Election 2023 Wairarapa — candidates respond

• Published date: 02 October 2023
• Publication title: Bush Telegraph

■ Kieran McAnulty — Labour

Grow and invest in domestic doctors.

Focus on fairness — everyone is entitled to care no matter who they are or where they live. Health reforms are focused on offering more convenient services in the community near where you live.

■ Democracy NZ

Financial incentives to attract more doctors and nurses to regional towns. Increase the number of qualified nurses by creating a new model to train nurses, and increase the number of doctors by increasing medical school places.

Prioritise care based on need.

■ Mike Butterick — National

Reintroduce health targets. Increase investment in health every year and focus on frontline services. Fix shortages in the health workforce by way of incentives and train more doctors for placement in rural and provincial areas.

■ Act

Act has released a variety of policies that will improve regional and rural health outcomes. Foremost, Act is committed to increasing GP capitation funding by 13 per cent.

Act will also create an easier pathway for doctors trained in comparable overseas jurisdictions to practise in New Zealand.

■ Celia Wade-Brown — Greens

The Green Party will train more doctors, dentists and nurses and support rural communities to have quality care for patients. Our free dental care plan includes dental vans and portable clinics.

The crisis in ED departments can be linked directly to difficult access to primary care but the focus is always the “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”. A coordinated drive to recruit more GPs and nurse practitioners is required and practice nurses should be paid the same as colleagues in a hospital.

The cost for owners of commercial buildings in earthquake-strengthening compliance

■ Kieran McAnulty

The uncertainty arising from various factors means that %NBS [level of compliance with New Building Standards] should be viewed as indicative of the engineer’s confidence in the expected seismic performance of the building rather than an exact prediction.

Building ratings were not intended to be used to support building occupancy decisions. Building owners or tenants who have received a seismic assessment with a low rating should refer to MBIE’s Seismic Risk Guidance for Buildings to understand their seismic assessment and options for how to respond.

■ Democracy NZ

Re-evaluate the strictness of earthquake compliance standards for one-storey buildings in regional areas, offer financial assistance or tax incentives to building owners and give territorial authorities more discretion in assessing and addressing earthquake risks.

■ Mike Butterick

Advocate for pragmatic responses to these sorts of issues and make sure the local voice is heard in Wellington. National has a plan to make construction work more affordable by streamlining business consents to cut compliance costs. Reform the RMA.

■ Act

In 2016 Act opposed the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill on the grounds that it failed to exempt low-risk areas and imposed arbitrary standardised costs across New Zealand. This one-size-fits-all...