Written By:
- Date published:
2:05 pm, October 24th, 2025 - 11 comments
Categories: journalism, Media, workers' rights -
Tags: lloyd burr, protest, strike, stuff
I’m no fan of Lloyd Burr. The last time I wrote about him, it was because I felt he was promoting Crimson Education (a Jamie Beaton and John Key business) without disclosing the numerous scandals that Crimson has been involved in.
I felt it was an endorsement disguised as journalism.
On Wednesday, he continued his trend of being a pomposity, positing striking workers (doctors, teachers, nurses, social workers and the like) as “aligned to Labour” or “Greenpeace” – and essentially “political” puppets.
This is the same line National has been pushing, by the way.
I can’t express how disgusting and inaccurate this is.
First of all, it ignores the agency of hardworking Kiwi workers who overwhelmingly voted for the strike independently. Second, unions have always chosen to take action as they see fit, and have striked under all governments – Labour and National.
Third, all action to influence is political, whether it’s asking for better work conditions, or supporting an accessible & healthy public health / education system. Unions are made up of workers who choose to come together – police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, mental health staff etc. Calling it political serves to discredit these individual workers, and ignore the substance of their arguments.
The reason why unions are striking in the manner they are is a direct result of how National have handled their concerns e.g. Senior doctor vacancies are critical across public hospitals and many on the brink of collapse but National have ignored this; patients are dying in corridors and carparks. Doctors want, resourcing, and pay that will retain our specialists and medical officers.
In addition, National’s tactics are deceptive, disrespectful and in bad faith.
Public Service Commissioner Brian Roche also appears to be a partisan National Party recruit.
He’s on a minimum $630,000 part time contract and gets to hold at least 4 private directorships – including Mission Estate Winery, Hugh Green Group (property development), Wao Marino Ltd (forestry) etc – while politicising what has always been a politically neutral Public Service to attack workers using taxpayer funded ads.
Roche and National have been playing dirty politics – from upending pay equity, to framing teachers as striking for Palestine, to claiming unions haven’t tried to negotiate in good faith – a point Roche repeated tonight while on holiday on the Gold Coast. (Collins is still in the US, boasting about relationships with Trump officials)
Nurses have been begging for safe staffing for over a year, doctors are getting gaslit, and desperate Kiwis can’t get ambulances or beds. Meanwhile, Ministers Judith Collins and Simeon Brown lie unashamedly about doctors and teachers salaries etc.
The irony is not lost on me that we have a $630,000 businessman / Public Service Commissioner, a $520,000 “wealthy and sorted” Prime Minister who made $770,000 tax free on investment properties last year, together with $327,100 Ministers all gaslighting hard working Kiwis that they can’t get resources because they are giving billions to landlords and tobacco companies instead.
Our workers deserve better, we all do – and what Lloyd Burr offers isn’t journalism, it’s National Party bulls**t.
I don't disagree with the premise of your post which has some well made points. Good work.
You stated that nurses have been begging for safe staffing for over a year. Lets not under report how long they have been begging for this though. That was a central theme of the major industrial action taken in 2021. So its very disappointing to still be here and have them asking for the same thing. Disgraceful really.
Nurses protesting in Christchurch said they were worried that current staffing levels were not safe and they were not able to provide the level of care they would like to patients
The Health Boards that made the staffing level agreement no longer exist.
Okay. The same issue persist which is my point
I think that you are missing the point that SPC made. There were improvements and some progress was made. This pack of idiots that make up our current government dissolved all of that with their restructuring of the health system in an attempt to save money in a already strained system, and tossing out pay equity claims.
Now the CoCkup ministers and their pet commissioner are lying about the causes and progress of the industrial action.
There was a change in staffing levels after the 2021 industrial action
Gemini summary is …
While not perfect, most of these elements wound up in the agreements with the dissolved health boards in 2023.
The current offers from this government have nothing to do with improving actual staffing levels which are currently being held artificially low by not replacing nursing staff. Nurses leave, usually to go offshore, and the replacement positions are not advertised or people sought for replacement. The kind of ‘cost’saving’ made by an idiot who likes killing patients.
Nursing staff are leaving because effective pay ‘offers’ are in fact a pay cut once you look at cost inflation and are not competitive in retaining staff in a world wide skilled market. And they are expected to do long shifts in understaffed wards. Nursing staff really aren’t like the weevils who like cost-cutting, they don’t like killing patients because they are too tired to work effectively.
Perhaps you'd like to actually make a relevant point that has something to do with current reality?
Nope, nurses settled with the previous Government a couple of months before GE-2023 and this is a new round that’s on the Coalition.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nurses-accept-collective-pay-offer
There are now enough nurses to fully staff the wards, but National prefers to operate at 80% capacity to save money.
They delay replacing staff despite knowing that they have a high turnover rate – and why, the workload pressure.
They seem to be exploiting having a reserve of nurses who want these jobs because of higher hospital pay (here aided by the cost of living factor).
(not all nurses getting pay equity)
The locally trained ones are the slowest to move on to Oz (student debt a factor), but if/when we lose these … .
Considering the good points made above and that he (Lloyd) is touting the same line National has been pushing, it would seem Lloyd is the puppet
The concept that unions didn't have member support for strikes led to the National-led government amending the Employment Relations Act in 2012 to require members to vote on strike actions by secret ballot (source).
Turns out unions do have member support for strikes… the suggestion that members are puppets of their unions is obvious rubbish since unions have no way to force members to actually go on strike even if the vote is in favour.
What annoys me the most is that the msm just repeats the lies. It wouldn’t be hard to check any union’s mandate.
That's precisely why it's hard not to believe it's not intentional
In fact, without even checking mandates, the role of them is pretty clear