Latest news with #Kaitāia
RNZ News
19-05-2025
- RNZ News
Manhunt under way after stabbing in Kaitāia
Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER Police have cordoned off a street in the Far North as they search for the suspect in an alleged stabbing. Both ends of Lake Road, in Kaitāia, have been sealed off after the incident about 11am on Monday Officers have been going door to door. The extent of the victim's injuries are not yet known. More to come... Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
18-05-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Public worried about creeping health privatisation, lack of preventative care
Doctors Art Nahill, left, and Glenn Colquhoun in Kerikeri on the second stop of their 'Hīkoi for Health'. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Creeping privatisation and decades of neglect by successive governments are among the top concerns uncovered by doctors travelling the length of the North Island to hear people's views about the health system. Auckland hospital doctor Art Nahill and Horowhenua adolescent general practitioner Glenn Colquhoun spent two weeks on a 'Hīkoi for Health' from Kaitāia to Wellington, arriving in the capital on 8 May. Along the way, they tried to speak to as many people as possible about their healthcare experiences and their ideas about how the country's creaking health system could be fixed. Nahill said they were still working through the submissions and interviews they collected, but anger and frustration were common themes. "I know a hīkoi like this will self-select people who have had bad experiences, but we had a number of people who had very good healthcare experiences, but who are still angry and frustrated at the conditions under which healthcare workers are being asked to perform their roles," Nahill said. Another key theme to emerge was the need for a more robust public health system, focussed on keeping people healthy in the first place by ensuring access to good food, water and housing. "I think a lot of people realise that we have to turn off the tap of very unwell patients turning up to emergency rooms and other urgent care facilities," he said. Another common thread was the need for better access to health care providers. "There are people who have been waiting years to try to register with a GP, but all the books in the practices in that locale are all closed. There are lots and lots of people who are debilitated by things like arthritis in their hips or knees, who are waiting years to even be put on waiting lists, so people are getting very fed up with waiting." Nahill said many people wanted more funding for the healthcare system, although in his view, more investment on its own would not fix the problems. Simply training more doctors and nurses, for example, would not necessarily help, because there was nothing to keep them in a "broken healthcare system", when they could easily find work overseas. The Hīkoi for Health 'vanbulance' was transformed into a mobile work of art by painter Nigel Brown. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Many people they spoke to were angry about what they described as decades-long neglect of the health system and fearful of the way privatisation seemed to be occurring without public discussion. Nahill said he shared some of those concerns about privatisation, highlighted by a recent decision by Health New Zealand to outsource thousands of operations to private hospitals. "We only have a certain number of doctors in New Zealand, and if they work more and more in private, that means there are fewer and fewer of them available to do the same procedures in public, which means the waiting lists grow. We then have to outsource again to the private system, so it seems to me to be a silly way to deal with waiting lists." One of the stories that stood out for him from the two-week journey was from the father of a young girl who died in hospital, possibly due to a medical error, though that was unclear. "His only contact with the hospital after his daughter's death was a text several months later, offering him a few sessions of counselling to deal with his grief. He was incredibly angry and didn't know where to go." Another story was from a Kaitāia couple, who had tried to register with a GP for three years, but all practices in the town had closed their books. If they needed to see a doctor, they had to go to the emergency department or after-hours clinic at Kaitāia Hospital, or travel to Tauranga - an eight-hour drive each way - where their previous GP was based. However, Nahill said they also heard many positive stories about community organisations, iwi health providers especially, working creatively and cobbling together funding from various sources "to fill in the gaps that the broken healthcare system has left". "It struck us that, if we could scale up some of those small community services or find a way to allow more communities to manage their own healthcare, that might be the best healthcare system we could devise," he said. The next step in the project would be to assemble an expert thinktank to come up with a plan for a new kind of health system that addressed as many of the concerns raised during the hīkoi as possible. Nahill expected that would be completed in 8-12 months. Outside their day jobs in medicine, both Nahill and Colquhoun are known for their poetry. Nahill was not yet sure if the hīkoi would inspire any fresh writing, because he never intentionally set out to write poems. "Once an idea or an image marinates in my brain for long enough, poetry begins to form itself," he said. "I'm sure, at some point in time, some creative writing will come out of this hīkoi, it just needs a much longer period of time to marinate." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
09-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Problem-plagued Far North water scheme to be reviewed
Far North District Council headquarters, Memorial Ave, Kaikohe. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Far North District councillors have ordered an immediate, independent review of a controversial Kaitāia water project dogged by delays and cost overruns. The Sweetwater project was launched in 2010 by then Far North Mayor Wayne Brown, with the aim of tapping into an aquifer north of Kaitāia and reducing the town's reliance on water from the drought-prone Awanui River. Water from the Aupōuri aquifer finally made its way into Kaitāia's town supply in January this year - 15 years later - at a cost thought to be around $17 million. Uncertainty over the cost of the project has long been a bugbear for Awanui-based councillor Mate Radich, who at Thursday's meeting moved that the council order a judicial review. Radich told fellow councillors the project was supposed to take five years, but instead took 15. He had become especially frustrated, unable to get consistent information about the project's total cost. Figures he had been given by council staff since 2021 ranged from a low of $13.5 million to a high of $18.9m, with three different figures - varying by almost $4m - provided just this year. The figure earlier provided to RNZ under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act was $17.2m to 30 June 2023. "Ratepayers have a right to know how much it cost," Radich said. "I know a judicial review is expensive, but given the mess, what other option do I have? It's so important to bring out the truth." However, Mayor Moko Tepania said judicial reviews cost "a heck of a lot of money". He proposed ordering an immediate independent review instead, which could provide the same answers but at lower cost to ratepayers. Deputy Mayor Kelly Stratford, who seconded Radich's original motion, wanted assurances any review would be "absolutely independent". She was unconvinced it would have sufficient integrity if it was carried out internally. "We're not looking to lay blame, but we need to understand what happened so we don't make the same mistakes going forward." Councillor Ann Court said she was concerned about the expense of a review, and the cumulative cost of the council's ad hoc decisions over the past two and half-years. "If this is just a 'gotcha' exercise, I don't think it would be a useful spend of ratepayer money." However, if the review led to useful lessons, it could have merit, Court said. Chief executive Guy Holroyd did not want to guess the cost of a review, but said it would be "tens and tens of thousands of dollars". His preference was to gather the information internally to keep costs down, then have it audited by external experts. The amended motion, for an independent review to be completed by July, was passed by a clear majority of councillors. The Sweetwater project was dogged by problems almost from the outset, including difficulties accessing the bores because they were on private land. The pipeline also had to cross private land to reach Kaitāia. In 2013, newly elected Mayor John Carter halted the project and called in the Serious Fraud Office. Its investigation found some council members and employees failed to follow internal processes, but there was not enough evidence to lay charges. In 2019 however, after Kaitāia had been hammered by a series of severe droughts, the Sweetwater project was revived. In 2020 a cash injection from the Provincial Growth Fund paid for temporary pipes carrying bore water to the treatment plant at Okahu Road. However, it turned out the silica-rich aquifer water was unsuitable for a plant designed to treat river water. After much technical tweaking and the installation of new equipment, water from the Sweetwater bore finally started flowing through Kaitāia's taps in January this year. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
