M.I.A.
OPINION: The previous government spent too much during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite warnings from officials, according to a briefing released by the Treasury.
Rural General Practice Network chair Dr Fiona Bolden is disappointed that the Government is treating rural general practices the same as any other business in the community.
Bolden told Rural News that rural GPs were expecting to get two payments from the Government to assist them financially.
However, she says while they had received the first payment, Cabinet vetoed the second payment – just days before it was expected to be paid.
Bolden says this has made it very hard for many rural practices because the money they normally receive from face-to-face consultations and ACC is no longer there.
“At the moment we are just being treated like any other business, despite the fact that we part of the frontline staff,” she told Rural News.
“We are part of the reason why the curve has flattened, because of the changes that we have made to our practices and, in fact, most people in the community who have contracted Covid-19 have been managed by general practice and not at hospitals.”
Bolden says her organisation is now in the process of gathering additional information to present to Cabinet in a bid to get them to change their mind over funding.
She says some positive things have occurred in the past weeks with more Community based Assessment Centres (CBAC’s) been set up in rural areas. She believes that, in time, this role may be handed over to local clinicians by the DHB and concedes this may not be unreasonable.
Under Level 3, Bolden says there is an expectation that rural general practices should be getting back to business as usual. This would involve taking smears and that sort of thing. Also managing people who have become quite unwell through Level 4 and have presented themselves to GPs later then they might otherwise have done.
Applications have now opened for the 2026 Meat Industry Association scholarships.
Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) says it is backing aspiring dairy farmers through a new initiative designed to make the first step to farm ownership or sharemilking easier.
OPINION: While farmers are busy and diligently doing their best to deal with unwanted gasses, the opponents of farming - namely the Greens and their mates - are busy polluting the atmosphere with tirades of hot air about what farmers supposedly aren't doing.
OPINION: For close to eight years now, I have found myself talking about methane quite a lot.
The Royal A&P Show of New Zealand, hosted by the Canterbury A&P Association, is back next month, bigger and better after the uncertainty of last year.
Claims that farmers are polluters of waterways and aquifers and 'don't care' still ring out from environmental groups and individuals. The phrase 'dirty dairying' continues to surface from time to time. But as reporter Peter Burke points out, quite the opposite is the case. He says, quietly and behind the scenes, farmers are embracing new ideas and technologies to make their farms sustainable, resilient, environmentally friendly and profitable.
OPINION: The Greens have taken the high moral ground on the Palestine issue and been leading political agitators in related…
One of the most galling aspects of the tariffs whacked on our farm exports to the US is the fact…