Daniel Hutchinson From The Hutch

Like a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky, the Government is changing our health system.

Amongst other things, Health Minister Andrew Little is promising to 'treat people before they get sick”, however like a 5pm sushi special, it's already making me queasy.

A centralised national health service sounds like a great idea but the loss of district health boards will send shivers up and down the spine of the country, especially in smaller communities.

DHB meetings are not exactly entertaining in the same way as a Ranfurly Shield match.

In fact, such is the popularity of most meetings, the reporter, and sometimes a member of GreyPower, are the only people who have to leave the room at lunchtime and buy their own sandwiches.

But that doesn't mean that buried in the numbers and the dry-as-a-bone targets and reports, the jargon and the acronyms, there aren't important local issues, because that's what DHB's are all about.

It's an opportunity for everyday people to be involved in the discussions alongside the doctors and professors. It's a chance to lobby the decision makers.

Problems and trends at a local level are discussed and reported on so everyone sees what's going on. Solutions – by locals, for locals – are devised.

Like a Ranfurly Shield match, communities have to fight tooth and nail to retain money and services in their area and halt the migration of specialist facilities to the main centres.

In fact the reasoning behind the new separate Maori Health Authority appears to be exactly the same as that which was behind DHBs in the first place.

One size fits all?

Local communities are best placed to identify their own problems and come up with their own solutions, so I hope the new Health NZ has some system set up to listen to other communities of interest.

Coupled with robust reporting and clarity, a centralised health system could improve on a health system which already stacks up comparatively well internationally.

It's not good enough that levels of health service vary depending on which region you live in but local input into health decisions are absolutely vital in my opinion.

To put it into perspective, the Government allocated about $20 billion to the health budget this financial year and we all spent another $5 billion privately. It's big money, second only to social welfare, and it represents twice the amount spent by every local and regional council combined, with all of its representation and bureaucracy.

What's the difference?

If looks could kill

Seeing as we are talking about serious subjects I'm going to move on to murder. It doesn't get any more serious than that.

Although, in the case of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, it is actually a bit of a grey area.

Derek quite obviously was responsible for the death of George Floyd back in May last year. We've all seen the video and followed the trial.

If he had been found guilty of anything less than murder, the rioting would probably only just be getting into full swing.

However, I was almost killed by a death stare myself when I pointed out to someone this week that Derek wasn't actually charged with murder – not by the New Zealand definition anyway.

You see the Oxford Dictionary definition of murder is ‘the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought'.

Derek was charged and convicted in the United States with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

In New Zealand all of those crimes are simply called manslaughter because they lack the element of intention or premeditation.

Interestingly if the tables had been turned and George suffocated Derek, he would have been charged with first degree murder in the US because a police officer was the victim and that supercedes premeditation.

Go figure.

Slice of heaven

On a lighter note, one of New Zealand's favourite likely lads was officially knighted this week.

Photo: Spid Pye

Dave Dobbyn, a self-described ‘ratbag' started out as a member of Th' Dudes with his schoolmates in 1975. He is now a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Now that's a slice of heaven.

daniel@thesun.co.nz