Letters: Simeon Brown’s strong-arm tactics aren’t winning friends among medics

Health Minister Simeon Brown has said a law change may have to be considered over industrial action by doctors. Photo / Mark Mitchell NZH 24Jul25 - Gary Hollis applauds Simeon Brown for his Auckland speed-limit changes. HBG 02Aug25 - Gynaecological cancers make up one in 10 of all cancer cases in New Zealand and one in 10 of all cancer deaths in women.

Challenges for the health profession

I am one of those senior doctors earning around the supposed average of $343,500 per year, but this is actually far in excess of my base salary.

I am an Auckland graduate of 1998, 16 years a senior doctor. More than half my graduating class is overseas. They must have left their Hippocratic oath at the emigration desk on the way out.

Replacing some of them here in the department of medicine in Whangārei where I work with three Kiwis are three from the United Kingdom, three Americans, three Indians, two from Europe, one Pakistani and a Russian. They are all excellent doctors, but we remain understaffed with frequent cross cover and additional duties, all which come at excess cost to the health system and our own health.

Lifting our base salaries and conditions would improve retention and recruitment, and I for one would end up being paid less. It’s actually more expensive to run an understaffed service! Productivity goes down and costs go up.

I won’t be striking on Thursday as work deferred has to be done later. However, our young upstart of a Health Minister is not making friends among my colleagues with his self-righteous pontifications and strong-arm tactics, and it would be best to remove the political plank from his own eye before pointing out the speck in ours.

Dr Matthew Farrant, physician, Whangārei.

Trump tactics

If Simeon Brown is considering banning the right to strike among the New Zealand workforce, does he have any idea how to deal with protests involving up to 100,000 people, despite any such law being passed?

Police won’t be able to arrest everyone across our five largest cities when the action starts.

Could Minister of Defence Judith Collins have our new military helicopters, bought as part of a Defence Forces upgrade, deployed to monitor and control our own citizens, just as Donald Trump is doing across America?

Our coalition Government certainly seems to be influenced more each day by what’s happening over there.

Jeremy Coleman, Hillpark.

Remembering Balibo Five

Good on Paul Bensemann for upholding brave truth-telling journalists. (Oct 18). In 2007, Sydney Coroner Dorelle Pinch conducted a nine-month investigation into the deaths of the Balibo Five and memorably said, “The truth is never too young to be told, nor too old” as she referred the case to the Australian Attorney-General for him to consider war-crimes prosecutions as mandated by the Geneva Conventions.

Coroner Pinch perused confidential Australian government records, heard evidence from Timorese witnesses and the top echelons of the foreign affairs and intelligence bureaucracy. She concluded that the journalists were killed deliberately and that strong circumstantial evidence linked the killings to the highest levels of the Indonesian command. Retired Lt General Yunus Yosfiah, who is alleged to have given the orders to kill, went on to pursue a successful political career.

Perplexingly, in 2014 the Australian Federal Police closed the case because of “insufficient evidence”. Impunity is a licence for ongoing human rights abuse in isolated West Papua.

In East Timor, the Balibo Five are being awarded posthumous honours as national heroes, but our Government hides behind Australia’s coattails and in 50 years has taken no meaningful action on behalf of its citizen, Gary Cunningham.

Maire Leadbeater, Mt Albert, author of Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand’s Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor Leste.

Public transport

In a recent letter to the Herald (Oct 15), retired Professor of Urban Design and Planning Dr Dushko Bogunovich commented on Mayor Brown’s focus on Auckland’s Transport needs, specifically his plans for “choosing its future”.

Missing from Bogunovich’s or any other current transport planning is a solution to next “street-level” servicing of public transport needs. I refer to the provision of street-by-street servicing of small unit feeder bus routes conveying commuters to the transport hubs.

Without these vital first and lower-level services, a gap exists in our transport system, particularly for the elderly because of the large walking distances from suburban homes to existing main transport routes.

Larry N. Mitchell, Rothesay Bay.

Reality of ‘peace deal’

At the risk of sounding snide, I would remind letter-writer Bruce Woodley (Oct 19) that the reason those of us on the left have not rushed to join him in telling Donald Trump what a swell guy he is or congratulating our current Government on their fence-sitting ability over the latest Palestine/Israeli conflict, is because we have been here before.

How long this “peace deal” will last is anyone’s guess. What it has done is create another generation of young Palestinians and Israelis with their own reason to hate each other and seek retribution.

John Capener, Kawerau.