Mōrena. The six things to know this morning in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate are:
Health NZ has admitted most of New Zealand’s biggest hospitals were already overflowing before the worst of the winter flu epidemic blew out delays at EDs and forced the cancellations of elective surgeries, Rowan Quinn reports this morning for RNZ1.
Official documents reveal Associate Health Minister David Seymour called for messaging around children staying home when sick to be softened in a bid to boost school attendance in late 2023, but did it without getting advice from Health NZ about the health risks, Harriet Laughton reported yesterday for The Post-$2.
A homeless Auckland man who had a severe stroke while living under a bridge this winter was later discharged from Auckland City Hospital in just a gown and taken to an unfunded charity for help. The stroke left him with slow speech and movement, needing a walker to get around, Amy Williams reports this morning for RNZ3.
National has proposed granting councils a share of the Government’s visitor levy instead of a bed tax, but mayors say4 it still leaves them around $8 million short.
The Government is already well behind on its targeted reduction in the number of people on the jobless benefit, with 218,500 people receiving benefits — nearly 80,000 above the 140,000 target, RNZ5’s Farah Hancock reports this morning..
Outgoing ANZ CEO Antonia Watson has again called for the adoption of a Capital Gains Tax (CGT), Jenee Tibshraeny reports this morning for NZ Herald-$.6
