Whilst John Key’s raising of privatisation is the first focus of his State of the Nation speech, perhaps equally as important is his intention for swingeing cuts to public services. Health and Education will have to pay higher wages from the same budget, but the likes of Police, Justice, Conservation and Social Services can expect cuts of more than 10%.
The Tertiary Education Union’s new National President, Sandra Grey, joins us for a guest post on the challenges facing tertiary education as the government cuts funding and institutions are ‘rationalised’ to focus on economic values alone. Tertiary education can be so much more than that.
Why in the hell should I carry a passport or a birth certificate for the benefit of the state? There is no reason that I can see, but at least one DHB thinks that I should because it makes their life easier. If they want proof of citizenship or resident status then they should be prepared to pay for it themselves rather than throwing the onus to prove status onto us. If the government wants to introduce a requirement to carry identity papers then they should debate this in the political arena rather than trying to sneak it in through the back door.
National and Act are attacking student unions. The cover story is freedom of association, but it’s bollocks, freedom of association is already protected. Without the unions students will still have to pay. But they will lose the rich social and cultural heritage of the unions, lose the learning experiences that the unions provide, and lose their independence. Hey students – does that sound like a good deal to you?
Three government investment decisions in the last couple of weeks have shown the deficiencies in the neoliberal way of doing things. SOE Solid Energy’s lignite-to-liquids obsession, Kiwirail buying trains in China rather than making them itself and Steven Joyce decision to re-create Telecom’s monopoly by giving it 70-84% of the broadband contracts.
The Right always advocates for less government spending as a percentage of GDP. Those with ideological blinkers cannot see the high correlation between being a free and stable country and paying for it. The most successful nations are willing to invest in quality public services. Government spending is low in poor, unequal, and unstable countries.
Let’s face it. A government doesn’t accidentally spend $15 billion more than its revenue while cutting billions in taxes. The unsustainably high deficit is intentional policy, not happenstance. In good times and bad, National’s answer is always to cut taxes. The objective is to make huge deficits that then need to be ‘fixed’ with spending cuts.
One of the features of the neoliberal revolution has been the outsourcing of public service delivery, usually to not-for-profits, sometimes to profit-making entities like private hospitals. Whanau Ora is an extension of this. Two recent stories have exemplified the risks of this model – corruption and cuts by stealth.
National are continuing their privatisation by stealth. Hospitals services and a new prison are the current targets. Tony Ryall, Judith Collins and Bill English are the ministers currently pushing their ideology in their respective areas.
The government is refusing to step up to save IHC providers that are insolvent due to a recent court case that resulted in IHC carers being awarded hundreds of millions in back wages. The government is washing its hands, even though it is the primary funder of the services. Will the Nats let IHC collapse or will they use this to bring in their corporate mates?
New Zealand’s most infamous anti-Ambassador Paul Henry has shamed us all once again. On TVNZ’s Breakfast this morning, Henry asked John Key (at […]
Treasury in their first year under National tripled their expenditure on contractors whilst forcing all other departments into cuts. Bill English decided against having any public accountability, and left Tony Ryall talking rubbish trying to explain it.
Parliament unanimously made Gerry Brownlee dictator. Apparently, this was necessary to save Christchurch. But are Dictator Gerry and Bob ‘the Rebuilder’ (wonder how long it took Kevin Taylor to come up with that one) actually delivering for the people who need it the most? Not if the anger in poor Christchurch suburbs is anything to go by.
A recent article in Canada’ MacLean’s magazine on the decline of public services in the US bears sobering links to what is happening in New Zealand. For three decades the neo-liberals have worked to starve public services to death with tax cuts for the rich. Now, the US is facing the consequences. New Zealand is on the same path just a little behind.
The state sector is in turmoil. Secondary teachers and medical technicians are striking for fair pay and against claw-backs in their work conditions. Junior doctors look set to join them. What’s the Nats’ reaction? They’ve appointed the Scottish ‘smiling assassin’, Dr Kevin Woods, who fired 1,500 nurses from the Scottish NHS and will apply the same formula here.
Bill English has ruled out an inquiry into the SCF affair. Think about that: the government is forced to spend the annual Police budget in a single morning and isn’t even interested in learning what could have been done better. The public service’s response, on the other hand, to the Christchurch earthquake will doubtlessly be subject to numerous inquires. It’s just good governance.
A hell of a lot of those ‘back office bureaucrats’ that the Nats love to attack have been working their arses off on the Christchurch earthquake. You would think they’d get some respect from their political bosses. You would think wrong.
After every emergency come the media articles that accuse the civil defence system of failing. This time the well-known emergency relief experts at the Herald were criticising within a day. Well, the Herald can go f*ck itself. I take my hat off to all the public servants who did their jobs with skill and dedication. The public services responded swiftly to get the situation under control and get people the help and information they needed.
Whatever flimsy and tattered remains of Labour-lite which National used to disguise itself at the 2008 election has well and truly disappeared. Thank […]
Key says that teachers are “disconnected from the real world” for wanting a pay rise that will barely beat inflation. This from the same guy who promised higher wages. The same guy chucked half a billion dollars this year alone on the taxpayer credit card for tax cuts for the rich. The only people disconnected from the real world are those who think skimping on education and health will take this country forward.
What’s going on in our health care system when the well respected head of a DHB resigns, saying he cannot cut costs any […]
The NZ Herald editorial criticising National’s pursuit of a private prison in Auckland should make Judith Collins and her cabinet colleagues sit up and rethink.
For some time now National has been quietly making plans to subsume Archives New Zealand and the National Library within the Department of […]
Bill English claims that our low national savings rate is due to the ‘government paying for everything’. According to English, people don’t need to save because the government pays for early childhood education, superannuation, Working for Families, and interest-free student loans. Does he have any evidence that is the case? Of course not. The evidence points the other way.
It’s interesting to see how Irish’s ‘rabbit from a hat’ metaphor has taken off for describing this Budget. Some, like Tracey Watkins, are even using it positively. She needs to have a bit more of a think about what the rabbit from a hat is. The rabbit itself is nothing special. In fact, in this case it’s a borrowed bunny, despite the media’s tendency to portray tax cut as costless.
I think the saddest part of this budget is that the government will spend $70 million building more prisons while cutting $120 million from early childhood education. It kind of sums up this Key Government’s priorities don’t you think? They’re cutting taxes for the rich while they cut health and education spending. It’s our future they are cutting, so the rich can be richer in the short-term.
We already know that National’s big economic plan this budget is a tax swap from working Kiwis to the rich that will not affect growth but will increase inequality. There’s some money for science and Kiwirail, which is good but only partially reverses the cuts that National imposed last year. The two big items in the budget that the Nats have control over (assuming no cuts to benefits or super) are education and health. The increases in these two sectors are the things to watch.
A passage from Matt McCarten’s article in the Sunday Herald summed up for me not only the approach of Rodney Hide in setting up his Super City but also the neo-liberal project that has been in vogue for the past quarter century. Democracy under the neo-liberal model is, as far as possible, to be a financial transaction.
David Farrar has finally made a comment on my “Hey Chubby…” post. It raises more questions than it answers. So I ask some of the obvious questions, and conclude that he has forsaken the principles of “free speech” that he so enthusiastically espoused only a few years ago.
I’ve been having a look at the new advice on the civil service code of conduct. It is a clear attempt by the Nats to make sure the civil service is ‘politically correct’ for their purposes. Perhaps they’re tired of getting official advice that says ‘don’t cut that, it’s good value for money’, ‘don’t fund that, it’s stupid’, and ‘don’t pass that law, it might cause more murders’.
Even Guyon Espiner is concerned about the lack of quality analysis and policy design. If the government were serious about helping families in need it’s priority would be getting people back into work and better pay and conditions for low income workers. The fact that is has gone with this Whanau Ora nonsense shows it has no real intention of tackling the causes of this country’s social ills.
Maori activists who want a better deal on the foreshore and seabed can rest assured that the Maori Party is about to sell them out. Tariana Turia just got herself a shiny new portfolio as Minister for Whanau Ora, whatever it is. Do you really think she’s going to give up a control over a policy that National has agreed to just for her? Do you really think she’ll stand strong on her principles over the foreshore and seabed if it means losing the Crown limo?
The Whanau Ora Taskforce report is out and it fails to even attempt to answer simple questions like ‘why is Whanau Ora the best way to help families’. It provides no evidence it will work. Check out the graphic to the right – what does it even mean? All we do know is Whanau Ora will put public money in unaccountable private hands and be privatisation by stealth.
Whanau Ora is, apparently, about giving a big pile of money to private groups under so-called ‘high trust’ contracts and expecting them to get on and deliver a whole range of public services that have previously been the responsibility of accountable government departments. What could go wrong? Quite a bit suggests this story
