Jacoby Poulain: Deciding what is best for your life

Jacoby Poulain is a Hastings District Council Flaxmere Ward councillor and a Hawke's Bay District Health Board member.

Much depends upon how we look at a situation and what we each make of it.IN MY time as a columnist if there's one thing that I've learned it's that if ever a person wishes to create some debate then comment on the rich versus the poor or the brown versus the white.

Usually I don't desire to enter such debates.

I often find that our public demonstrators, such as our "war on the poor" campaigners or the man who took to John Banks with a bucket of compost, can express their sentiments in far more dramatic and media engaging ways than I can.

Sometimes though, I can't help myself.

It's human nature to want to put our two cents in. Whether it's through a newspaper column or leaning over our backyard fence yakking to our neighbour, we're all guilty at some time or another of sticking our noses in and giving our opinion.

Rest assured also that no matter what you say or what you do there will always be people for you, and people against you. That's human nature also.

You can't please everybody all of the time.

You certainly can try to though and that's what I believe our National Party Government has in many ways craftily attempted to do through its recent Budget announcement.

Some of the carrots waved beneath our noses are, in my opinion, quite enticing and designed perhaps even with the thought in mind that they may woo some other party's voters across the line.

I've even sat up and taken notice. Free doctor visits are being promised to our under-13s as well as other children and family-friendly offerings.

For many of our multiple-children homes, this has got to be relatively significant in that it obliterates the cost barrier to health.

In our homes and as a society we should therefore expect healthier children and that's got to be a good thing.

We all know though that nothing comes for free and that there must be a cost or a casualty somewhere.

Russel Norman, Green Party co-leader, reckons that the casualty is the overall health and education budgets and that National is trying to hide this erosion of health behind its move to provide children with free GP visits and prescriptions.

What I've also come to learn very quickly is that often the same set of facts or figures can be used to paint two very different looking scenes, yet both be accurate pictures and accounts.

Much depends upon how we look at a situation and what we each make of it.

Here we have a National Government painting a rosy-looking picture with their Budget announcement, and in many ways, with the promises and existence of a surplus, I agree it is. I also agree that no doubt it's true that casualties occurred, or will, along the way.

The real question that remains and perhaps the only one that really matters, is what will each of us at the ballot box come election time decide is the best picture for our own lives.

What each party offers each of us individually as people and families, and collectively as a region and nation I believe is going to be worth following right up until elections.

We also have our local candidates who sit under the party umbrellas. Though much of what they do and say is guided by their higher machinery, within this each do have scope, leeway, room, and a distinct personality and style to represent us with.

Our local candidates are worth considering just as much as the party vote and perhaps I may have my two cents on the scenery of this in the future.