Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Minister of Health misses the need

COMMENTARY:

Where was the Minister of Health this week?

If you had watched the nurses' strike closely, you would have noticed that David Clark was MIA for a good time.

the eleventh hour, when things got really tense, he disappeared. While the DHB and the nurses were looking over an office, sweating the negotiations, hoping to avoid the strike earlier this week, it was AWOL.

David Clark was on vacation. In the three days leading up to the strike, he took his family to Australia. It was a long planned party. He says that he cut short and returned in time for the strike. Someone reported seeing him at the Wellington airport after 9 pm the day before union action.

Did not anyone at the Beehive think of what it would look like? Nobody asked that he cancel his trip and stay in town? With the first nurses' strike imminent in 30 years, should the head of our health care system be at his desk, as he did everything he could to prevent it? Should not it seem to worry about it?

Nothing says that IDGAF likes to go on vacation.

It's a beginner's mistake. And just an example of how this government has changed its management of the nurses' strike this week.

By the way, it's hard to strike if you're in government.

For starters, you know it's coming. This is not a surprise. The nurses gave the government more than three months notice. Which means that there is a lot of time to spend on this vacation to pay people who seem to do their job.

Moreover, the public does not really like the strike. This seems like a good idea until the operations are canceled and the two parties bicker in public. The mood turns quickly sour. Nobody likes a plaintiff or a shirker. Striking workers are those two things. For many hardworking Kiwis, the 9 percent pay offer seems generous. It's more than what they get.

Which means that if the government had done it well, the nurses would have looked rather greedy.

But the government did not play well. The government wanted us to hear, that is, the budget is tight. There is simply more money, said Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters. He said it with so much conviction and compassion that it almost began to sound true.

But if that is the key message, it is better to hide the money. Do not make a point of showing it. Someone forgot to tell the government this tip. So, he packed the week of the strike with spending announcements.

The most offensive spending was the $ 2.3 billion spent on the purchase of four aircraft. Aircraft of war. Armed with missiles. Let's be honest with each other here. These are missiles that New Zealand will probably never shoot outside of the training exercises. These are just toys for men who want to be GI Joe when they grow up. Of course, we really need planes to replace our Vietnamese era planes, but missiles seem to be a luxury. They are the ultimate statement of frivolous spending.

The rest of this week's spending announcements were smaller. But they added to the story. There is money after all. It's spent on everything but nurses this week. Millions for Radio New Zealand. Hundreds of thousands for Venture Taranaki to offset the cancellation of oil and gas exploration.

Missiles or nurses? Journalists or nurses? A provincial organization that you have never heard of nor nurses?

We always turn to the nurses side. Which means that we are not yet quite angry with the nurses.

Which also means that the government could give a little more salary to nurses

.

Which means that the government has shaken it.