First Tea and Toast, now Milo — why do NZ’s best beverages need so much defending?

Only two months ago, Nicola Willis had to step in to stop Health New Zealand cutting tea and toast for post-birth parents, and now Lester Levy is riding to the rescue with a welcome message for all: our health workers can once again drink Milo, and will no longer need “clinical reasons” to access New Zealand’s most basic of drinks.

The move to cut down on “extra expenses” — or what some would label basic operating expenses — comes as a result of Lester Levy’s attempts to squeeze New Zealand’s health system down to the specific spending number this Government has assigned for it. Obviously, he’s finding it a struggle, and his underlings are now resorting to taking the final few dollars out of the staffroom shopping budgets in their attempts make the maths work.

Unless Nestlé has changed the recipe recently to cut their cocoa with gold, I really have to question how effective spending cuts like this are, especially in the grand scheme of the total hospital system spreadsheet — let alone the total government budget overall. It seems quite obvious that budget pencil-pushes have been left desperately pinching at pennies in order to meet Lester Levy’s unmeetable demands.

Could it be that there isn’t actually this massive pile of misspent money the National government keep vaguely referencing?

If there really was an “overspend” because of COVID, or bureaucratic mismanagement or whatever boogeyman has created this health system bloat just in time for National’s budget cuts and tax handouts to come in and correct, and if Commissioner Levy really was installed because the previous board were incompetent at managing money (and not because they kept telling the government there really was no more left to cut)…

Would we really need politicians riding to the rescue of our hospitals’ hot drinks in what can only be described as an accountant’s carrying cry for help?

Some housekeeping:

I learnt today that links to my page are apparently all considered spam by Facebook as of one month ago, and so will not show up on anyone’s feeds. This may apply to all substack links or just to certain authors so far, it’s unclear.

I appreciate your shares and my metrics show that the facebook links you posted definitely helped this substack grow for a time, but Meta has decided no now. Don’t you love market giants?

And a question for commenters (or anyone who feels strongly on the topic):

I have a tendency to take short(ish) deep dives down historical rabbit holes. Do readers prefer:

-The history stays in the main post

-The history be put in a seperate post (makes main post shorter and more focussed)

-Nebulous third option

Thanks for supporting!