The National Party is responsible for the greatest health crisis the country has ever faced.

The Sunday programme on TV One highlighted a crisis in maternal health care that providers of mental health services clearly identified as caused by a major lack of funding.

New mothers are trying to cope with mental health issues without the support they deserve and this is affecting not only them, but also their babies, and their family.

Waiting lists for hip and knee surgery, colonoscopy, cancer treatment, and a host of other serious health issues are being managed to look acceptable only because people are being dropped off rather than being dealt with.

National had nine years in government during which it cut health services and demanded higher returns on property from District Health Boards.

It also fostered net immigration at an average of 70,000 people per year without providing the additional facilities and services to cope with that population increase.

Hospitals are short staffed, again largely due to funding cuts, and the staff on duty are overworked and stressed.

Those funding cuts to health and numerous other community services were so that Bill English, Stephen Joyce, and John Key could boast about what a great job they had done as economic managers to produce a rock star economy.

Those who paid the price for that boast were the elderly, the low paid, and middle income kiwis.

Meanwhile National was happy to pay international investors and bankers $5 billion dollars per year in interest on government borrowing, when it could have sourced that funding from the Reserve Bank, which it owns, and not cut services at all.

The current government has continued with the same stupidity.

A simple change in economic thinking would free up $5 billion dollars per year to put into health, education, social services, and other things that would benefit kiwis.

Social Credit is the only political party in New Zealand that is committed to making that change.

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