Stuff declares that Big Government is back.
Is it?
Certainly the universal shared experience of lockdown and Covid have made people rush towards the State for protection and National’s small Government mantras are a joke.
Certainly deregulation has dirty example after dirty example to pursued Kiwi’s the free market is a scam.
But is the Government really challenging the failed free market when it comes to Housing, Poverty, Inequality and social services?
In the words of the great Unionist, Robert Reid…
…Labour won by accident in 2017 and Covid overshadowed 2020 so none of them have any real reform platform for the Public Service which allows the neoliberal public service to call the shots.
The ideological right wing acolytes who have taken up residence in our public service, must be cut from the body public as one cuts out a tumour. These spiteful people have spread their hateful right wing beliefs and infected every inch of what should be a welfare system designed to protect and help rather than punish and torture.
We have seen example after example after example of how these ‘servants’ damage and kill the poor they are supposed to serve. Hounding a beneficiary into suicide for a debt that never existed is an abomination.
Our civil service has become uncivil.
Our Public Services are supposed to be the bastions of egalitarianism which are essential for a progressive liberal democracy progressing. Instead, spiteful zealots mutate it into the cruelest of torture devices used by the State to keep the poor too terrified to fight back.
Just like Oranga Tamariki stealing babies, Housing NZ evicting tenants, Motels housing the homeless, Corrections miscalculating Prisoner sentences and sparking prison riots– all of them don’t care about the actual welfare of the people they are supposed to care about.
Prisoners, the poor and beneficiaries have no rights as far as our burnt out and mutated public services are concerned, and attempts to push through new Government policy will fail if there isn’t a vigorous counter attack inside the Ministries.
Big Government may be back, but if it’s the same neoliberal Wellington Bureaucratic Elites, why rejoice?
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Thought experiment here…
–If–the PSA was a class left focused union (hold the bwahahahas a moment) with delegates and members educated in why there are hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people needing assistance–overwhelmingly because of macro decisions made well outside their ability to influence them; then industrial pressure could be put on the neo liberal bludgers at the top of Ministries. Make them reapply for their own jobs, and laugh in their faces as the likes of Robert Reid, Mike Treen, Debbie Ngarewa Packer, Jane Kelsey, or younger versions of them perhaps, are appointed to replace them!
Regardless of that, the PSA could right now put its bogus “politically neutral” stance to one side, it only ensures nothing changes in respect of the structural elements of neo liberalism entrenched in our Govt. Departments. The Public Service should serve the public not private capital as it does now in so many ways following the 80s and 90s–contracting out, market rates, user pays, paying dividends, State Sector Act, Reserve Bank Act, SOEs etc. etc. The PSA could educate members at MSD and Kainga Ora to name two, to understand a class society and stop torturing their fellow citizens because they can, and might get a bonus for doing so.
A number of the State Bureaucrats are indeed Fifth Columnists, really representing the capitalist class rather than the ordinary citizen, yet they are happy to spew over the working class at every opportunity while taking their taxpayer funded salaries. The public service leaks big time to the NZ National Party and ACT, that is one sure way to know Martyn is spot on here.
The PSA serves its members well and acts to protect their interests – unfortunately for Bomber they are mostly also members of the Professional Managerial Class so it would seem change, at least that he’d like to see is away on the never never
US Police unions serve their members well too, but at some cost to their society and non white individuals in particular.
While I would definitely not directly equate bent cop unions with the PSA, the PSA has a negative effect on thousands of New Zealanders via its political neutrality–i.e. support for the neo liberal status quo, and with MSD, ACC, and Kainga Ora case managers not providing full lawful entitlements and practising discriminatory behaviour.
The PSA leadership in fact was a prime enabler of the 1991 Employment Contracts Act that started the decline of the NZ Union Movement, and the low membership density of today. At a special NZCTU Affiliates meeting in Wellington the PSA voted against a national workers stoppage to try and stop the ECA, despite thousands of its members taking action around the country.
“Big Government may be back, but if it’s the same neoliberal Wellington Bureaucratic Elites, why rejoice?”
Then why not sack them? If the so called Wellington Bureaucratic Elites refuse to do the jobs they’re employed to do, which is to do the very best by us which is to say they must always focus on those most at risk first, then sack them. Deal with the riche privateer arseholes at some point later and that might mean dramatic changes to tax loops holes and all that nice ball-cupping special treatment from OUR politicians feeding the riche our money, assets and resources can come later. They can afford to wait. Unlike the victims of their greedy laziness you’ll find living hungry and homeless in the streets.
Bureaucrats are only as strong as the weakest union and we have fuck all in the way of unions left thanks, in part, to a corrupt Wellington bureaucracy.
( Farmers? You want to produce mass trouser shitting followed by a sudden surge in on-farm profits? Then form a compulsory union from The Cape to Bluff. Headlines on rnz! Toilet paper sales soar! )
Is this interesting?
The Guardian.
‘How can women get equality? Strike!’
Sally Howard
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/14/how-can-women-get-equality-strike
“Then why not sack them?”
Because it’s not the done thing doncha know @ CB. We have to face it. With the exception of one or two in the Labour Ministerial ranks, they’ve been captured. Rather than their being sacked (managerialist snr and muddle mngmt employees paid handsomely by the state, they’re promoted. Some of them even have embellished C.V’s on LinkedIn – not only to prove their worth, but also as an example of the corporatisation of our civil service.
Example after example of bureaucrats not acting as public ‘servants’, and often not even attempting to implement policies we voted for.
Even Little (after a good start with Pike River) appears to have succumbed, and Hipkins is buying into the comms and marketing line.
(I heard him talk of “continuous improvement” the other day, and had to ask whether or not he’d browsing around the Unity Books self-improvement, management theory and marketing sections).
A government – in theory – with such a thumping majority really should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Unfortunately, there’s just not the will among the teacher’s pets – kind and compassionate, but conservative teacher that she is.
Where’s that handbrake now? The same place it always was and it even has a brake pad retread or two parachuted in from the empire.
Pick any measure. IS the housing crisis better now than it was 4 years ago? Is the health system? How about edjakayshun. How about that copied “best practice” in immigration and what we’re doing with refugees? And what about public service broadcasting and a plurality of voice in the 4th Estate. What about Chile Poverdy. What about the unwillingness to adequately support victims of the Christchurch massacre – lest it set a “precedent” – despite precendents already having been set.
They can’t walk and chew gum at the same time simply because they don’t really want to, and Jacinda can’t do everything – not even delegate.
The new intake of MPs (a couple of whom would make far better Ministers than one or two licking the teacher and public servant boots at the moment) might get a look in. But by the time they do, it’ll probably be too late.
Things are going to have to get a bit worse yet. But please, after they have, and when the Labour Party does finally make an attempt to get back to its founding principles, let’s not give its hijackers the time of day. (Well I ‘spose we could make one exception and let JA do the comms and handle the loiks).
You are onto it OnceWasTim…“continuous improvement”…bwahahaha!! continuous capture of Ministers by their Departments more like.
Management speak is risible if you have the misfortune to have to listen to it “going forward”, “circle back”, “its on my radar”, “thought shower”, “synergy”, “action that”…
‘The ideological right wing acolytes who have taken up residence in our public service, must be cut from the body public as one cuts out a tumour.’
We’ll have to wait for a proper government to gain power before that happens, Martyn.
In the meantime we have to endure more of the same, as the system takes us down the path towards ‘implosion’ (US10YT now 1.62%)
By the way, this Covid thing is unlikely to ‘go away’ any time soon.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/explained-3-major-covid-19-variants
(Click on the graphics to enlarge)
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