
The collapse of the New Zealand health system
Or is it being collapsed?
Seemorerocks
Dedicated to the dedicated nurses, midwives and ambulance staff and to mandated practitioners.
We have been told that the Pfizer mRNA “vaccine” is “safe and effective” and would protect against covid-19; that it would protect against serious symptoms and keep people out of hospital.
Now we have a crisis in our hospitals “because of COVID”.
The truth is that in this country at least 80% of people in hospital because of COVID have been vaccinated.
The data from Australia is even more stark; I came across the following just this morning:
It appears that we have a crisis in our hospitals and it is getting worse, week-by- week.
For example this while I was compiling this article:
Dunedin Hospital closed to visitors
Dunedin Hospital is no longer accepting visitors to any of its wards because of an outbreak of Covid-19, combined with increased pressure on capacity.
Visitors were turned away from the hospital yesterday after the restrictions were implemented at 6pm.
Southern District Health Board chairman Pete Hodgson said there had been an outbreak of Covid-19 at the hospital, which was the reason it had to close the doors.
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I wish to start with some anecdotes from people that we know:
PATRICK’S STORY
I have a healthy 78-year old friend who we have been worried about for some time as he has had 3 doses of the “vaccine”.
A few weeks ago he had very sore feet and was getting round in woollen boots.
We immediately suspected blood clots.
He had several on-line consultations with his doctor who could only suggest he bought some special boots but showed little interest in investigating further, something that has become the rule, rather than the exception.
When he finally had to crawl to the bathroom and couldn’t walk his family phoned for the ambulance.
The ambulance staff did not believe that he was in pain and couldn’t walk until they accidentally kicked him in the foot and he yelled out in pain.
He was sent to Wellington hospital in our region and indeed, he did have blood clots, all to do with his smoking or his age and nothing to do with a vaccine booster of course!
He had an operation involving the transplant of veins that appeared to be successful; he was recovering and was, according to his nurse-daughter due to have a second operation on his second leg on the Monday.
We learned that on the evening before he was diagnosed with covid-19 and was put into isolation where he has remained for the week.
During that time he has had no symptoms of COVID other than being irritable and stir-crazy from the isolation.
The latest news is that he has been transferred to Hutt hospital – the one that, as you will see, is having its largest wing closed down soon. All this is because of a shortage of operating room staff at Wellington hospital.
So he was down for an operation on Monday (because it was urgent) and by Thursday there is apparently no staff to do the operation.
CEMETERY WORKERS
We have another friend who has worked outside for 35 years as a gravedigger – the one who reported that in his career he has never buried so many people as he has over the past months, especially following a “vaxathon” last year.
He was done out of a job because he refused to have the vaxx and as far as we know has not been reinstated despite having heard (in the middle of the night of course!) reports of a shortage of crematorium and cemetery workers.
They will never acknowledge or admit that cemetery workers have been mandated out of their jobs but instead produce human interest stories like this.
‘I respect these people who are buried here’ – Graveyards call out for volunteers
Public and community-run cemeteries around the country are struggling to recruit staff and volunteers
So, folk just don’t want to do the job any more? Is that it?
THE UNVAXXED NURSES
We have anecdotal information that after an unspecified (but considerable) number of nurses in the hospitals walking out of their jobs because they would not succumb to the vaxx no one has been allowed back to their jobs.
In an interview recently Liz Gunn said that far from people returning to work more and more are leaving the sector because the demands are becoming greater and greater so that those who have received three doses of the mRNA shot will be regarded as “unvaxxed”.
All the while, it seems that staff are allowed to work with COVID symptoms but are not allowed to be unvaxxed. A well-known figure in the movement and my former doctor, René de Monchy had this to say when I asked him:
As to my situation as mentioned in the article, it is indeed so that on 18 November last year I was told that I was not able and permitted to work any more and the hospital said I was not allowed anywhere on the DHB grounds, which would be considered a criminal offense…..
A colleague of mine who is a gynaecologist and who was working in the same hospital, has not been able to work anywhere in hospital or do locum work as a specialist or as a doctor in general because he is unvaccinated.
(edited)
So we have a crisis in the hospitals due at least in good measure to Jacinda Adern sacking her most dedicated nursing staff.
All this is being ascribed to COVID amongst staff (which well might be the case, at least in part) while the other main reason is ignored or even denied.
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This is further illustrated by this story: another acquaintance had to go to Accident and Emergency (ER) with a kidney infection was not responding to antibiotics.
Although she was regarded as urgent she was shunted off to a room where she was left for a long period of time.
She alluded to the fact that there were very few nursing staff and they were being moved from Emergency to other areas of the hospital.
This was confirmed by her:
“The nurse said they were reducing the number of staff in A&E – they already couldn’t cope and reducing numbers would be diabolical”.
There have been accounts in the media of staff having to work very long shifts.
There was a story of a woman working in a small rest home, of maybe 50 people, having to work 3 days in a row and grab some sleep in between and couldn’t get home for 36 hours. She reported after having been at work for 2 whole days having to stay on because no one turned up to relieve her.
Changes are being made to our work visas that allows the fast tracking of immigrants in professions where there is deemed to be an acute shortage – medical professionals, builders, project managers, engineers, dentists.
Nurses were not on this list.
A Swedish nurse reported she cannot practise nursing here because her qualifications are not recognised here, all that despite the fact that probably has among the highest standards of nursing in the world.
Another Indian doctor we know who is working with immigrants in a poor neighbourhood reported she had to go “through hell” to get her qualifications recognised. She reported being bullied and generally treated very badly.
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE OLIVER
Perhaps the clearest example of how run down the health system is comes from an interview of Steve Oliver with Liz Gunn where he describes his friend having a heart attack in front of him.
Getting only an answering service on 111 which said they were over capacity and to go to a GP. he set off taking his friend to the hospital in Whangarei,
When they got to medical centre where they tried ringing emergency; the phone rang for an hour and a half without being picked up. His friend started to get anxious and instead of being sedated was told they would ring the police and have him thrown out ion the street. They managed to finally get an ambulance and when they got to the hospital there were staff everywhere, all clipboards whose only concern was if he had any COVID symptoms.
Steve Oliver was told the hospital was 150% over capacity and he had better go home and see his GP.
After sleeping for 2 days he was told the earliest he can get a PHONE consultation was Monday. The heart attack happened on the previous Thursday.
Other comments were that:
- Health practitioners are still being mandated when we are being told the mandates are over. The exit from the health profession because people don’t want to take the boosters.
- The hospitals let people go to work if they have COVID symptoms. How will that stop people getting sick?
- The response from staff to question was “no comment” or that they can’t do anything other than just deal with the fallout.
- People are unaware that this is going on until they need the system.
THINGS ARE ONLY GOING TO GET. WORSE
While we are seeing that there are greater levels of hospitalisations of the vaccinated and deaths are constant compared with when we had the original Wuhan strain of Covid-2 things are only going to get worse.
We have not reached flu season yet.
This prognosis came out a couple of days ago from a modeller who I have to say have never got things right
Covid-19: Hospitalisations could be higher in second Omicron wave
Older people are expected to be on the list of people who will be eligible for a fourth dose of the vaccine later this month.
“Offering a fourth dose of the vaccine as we go into winter for those groups is a really good way of mitigating the risk.” (sic)
This report from February from Dunedin Hospital which has just closed its wards to visitors is fairly typical of hospitals across the country.
Visitor access changes to southern hospitals
Hawkes Bay describe an increasing number of people admitted to hospital with flu although it has to be asked how they distinguish influenza from COVID seeing they have very similar symptoms. In any case it is leading to a call for people to get the flu jab although there is evidence that it can only make matters worse
Spike in people admitted to Hawke’s Bay Hospital with flu
As at Monday, there were 10 people in Hawke’s Bay Hospital with influenza.
Four days later, there were 33 people in the hospital with influenza, with one of those patients requiring intensive care support.
It comes during the same week the hospital’s ED reported its busiest days on record with almost 200 presentations on both Monday and Tuesday.
Now we come to the big story.
THE IMPENDING CLOSURE OF HUTT HOSPITAL
In the midst of a dire health crisis it was announced that the Wellington region’s second largest hospital, the Hutt Valley hospital is closing its Heretaunga Wing, which houses 79 percent of the beds and services and 25 percent of the region’s capacity as well.
It contains the children’s ward, the maternity wing, the coronary care unit and other wards and services.
The reports say that the DHB used a 10-year-old seismic assessment to persuade the Hutt City Council to go easy on it in May 2021
Hutt Hospital to clear building after it is declared a quake risk
Unclear how long services will stay at quake-prone Hutt Hospital’s Heretaunga Building
Of special interest is the birthing unit.
If closed that would leave no maternity services in the Hutt Valley and people may have to go elsewhere where services are already stretched to the maximum.
Everyone, right up to the Health Minister, Andrew Little says they want to keep a hospital in the region but reality on the ground paints a different picture.
There had been talk of shifting birthing to a unit, te Awakairangi, owned by a charitable organisation, the Wright Family Foundation, was mothballed only last year due to lack of funding.
Much-loved Hutt Valley birthing centre set to close next month.
However a motion to this effect was voted down by a majority nine members of the board at a special meeting just a day or so ago.
Hutt Valley DHB declines to make maternity services move a priority
However, as the following article makes clear the problems are not confined to the Hutt Valley but are across the region
We are blithely told that services will be transferred to other hospitals .
However, there are problems in Wellington as well
Wellington hospital staff shortages at ‘critical levels’ in midwifery, nursing, allied health
That leaves the only other hospital in the region – the small Porirua hospital. However, the media reports;
“18 percent of health workers at a Porirua Hospital are absent as the impact of the outbreak continues to grow outside Auckland.”
WHAT ARE THE ODDS?
If you thought the problems were limited to the Hutt Hospital you would be wrong.
Within a very short period of time three other hospitals that I know of were singled out for partial closure – all because they are prone to earthquakes.
Firstly there is Wellington hospital where they have discovered they have to move its emergency department “because its structure might fail in a quake“
More shaky hospitals: Wellington emergency department deemed earthquake risk
That must be a really urgent problem that has to be solved immediately (sic)!
Then there is Hawkes Bay Hospital where they have discovered its newest buildings (built in 2004) has been found to be “earthquake-prone” just a month before the Hutt Valley and Wellington announcements.
It has been reported that they cannot install their new MRI scanner

Seismic risk assessments exposing widespread shaky hospital issue
Isn’t it strange how at a time when the health system is in dire crisis and losing staff at an amazing rate that policies are being enacted that would reduce facilities and they would undertake a major reform of the system?
If it is not by design it seems to me that if there nefarious aims this is just how they would go about collapsing a health system that was already in a parlous shape
THE REST HOMES
The situation in the rest homes which was previously almost intolerable has only got worse.
NZ Health Group Managing Director on inadequate funding for home and community support that contributes to staff shortages and affecting future age care options
The article reports that the New Zealand Health Group, the largest provider of home support services has had to suspend referrals in Auckland, turning away 20 to 30 a day, due to the lack of registered nurses needed to supervise carers.
Furthermore they report the vaccine mandate took out more than 400 caregivers, and they have lost about 20 per cent of nursing staff to district health boards (DHB) over the past six months because of the pay gap.
In this regard, a friend’s mother has been in hospital taking up bed space that is already in short supply while they look for a bed in a rest home. However, there have been none available anywhere near where she lives.
There was also a story of a woman working in a small rest home, of maybe 50 people, having to work 3 days in a row and grab some sleep in between and couldn’t get home for 36 hours. She reported after having been at work for 2 whole days having to stay on because no one turned up to relieve her.
Another friend has a friend in a Lower Hutt rest home and reported that the old people are underfed and going hungry.
I have looked to see if these shortages are affecting the private hospitals as well. However, I can find no indication of any problems being identified in the media connected the private system.
QUESTION: If staff are succumbing to COVID in the public hospitals would this not affect the private hospitals as well?
But that is not what we hearing.
Are we being herded into the private system?
A GOVERNMENT SHAKE-UP OF THE HEALTH SYSTEM IN THE MIDST OF CRISIS
A major health reform in the midst of a grave crisis?
In response to the article above, Lower Hutt mayor Campbell Barry said that the Hospital Board needed to make a strong stance about retaining health services in the Hutt Valley while it still had the power to.
This is because the decision-making powers will be transferred to the new government organisation, Health New Zealand, next month.
This move is away from local decision-making towards a single centralised, govenment-controlled organisation, Health New Zealand.
Major health sector shake-up: DHBs scrapped and new Māori Health Authority announced
Just like this government relies on a “single source of truth” its response is always to regulate, legislate and centralise.
DEBT
All of the above points to a problem across the sector with funding, from private rest homes to the public health system.
Debt across all the health boards reached $237 million in the last financial year, compared with Government predictions of $210 million.
Some of the hospitals badly need input, as shown by this article:
Whangārei Hospital: Leaky roofs, dodgy lifts, waiting lists and Covid-19’s here
It is unclear what the government has spend on COVID – on propaganda, buying in vaccines and what have you – I recall a figure of 100 BILLION.
I came across the following official item that is designed to confuse as much as it is to reveal.
Controller update on Government spending on Covid-19
To put a $237 MILLION debt into context in 2020 the government expanded their money-printing (QE) to $100 BILLION.
Covid 19 coronavirus: Reserve Bank expands QE to $100 billion
According to the debt clock New Zealand’s national debt (which represents 42% of GDP stands at NZ$ 120 billion with interest payments of $5 billion.
To put this into perspective NZ cannot rely on a petrodollar backed by a huge military.
Instead, it does not earn enough from dairy and tourism (which has been closed down for 2 years) to make ends meet.
It does not take a genius to realise that this situation must have a huge effect on the public health crisis.
We can cover hospital debts only by still more borrowing.
Or we can tighten our belts but it will never be enough.
Conclusion
I am leaving it up to readers to decide how to interpret what I have reported – the degree to which the health system is collapsing or is being COLLAPSED.
Perhaps the fact that they announced the closure of several hospitals all within a short period of time is just a giant coincidence.?
Perhaps the fact that we have a shortage of nurses, cemetery workers etc. is just happenstance?
That is what the media would like you to believe.
They will go anywhere in their explanations other than so much as mention the mandated health workers.
They simply don’t exist.
But I for one don’t believe in “coinkydinks”.
Perhaps I can finish with the following?
We do not know what Jacinda Adern signed up to with Pfizer in 2021
We do not know what she signed to in America in the last week.
We do not know what Jacinda talks about in her daily breakfast discussions with former PM Helen Clark.
Helen Clark on Jacinda Ardern at the White House – how it works and why it matters now


You can find out more at AmazingPolly’s video, BOOM! Caught Red Handed Planning Monkeypox Pandemic.
I think I will leave things there.
9 thoughts on “The collapse of the New Zealand health system”
Disaster Capitalism. The U$K has creeping privatisation of the NHS; it seems likely they, the Blaircinda crowd, think it’s hobbitland’s future too.
I say this with sad resignation and no hostility Blaircindy is a traitor! She’s an empty vessel filled with the Neoliberal,rentier economic and social poison, she’s been bought.
The Daily Sceptic reported last week that NHS England had revealed the deaths of 3,000 people with diabetes due to lack of care since the plandemic began. https://dailysceptic.org/2022/05/31/covid-lockdowns-caused-3000-extra-diabetes-deaths-in-england-nhs-report-finds/
Ol’ Blacinda dressing like Helen Clark now ….it’s all so ouvert.
After 15 – 20 years of massive immigration and no sign really that our infrastructure has kept up with it, plus peak everything and the current cultural growth fetish, it’s little wonder we’re seeing things starting to fall apart.
I have no faith this government can be open on anything anymore. We can not expect leadership from Wellington.
In 1995, a few years after I became involved in NZ public health system issues, I received a letter from an Otago nurse including this statement; “The seventeen nurses who resigned were great nurses but who cannot work under the new management regime”. I still have the letter.
And so it continues to this day. Lunatic, bureaucratic empire-building whereby ill-qualified upstarts with their politically-driven agendas are destroying the caring traditions and ethical values of dedicated career health professionals. As a twice-elected member of the West Coast DHB board I was horrified not only by the agendas followed by management – and given into by the majority of board members – but by management’s forcing out of their positions any health professional brave enough to challenge them. I recall that the “official” line on having DHB boards was that the boards set the agenda for their local services and management carried this out. Absolute rubbish. Wellington set the agenda and board members were utterly powerless to alter anything dictated from above and connived in by the government-appointed chairman and 4 government-appointed members..
There is no other logical explanation for this than the deliberate destruction of the public health system and its being taken over by profit-driven businesses. Surely now, the current government’s intentions are obvious to anyone aware of what is going on. And in the middle of crisis after crisis government is actually wanting to establish a separate health system based on what can only be described as an apartheid-driven agenda. If it happens big business and the new horde of bureaucrats will be thrilled but where, one asks, are the health professionals going to come from given that the current public health system is already desperately short of health professionals because of the agenda of the past three decades?
As a Kiwi born and bred and having spent the greater part of my life in New Zealand I love the place – and the typical New Zealanders of whatever race, creed or colour. But if the current agenda is carried through I never wish to set foot in the country again.
In 1995 following my second New Zealand-wide rural hospitals campaign in my old house-truck accompanied by Emma the rural health watchdog (of the canine variety) I wrote a little book entitled, “Community or chaos? The social crisis in rural New Zealand”. For “rural”, now read all New Zealand. I ended the book with a quote from my father, someone who had no connection with the health system other than as a patient through some major illnesses. Regarding nurses he stated; “These dedicated ladies are the heart and soul of health care, and I deplore the cavalier manner in which they are being treated by unqualified upstarts who think they know best”. I know that Dad thought similarly of every health professional who treated him.
There’s a quote on our fridge, “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty”. I trust New Zealanders are going to act accordingly.
Very well said.
This is a great article about the status of our healthcare system, but the problem is far deeper as you and dr bancroft below comment on. Richard Prosser made similar comments last year, and it appears he is no longer with us.
We need to reveal the agenda and stand together.
Excellent roundup of the current state of affairs in the NZ health, hospital and aged care sectors. I’ll share this around as far as I can
Is what we call the “health” system really about health?
From practicing Medicine since 1970, I realized that it is actually a SICKNESS INDUSTRY that grows and profits hugely from more people being ill every year.
The model for this industry developed during the post war “golden age” of economic growth and prosperity.
The metric for “health” became the consumption and cost of medical products, procedures and services.
The elite people in political parties promised more medical services as a means of soliciting votes and gaining more political power.
“Free Health for all” was a very successful political tactic but a promise that could never be kept.
The “health” bureaucracy increased in size, complexity and public funding as the prosperous times continued.
Then came the Neoliberal economic reforms of the 1980s and the notion that the public medical system should be operated as though it was a big business.
More and more CEOs, Managers, administrators, office workers and other non-medical people were employed to manage the “workforce”.
Money that had been available to diagnose and treat sick people was diverted to paying for administration, PR, marketing, logos and other management issues.
Costs increased and management responded by reducing wages, and reducing the available beds and services that people required when ill.
Waiting lists for assessment and treatment increased and the private medical system grew to help provide the services that the public one had cut out.
People ought to understand that the real wages and salaries (purchasing power) of most productive workers have steadily decreased since the late 1970s and debt has replaced the prosperity of the “golden age”.
The people of New Zealand cannot afford the medical facilities and services they are promised by ambitious politicians and bureaucrats who keep avoiding and hiding the truth that the entire system has failed.
There are 3 very significant facts that need to be understood.
1. It is well known that the demand for medical services always tends to increase to exceed the supply.
2. The “baby boomers” who thrived during the “golden age” of prosperity are now older, sicker and demanding more of the available medical resources.
3. The broken system could not cope with a new burden like the occurrence of the Sars Cov 2 virus.
The failed system could never handle the burden of illness that Sars Cov 2 was predicted to cause (but fortunately did not).
Lockdowns, border closures, social distancing, business closures, vaccine mandates and violations of human rights were imposed to prevent the “masses” from knowing that the politicians and public servants they paid failed them miserably.
In order to understand how the good times after WW2 became the current hard times of inflation, debt and systemic failures you ought to think about who has been choosing, supporting and promoting the political celebrities that the rest are allowed to vote for.
There is a very small but very influential minority of people that actively participate in and fund the operations and campaign of the 2 main political parties.
This minority decides who will be selected, promoted, marketed and elected to represent and serve THEM.
The rest of the people that vote and pay do not get properly represented or receive value for what they are forced to pay.
C.S Lewis accurately described this influential political minority as Omnipotent Moral Busybodies.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
If the ordinary working people whose productive efforts pay for “the government” want things to improve they need to take the power away from this tyrannical minority.
Either.
1. Become involved and influential members of the National and Labour parties to choose politicians that represent the working people.
2. Stop voting for the political celebrities that these busybodies choose to represent and serve them and their selfish agendas.
The coming years are going to be very difficult for most people and continuing to elect the representatives of the elites of the National or Labour parties will only result in more central government power, control, tyranny, failure and poverty.
Isn’t it time for the voters to rebel while they still can?