John McLean: Evolution Of New Zealanders Into Entitled Aoteachondriacs

The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near

Sit down and pour yourself a strong one. Or a cup of tea. It’s all the same to me. I’ve got news for you. You are going to DIE. And, in the overall scheme of things, your death will come soon. The longer you live, the more likely it is that your last few years will be unproductive and unpleasant. In old age (if you get that far), you’ll be a burden on your fellow New Zealanders. There is no “right to life”.

Dr Malcolm Mulholland is the public face of an alarmist advocacy group called Patient Voice Aotearoa. Malcolm is not a medical doctor. His PhD, titled “Prominent Flags and Changing Notions of Identity”, resulted from his time on Shonky John Key’s ill-conceived New Zealand Flag Referendum Panel. With two decades at Massey University under his belt, Malcolm’s a lifer at that derailed and deranged tertiary institution.

WHACKY, SASSY MASSEY UNI

John McLean  12 August 2023



Massey University has its origins in the 1926 amalgamation of the agricultural schools of Victoria (Wellington) University and Auckland University. Given what it has become, it’s astonishing that it remains named after former New Zealand Prime Minister William “Bill” Massey, a cis white male of conservative disposition.
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Malcolm’s particular badge of dishonor is that he was a Kiwibank Local Hero in 2024.

A year ago, Malcolm was appointed chairman of Pharmac’s new(ish) Consumer and Patient Working Group, a motley collection of neurotic individuals designed (according to Pharmac’s website) to “help Pharmac reset how it works with consumers”. The “consumer” corporate-speak is the giveaway.

It’s not clear what “reset” of Pharmac is intended - not that Pharmac doesn’t urgently require a reset.

So far has Pharmac strayed from its statutory function that it recently began to subscribe to a bizarre and bogus notion of a mystical fourth article of the Treaty of Waitangi (“Whakapuaktanga Ritenga Maori”), a constitutional addition that Sir Geoff Palmer said could indeed be formalized with ““deep analysis, development of policy options, interdepartmental consultation, and consultation with Māori”.

Malcolm’s wife Wiki, the mother of his children, died of breast cancer. Malcolm blames her death on Pharmac not funding fancy breast cancer drugs. To make matters worse, after Wiki died Malcolm got prostate cancer. Thanks to Western medicine, Malcolm has survived. But he’s never got over his wife’s death or his own health scare.

Malcolm thinks Pharmac should make available, for free, the best medicines available on the planet, public stating:

“Medicines are a core part of the backbone of healthcare, enabling patients to lead healthy and productive lives. Yet, New Zealand languishes at the bottom of the OECD, without access to numerous medicines that form part of standard international treatment regimes.”

What Malcolm unfortunately fails to grasp is that New Zealand’s dismal economic state, resulting mainly from the last Labour Government’s gross mismanagement of the COVID virus and general fiscal incompetence, means that our plucky little country simply can’t afford to provide many medicines that other countries are able to provide to their citizens.

Even more unfortunate is that Malcolm has unwittingly become a pawn in the Leftie Lamestream Media’s campaign to discredit and upend the current Nats/ACT/NZ First coalition Government and install a Labour-led government under a diminutive beady eyed ginger haired beta male. The Wokerati is playing on Malcolm’s psychoneurosis (and Maori ancestry) to paint a false picture of a Government that is deliberately depriving New Zealanders, and those with Maori ancestry in particular, of miracle chemical cures.

Malcolm persistently parrots the false narrative that New Zealand’s health system is in “CRISIS”. Since 2023, when the current Government came into power, Malc has been trotting out this rot. In fact, New Zealand has one of the best public health systems of any country in the world, commensurate with its financial capacity.

In November 2025, Malcolm delivered his “Buller Declaration” (health CRISIS!) to Parliament’s steps, accompanied by Green MPs Hūhana Lyndon and Marama Davidson and Labour’s Ayesha Verrall, but no current Government Ministers.

The present Government appointed Malcolm as the chair of Pharmac’s Consumer and Patient Working Group mainly to try and shut him up and appease New Zealand’s hordes of hypochondriacs who hallucinate that New Zealand has unlimited resources to spend on every fringe miracle cure promoted by Big Pharma.

In the real world, every dollar spent on drugs extending the miserable lives of decrepit oldies and the terminally ill is money that could be spent on improving the mental health and wellbeing of New Zealand’s most neglected group, young people – and paying off our burgeoning national debt.

Malcolm is therefore a delicate (albeit corpulent) flower whom the Left should leave alone to get on with his life.

His position as chair of Pharmac’s Consumer and Patient Working Group is not a statutory role. If “Doctor” Mulholland continues to abuse his position to catastrophize about the state of New Zealand’s enviable public health system, Health Minister Simeon Brown should remove him from his position and leave him to focus on whatever he’s supposed to be doing at Massey University.

Current Government Ministers mustn’t continue to masochistically tolerate their own appointees undermining faith in New Zealand, biting the hands that feeds them and spreading irrational fears.

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced