Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent speaks ahead of Thursday's mega-strike

The Public Service Commissioner's again sounding a negative note over New Zealand's major health and education strike tomorrow.

About 100,000 union members across various sectors will stop work across the day - expressing frustration over pay and working conditions.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper says this is expected to be the biggest strike in New Zealand's history since the 1970s, with many unions expected to take part. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Barrisoper, Senior political correspondence.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
With us A Barry, Good afternoon, Heather, Right, So.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Has the mega strike dominated Parliament?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
A lot of questions on not today? Not surprisingly they
it's reputedly the biggest strike since the late seventies. And
I remember at that time I was the industrial aroundsman
at TV and Z and the Federation of Labor were
calling for tools down on a number of occasions under
the Muldoon government and they were massive strikes. And this

(00:28):
is going to be a big one. They're talking more
than one hundred thousand public sector workers. The main unions
will be the Public Service Association, the Nurses Organization, Post
Primary Teachers NZI, one of the biggest union groups that
will be marching tomorrow around They say thirty six thousand

(00:51):
nurses who work for the ministry. Their nationwide strike will
see a complete withdrawal of labor. Now. It was with
that in mind that the Greens Riccardo Menendez March asked
the Health Minister Simeon Brown about the safety of our
health system.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Since coming into office, this government has edited around two
thousand more nurses to the public health system compared to
twenty twenty three alongside hundreds of additional doctors fanced back
via a record additional sixteen twenty six to eight billion
dollars investment in health over three budgets, including initiatives focused
on improving workplace safety and reducing weight lists for patients.

(01:29):
Notes this, I'm telling us across the country that they're
not experiencing safe working conditions as a result of current understaffing.
So the last government allowed weightless to balloon whilst they
fiddled with a bureaucracy. We're focused on patients for the
focused on bureaucracy.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, interestingly, the bureaucracy he was talking about then was
and it was true that during the COVID lockdown, if
you remember, they restructured their health workforce and I couldn't
understand it the time. What a time to peck to
do it. But so that sort of came bounced back
a bit on Benendez March. But yeah, it's a big strike.

(02:11):
The government is saying it's political. They claiming that unions
are not taking it seriously, discussing Palestine at one meeting
that was set up, and they say that it is political. Well,
who's to know, I mean.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Oh, Barry, come on, it's clearly political.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I think. Yeah, example, when you have.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Got unions ordinating their strike action to one day, and
when you have got the association the senior doctors who
refuse to settle in final arbitration but rather go on strike,
it's clearly political, don't you think.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, Well, I guess the members though, have to agree,
don't they. And whether that's politics, who knows? Certainly from
the Union's point of view.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
No, totally fair point. Listen, is Jerry going to blow
a valve over what happened on the Full Court?

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Well, I couldn't quite understand why the Speaker got so
upset about it, because, I mean, it was a silly
thing to do, no doubt about it, burning the bill
at the hilarious bill and you know, burning it in
a rubbish spin. It looked pretty amateurs.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Such a lame protest was it was done.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
It was performative politics at its best. And Jerry said
that he was considering with it to take action over
the incident at Parliament. But look, I think it's in
the debating chamber that Jerry's got to worry more about it.
I mean outside, I mean, you see you know landrovers
driving up the steps of Parliament metal the tractor going

(03:39):
up at one other stage. You know, things have gone
on out the fore court before, much certainly much worse
than what the market up to.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
What's your take on what gold He's going to do
with the BSA.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Well, it's fascinating because you know the BSA talk about overreach.
I mean, you know they they replied to one complaint
about Sean Plunket on the platform saying mumbo jumbo that
t kanga was and you know it was minor, but
they took it so seriously, and then they were bringing

(04:12):
them so many other aspects of broadcasting under their guidance.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
It seems, well, the entire Internet is mary well.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
You know, I mean it's incredible. Really, I talk about overreach.
If you listened to the Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith on
with Hosking this morning, you would have heard him postulating
about getting rid of the BSA all together.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
There's two basic options. You could try and extend the
reach of the BSA to covering all things that look similar,
or you could just get rid of it entirely and
say well that the world's moved on. And that is
one of the options. And so we're working our way
through the at the moment, and we're giving some careful
thought to it. There was an act that was set
up in nineteen eighty nine before a whole lot of
things have happened and nobody's got round to dealing with it,

(04:55):
and we are going to deal with it.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
See fascinating that because that's quite definite, and the BSA
could just have written its own death warrant when you consider,
you know, what they've done as a result of one
silly little complaint. I've really opened themselves up to all
sorts of things. And now we'll get me excited.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
Barry.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's right. They'll be listening to this and there'll be
a complaint filed to them.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
Oh well, one can only hope.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
One can only hope they've never been they've never had
a complaint about me.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
Actually, there'll be.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
They'll be like, who is this person? Though I didn't
even know she existed? Barry, Thank you very much, Barry
so for senior political correspondent.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
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