NZ Government, an Atlas Network puppet, intent on ruining public healthcare
Government contines to promote libertarian values over our environment, community, Te Tiriti o Waitangi & healthcare
OPINION & ANALYSIS:
At the heart of everything we see in this government is simplicity.
Things are simpler than they appear.
Behind all the public relations, marketing spin, corporate overlay e.g. “By leveraging private sector expertise…we are setting a precedent for the government working with businesses to achieve better results.” [Seymour on school lunches] and defensive or bombastic posturing, the ideology of this government can be boiled down to libertarianism.
The word is perhaps opaque for many, but it is reflected through a series of logical attributes:
Property rights over the community/environment, corporate and wealth dominance, low taxes, anti-environment, centralisation of power, anti-minority and workers’ rights, and use of law to enforce.
It’s the Atlas Network vision1 espousing ‘liberty, property rights, and free markets’.
Everything is marketed through ‘improvements’ using words such as efficiency, lower cost and prosperity for all - except those who genuinely benefit are the wealthiest and power class.
And we now know better, thanks to Trump’s Project 2025 and our own Aotearoa government, what all these words look like in practice.
As one example, it looks like Chris Bishop’s RMA reforms where the government is elevating private property rights and abolishing the Treaty of Waitangi clause. [Potaka claims he doesn’t know anything about this!)
What will that mean in practice?
Well it means the Environment Court and advocates would be unlikely to stop Peter Thiel building a luxury lodge where he wants to again.
And if you try to stop or reverse it, Thiel would be entitled for compensation and redress.
It also means the Wanaka McDonalds application would likely not have been able to be stopped - as Chris Bishop said today: When you impose on “private property rights, there's a price for that." This government will put barriers in place on who can submit on applications, and the reasons for objection.
It also means future governments who try to stop applications that were granted under existing laws would be faced with heavy compensation claims and law suits.
It penalises Aotearoa New Zealand if we try to reverse what is signed under the existing government’s laws.
You can see how central holding property rights supreme, and abolishing Te Tiriti o Waitangi in spirit, is to this government’s strategy because they have launched it via at least three heavy duty avenues:
Legislative changes - 28 times that we know of to date
Another example of their libertarian bent is in our public healthcare system.
National’s ideology of “saving money” through delaying, and freezing hiring of much needed clinical doctors around the country while moving lower cost, public health procedures to private facilities is tantamount to this type of destructive libertarian ideology.
This year, I jumped up and down about a piece of media only reported in a singular Christchurch masthead (The Press) because it showed the government cancelling at-cost surgery contracts to move them to plush, more expensive, private hospitals.
No-one else seemed to care as much - but I did - because to me, it was reflective of their modus operandi.
Cancelling lower cost, professional surgeries to transfer wealth to private operators is not the actions of a government genuinely interested in efficiency, taxpayers’ money, or long term sustainability.
Is it any wonder Stuff only published it its Christchurch masthead?
And today more of that news is coming out.
Simeon Brown has directed 10,579 procedures be farmed out to private operators; a move which some doctors say does not focus on health outcomes and for some regions, “disproportionately advantag[es] relatively well-off white women, rather than those who were most in need”.
And this morning, PM Luxon was predictably defending the moves, saying it is only patient outcomes that matter.
And of course it’s true - except National are the ones who ensured that our public system couldn’t cope.
What it all reflects, in my view, is a break-it-at-all-costs ideology that will ensure our public health system is unable to respond adequately, and longer term private contracts will be used to manipulate the perception of a ‘fixed and improved healthcare system’.
Frustrated senior doctors are saying the same, but most Kiwis won’t be aware.
Only RNZ has it on its front page.
A scan of Stuff, The Post, NZ Herald, and 1News shows it all in absence from any front page this morning.
Mega-private corporations, hedge funds, and healthcare investors such as Lester Levy and Shane Reti will profit in this libertarian model.
calls it all the “the biggest welfare scam in New Zealand -private corporations sucking profits out of the public system.”Other courageous health leaders are speaking up too:
"Had that money [for outsourcing] been available over the last 12 months, we could have treated many more patients than they are going to do with this. This is a political move to make them look good."
- Dr David Bailey, lead obstetrician-gynaecologist for Northland
Make no mistake - healthcare has always been a sore point in the country and mistakes and weaknesses will always exist unfortunately.
But in my view, this represents an intentionality that reveals libertarian ideology beyond anything we’ve seen.
It’s the emboldened strategy of the wealthiest who not only control large parts of corporate media, but also willing politicians.
In that way, it is my belief that National, ACT and New Zealand First are deeply aligned.
Each play a key role within the Atlas Network ideology popularised in countries around the world - from Argentinia’s Javier Milei to the US’s Donald Trump. In Australia, Peter Dutton lays in the wings, aided heavily by Rupert Murdoch press and supported by oil and mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
The Koch funded Atlas network, partnering with corporates such as Exxon Mobil, is also reportedly targeting Europe and wants Canada to stop using EVs. Just another day in libertarian land, where borders are no longer so real.
Double Whammy: New Zealanders’ Health Rights and Access Undermined Within A Weak Corporate Media
Last year I wrote New Zealanders are now dying from an underfunded health system.
But it’s getting worse:
High risk patients are being handed out “death sentences” due to increasing urgent delays and waitlists for heart scans.
Desperate patients are having to find money to fork out for private ultrasounds as the public health system is unable to cope.
Surveillance colonoscopies for high risk patients have been stopped in some regions despite bowel cancer risks.
Dying children may not get the care they deserve after we lose the only paediatric palliative specialist in the country to extended leave
Māori and Pacific peoples are being subjected to higher risk of death after the government delayed their bowel cancer screening from 50 to 58. This is despite long standing evidence that Māori and Pasifika are disproportionally affected: i.e. Maori are more likely to die from bowel cancer and more likely to be diagnosed at Stage 4. i.e they are being neglected in our health care system already.
West Coast urgent care GP clinics close even though Shane Reti knew it might not be safe.
Citizens are taking to the streets to advocate for their healthcare access and rights.
Outgoing Chief Ombidsman Peter Boshier says Health NZ acts “contrary to the law” in dealing with OIA processes. This echoes the Health NZ NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) instituted by Margie Apa - a move criticised by Labour’s Dr Verrall as “North Korean” and which Lester Levy promised to remove. [The government didn’t]
With a meek press, and complicit enterprise, it sometimes feels that Kiwis are more voiceless than we should be - at a time when the stakes really couldn’t be higher.
Health NZ Investment Over the Years
Latest Ipsos Survey Reveals Healthcare Concerns Among Kiwis
https://www.atlasnetwork.org/our-mission
Yes, neoliberal attack on all fronts. We need the opposition parties to highlight this at every opportunity and to commit to undoing any changes to legislation, without compensation
If somebody tells you to calm down, could never get that bad here, then I would remind them people were saying that last year in the US before Trump was elected. Complacency will lead us in a bad direction. I appreciate you keeping these issues alive.
While I understand people may raise issues that are most immediately pressing to them, it always surprises me that Climate Change, with the likelihood of impacting in an adverse manner all the other things people are now concerned about, is languishing at 15%.