RNZ reports:
Shane Reti: Life expectancy for Māori was 30 years in the 1840s but today it is around 73.4 years.
Willie Jackson: Shane is talking nonsense.
There have been enormous health (and other) gains for Māori over the past 100 or so years. I gathered them together in one document here.
Progress is being made but constant polemic-driven politicking and redundant reforms will not hasten it.
If Andrew Little's goal is to reduce bureaucracy to improve efficiency, why develop two separate health authorities? He too is flying in the face of reality.
Ultimately, the personal decisions individuals make about their own health will have the greatest impact on their longevity.
That should be the message to Māori and every other person of every other ethnicity.
4 comments:
I cannot help feeling that Andrew Little is only doing what Jackson and Mahuta are instructing him to do in respect of the Maori Health changes. They (Jackson and Mahuta) are backed by a compliant (so called) Labour Maori Caucus who must do what Jackson and Mahuta tell them.
It’s beyond belief that no Maori in the “we are victims” stakes seems to appreciate access to a first world western medical system where we don’t rub herbs and hum on to ailments, we have real medicine. Humans can stuff up every aspect of their own health by making poor life choices. It’s about time we weeded out some responsibility in the public system as they do when I apply or pay yearly for my private insurance. Starting by putting people to the back of waiting lists who are morbidly obese if their own doing. If they don’t care about their own health then why all of a sudden should others wait behind them for ailments of no fault of their own?
3 words. Follow the money!
Hi Lindsay
Your summary message that "Ultimately, the personal decisions individuals make about their own health will have the greatest impact on their longevity" ought to be profoundly obvious to everyone, but it is a message studiously avoided by our political elite, preferring instead to impose a narrative of victimhood on Maori in order to further their personal and ideological ends.
Who would have believed we would become so lacking in what was once considered 'common sense'?
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