“The National Public Health Service’s decision to invest time and resources into opposing the resource consent for a McDonald’s in Wanaka shows exactly why cost-cutting measures are justified,” says ACT Health spokesman Todd Stephenson, who is based in Queenstown.

“This is the same agency that waged war on food trucks in Invercargill, trying to shut down operators who didn’t serve healthy options.

“These taxpayer-funded busybodies have either misread or are wilfully undermining the direction of the Coalition Government on wasteful spending and resource management.

“They are exploiting the resource management process to impose their own nanny state agenda. As one commenter pointed out, half their submission against the proposed McDonald’s is based on health concerns irrelevant to resource management, the other half concerns matters on which the Public Health Service has no expertise, from climate change and litter to aesthetics and ‘cultural wellbeing’.

“The Public Health Service is meant to be responsible for managing infectious diseases, but during a global pandemic they were so useless they had to be sidelined, with the Ministry of Health leading the COVID response.

“ACT welcomes reports of impending cost-cutting measures at the Public Health Service. Ideally the Government would go further and strip the Service right back to its core function of responding to infectious diseases, like the current whooping cough outbreak.

“We’re also cheering on the Minister for RMA Reform, aided by Simon Court, as he develops a resource management system that puts property rights first and sidelines the busybodies.”

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