Top public health officials have been caught red-handed undermining or attempting to undermine the new Government to get its own way. It’s like they never got the memo that the Government had changed or they wilfully ignored it.
The Government’s top health officials were so concerned by its decision to repeal the smokefree generation law that at least one considered quitting.
Documents released by Te Whatu Ora show outright anger from top health officials, who discussed how to try and stop the Government’s repeal of a law which would have led to New Zealand stopping the sale of cigarettes.
Te Whatu Ora national director for public health, Dr Nick Chamberlain said he was so concerned by the moral and ethical dilemma of repealing the smokefree legislation that he was considering whether he could continue working in the role.
As the national public health director, Chamberlain is one of the Government’s most important health officials – effectively a deputy chief executive of the department operating every hospital. Before this, he worked for 12 years as chief executive of Northland DHB. He remains working at Te Whatu Ora.
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If they are opposed to the new public policy then they should just quit.
But the issue is so much worse than just being annoyed about a change of Government.
Chamberlain, alongside Director-General of Health Dr Diana Sarfati and Apa, worked with other top health advisors to provide urgent advice to Cabinet about repealing the smokefree legislation.
Apa suggested the focus on the financial burden of repealing the legislation.
“We need to make legislation look like the cheapest option,” she said.
They also discussed how unpopular, both among the medical profession and the public, repealing the bill was.
Safarti wrote, “The Government is certainly under considerable pressure”.
She agreed that cost should be focused, but warned against other suggestions – including advice that the Government could consider introducing a sugar tax to offset the public health cost of increased smoking.
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These clowns have breached the civil service code of ethics; they’ve jimmied their advice to try and hoodwink ministers into doing what they wanted – not what the coalition was voted in to do.
Look at the wording: “We need to make legislation look like the cheapest option“.
Either it is cheaper or it isn’t, but we can’t know what the reality is and never will get a straight answer now because they’ve tried to make it look like it was.
Which means we can’t trust a thing that they say, ever.
They can no longer be trusted. They need to be sacked.
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