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Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly column that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings. If you enjoy a “serious laugh” - and complaining about politics and politicians - you’ll enjoy reading Greg’s latest grievances.
Here’s the nagging question of the week: how many layers of spin are there between this National-led government and provable reality?
If anyone ought to know it should be the Prime Minister, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher Luxon. After all Luxon, who never shuts up about his business background, is what you might call a Numbers Guy, though some might suspect he knows the cost of everything to the taxpayer, but the value of nothing.
However the Numbers Guy has proven himself embarrassingly loose in his wild claim that there are 14 layers of management muckamucks between the CEO of Health NZ and the poor, bleeding patient waiting more than six hours to be seen by an overworked A&E doctor.
Luxon first produced the number during his and Health Minister Shane Reti’s joint press conference to announce the disbanding of Health NZ’s board, and the appointment of a commissioner to fix what Luxon claims is the botched merger of the District Health Boards begun under Labour.
Health NZ may well be the “bloated” monster the government claims it is. The trouble is that neither the Numbers Guy nor Reti have been able to stack up the wild claim. Reti took days to produce a farcical organisation chart that included the patient as one of the 14 layers of managers.
It was about that point that Luxon, ever the caring CEO, threw his middle manager Reti under the bus — possibly the Number 14 bus eventually terminating at the backbenches — for giving him the wrong figure to begin with.
Now, out here in the real world we all understand that mistakes are made. But we also know that when we find ourselves at the bottom of a deep hole with sewage up to our ankles, the best idea is to stop digging.
But not Luxon, who has become noticeably petulant the more he’s been questioned about his 14 layers claim. Faced with the fact he had his numbers wrong, he opted for a mix of bluster and obfuscation. And by Tuesday, he had made it clear that he, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, did not care if he was giving his fellow New Zealanders fake news when he was standing at the podium of the Beehive theatrette.
“You can debate whether it’s 12, 13, 14, 15, I don’t really care,” Luxon told reporters. “I’ve told you it’s 14. I’ve given you the information last week. And if you want to debate that, that’s great, but you’re missing the point.”
Actually it is he who is missing the point. It is clear that for those at the end of the 12, 13, 14 or 15 layers, the bigger problem with our health system is not how many managers there are, but how few nurses, doctors and specialists there are. And it’s increasingly clear the government, for all its spin, has no answer for that.
Medical staffing in the health system is in crisis. Earlier this month, RNZ was told by multiple hospital workers around the country that clinical jobs in their departments are being left vacant.
And this week it was revealed that Dargaville Hospital is so short of medical staff that there has been no doctor onsite overnight.
Yet Luxon is distracting us with fake facts about swollen management numbers at Health NZ.
Well, it isn’t the only outfit that’s bloated. Luxon’s over-active spin machine is, too.
Another Kind of Politics has managed to obtain an organisational chart for the PM’s reality distortion field which has, believe it or not, 14 layers as well.
Oh dear. It appears there may only be six layers of bullshitting between the PM and the voter, not 14. It doesn’t matter. Like Luxon, Another Kind of Politics knows you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Coneheads or boneheads? You be the judge
Meanwhile in news from Planet Bonkers, the government has declared war on the nation’s true enemy: road cones.
Like some pint-sized Dalek, Transport Minister Simeon Brown has been bellowing “Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!” about the place as he seeks to wipe out the orange plastic menaces from as much of the land as possible.
Asked a patsy question about his War on Cones in the House this week, the Dalek seemed to suggest the hated enemy is costing the nation too much time sitting in queues and is thus helping to destroy the economy from within.
To which one says: balderdash. Like so much of the coalition’s government’s agenda — more cops on the beat, the anti-gang patch law, beneficiary bashing — the War on Cones is real ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff stuff.
A proper study of the road cone “problem” would surely determine there would be no need for road cones if there were no motor vehicles needing guiding by road cones. And if there were no motor vehicles, there would be no need for roads. And if there were no roads, there would be no roadworks. And if there were no roadworks then the pint-sized Dalek wouldn’t have to waste his time exterminating the road cones.
The logic is unimpeachable. The only way to eliminate the road cone menace is to eliminate roads. You’re welcome, minister.
Political quiz of the week
What is the Prime Minister, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, doing in this picture?
Is he:
A/Explaining the difference between himself and a dummy.
B/ Introducing the new after-hours doctor to Dargaville Hospital staff.
C/ Performing a laying on of hands for his personal polling numbers.
D/ Attempting to revive the New Zealand economy.
