Red Alert

Author Archive

Roads of National Significance Killing Rail

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on May 18th, 2012

The Capital Connection, the commuter rail service between Palmerston North and Wellington will be cut by August unless a new funding package can be brought together.

The proposal is for Horizons Regional Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council and the NZTA to fund the Capital Connection as part of the Wellington Metro rail service.

This makes complete sense since the Capital Connection is the only commuter rail service in New Zealand that is currently expected to run on a totally commercial model. The funding proposal simply brings the Capital Connection into line with every other commuter train in the country.

The problem is that while the two regional councils have indicated support for the proposal, the NZTA is holding out. Why? Because a Road of National Significance is being built near by.

Suddenly, the only criteria the NZTA will consider is whether or not the rail line will relieve congestion. Ignore the environmental benefits, ignore the social benefits it’s all about congestion and of course spending billions on roads that don’t stack up economically is much better than encouraging people to use the train.

If yet another regional rail service is lost this year, it will have been killed off by National’s significant obsession with roads.


What Veterans Really Want

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on March 16th, 2012

Veterans Affairs Minister Nathan Guy has something to announce: Veterans’ Pensions are incresing to cover inflation!! Stop the press.

What would really get veterans excited would be for National to follow through on their promise to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations and replace the War Pensions Act. For older veterans in particular, this is the number one priority.

But other than their election promise, National has been completely silent. They won’t say when they will introduce legislation, they won’t say how much they intend to spend and they won’t say what recommendations they will implement.

They’ve said nothing since the report was tabled in June last year 2010.

Veterans deserve better and breathlessly announcing what should be routine annual inflation adjustments doesn’t make up for dragging the chain on fixing the system.


Defence Force Personnel Lining Up To Leave

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on March 8th, 2012

The Government’s mismanagement of the Defence portfolio has led to a mass exodus from New Zealand’s armed forces.

The fact that the Defence force is actively recruiting from the UK shows that our armed forces are losing skilled personnel as low moral and high attrition take their toll.

Money that should be used to put people on the front line is being wasted trying to replace the people lining up to leave the Defence force because the change process has been handled so poorly by the Government.

Unemployment is over 6%. It’s hard to get a job right now but things are so bad that people would rather take their chances on the job market than stay in the Defence Force. The civilianisation process has been poorly run and has had a devastating impact on morale.

Tens of thousands of new Zealanders are looking for work. We should be training and employing our own people, not spending money on bringing people in from overseas to take those jobs.

Tags:
Filed under: defence

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on March 5th, 2012

Tariana Turia has accused Fonterra of dumping milk into the Manawatu River.

I was concerned when I read her press release so I contacted Fonterra to see what was going on. The odd thing is, the idea of calling Fonterra hadn’t occurred to Tariana. Nor does it seem she had spoken to Horizons Regional Council. In fact, as best as I can tell, she hadn’t done a thing to substantiate her claims before she issued her press release.

This is totally irresponsible from a Government Minister.

No doubt it took Nick Smith by surprise. Tariana’s accusation is completely at odds with the positive announcement over the weekend of funding for the river clean up project and the Government’s intention to work closely with local government and industry.

As a representative of the Manawatu region, she should be trying to be positive about her region’s reputation.

If the claims are true, Fonterra absolutely should be held to account. But where are the facts and why on earth was her first action to issue a press release?


Why Ryall’s Health Targets Are Wrong

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on February 3rd, 2012

Labour, along with many people working in healthcare, has been saying for a long time that National’s health targets are narrow and simplistic, short sighted and lack enough focus on the looming problems for the health sector.

Yesterday, the Health Ministry’s briefing to the incoming minsterwas published. The ministry identified the priorities it thinks the government should be focused on:

  • Preventing cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases which make up 80% of the disease burden of the total population.
  • Improving mental health outcomes.
  • Adressing the long term health conditions facing our ageing population including the increaseing incidence of dementia.

Compare that with National’s targets:

  • Faster transit through Emergency Departments
  • More elective surgery
  • Shorter waiting time for cancer treatment
  • More immunisations
  • Better help for smokers to quit
  • Better cardiovascular services

The two sets of prioities do cross over on getting smokers to quit and cardiovascular services although these are the weakest measures in the government’s set. National’s cancer target is for treatment, not prevention and beyond that, the ministry’s prioirites don’t get a look in.

No one is saying that the things the government identifies as priorities are not good, worthy things that we want to see happen in our health system. The problem is that when this narrow focus is combined with reduced funding in real terms, all the other things that the ministry says need to be addressed now before they get out of hand aren’t getting the attention they need.


Health Target Tinkering

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on January 19th, 2012

Yesterday, Tony Ryall announced he is tinkering with his narrow and simplistic health targets. The changes in of themselves are positive but the targets are flawed. Even the Medical Association thinks so.

Association chairman Paul Ockelford said the health targets were commendable, but the emphasis on targets was flawed.

The targets needed to work alongside other approaches, such as housing and education, that influenced people’s health.

“If these are not addressed we will continue to have glaring health disparities in our communities and a high prevalence of preventable diseases that affect not only quality of life, but life expectancy,” Dr Ockelford said.

The targets were “narrow and simplistic”.

“They do not give a full picture of how our health system is performing because of the difficulty of linking these targets to information about patient and public health outcomes.”

The real challenges for our health system are the projected increasing cost of delivering healthcare and the increasing prevalence of preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease as well as depression and anxiety disorders.  

Tackling both of these requires that a much greater emphasis be placed on keeping people well and preventing the need for costly treatments. This is desperately lacking in National’ approach to health.

To me, two of the most glaring omissions from National’s priorities are mental health and chronic disease management. The lack of resources to respond to people with low acuity need in these areas means they end up with much bigger problems than necessary and the taxpayer foots a much bigger bill than we ought.

Tony Ryall will enthusiastically point to short term output data that my look impressive now, but what is his strategy doing to improve long term health outcomes for our nation?


Addicted to Food

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on December 30th, 2011

Perhaps it’s just because Christmas overeating is still heavy on my mind (and other body parts) but I’ve noticed there seems to have been a lot of discussion about causes of and suggested solutions to obesity over the last few days.

Waikato University scientist, Dr Pawel Olszewski suggests sugar and fat may produce changes in the brain which resemble the effects of addictive drugs. This may have a profound impact on the way governments, health practitioners and communities plan to combat the impact of the growing incidence of obesity.

We must be careful, though, not to directly equate sugar and fat, which our bodies need, to nicotine, alcohol, THC, amphetamines etc which we can quite happily do without:

Dr Olszewski says that while the brain responds to tasty foods in ways that have a lot in common with its reaction to drugs, he stresses there is a clear distinction between the complex mix of substances found in foods and a single compound such as morphine or nicotine. For this reason he describes over-eating patterns as “addictive-like”.

“We don’t want to send the message that if you’re eating a sandwich, that you’re consuming a drug. However palatable, high-sugar foods very often increase activity of the same brain circuits that are involved in the creation of the addictive state.

“So we believe this addictive-like behaviour stems from the effect that nutrients, in particular sugar and to some extent fat, have on the same set of brain areas that drive addiction.”

Tony Falkenstein, chief executive of Just Water International, made the connection and took it to a seemingly logical conclusion by suggesting a sugar tax. (Which, of course, would benefit his company).
This drew a thoughtful rebuttal from Dr Jim McVeagh at MacDoctor:

Immediately one can see the absolute pointlessness of a sugar tax. Potatoes, white bread, rice and pasta become sugar in the body as fast as pure cane sugar and nearly as fast as glucose powder. Taxing sugar is like sticking your finger in the dyke when the tsunami alarm has just gone off. And taxing carbohydrates in general is just adding a tax to nearly all food.

I’m inclined to agree that taxing sugar is pointless and taxing fat just becomes ridiculously complex as you attempt to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fats.
As Jim McVeah says,

all that causes obesity is taking in more calories than you burn up.

So if an excise-type tax were to be used in an attempt to curb obesity, the only logical approach I can think of is for it to be based on calorie density. Extremely calorie dense foods tend to be those that we ought only to eat occasionally although I expect there will be exceptions. A similar  effect could be achieved by taking GST off  low-calorie density foods. Both approaches have flow-on consequences that would have to be thought through before suggesting that either is worth implementing.

Add to the mix research released from Ohio State University this week that shows the attachment between mothers and toddlers is linked with incidence of obesity and you quickly get the picture that obesity is not straight forward and solutions will be neither singular nor simple.

Obesity is a significant driver of the increasing cost of healthcare and therefore cannot be ignored. Developing prevention and treatment strategies is the responsibility of governments as much as it is the responsibility of parents, communities and individuals.


Why Are We Labour?

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on April 16th, 2011

Like Trevor I’m enjoying the candidates conference in Wellington. The weather is a bit arse but hey, locked inside all day so no complaint.

Trevor mentioned the fact that half the conference have been members for less than ten years. Another interesting statistic cropped up: When asked how we came to join the party, we were given four options: Family; Friend(s); Union/Church; Epiphany.

All groups were fairly even but noticeably smallest was Union/Church. Guess we don’t always live up to the stereotype.


Long Term Effects

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on April 5th, 2011

Yesterday Otago University released data linking the increasing unaffordability of food with deteriorating mental health.

It’s a very good example of the need to consider the long term effects of government policy. Yes, we all understand that putting GST up without proper compensation for people on middle and low incomes is making life harder for kiwi families right now, but the long term effects are much more concerning.

National’s policies have not only increased inequalities, they are creating a problem for future governments by failing to keep people well and increasing future demand on all health services including mental health.

It might not be of much concern to John Key and co because it won’t be their problem. But someone will have to deal with it and we’d all be a lot better off (financially and socially) if we prevented the problem when we can see it coming rather than waiting for someone else to clean up the mess.


Booze-Free Month: Half Way Through

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on February 17th, 2011

During February I’m taking part in FebFast along with Labour MPs Carol Beaumont, Brendon Burns, Clare Curran, Lianne Dalziel, Kris Faafoi, Sue Moroney, Lynne Pillay, Carmel Sepuloni, staff members Jessie Barwick, Sonny Thomas, Jen Toogood and Labour Tukituki candidate Julia Haydon-Carr.

By taking part in FebFast – and swearing off the booze for 28 days – we are raising funds for four organisations working with at-risk youth, particularly on drug and alcohol issues.

I can’t say that I’m missing alcohol all that much. Actually I feel pretty good. Being on FebFast is a great reason to say ‘no’ when the inevitable opportunities to consume occur at Parliament and around the electorate. Don’t think I’m going teetotal just yet though, and that’s not the point. This is just about having a break from alcohol and raising money for a really good cause.

If you’d like to donate, go to the Labour Party Team page on the FebFast website.

Cheers!


Key Running Out of Steam

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on February 8th, 2011

Honestly I was dead surprised at the lack of vigour in Key’s speech today. It lacked energy, it lacked punch and he seemed to be desperately surveying the press gallery for signs of adoration.

I thought Bill might fall asleep. He certainly looked relaxed.

Contrast that with the passion and belief in Phil’s delivery. He believed in what he was saying and that came through when he spoke.

Key is bereft of ideas and it shows. In the speech he tabled he even resorted to stealing Labour policy. Strangely, though, I don’t recall him mentioning it when he actually spoke. Shows how much of a priority kiwi kids are to this Government.


Dealing with Death on Our Roads

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on February 7th, 2011

I have no desire to be a Law and Order zealot. Garth McVicar I am not. However, the number of constituents who have contacted me recently about our approach to those that cause injury or death on the road has got me thinking.

There is a good reason I’ve been seeing a lot of these cases – there has been a number of totally avoidable deaths on Manawatu roads recently, several involving cyclists.

The thrust of the complaints I’ve received is that we are too lenient on those who cause lethal accidents on the road. It’s an understandable response from people who have lost loved ones.

The gut reaction is, of course, to lock people away longer and to punish them harder. I’m not sure that achieves much but I do wonder if we need to look at how long drivers might lose their license if found guilty of careless, reckless or dangerous driving causing death and what might be demanded of them before that license is returned. Same goes for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

So I have some questions:

  1. Is the current system too lenient?
  2. If it is, what is the appropriate method of punishment and rehabilitation?
  3. Should a driver’s license be automatically suspended when they are involved in an accident causing death pending the outcome of their trial?

There are other ways to prevent road accidents besides tougher penalties and while that is not the focus of this post, feel free to share your thoughts on those too.


Cancer Treatment Cut

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on January 4th, 2011

Mid-Central DHB is cutting chemotherapy treatment for certain types of cancer.

It’s clear that one of the over-riding reasons behind the decision to refuse some cancer patients treatment and the failure to even place them on the waiting list is to ensure that Tony Ryall can manipulate cancer waiting times to present to the media.

Cutting cancer waiting times is one of Tony Ryall’s narrow-focused targets for the health system. A laudable aim at first glance, but did anyone really expect that this would be the method used to achieve it?

National criticised Labour for sending patients needing cancer treatment to Australia when there was a shortage of specialists. We know now that instead of sending patients to Australia when there is a shortage, National’s answer is they just won’t treat patients who have some cancers.

Ryall has been virtually silent since this issue came to light. Guess there’s no photo-op in it for him.


Liquor Licenses

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on December 28th, 2010

OK, so the last time I posted one of these videos, everyone jumped down my throat despite me saying it was not Labour policy, just something I had been sent by one of the groups lobbying for reform.

Having said that, this one is about giving the licensing power back to communities, something I totally support.

Have a look.


Out of the Mouths of Babes

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on December 26th, 2010

This is the only time of year any of us get to spend a decent amount of time with our kids. I was kicking a ball around with my 5-year-old a couple of days ago when the following conversation occurred. I’d like to point out that I really do my best not to indoctrinate my children… but you can’t stop them being perceptive.

5-year-old: “Dad, Mummy says they’re going to stop Kidzone.”

Me: “Yeah, I’m afraid they are.”

5-year-old: “Why?”

Me: “Because they don’t want to spend money on it any more and they want to put something with ads on instead.”

5-year-old: (Thinks for a moment) “Did John Key decide that?”

Me: “Pretty much, yeah.”

5-year-old: “He’s dumb.”


The Price of Alcohol

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on November 9th, 2010

Got sent this today. Thoughts?


Smokefree 2025

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on November 3rd, 2010

The Maori Affairs Select Committee tobacco inquiry report is finally out. I’m proud to have been part of putting such a bold set of recommendations to the Government.

The mood on the committee was to direct as much of the attention as possible towards making the industry itself more accountable and supporting smokers who want to quit. That’s why we favoured recommendations like removing tobacco displays, plain packaging and funding for nicotine replacement therapy.

We tried as much as possible to steer away from further impacting individual smokers. So we didn’t come out so strong on proposals like banning smoking in cars or in private homes. Personally I’m opposed to both. The only initiative that directly affects smokers is increasing excise tax.

I see the tobacco industry is upset as is their front organisation the Association of Community Retailers (sounds so friendly, doesn’t it).

Good. If they’re squealing it probably means we are on the right track. The question now is: Will the Government show the same ambition as the committee?


Tobacco on You Tube

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on August 26th, 2010

I was sent some information today about tobacco advertising on You Tube along with an article calling for greater control – either through self-regulation or legislation. It’s this type of thing that the article is getting at:

I’m not sure that more regulation is what is needed. In fact I’m not sure this stuff encourages smoking. If you look at the comments (the ones in English anyway) there is a strong anti-smoking sentiment amongst those who have seen the clip.

In traditional advertising, communication runs along a one way street. Material on You Tube and other new media is open to the kind of commentary and debate we see here on Red Alert. If the tobacco companies are silly enough to use You Tube to advertise then they open themselves up to attack they don’t need.

And, of course the same medium is available to tobbacco’s opponents. I quite like this one:


Power Announces Government’s Alcohol Package

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on August 23rd, 2010

I haven’t had a chance to look at it properly just yet but here is a summary of the proposed changes, taken from the Government’s press release. I will post thoughts on it later but what do you make of it?

  • Introducing a graduated approach to purchasing alcohol – 18 years of age for on-licences and 20 years of age for off-licences.
  • Restricting RTDs to 5 per cent alcohol content and limiting RTDs to containers holding no more than 1.5 standard drinks.
  • Making it an offence for anyone other than a parent or guardian to provide alcohol to an under-18-year-old without a parent’s or guardian’s consent.
  • Where alcohol is provided to an under-18-year-old the parent, guardian or authorised person will need to ensure the alcohol is supplied in a responsible manner.
  • Allowing the Minister of Justice, in consultation with the Minister of Health, to ban alcohol products which are particularly appealing to minors or particularly dangerous to health. 
  • Empowering local communities to decide on the concentration, location, and hours of alcohol outlets (including one-way-door policies) for both on and off-licences in their area through the adoption of local alcohol policies.
  • Setting national default maximum hours of 7am – 11pm for off-licences and 8am – 4am for on-licence, club licence, and special licences for local authorities who do not adopt a local alcohol policy.
  • Broadening the matters that must be considered in licensing decision-making to include such things as the object of the Act, the provision of the local alcohol policy, and whether the amenity or good order of the area would be lessened if the licence is granted.
  • Strengthening the law on the type of stores eligible for an off-licence to reinforce the current approach that dairies and convenience stores are not eligible.
  • Increasing penalties for a range of licence breaches, including allowing an intoxicated person to be on licensed premises, allowing violent behaviour to take place on premises, and running an irresponsible promotion.
  • Widening the definition of ‘public place’ in liquor bans to include car parks, school grounds and other private spaces to which the public has legitimate access.
  • Strengthening the existing offence of promotion of excessive consumption of alcohol by making it apply to any business selling or promoting alcohol, and setting out examples of unacceptable promotions, such as giving away free alcohol.
  • Making it an offence to promote alcohol in a way that has special appeal to people under the purchase age. These changes will apply to any promotion, including TV advertising and billboards.
  • Investigating a minimum pricing regime by giving retailers a year to provide sales and price data. If they are not forthcoming the Government will consider regulatory options for obtaining this data.
  • Improving public education and treatment services for people with dependency issues.
  • Requiring Parliament to lead by example by removing its licensing exemption.

The cabinet paper is on the MoJ website.


What Motivates You to Stay Healthy?

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on August 14th, 2010

It’s a slightly tired old saying but nevertheless true that prevention is better than cure.

Fittingly, it’s a mantra that resonates particularly in the Health system. Appropriate investment in the prevention (and management) of disease and injury is far more cost effective and socially constructive than waiting for you to get sick and only then trying to fix you.

Gareth Morgan recently wrote a column in which he notes that every dollar invested in prevention produces four times the results gained by a dollar spent in treatment.

It’s not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. Some responses to the challenge of preventing illness have been successful, others haven’t. Some have been politically palatable, others have been labeled ‘Nanny State’.

So here are some questions:

  • What motivates you to be healthy?
  • Are you motivated to be healthy?
  • Can the Government motivate you to be healthier, if so how?

I’m keen to hear what you think because if we are really going to crack this one, we need to get alongside people and not just be telling them what’s best.