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I was finishing up at work when my mum rang to say I should come over as they had some “not great” news for me.
This was 14 years ago; it’s as clear to me as if it was yesterday. I sat down, asked questions, but mum said just come.
I knew straight away it was something to do with my best mate, my dad.
When I got to mum and dad’s place, I opened the door and dad was waiting at the top of the stairs, shaking. I slowly walked up towards him and we hugged and he started crying and he said, ‘I’m stuffed, It’s cancer.’ I replied, ‘We’ll fight it mate...’ while knowing nothing of what he’d just been told.
Nine months later on Thursday May 20, 2010 dad died, I was lying under his hospice bed holding his hand when the nurse came in at 5am and said he’d passed. It was also Budget Day and I was the political editor at Three News. Every Budget since then has been a reminder of his death and a reminder how little there was in the way of options to prolong his life.
Dad was the guy who had always been there for me; the guy in the grainy photos that remain stuck in family albums that can’t be deleted by a simple push of a button.
He’s the guy who never missed my games; the one who watched and listened to all my work during the years.
The guy who came and picked me up when I got too drunk to make it home as a teenager and, the next day, punished me by making me clean the mag wheels on his car with a toothbrush. He bought me my first bike, tennis racquet and home brew kit.
He was the one who sat with me and my mates, had a few and laughed with us into the wee small hours, giving each other a hard time and telling stories.
Dad was my source of knowledge, my guide to life, my financial adviser, the disciplinarian and the good bastard who laughed at my jokes, who got angry at my stupid decisions, who was called up to the school office to support me as I faced the principal after a schoolyard scrap. He’d shake his head, tighten his lips and give me a stare no one wanted to face ever again.
But he loved me no matter what and I loved my dad. He never stood in the way of what I wanted to do. Instead, he’d be there backing me all the way.
He worked in finance because his family were bankers. He was a hardworking, tax paying, law abiding, good Kiwi man who put his family first at all times. He was Presbyterian, but not church-going. Rugby was his game; he’d drink rum most nights. His mates were all successful and hard cases, and he was fair, tough when he needed to be, and well liked.
His mum died early, he was just 12, and in a bizarre decision he and his younger brother were kept away from the funeral. He was sent from Gisborne to boarding school in a far-flung place called Auckland.
It was the early-1960s, he missed his mum, and he really hadn’t been allowed to grieve. It must have been awful. Boarding school was strict - his school belt had 32 notches on it, each one represented being hit by the school cane.
He never got over his mother’s death and, when it came up, we saw how upset he quickly became. He carried his sadness with him.
He never asked for welfare, nor did he ever get into trouble. When kererū would fly into the windows of our house and break their necks, dad would wrap them up, lie them down on the back seat and take them to the Auckland Museum. His grandkids loved him, and he adored them.
So, he deserved his country to be there for him when his hour of need came.
On that day 15 years ago, dad was told that he had cancer and that there were few drugs available to extend his life. The best ones on the market were free in some other countries but cost $6k a month here. He tried them for a month but pulled the pin, knowing he was terminal, and he didn’t want to waste hard-earned money when the impact was marginal at best.
He had always had health insurance but that didn’t cover cancer drugs, so dad largely spent the last nine months of his life waiting to die.
As a family, it’s hard to recover from but you simply have to forge ahead, live well and hold on to the memories. As I said earlier, it was Budget Day 2010 when Dad died. He was at Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington, it was 4am and I was holding his hand as I lay on the floor under his bed.
Since that day, I have advocated for better cancer treatments. I interviewed a bloke this week who has a similar kidney cancer to my dad. He’s still alive six years after his diagnosis but only because he’s paid more than $200,000 during that time for the latest drugs.
It’s remarkable the advancements being made by researchers. If those drugs were around when my dad got cancer, he would have met my youngest son Buster and seen him off to primary school. The drugs are not funded here but they are in Australia.
So, if you have money, you live; if you don’t, you die. It’s worse than cruel.
Since dad’s death, I have read as much as I can and talked to a variety of people. You don’t want to get cancer; you especially don’t want to get it if you are poor. The wealthy – the very wealthy – can spend hundreds of thousands to buy the required drugs, which are free in many countries.
Why? Because their governments have prioritised the funding and made it clear to their drug-buying agencies to stay up with the latest life-extending drugs on offer. I reckon New Zealanders are being sold a pup on cancer. Our services are third rate, and people are dying when they should be alive and kicking.
So, when a major political party, during an election campaign and led by a prime minister in waiting, pledges $280 million for 13 life-extending drugs, that’s going to make an impression on the thousands of patients, and their families, who are in dire need of those drugs.
Naturally, when these families heard that it was one of National’s top priorities, they voted accordingly.
So, when Budget 2024 came and went – without this promise being honoured and no monies set aside to do so – people felt rightly gutted and incredulous. Was it a mistake? Was another announcement coming?
No, there was nothing. Good people were delivered a body blow that some may not recover from. These people aren’t just statistics; they’re people just like my dad and they deserve better.
Budget 2024 invested an incredible $8.15 billion extra operating and capital funding in health services. Pharmac received more money, because of underfunding, but not enough to meet Luxon’s promise of the 13 new cancer drugs.
This Government found $665.1m in savings from the health sector and put it towards areas it considered more important in the same sector. There was an extra $3.44b for hospital and specialty services and $2.12b for primary care and public health. Nothing for those cancer drugs.
Politicians shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep – or even remember – at the best of times. They especially shouldn’t do so if the promises relate to life-or-death situations. It’s worse than cruel and if someone now dies waiting for funding for these drugs, Christopher Luxon should resign and take ultimate accountability.
He won’t, of course. Now his Finance Minister Nicola Willis is trying to sort out the blunder and says it’ll be sometime soon. As in, shortly. Like, this year.
My dad will be shaking his head, saying you can’t trust any of the buggers. And that’s Luxon’s problem now: trust, integrity and credibility. What can we believe? Everything, or just some of what he says.
We aren’t talking about a promised road not being built. We are talking about desperate people, being used for political gain, then ignored. I find it shallow, cheap and utterly shameful. If it was me I would be too embarrassed to show my face.
