Opinion: Year of non-delivery

National MP for Hamilton West Tim Macindoe. Photo / File

The Prime Minister heralded 2019 as her administration's "Year of Delivery", but it's becoming increasingly clear that — despite their good intentions — ministers in the current government are out of their depth and haven't a clue what they are doing.

Kiwibuild has been abandoned and the minster was sacked after his housing project proved an abject failure.

The number of children living in benefit-dependent households has increased by 8000 in just over a year despite the Government's commitment to halve child poverty in 10 years.

The Prime Minister has made vague statements on Ihumātao and water ownership without having any understanding of the issues, or any ideas how to effect change, and taxpayers may end up footing a huge bill for her public musings.

Road construction projects have been delayed or cancelled, especially here in Waikato.
The Ministry of Health recently published the 2018/19 Quarter Three Health Target Data file on its website — several months later than expected — which showed the health system has gone backwards in two-thirds of the published metrics since David Clark became Health Minister.

Performance has reduced so much that the Ministry of Health no longer publishes information on elective surgeries, while 17 of the 20 DHBs have poorer immunisation rates than they did before he became Minister, and 13 of them have shown poorer performance against the Faster Cancer Treatment target.

In July, National announced our detailed policy for improving cancer care throughout NZ. I set out details in my Soapbox column last month.

At the time, the Health Minister criticised the policy, but last weekend he announced a diluted version of our policy, to be implemented later this year. It's strange that it was a bad idea when we announced it but a great idea now.

National began increasing police numbers. Labour then announced a bigger target, but is falling well short of meeting it.

The gun buyback scheme is costing us a fortune but gangs are refusing to surrender their guns.

Shane Jones travels around the country, at great expense to taxpayers, dishing out tens of millions of dollars of your money on projects that often lack rigorous business cases, don't create jobs, and in many instances seem more about securing votes for New Zealand First than securing growth for the provinces.

Labour promised to end school donations for all schools, but are now only stopping them for some, causing huge inequities, especially for poorer families whose children attend higher decile schools.

The referendum to legalise recreational use of marijuana is just a year away but ministers still can't say what the question will be.

We need better than a government that has no idea how to convert good intentions into better outcomes for New Zealand families.