Bernhard Hickey

[Ricky-bobby]

I am going to disagree with you about the public service. I / the family have had some contacts with the health sector over the last 15 years, and they have been uniformly excellent - especially the hospital-based services. Good healthcare does not make newspaper headlines. My kids are getting excellent educations in the public sector - one of them has learning needs, and her last two schools have been responsive, creative and encouraging. She is doing well, and remains really engaged in her learning. When something happened a while ago, the Police were amazing, and this helped with insurance claims and so forth.

The problem with the public sector is often not a lack of competence, but a lack of investment. Talking to the health staff that have been managing us at Starship, they have the same number of positions that they had 20 years ago, but the population they are dealing with is close to 50% bigger. Their IT is antiquated - they were still arm-wrestling with Windows 7. Our local Intermediate school finally got a new build completed for some new classrooms - the MoE had a leaky building nightmare they had to deal with at other schools - but their roll has increased by 40% in 12 years, with the same number of funded teaching positions.

The issue is that when our economy was smashing it, it was mostly based around immigration and protein production. We put those savings into largely meaningless tax cuts, incentivised property investment and thought that we could continue to grow the population (and reap the benefits in terms of the labour force and economic gain) without bothering to look at what sorts of resources those people might need, and plan ahead accordingly.

So my experience is that the public sector is pretty good. My hypothesis is that they are strained due to successive governments either kicking the can down the road, or not having the skills and awareness to properly plan for the future. My belief is that the public sector isn't like a tap - you can't turn it on and off depending on what the government of the day does. It needs steady investment to properly thrive.

Someone who has paid taxes all their life and then have to wait 2 years for a hip replacement isn’t right. Also the amalgamation of the DHPs has been a disaster… they didn’t even allocate appropriate DALs, so nothing has been renewed/replaced etc. Talk to anyone involved. I live in a small town and our hospital is at braking point. All the nurses are retiring or going to AUS and the people left are so over worked, just not right. There might be underspend, but there are good times and bad and like everyone else they need to be adaptable and move with this. Talk to anyone re Capex at the moment, it’s the first thing to go when managing spend.

If they spent money on getting the job done instead of consulting a 1000 people and then using consultants with no skin in the game, we would be in so much better shape. The waste of tax payers money with nothing to show for it is disgusting and has been so frustrating to witness .

Re changing the tax system to move away from property, am open to. But we have got to get the fundamentals of spend right first. No point changing something if at the end of the day is just going to get spent poorly again. I love the sound of what the do in Singapore with the incentives for public servants, I would start with that first!

[Valuegrowth]

I am going to disagree with you about the public service. I / the family have had some contacts with the health sector over the last 15 years, and they have been uniformly excellent - especially the hospital-based services. Good healthcare does not make newspaper headlines. My kids are getting excellent educations in the public sector - one of them has learning needs, and her last two schools have been responsive, creative and encouraging. She is doing well, and remains really engaged in her learning. When something happened a while ago, the Police were amazing, and this helped with insurance claims and so forth.

The problem with the public sector is often not a lack of competence, but a lack of investment. Talking to the health staff that have been managing us at Starship, they have the same number of positions that they had 20 years ago, but the population they are dealing with is close to 50% bigger. Their IT is antiquated - they were still arm-wrestling with Windows 7. Our local Intermediate school finally got a new build completed for some new classrooms - the MoE had a leaky building nightmare they had to deal with at other schools - but their roll has increased by 40% in 12 years, with the same number of funded teaching positions.

The issue is that when our economy was smashing it, it was mostly based around immigration and protein production. We put those savings into largely meaningless tax cuts, incentivised property investment and thought that we could continue to grow the population (and reap the benefits in terms of the labour force and economic gain) without bothering to look at what sorts of resources those people might need, and plan ahead accordingly.

So my experience is that the public sector is pretty good. My hypothesis is that they are strained due to successive governments either kicking the can down the road, or not having the skills and awareness to properly plan for the future. My belief is that the public sector isn't like a tap - you can't turn it on and off depending on what the government of the day does. It needs steady investment to properly thrive.

That’s exactly how I feel. I have seen there are efficient, productive, and hard-working people in both private sector and public sector. Similarly, we find inefficient people in both sectors almost all over the world. I have good experience in myself. Not all public sector or private sector organizations can perform similar manner due to different reasons. Currently many companies are making losses, and some are running their businesses thanks to borrowings. Good companies have financial discipline. Even under private sector many companies ended up with bankruptcy. They didn’t have the better risk management system to face different types of crises. They were overleveraged. Finally, taxpayers had to bailout them. Those mony could have used for other areas like educatioin,healthcare and infrastructure.

[troyvdh]

Aaron is that a good thing.
Re NZ immigration really pumping.

You are correct...my humble sincere apologies.

The whole issue is quite bewildering...shocking.

I understand the "we" move on average about every 7 years re homes.
Residential properties are viewed as ...well play things ...a way to make money.
I have lived in the same house for over 3 decades.

And lets not forget the approx 40 billion dollars re leaky homes !.

[Aaron]

Aaron is that a good thing.
Re NZ immigration really pumping.

You obviously do not read my posts on other threads. Read Count Von Counts post, look at the housing shortage, congested roadways, hospitals, schools etc etc. Uncontrolled immigration is a disaster in my opinion, it is not even the doctors and nurses that we need coming in, anyone who can fog a glass is required apparently. National, Labour and now National again have some idea that more people, consuming more stuff, makes for a better society. I personally doubt it unless you are a townie and shopping and eating out is what you do on the weekends.

I read that Chris Bishop wants to double the population by 2060. Based on the young people leaving to go overseas or choosing a house over a family that is at least 125,000 immigrants a year for the next 36 years. Its nuts.

If it were up to me I would close the door and deal with the people we have. One of the best things about NZ is the lack of people. I guess it is cheaper to import people than to invest in our own younger generation. Immigration also pushes down wages while pushing up rents so it is a boon for the asset owners of NZ.

National is looking to cut spending while continuing to keep the immigration spigot open. Not sure how that pans out but probably not good for the average Kiwi.

[Valuegrowth]

Housing has become a commodity. Migrants are also partly responsible for the housing bubble worldwide. We are not far away for one of the biggest drops in housing prices. This time is no different.

Some of the facts in the following link are relevant to today as well.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star...f8e0873af.html

[troyvdh]

Yes...It will be tragic.