A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
What an impressive grasp of New Zealand political history National's Shane Reti seems to be claiming when he attempts to ridicule the essential health reforms made by the Government and protests that this is “the worst time in a century”. This is a Trump-like statement of the most sweeping kind
and therefore entirely inaccurate.
A convincing case for an infinitely worse time could be made for the 1940s when thousands of our countrymen were battling overseas, trade had dwindled to a trickle, the maimed and dying were being returned home to a severely under-funded health system and nationwide trauma had to be contended with when we all coped with the grief that follows loss of life on such a scale.
A couple of years outside his claimed worst time in a century we had the devastating flu epidemic, hard on the heels of our massive losses in World War 1.
As a physician, Reti should be the first to endorse what so many of his profession now acclaim as long overdue changes. Yes, they will take time and huge injections of capital to make them effective, but the Labour Government should be congratulated by all fair-minded citizens for tackling a problem National was content to completely disregard, year after year.
M. Hall
