How to Rescue a Sick Health System

It’s Time to Stop Patching Up a Broken and Sick Health System and Start Building a Healthier New Zealand

I’ve been watching the news lately, shaking my head at yet another crisis in our health system. The latest headline from Newsroom on April 3, 2025, hit hard: “Revealed: Senior doctors told PM Gisborne Hospital is on brink of collapse.” This comes hard on the heels of an identical crisis facing Nelson. Frontline health workers are sounding the alarm, and I don’t blame them. They’re exhausted, overworked, and doing their damnedest to keep people alive. I’ve read the plea from those senior doctors—attached here for anyone who wants the raw details—and I commend their tireless grit. They’re heroes in a system stretched to breaking.

But here's the thing: many of these struggling health workers didn’t help prevent this mess. Five years ago, during the COVID pandemic, they didn’t stand united with their colleagues who refused to be intimidated into complying with the anti-science nonsense tied to that crisis—a crisis still dragging on thanks to the failures of the mass vaccination campaign.

Scientific Fact: You don’t vaccinate with a partially effective jab in the middle of a pandemic—it’s like pouring petrol on a fire and hoping it’ll burn out. Many brave medical professionals who called this out were either forced out of their jobs or quietly walked away on their own terms. My assessment? Far more left than the official numbers admit, hollowing out our workforce and setting the stage for the staffing crisis we’re drowning in now. This isn’t a surprise—not to me, anyway. It’s a classic case of reaping what they sowed, their chickens coming home to roost.

The fallout’s brutal: people’s immune systems are buckling, worn out and giving up the ghost. Diseases that should’ve been kept at bay are flourishing within us, and our hospitals are paying the price, and their only solution is more of what has already failed so terribly! But let’s not kid ourselves—the health system itself has been hijacked by big business interests that couldn’t care less about you, your family, or your community. Their only goal? To extract your last dollar by the time you’re buried. To them, the most profitable person is one who’s unwell from conception to the grave—hooked on their drugs, their junk food, their endless interventions. By contrast, a healthy person is a liability, someone who doesn’t need their products or pad their profits. Throwing more money and bodies at this isn’t working—it’s like mopping the floor during a flood without fixing the leak. We’re not short on ambulances at the bottom of the cliff; we’re missing the fence at the top. The solutions being pushed are failing because they’re looking in the wrong places.

And here’s another hard truth: health professionals need to walk the talk. I’m asking you this—if a health professional looks less healthy than you, why would you ever take their advice on how to be healthier? If they’re not living proof that their approach works, what’s the point? Food is medicine, and the body can heal itself when given the right tools—yet too many in the medical field ignore this, peddling pills instead of preaching prevention. Now, let me be clear: I’m in awe of emergency medicine. When it comes to mending broken bones or tackling a rampaging infection, there’s never been a better time to be alive. But when it comes to diseases tied to lifestyle, nutrition, and ageing, modern allopathic medicine is an abject failure. It’s not healing us—it’s managing our decline.

Let’s face the elephants in the room. Our hospitals are bursting because we’re sicker than ever, and it’s no accident. We’ve let nutrient-depleted, carbohydrate-loaded, chemical-soaked junk food take over our diets—food-like substances that starve us of vitality. Meanwhile, we’ve banked on patent drugs, vaccines, and surgery as the answer, ignoring the desperate need to build a strong, resilient population from the ground up. We’re treating symptoms, not causes, and it’s a one-way ticket to collapse.

Three of my children with my friend, and running legend Rod Dixon — Myra, Mary-Ann, and Kelvin.

Imagine if we turned this around. What if we improved New Zealanders’ health by just 10%? Picture it: fewer people flooding emergency rooms with preventable conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity-related illnesses. Fewer children saddled with chronic issues that didn’t need to happen. A 10% lift in our collective health would ease the stranglehold on our health system—fewer beds taken, shorter waitlists, and doctors who aren’t running on empty. It’s not fantasy; it’s logic. Healthier people need less patching up. The ripple effect? A stronger economy, happier families, and a nation that’s not just limping along, but leaping forward.

That’s my goal. I’m making it mine, with or without the government, its health officials, or the medical establishment. Too many of them seem clueless about what health really is—or should be. To me, health is what the Freeranger knows it to be: freedom from disease and a body humming with vitality from conception to a ripe old age. It’s not about managing a revolving door of sickness; it’s about preventing it. It’s not about how many drugs we can push or surgeries we can perform—it’s about how well we can live. The body can heal itself—body, health thyself—if we fuel it right. Food is medicine, not a syringe or a scalpel. I’m not waiting for them to wake up. It’s up to us, as individual Kiwis, to take personal responsibility and stop outsourcing our health to agencies whose motivations don’t align with our true betterment. We can’t trust big business to care—they’re in it for the cash, not our wellbeing.

True health comes from investing in the foundations—clean water, nutrient-rich food from good soil, regular movement, deep sleep, strong community bonds, and a connection to the land that keeps us going. We’ve traded these essentials for convenience and quick fixes, and we’re seeing the bill come due in hospital wards nationwide.

But here’s the bright side: we’re Kiwis. Rather than think and behave like kiwis that prefer to be in the "dark," let’s be like the Kaka and the Kea—resourceful, intelligent, resilient, independent, and cheeky. We don’t need bureaucrats or Big Pharma to save us. We can grow our own kai, ditch the processed garbage, and get moving like our ancestors did. We can teach our children what real food tastes like and how to thrive, not just scrape by. We can rebuild our health, family by family, community by community, trusting our bodies to heal when we treat them right.

The Gisborne and Nelson Hospital crises aren’t a shock—it’s a wake-up call some of us saw coming. If we keep ignoring the real culprits—the junk food, the failed policies, the big business takeover—it’ll only get uglier. But if we take the lead, if we commit to that 10% shift, we can turn this around. I’m in, government or no government. Who’s with me? Let’s make New Zealand the healthiest, happiest place to call home. We’ve got the guts, the spirit, and the smarts. Raise your children to be freerangers!