Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: National’s proposed foreign aid cut shows how far we've fallen

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Andrew Dickens: National’s proposed foreign aid cut shows how far we've fallen · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So the Pharmac and foreign aid thing. National's trade-off between
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: foreign aid and Pharmac, to me, is just a sign
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: of how far we've fallen. So firstly, our spend on
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: medicines through Pharmac has always been woefully low. It pales
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: beside Australia's investment. It's never made sense to me. What
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: we just heard makes total sense to me. Medicines funded
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: by Pharmac save money within the health system, preventing ongoing
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: costs through hospitalisation and ongoing care. and the cost of drugs.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Graham Jarvis said all that, and I agree. The way
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: we've underfunded it has been a false economy. But successive
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: governments have always found excuses to keep it running on fumes.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: So look, it should be appropriately funded. I welcome it,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: but it isn't. But now, National decided to rob Peter
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to pay Paul by reducing our foreign aid. Not all
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: of it, about 10% of it. But that will still
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: be enough to lower our perception as a compassionate country
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: actively participating in on a world stage. In an ideal world,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: if we were still rocking it, we would be wealthy
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: enough to fund both. This should not be a debating point.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: This should not be an election point. But we are not.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And in that is more proof that we are a
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: shadow of the country we used to be.