Using underfunded CYFs to start privatising social services

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publicprivate

If one were to be cynical about the appalling number of children abused by our own state agency, one would suggest that If NZers want a sex offenders register so badly, perhaps they can start with listing all the CYFs offices.

We have a Government who underfund public services because they’ve decided to borrow billions in tax cuts for the richest and sold assets that generated revenue so that when underfunded public services like CYFs fail the justification to privatise those social services can be used.

It’s all so painfully obvious. National are doing this is state housing, education, prisons, disability sector and now with CYFs.

Tolley will use this report to argue for privatisation, that’s not the answer. The answer is that they actually fund these services properly, and the cash for that should come from the billions National have borrowed for tax cuts.

Serco running CYFs fills me with dread.

National will use these terrible stats as a way to trick NZers into the next round of social service privatisation.

For those who cry ‘where is the money to fully fund CYFs so that kids in state care aren’t being abused’, I have a very simple answer.

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Want to know where we’d get money so kids in CYFs aren’t abused? The cost of Government selling 49% of our power companies is $871million!

There’s your money.

Imagine if we had not sold our assets. We would have that billion to spend on the downstream series so that kids aren’t just dumped off in lowest care facilities to then get re-abused!

This Government borrowed billions in tax cuts for the rich, and then subsidised them to the tune of hundreds of millions into buying shares in NZs public power companies. Don’t tell me we don’t have the money to ensure children aren’t being hurt, oh we have the cash, it’s just that this Government chooses to hand that money to the rich.

This is the consequence of a right wing National Government who speak the morality of small business, yet practice in the interests of corporations and the wealthy elite. If we had not privatised our public assets to the already wealthy, we would have the money to fully fund these services. They have been purposely run down so that privatisation looks attractive.

National have done it in prisons with Serco, they are trying to do it in education with Charter Schools, they are underway trying it in social housing, then they will try it with beneficiaries.

The long term revolution National want is to shrink the Government, aid the wealthy and screw the poor. By eliminating revenue streams for the Government, National can underfund these public services and then forward the argument of further privatisation under the guise of fiscal responsibility.

The obviousness of this must cut through our cultural stoic masochism at some point and those in the middle need to realise their wealth accumulation in housing is an illusion.

How much egalitarianism will Middle NZ lose for that illusion?

 

15 COMMENTS

  1. “We have a Government who underfund public services because they’ve decided to borrow billions in tax cuts for the richest and sold assets that generated revenue so that when underfunded public services like CYFs fail the justification to privatise those social services can be used”

    I wouldn’t go that far but as I said National is utilitarian – ensure the majority are happy and screw the minority – the poor and the disenfranchised.

    “Tolley will use this report to argue for privatisation, that’s not the answer. The answer is that they actually fund these services properly, and the cash for that should come from the billions National have borrowed for tax cuts.”

    I believe in privatisation in the first instance but something like social services should never be privatised. WINZ is basically the monster it is because the government at the time decided it wanted what was the department of social welfare to be run like a “business” with beneficiaries as “customers”. And I agree. Social services should be funded properly.

    • Unfortunately, Kevin, “believing in privatisation” eventually leads that ideology to privatisation of social services as well as hard assets. Once the gates are open, it is hard to stop the process.

      • I’d agree if we’re talking pure ideology. But I consider myself a pragmatist. If the social worth of something is more than the cost of inefficiencies it has as result of being socialised, then it should be kept socialised and never privatised. Using this criteria, clearly, CYFs shouldn’t be privatised.

        I don’t get me started on SOEs.

    • “I wouldn’t go that far..”, well actually I would. It is precisely the modus operandi of this government to underfund, neglect and allow services to fail, that then gives them the opportunity to say, “Well this isn’t working, let’s try a private provider.”
      One of the few things that is transparently clear about this government is that by giving massive tax cuts to the wealthy, they have less money to fund essential services.

  2. total revamp of CYPS that Social Development Minister Anne Tolley raised on RNZ this morning.

    This review is being headed by Paula Rebstock – who was responsible for the report that culminated in the government’s recent round of welfare reforms. The terms of reference for the Rebstock review of CYPS can be found here.

    Among other things, the Rebstock panel will consider the potential for privatisation:

    The core role and purpose of Child, Youth and Family; and opportunities for a stronger focus on this, including through outsourcing some services

    http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2015/08/27/gordon-campbell-on-the-childrens-commission-report-on-cyf/

  3. What’s obvious is this government are a bunch of cheats, chiselers, cheats and bullshitters. They’re a disaster and incompetent too led by Playboy Key.Like most I’m sick of going into the reasons why I don’t have Macskasy’s admirable stamina to spell it out ad infinitum until I join the Natsis by going blue in the face. blue in the face
    Exhausted from anger, strain, or other great effort. For example, You can argue until you’re blue in the face, but I refuse to go. This expression alludes to the bluish skin color resulting from lack of oxygen, which presumably might result from talking until one was breathless.

  4. The Nats have been busy privatizing social services since they first got elected. It’s the final nail in the coffin to State services.

  5. National really couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery, but when it comes it comes to creating illusions and turning them into reality – they have no peers.

  6. want to make changes for tha sake of idiology ? first manufacture a ‘crisis’ and then use it as an excuse to do what ever needs doing.
    the ultimate ‘crisis’ of course comes when the country is so far down the tubes that we are forced to do a ‘greece’, fait accompli.

  7. National by providing tax cuts to the wealthy in NZ have put money in the pockets of the wealthy and further deprived vulnerable people of basic living standards. Ugly Government Policy.

  8. Yes these hard right Keysters were puppets of the global elitists searching the globe for weak unstable governments to buy and install to asset strip venerable countries so NZ was a good choice because of its brand name so we are systematically being slowly wound down from the once proud “Egalitarian” (share the wealth with all) to a fire sale at the end of starving SOE’s into dysfunctional entities to be then placed on the sell-off block.

    Just look at NatZ track record at mis-management of all Government SOE’s and we see wreakless agendas to cause internal dysfunction until these former “essential services” are nothing but badly run preparation for fire sale entities for their masters.
    Wake up NZ before we are sold out completely.

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