Al Gore’s New Zealand Model – part 2

Part One featured in
the June 2003 Omega Times

Though it is ceaselessly
proclaimed its altruism in advocating the "reforms," the
Roundtable's own members were the overwhelming beneficiaries of
the destruction of the economy, which they so fiercely advocated:
Firms associated with the Business Roundtable ended up
with NZ$12.542 billion of the $15.233 billion in former state
assets, which had been dumped dirt cheap.

Meanwhile, Treasury and Reserve
Bank "public servants," joined by numbers of pro-reform
politicians, took up plum positions with the firms they had just
privatized, sometimes at salaries of more than $1 million a
year.

In particular, Roundtable Chairman
Ron Trotter and his family, made out like bandits. Trotter's son,
W.R. "Bill" Trotter, was the managing director of the local
branch of Credit Suisse First Boston known as
First NZ Capital. First NZ Capital, produced more free
market reports, performed more consultancies, and advised more
privatizations in New Zealand over the 15 years of the reforms,
than any other company, making tens of millions of dollars in the
process.

Mont Pelerin member Alan Gibbs
made out quite well also. Between 1984 and 1997, his personal
wealth soared from NZ$46 million to $200 million, making him the
fourth richest person in the country.

It is difficult to know what
attracts Al Gore more to the New Zealand "model" -- the billions
looted through privatization, and free trade, or, given Al Gore's
commitment to "population reduction," New Zealand's Nazi-style
health "reforms."

In 1938, New Zealand was
internationally acknowledged to have the most comprehensive
social security system in the world which included free family
doctor, hospital and maternity services. This system remained
largely intact until the late 1980s, when at Roger Douglas's
urging, it began to be decimated through privatization and savage
budget cuts. Two recent examples perhaps, best capture the Nazi
outlook which has destroyed it.

• On October 12 1987, 61
  year old Rau Williams died, after his privatized "health
  provider," Northland Health, decided, based upon a "point
  system," that he no longer qualified for dialysis. As a horrified
  nation watched, his family fought heroically to get him
  treatment, but in vain. They appealed to Northland Health, which
  fought then in court; to New Zealand's Human Rights Commission,
  which spurned them; and to New Zealand's Court of Appeal, which
  in an emergency session, rejected them. The family even brought
  in a doctor from Australia, and secured a dialysis machine from
  private sources, but Northland Health refused to let the
  Australian doctor treat Williams. Upon William's death, Associate
  Health Minister Tuariki Delamere, observed that "health
  rationing" is now a "fact of life."
• On December 23 1998, 42
  year old Sean Collins was buried by his wife Jill, and his three
  daughters, aged 12, 10, and 9. After tests at Wellington Hospital
  three months before had showed that five of Colin's main arteries
  were blocked -- one totally, another 99%, and the rest between
  75% and 90%. He was put on one of New Zealand's infamous waiting
  lists classified as an "urgent priority" for a heart bypass
  operation. After suffering daily angina attacks for the last
  three months, and being told continually to wait, Collins finally
  died two days before Christmas.

Jenny Shipley

New Zealanders now regularly die
while on waiting lists, where they often only languish for two or
three years. As of 1997, official surgical waiting lists had
soared by 50% to 94,000, while the real waiting lists were more
than 200,000 -- this in a nation of only 3.4 million people!
And every aspect of these genocidal health reforms was
personally overseen by Mont Pelerin personnel.

The process began in 1987 when
Douglas's Labour government established a taskforce on Hospital
and related services chaired by his mentor, Mont Pelerin member
Alan Gibbs. Meeting fierce political resistance, the reforms were
implemented only after a change in government when Simon Upton,
another Mont Pelerin member became health minister in 1990. The
apparatus set up to oversee the reforms was the National Interim
Provider Board chaired by Business Roundtable Chairman, Ron
Trotter, with his son's company CS First Boston as
consultants.

A later Minister of Health, Mont
Pelerin co-thinker Jenny Shipley, intensified the reforms when
she restricted the number of people eligible for heart surgery.
She did this by insisting, based on "the money available," on a
new "point system," in which patients had to "score" 35 points to
get surgery; doctors had urged a maximum of 25 points.

Later as Prime Minister, Shipley
was a speaker featured at Al Gore's January 14-15 conference in
Washington.

Used with permission Graham Reid
http://www.nex.net.au/users/reidgck/MONT-PEL.HTM