The Standard

Daily review 31/07/2025

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, July 31st, 2025 - 15 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

15 comments on “Daily review 31/07/2025 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Patricia Bremner 1
    31 July 2025 at 6:20 pm

    Complaints about people finding they are not enrolled.

    Explanation …

    A garbled "you could be on the Holding roll".

    A place enrollments go if the enrollee can not be contacted by text or email.

    Wow!!! We better all check as we may be disenfranchised by an algorithm, or an over enthusiastic clerk.

    Debbie co-leader of the Te Parti Maori reports 300+ queries so far, her enquiries led to the above. She wants the system checked so people can feel certain they are able to vote once enrolled, and changes won't be made without notification.

    Some kind body may provide thelinkto RNZ

  2. Patricia Bremner 2
    31 July 2025 at 6:24 pm

    Another attack on our Democracy.

    Gerry Brownlee is "Looking at rewriting Question Time" Say What???

    • Dennis Frank 2.1
      31 July 2025 at 6:43 pm

      To say Answer Time, I presume. The posture of the supplicant can be deemed a tad too traditional for comfort. People want answers, not more questions. Not that there's much chance of Brownlee ever getting anything right.

    • alwyn 2.2
      31 July 2025 at 8:45 pm

      If he does what he seems to be saying it is certainly not an attack. Quite the opposite in fact. It will need a change to the rules the House operates under though.

      Even if he could get it back to the way Lockwood Smith ran it it would be a great improvement. He was the only Speaker who made them answer a question properly in the last 30 years or so.

  3. Dennis Frank 3
    31 July 2025 at 6:54 pm

    Well, both channels led their news tonight with the story of the FBI establishing a base of operations in the capital. Neither mentioned how many local jobs would be created.

    What's wrong with the media nowadays?? Everyone knows neoliberalism needs all the help it can get currently. I wonder if they will run night classes for would-be spooks?

    Yet Paddy Gower's account on 3 was a load of fun; he had Mark Mitchell in fast repetition mode, tightly edited to created a series of several dozen dodgings of questions, with strangely similar phaseology each time. Lux will ponder his turn on this: "We haven't got an effing clue, mate, we just get told what to do."

  4. SPC 4
    31 July 2025 at 7:02 pm

    Do we have a primary health care problem?

    By the numbers.

    Seventeen percent of the GP workforce are already at or over the retirement age.

    More than half the GPs and more than a quarter of rural hospital doctors surveyed had reduced their working hours in the last year.

    Meanwhile, 18 percent of GPs and more than a quarter of rural hospital doctors are considering leaving New Zealand.

    He said New Zealand has about 70 GPs to a 100,000 population, while Canada has 120, and Australia have over 100.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/568484/new-workplace-survey-warns-of-mass-exodus-of-general-practice-and-rural-doctors

  5. SPC 5
    31 July 2025 at 7:12 pm

    Do we also have a problem at our hospitals.

    A Hawke’s Bay Hospital nursing manager and union delegate claims some vacant nursing roles are not being replaced at the hospital, which is impacting the level of care and is akin to a hiring freeze.

    However, Health NZ Te Whatu Ora said it was “continuing to actively recruit to fill vacant nurses’ positions” at the hospital, which takes time.

    It appears that Te Whata Ora is using a time lag before filling vacancies to save money.

    This tactic will create a running cycle of unfilled vacancies and mean staffing levels will never be at the full quota. If shortages occur too long in an area then other staff will leave (burn out and either go to Oz, or take a pay cut to the jobs where pay equity was blocked).

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/some-nursing-roles-not-being-replaced-at-hawkes-bay-hospital-despite-dire-need-manager-says/FBBQHZZNCVHV5IZU4T6PYCFQZU/

    • SPC 5.1
      31 July 2025 at 7:27 pm

      It's all areas.

      On the picketline in Wellington today, Pip Cresswell told RNZ she quit her job as a charge nurse because she was sick of not being allowed to fill vacancies and working more than 60 hours a week to cover.

      "We've got 7000 staff in Capital and Coast Hutt Valley and we've got 1000 positions empty. But we're being replaced at the rate that people left last week, so we're never going to get the 1000 people back."

      That is a large cut in the numbers of paid staff.

      Hutt emergency department nurse Seteli Pelasio said the risk to patients was the worst she had seen in 30 years.

      The Government

      An honest person

      In an interview with Morning Report today, Health NZ's acting chief clinical officer, Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard was asked whether Health NZ had the money to hire the nurses it needed.

      "We're all in a fiscally constrained environment, Health NZ is in a fortunate position at the moment where we have plenty of nurses willing to work with us, and we're keen to employ them where we can."

      Other responses.

      Brown blamed the Nurses Organisation for postponing care for 4300 patients.

      Health NZ chief executive Dale Bramley said he was confident that Health NZ employed enough nurses to staff its hospitals safely.

      He claims the statistics he provides to government show improvements in all areas, as if this proves there are enough staff – despite all the unfilled positions.

      What does that mean.

      Waikato nurse Kristi Barthel gets multiple texts a day asking for her to work extra shifts.

      "We're all burned out because we're doing extra hours, over-time and we're not getting paid for our over-time, and having to pick up extra shifts."

      Nayda Heays had just come off a 12-hour shift at Hastings Hospital's intensive care unit.

      If she were a construction worker instead of a nurse, she would "not be having to argue for basic health and safety" measures, she noted drily.

      "I'm tired now, and I'm going to spend the next four hours with my colleagues getting it out to our community that this has to stop."

      Burnt out staff and other nurses who cannot get jobs.

      It's like a burn them out and then replace them culture. Which means in return for the pay increase, they get a short shelf life in their profession.

      If WHO managed medical staff treatment we would be on a blacklist.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/568491/thousands-across-new-zealand-strike-over-nurse-pay-and-lack-of-staffing

  6. SPC 6
    31 July 2025 at 7:39 pm

    Team New Zealand

    "They have bowed to the suggestions of the oil and gas companies and done what they wanted. They have further bowed to the interests of the oil and gas companies in taking eight months to sit with them, find out what they wanted and then bring a bill back to the House. This is not a government that is putting New Zealand first."

    The Regulatory Impact Statement referred to consultation with affected stakeholders.

    "Those consulted preferred ministerial discretion to the current act and approach in the bill. In other words, these shadowy participants in the oil and gas industry – a dying industry – who we don't know who they are, much prefer to be able to lobby a minister."

    Team Carbon (oil, gas, coal and tobacco)

    Jones was unapologetic about those he consulted with.

    "Why would you not engage with the stakeholders, the risk-takers, the providers of what precious little gas we have, ruined by the cancel culture."

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/568388/last-minute-change-puts-oil-and-gas-cleanup-decisions-in-ministers-hands

    Mr Shane Jones continues to peddle the lie that the decision not to issue new licenses impacted on the amount of gas available since then.

    The fact is lower estimates of the existing fields is the only relevant factor.

    Also relevant is that existing licences were not being used to explore and that was not a local decision.

    And it takes a decade or more to explore, discover and produce gas to the local market.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/535399/nz-s-gas-shortage-was-not-caused-by-the-offshore-exploration-ban-but-it-was-still-a-flawed-policy

  7. SPC 7
    31 July 2025 at 7:58 pm

    The man from the J Edgar Hoover Building came to Welling town.

  8. SPC 8
    31 July 2025 at 8:36 pm

    The FBI collaborates with international law enforcement partners through a network of offices worldwide. The Wellington position was originally established in 2017 as a suboffice of the Legat based in Australia.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/fbi-to-establish-base-in-new-zealand-after-director-kash-patel-visit/HLACKSKCSFCJTO7K4AGVMQWFEY/

    It may be a coincidence but National determined on a Fixated Threat Assessment Centre here in 2017, just before they left office.

    After a pilot project which ran from September 2017, FTACNZ was established on 1 July 2019

    https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/2021-12/fixated_threat_assessment_centre_new_zealand_annual_report_july_2019_-_june_2020.pdf

  9. joe90 9
    31 July 2025 at 9:02 pm

    While there's no evidence Jeffrey Epstein had a 'client list' or blackmailed associates Kash and Dan just happened to find burn bags chock full of the Most Incriminating Intelligence that someone forgot to burn but then they left them in the secret room.

    ffs.

    /

    EXCLUSIVE: FBI Director Kash Patel found a trove of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump–Russia probe buried in multiple "burn bags" in a secret room inside the bureau, sources told Fox News Digital.

    Sources told Fox News Digital that the "burn bag" system is used to destroy documents designated as classified or higher.

    Sources told Fox News Digital that multiple burn bags were found and filled with thousands of documents.

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/patel-found-thousands-sensitive-trump-russia-probe-docs-inside-burn-bags-secret-room-fbi