Cactus Kate claims that Labour’s politicising of a study highlighting a rise in infectious diseases is an own goal.
A study by the University of Otago has found that the hospital admission rate for infectious diseases rose 51% between 1989 and 2008.
The study also note that between 2001 and 2005 there was an improvement, before the rate again rose.
The study found that Maori and Pacific peoples are more than twice as likely as European people to be hospitalised with a serious infectious disease. It also found that people who live in the most deprived neighbourhoods have almost three times the risk of being hospitalised with an infectious disease when compared with those living in the most affluent areas.
The main contributions to the increase have come as a result of a rise in the number of respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal infections. They include illnesses like childhood pneumonia, rheumatic fever and meningococcal disease.
Many of these infectious diseases are linked with poverty and the problems of poor housing, overcrowding and a lack of access to affordable medical care. They are most certainly not “middle class diseases”, despite what Cactus Kate claims. That is not to say that middle class people can’t contract these diseases. The reality though is that most sufferers are poor. This cannot be a coincidence.
So is Labour to blame? In part, yes. The reforms of the Fourth Labour Government started New Zealand down the road towards rising inequality, but the drunken joyride to neoliberal nirvana in the ‘90s was National’s doing. Despite some progress being made by Labour in the 2000s to alleviate poverty, most Labour people would agree that not enough was done. What we did as a nation in the 1980s and 1990s left so many people on the scrapheap that even with the best will in the world and the desire to actually fix these problems (something entirely lacking in the current government), it would probably take a generation to turn things around.
Cactus Kate can blame Labour if she wants, but if anyone is to take the blame for starting us out on this ruinous path it is surely ACT founder Roger Douglas, with the policies he introduced in the 1980s to shift the nation’s wealth from the many to the few.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
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Very true.. the substandard nature of our rental properties that cater for those in the lower social decile certainly do not help.It should be mandatory that any house offered for rent MUST meet minimum standards as far as insulation is concerned as an example. Some homes we have rented over the years whilst looking nice on the outside turned into ice boxes come winter - and thats in Auckland !
ReplyDeleteSo it's all Roger Douglas' fault! Lmfao. Can we do a roll call of all the Labour MPs of the 90's who voted for these reforms?
ReplyDeleteIf The results did indeed improve for a short period of time them explain the non-improvement of 2005-2008 when Labour were spending more money than ever.
A bit like the study that NZ spends less on education and obtains better results, this is a survey that Labour would be best to shut up about.
I'm not sure what your point is. Labour came to terms with the fact that it made major mistakes in the 1980s some years ago.
DeleteNone of the current Labour front bench were in parliament during the Roger Douglas years. There is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in their denunciation of the destructive neoliberal policies of the 80s and 90s.
Labour didn't go far enough in addressing the problems caused by poverty and inequality in the 2000s, though to be fair they were left to deal with a mess. That may be why the figures went down initially and then up again, though I'm not sure why this is.
As for the education study you cite, I'm not so sure it proves what you think it does. If anything, it proves that New Zealand teachers are good at their jobs and know more about education than the politicians, columnists and bloggers from the right who continue to attack them.
Last-word Odgers strikes again. Has her nom de guerre "Cactus Kate" on Google Alerts and scurries off to whichever blog has mentioned her; vaingloriously basks land then snipes in her petty little "look how clever and rich and clever and rich and edgy and hip I am." Pfft. Stay in Hong Kong.
ReplyDeleteI would appreciate it if people could focus on arguing substance, rather than resort to ad hominem attacks.
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