If you aren’t prepared to go to the modest effort of becoming a citizenship, and swearing allegiance to New Zealand and its sovereign, we might be quite happy to let you live here permamently, but why should you get a say in how this country is run or governed?  You’ve chosen to remain at arms-length from us.

I agree.

This is Part 3 of my family tree, covering the Clemens, my mother’s father’s mother’s family.

It seems I am distantly related to Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. I don’t know the exact relationship but when he visited New Zealand in 1895, he caught up with my great grand mother whom he was related to.

Jonathon Clemens my 6th great-grandfather was a blacksmith in Devo, England. He married Christian Mussell and they had one son. Johnathon Clemens joined with over 200 people in 1723 to sign the oath of allegiance to Government.

My 5th great-grandfather Anthony Clemens was born in 1707. He married Christian Saunder in 1742 and died in 1777 in St Giles in the Woods. He was also a blacksmith.

Anthony’s only son, also called Anthony Clemens was born in 1744. He is my 4th great-grandfather. He married Grace Cook in 1766 and they had eight or nine children. He died in 1806. Like his father and grandfather he was a blacksmith and was also the clerk of his parish.

His 7th child was called William Edward Clemens, my 3rd great-grandfather. William was born in 1778 in St Giles in the Woods and married Frances Williams in 1803. They had eight children and William died six years later aged 50 in 1828.  William was a exciseman, which took him around England.

Edward WIlliam Clemens is my 2nd great-grandfather and was born in 1822 in Bradford on Avon. He worked as a baker and at the age of 20 moved to New Zealand working as the cabin boy on the ship “Fifeshire” which landed in Nelson. Edward became a Master Mariner and went back to England and then to Australia in 1851. In Australia he married 19 year old Mary Doherty (from Ireland) there in 1857 and served with the Melbourne Water Police.

They then moved to New Zealand settling in Shakespeare Bay, Picton. He prospected coal and established a farm before dying in Marlborough aged 83 in 1905. They had 12 children. He left an estate of 829 pounds.

The 5th of their 12 children was Elizabeth Ann Clemens, my great-grandmother. She was born in 1862 in Picton. She married, aged 21, John Newth in 1883.  She had 11 children with John including my grandfather Ted (Mark Edward). She died in Auckland in 1949 aged 87. She was buried in Thames Valley in the Bay of Plenty.

Black Hands is a 10 part podcast from Stuff on the Bain murders. I’m not sure when I’ll get the time but I plan to listen to all 10 parts.

Of interest in this first part is that the Police originally thought it was murder-suicide. They said it was often the father in situations like this. It was only as they went through the evidence that they then suspected David.

If you comment on this, please follow two rules:

1. You can offer an opinion as to whether it is more likely David did it or Robin did it. But you can’t refer to David as a murderer as that is a legal term and he has been found not guilty beyond reasonable doubt
2. Don’t cast any aspersions on Joe Karam. This is about David or Robin, not Joe Karam. Karam has a passionate belief that David was innocent and won a large number of court victories for him. You might disagree with him on David’s innocence, but don’t suggest any improper motives.

Rodney Hide writes:

Sadly, there’s a big chunk of voters who think they’re entitled to live off the work of others. They see it as government’s job to make that happen. They vote for handouts.

Nothing signals handouts better than a party leader saying, “Hey, I lived on handouts too – and when I was short I lied to get more.”

Whoa, Turei gets it. It’s exhilarating. She lied and cheated and shows no shame and offers no apology. Imagine her as deputy PM. Wicked. If it’s okay for her, it’s okay for us.

Turei wins the handout vote, hands-down. The other parties don’t come close. They might promise more, but they will expect you to be truthful and live within the rules. The last Labour Government had zero-tolerance for benefit fraud.

 

Turei’s admission is a smart move for votes. She’s the handout voter’s dream. There will be no crackdown on benefit cheats if she’s in charge.

In fact their policy is to reward cheating. You can form a new relationship and no need to tell WINZ for three years. Yep can live with and have a child with a millionairre and still claim the DPB for a previous child. No need to apply for jobs anymore either – Greens policy is a benefit is a benefit for life with no work testing.

Her admission is also dumb. It has finished her politically.

She’s self-labelled a benefit cheat. That will haunt her. It will be the first thought most people have on hearing her name. It’s not a positive for the great majority of us.

She’s proved she will lie to suit her purpose. And have no remorse in doing so. That’s the very damaging thing: she doesn’t see she’s done wrong. 

That is what grates. NZers are very forgiving of people who have made mistakes in their past, so long as they are open about them and express regret. If Turei in her maiden speech has mentioned her welfare fraud and how she regretted it, then it would be of no interest to anyone. But as Hide explains she doesn’t think she is to blame – she thinks we are!

The Greens believe their policies are needed to save the planet. That’s what they keep telling us. There can be nothing more important to them than saving the planet.

If it’s okay to lie to get a few extra dollars, it must be okay to lie to propel the Greens into government. And keep them there. So if it’s okay to lie for dollars, it surely must be okay to lie for Green power, for Green policy, for a Green planet.

Or does Turei think that a few dollars for her then were more necessary than saving the planet now?

If small lies are okay, then what about big lies?

The Greens won’t make it to government this election. In the resulting dust-up Turei will be dumped. There is nothing more certain. She can’t be trusted. We all make mistakes but Turei shows no remorse and offers no apology. It wasn’t a mistake.

Can you imagine Winston Peters allowing Turei to become a Minister if he holds the balance of power? She will get the blame for them being locked out again, and get rolled after the election.

The Government announced:

The Government will co-invest up to $600 million alongside local councils and private investors in network infrastructure for big new housing developments through a re-purposed ultra-fast broadband company, Finance Minister Steven Joyce and Local Government Minister Anne Tolley say.

“Crown Fibre Holdings will be re-named Crown Infrastructure Partners, and bring the investment skills and experience gained through the Government’s world-leading ultra-fast broadband rollout to the job of attracting private investment in roading and water infrastructure that open up big new tracts of land for more housing development,” Mr Joyce says.

Sensible to use Crown Fibre Holdings (which has done a good job) rather than set up a new entity.

“Crown Infrastructure Partners will set up special purpose companies to build and own new trunk infrastructure for housing developments in return for dedicated long term revenue streams from councils through targeted rates and volumetric charging for use of the infrastructure by new residents.”

“This innovative new funding method will be made available to cash-strapped councils who are struggling to fund new long-term infrastructure from their own balance sheets,” Mrs Tolley says.

“Councils will have the option of buying back the infrastructure at some point in the future, but won’t have to commit to doing so. This is all about introducing outside capital to build this infrastructure, so current ratepayers don’t get burdened with all the costs of growth.”

This is really important and something I have championed for some time, since the NZ Initiative proposed it. Phil Twyford has also been calling for a way for housing infrastructure to be funded outside current ratepayers.

Currently Councils are incentivisied to not build houses as the infrastructure costs them money, and they sometimes have debt limits. This initiative will cover the costs of the initial infrastructure, and recoup them over time from the new residents (ie user pays).

Two of the earliest projects to be assessed by Crown Infrastructure Partners for investment will be the Auckland North and Auckland South projects previously submitted by Auckland Council as requiring investment outside the Council’s own balance sheet.

“These two large projects can provide an additional 5,500 homes in Wainui to the north of Auckland, and 17,800 homes across Pukekohe, Paerata and Drury to the south of the city,” Mrs Tolley says.

Mr Joyce says the Government is prepared to be an investor alongside the private sector and take up some of the early uptake risk.

“We learnt from the ultra-fast broadband programme that if we de-risk some of the early stages of the investment, we can bring in private sector investors to take on much of the heavy lifting as the investments mature,” Mr Joyce says. “We would expect the Crown’s investment in each project to be matched with at least one to one with private sector investment over time.”

A private-public partnership looks good to me.

One News reports:

Seven people have understood to have died from synthetic cannabis this month, sold in and around Auckland.

A crisis meeting has been called at the Auckland District Health Board scheduled for 2pm today with police and health officials to attend.

The coroner and Auckland police are investigating the deaths, which are thought to be result of one contaminated batch of the synthetic drug.

Synthetic cannabis is a substitute for actual cannabis. It got popular as it was legal for many years while cannabis is illegal.

As far as I know, no one has ever died from cannabis. It does have adverse health effects (like most drugs) but it doesn’t kill you.

So surely the logical thing to do is legalise the non lethal cannabis so people won’t due from taking the sometimes lethal synthethic cannabis.

The parties of the left have gone mad in the last few weeks with them announcing over $10 billion of spending programmes between them. They seem to be in a race to bankrupt New Zealand.

The latest is TOP promising $200 a week to every person aged from 18 to 23. So they think an 18 year old shouldn’t be allowed in the pub but should be given $200 a week regardless.

The policy would cost $3.39 billion per year but TOP say they could find this money by cancelling National’s tax cuts, savings on student allowances, and with money from the Budget surplus.

That $3.4 billion for just one policy. No way you get that from the modest tax cuts or current student allowances.

“As soon as [Joyce] said he was going to give himself and myself a tax cut I thought ‘Ha, I’ve found some money!'”, Morgan said.

The tax cut is $20 a week for wealthy NZers. That doesn’t fund $200 a week for every young adult.

HDPA writes:

Given the events of the last week, it may be time for both the Green and Labour parties to ask themselves how badly they want the baubles of office this year.

Is three years in Government worth the carnage they could suffer? Because, it’s becoming clearer, joining forces with Winston Peters after this year’s election could damage them both.

Parties in power with Winston always suffer. If National does an agreement with Winston for a 4th term, they’ll end up bundled out of office in the low to mid 30s and facing nine years in opposition afterwards.

If Labour and Greens do a deal with Winston, they’ll be a one term Government. They may not even last a term, and the Greens may have to worry about the 5% threshold.

But how can the leadership label NZ First’s approach racist, then in just a few weeks’ time seriously expect members to accept the Greens coalescing with that very same party?

The Greens are a party founded in activism. The members care deeply enough to force leadership to retract an immigration policy aimed at cutting numbers.

If they are in a coalition with Winston, they’ll be asked daily to comment on his latest attack on refugees or Asians or whatever. And they’ll have to humour him or face him bringing the Government down, with the net impact being their own brand gets damaged. Having Winston choose you to go into Government with him is not winning – it is losing.

The Greens risk being torn apart by divisions over Peters.

Which is why I hope he chooses them if he has the balance of power. It could see the Greens wiped out of Parliament the election after.

If he does ask to job-share the prime ministership for part of the three-year term – and then actually get that from a party desperate after nine years in Opposition – the damage to Labour will be enormous.

It will fundamentally undermine our traditional perception of Labour as one of the country’s two major parties. Suddenly, Labour would become a minor party in our minds.

Winston picked up the point I made on Friday that if Labour drop just 3% more (according to their own internal polls) then Andrew Little is out of Parliament and a leaderless Labour will happily accept Winston Peters as Prime Minister in a three way left Government. A brilliant decapitation strategy for Peters.

He may not even need to steal a further 3% off Labour. If they win an additional electorate seat, then 2% will do it.

Jake Bailey writes:

As far as a health goes, I’m part of a group of people who have come extraordinarily close to, and for a sustained period of time walked the line of, death.

When my cancer was caught it was at stage four, and was doubling in size every 24 to 48 hours. Tumours all throughout your body which double in size at a rate that is virtually visible to the naked eye- it sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie in which Samuel L. Jackson saves the world, I personally like to think.

It doesn’t take a medical degree to work out that there was some risk to my life involved in that, and I guess there still is. There’s about a 25-30% chance of my cancer coming back in the next few years.

 

I say all this for no reason other than to assure you that as someone who has come close to death, and might well go back there sooner than expected, I’ve no motives other than ensuring I have the best healthcare and most options open to me, should something go wrong. And that is why I’m a huge supporter of legalising euthanasia for terminally ill patients in New Zealand.

Hopefully Jake’s cancer does not return and this issue remains one that ispurely academic for him.

When my beloved grandmother died of cancer a year before I was diagnosed, the palliative care team who worked with us did an exceptional job to ensure she was comfortable and pain-free right until the end of her time.

She was able to pass in the house where she had lived for the past 50 years, and that meant a lot to her and us.

It was during that time that I witnessed just how good palliative care can be, and my family and I will forever be grateful to those medical professionals who made a difficult time much more bearable than it could have been otherwise.

However, there is only so much you can do to make someone who is dying comfortable. Not even they could remove her anxiety, or diminish her suffering, or do much more than sponge her tongue as it hung out of her mouth for 3 days, while her motionless body refused to let her go.

You can support euthanasia and also be in awe of the excellent work done by pallative care teams.

Aside from my own experiences, for me it boils down to this- in the case of a terminally ill patient, it’s no one else’s right to dictate another person’s ability to choose when or how they wish to die, any more than it is their right to dictate to someone who they can marry, or whether they’re going to have cereal or toast for breakfast tomorrow. …

For a terminally ill patient, even having the option is power to them – the knowledge that if their pain and suffering gets too bad, they have a right as an adult to make a choice to stop it would be some kind of reassurance, as opposed to staring down into a deep dark pit of suffering without an end in sight.

This is a valuable point – just knowing the option exists can be highly beneficial, even if never used.

So I only have two reasons for writing this. Firstly, to encourage everyone out there to have input on the issue, regardless of your opinion, to ensure this bill gets properly thrashed out during an election year.

And secondly, to explain to anyone out there who is sitting on the fence, feels uncomfortable with the subject, or is unsure how they feel about it at all, that as someone who has been there and seen both sides of it, it’s something I support fully.

I’m absolutely not saying that I’m right, or to be agreed with just because of that. But I’ve got an opinion based on a unique experience, which is that it’s an option I’d want for myself, and even if I didn’t choose it, then I’d be happy to leave it there for anyone who did.

Very well argued, from someone who sadly will have had to reflect on this far earlier than most of us.