Posts by Rosemary McDonald
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And here's Kirsty again, one year on and still fucking battling.
Truly, people, I'm over it and I'm singularly unimpressed with Genter's response.
The stumbling block appears to be funding... or it could simply be that the Ministry are being twats because they are being guilt tripped into sorting this.
Whatever...Genter needs to make some calls and get to the bottom of it.
Oh and Julie Anne....I'll say it again...don't rely on getting the truth or an accurate picture from Ministry of Health bureaucrats.
Oh, and thank you again Kirsty.
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Hard News: A handful of deeply precious…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I wish they had displayed a public list of people making submissions
A pity this couldn't be counted as a submission....
His lawyer Wayne Cribb told Judge Nevin Dawson that Oxton had a serious spinal injury after an accident and used cannabis for pain relief.
Cribb said Oxton did not want to to be exposed to the criminal element of the Far North so imported the seeds.
Cribb said the seeds were low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the intoxication-inducing element of cannabis - but high in cannabidiol (CBD), the pain-relieving elements.
He said the cannabis was clearly for personal use as pain relief. Oxton consumed it as a tea during the evening or at night to help him sleep as pharmaceutical pain relief did not work for him.
''He was involved in an accident more than 30 years ago that injured his spine, that saw him finish work and go on ACC,'' Cribb said.
He said in Kaitaia cultivating a small amount of cannabis for personal use would generally lead to a fine or community work and Oxton was able to do community work or pay a fine.
''Is there a different tariff in Kaitaia than the rest of the country?'' Judge Dawson asked Cribb.
''In terms of cultivation, if for personal use, while prison can be imposed, it generally isn't,'' Cribb said.
''I understand the imprisonment rate [in Kaitaia for cultivating for personal use] is half what it is in the rest of the country.''
Judge Dawson said it should not be.
Cribb said it could be that the prosecution rate for cultivating cannabis in the area was twice as high as the rest of the country.
Deepest respect to those who made submissions.
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Some of the larger Contracted Providers of disability support services do very well indeed.
Always an interesting exercise trawlng the Charities website...I fully recommend it.
One of the big 'charities' had an operating surplus of tens of millions in the same financial year that a resident was neglected to death...largely due to too few staff on duty.
And that was not the only case... Spectrum was investigated after another tragic death...one of those managers commented that many of their staff had trouble reading English...so vital care instructions were not read.
Ho hum. Another disabled person dies on a care facility.
And there was barely any outrage from the so called disability advocacy groups.
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Hah!
Hands up those who have been asked by organisers of such events..."What can we do to make sure you can participate fully?"
Thought so.
Great post Wendi, thanks.
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Access: The Family Carers case – here we…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Julie Anne Genter
is busy right now killing two birds with one stone.
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Access: The Family Carers case – here we…, in reply to Sacha,
Thanks. Do you have all the policy/operational docs mentioned in the judgement yet? Sounds like a confused mess, to be charitable.
Do I? Do large hairy beasties go poo poo in the woods?
Right here. Ride the time machine...
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Access: The Family Carers case – here we…, in reply to Sacha,
I’m hoping this new govt may finally do the right thing and instruct officials to get on with carrying out their actual legal responsibilities rather than dodging them in court.
Trouble is that unless this Government repeals the part 4 amendment to the PHDAct they legally have no responsibility for people with disabilities living as part of a family.
“70A Purpose of this Part
“(1) The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services
provided by persons to their family members within sustainable
limits in order to give effect to the restraint imposed
by section 3(2) and to affirm the principle that, in the context
of the funding of support services, families generally have
primary responsibility for the well-being of their family membersIn my dreams, this Government would enter The House and the first order of business will be to repeal this amendment. Then they will ditch Funded Family Care and those few that are on it are transferred to IF and the family member can be paid as any other carer with an upper limit of say 60 hours per week. Then, this new Progressive Government will reveal ALL the redacted sections of the Regulatory Impact Statement that National thought was appropriate to support the PHDAct(2)...this would, in my book, go an awful long way to restoring just a little bit of trust in Government.
Then, a complete overhaul of the NASC/DSS system....by human beings preferably, rather than whatever manner of beast constructed the current one. No one involved at any level in any committee, stakeholder group, policy advisory etc contributing to the current system need apply.
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Access: The Family Carers case – here we…, in reply to Sacha,
Thanks Sacha...I'm so busy discussing this elsewhere and with 'friends' I completely overlooked following it through MSM. I will listen to the interviews.
About clauses 75&76...you might be interested Sacha in a little OIA request I made late last year regarding what follow up the Ministry had done on a 1999 HFA discussion paper called Advanced Personal Care...
You might find it interesting as you have mentioned before about risk aversion and such.
Well...the result of my OIA?..Hmmm...put it this way, simply refusing to accept that certain DSS clients need certain 'Advanced Personal Care" procedures performed as a normal everyday part of their routine is not going to make these people or their need for APC disappear.
However much certain Higher Ups within the Misery say "we don't fund X".
This is what we are dealing with.
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Hard News: Waitangi: Just enjoy the day, in reply to Russell Brown,
But some history is in order.
The history goes way back...back to when Clarke was Minister of Health and Titewhai was doing time...the late eighties is when it was
The treatment of patients at Te Whare Paia metal health unit was truly sickening and Titewhai was not only in charge...she participated.
The jury also found Harawira guilty of a charge of threatening to kill. She was jailed for nine months.
The sentencing judge said that the five had carried out a "vicious and violent" attack on the patient and that the offences were "an arrogant and frightening abuse of authority and power".
He described Harawira's role as "outrageous".Imposing a longer prison sentence on Harawira, the judge told her "You were in a position of authority, you ought to have prevented what occurred."
At the time Helen Clark was Minister of Health and Harawira got her own back in 1997 when she made the then-Prime Minister cry by refusing to let her speak on the marae at Waitangi.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Sacha,
that’s what the PM is for :)
I doubt that the PM would have much depth of knowledge of this...though I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.
There are only seven sitting Government MPs who actually spoke about this in the House that day; Dyson, Faafoi, Logie, Lees-Galloway, Wall, Hipkins and Robertson.
Peter and I have written (real letters, with paper and envelopes and everything!) to all of these, reminding them of what they each said about the Bill and the RIS, and indicating that we believe the title "Honourable" has to be earned... repealing the Act and revealing the redacted sections of the Regulatory Impact Statement would be a very good place to start demonstrating that this Government has more integrity than the last.
There was a huge response on the blogosphere about this nasty bit of legislative work back in May 2013.
Geddis' post on Pundit got a massive 56699 page views and three years later he wrote
That still remains, I think, the most read thing I've ever written in any format. What the government did - explicitly prevent the judiciary from ensuring that government policy is consistent with the laws of the land - was pretty jaw-droppingly outrageous.
This post of Keith Ng's had over 81500 page views, and I still think that Keith might just get how those of us personally affected by what happened that day felt at the time...
Ours is a system of parliamentary sovereignty, with only an informal consitution. Parliament *can* change the Bill of Rights, and it *can* make the Government exempt from it. There’s no upper house to stop them, no presidential veto*, no supreme court which can strike it down.
It’s only “not okay” in the sense that we have a reasonable expectation that the Government respects the principle of the rule of law, constitutional conventions, and the laws which make up our constitution. Because DEMOCRACY.
When you say it out loud, it really makes our constitutional set-up sound stupid. And it kinda is. But it is, nonetheless, a system. And in this system, *we* are the check against Parliamentary power.
To exercise our constitutional responsibilities, we need to start by getting really, really fucked off.
...and still feel today.
"We" failed to respond to shit like this from the previous Incumbents by allowing them to get voted back in in 2014. Do "we" now have to get really fucked off with this New Bunch in order for them to at least make some 'we're going to move on this issue' noises?