WHAT WE ALL SAID LAST THURSDAY

I have not yet commented on any of the articles that surround me each week but last Thursday my fellow commentators covered fields in which I probably have had more experience than the writers themselves.

This is in no ways a means of picking on them as I enjoy friendly relationships with both John Carter and the Mayor and it is quite well known that Shane Jones has been a cobber of mine for a long time.

Jonesy chose to comment on the Mercury Energy power disconnection and the unfortunate consequences that followed. John’s piece was probably not even written by him, as it appeared to be the usual National Party line that my party is better than your party on health delivery and the Mayor chose to highlight council’s belated acceptance that something is very wrong with their consents department and announced very laudable goals to fix it.

With regard to electricity supply, I was called in to chair Vector after they disconnected the entire central business district of Auckland for a period of six weeks. It is hard to even put into context the level of disruption, inconvenience, economic loss, let alone the human misery inflicted on city residents and workers throughout this period. Our whole country was held up to ridicule in the world’s press for being unable to power up our biggest city.

This has made me very concerned over the fragility of the Transpower electricity transmission network limitations to Northland. I have already commented on the bottleneck through Auckland City and that council’s interference in our wellbeing. Ngawha extension will help but we need to keep pressure on to fix the supply constraint.

For fifteen years I have chaired various health boards under both parties and know well that glib generalisations such as John’s are meaningless. Administration numbers and their pay packets have fallen dramatically at ADHB at the same time that doctor and nurse salaries have climbed by around 23% in the last three years. The increased money goes to health practitioners, not only in hospitals but also in primary care but the pressure from growing numbers of elderly is hard to manage. Tony Ryall, National Health spokesperson is renowned for his negativity but has offered no solution at all. The main paper shuffling is answers to his parliamentary questions!

Lastly, readers will have noticed me banging on about how hard it is to get progressive projects approved up here so I am pleased at the change at the council, but hope that it is more than just an election year ploy to calm angry ratepayers, as the problem of processing building permits and resource consents has been around for ages.