Yesterday, Award winning journalist Aaron Smale and I, gift wrapped the attempt by state bureaucrats to hide despicable tactics like hiring private detectives to discredit survivors of State abuse WHILE the inquiry into historic abuse is occurring WHILE those very same State Services kill off any oversight by the Children’s Commissioner of Oranga Tamariki!
A decision that the entire political spectrum of NZ (other than the utterly captured Carmel Sepoloni and Labour) is against.
I have detailed my criticism of this neoliberal experiment in welfare, I have pointed out the disgusting abuses of power by MSD and I have called for real scrutiny on these Wellington elite bureaucrats who seem to have the following unspoken agreement with whatever Government gets elected:
You underfund welfare, we don’t get held to account criminally for the social carnage that underfunding generates.
That’s the deal with the MSD Devil that every Party must sign up to.
The removal of the Children’s Commissioner’s oversight of Oranga Tamariki is to ensure the State doesn’t get caught in the glaring scrutiny they are currently facing.
This isn’t
Despite all that, what mainstream media coverage of Hughes on the stand was generated?
This poor nonsense that misses everything we exposed and is pushed into irrelevance on the Stuff page.
Thank God there was Newsroom to follow up.
Look, this isn’t a right wing or left wing political partisan thing.
The State abuses lots of vulnerable children, 1 in 3 after the abuse of State care go straight to prison.
Allowing those who are obligated to care to get away with underfunding shouldn’t be then allowed to slip the accountability for that underfunding.
These Wellington bureaucrat elites get away with terrible abuses of power against individuals.
Economist Eric Crampton gets it…
…the deafening silence from woke Wellington Twitter over any criticism of Hughes or the MSD betrays the reality that many woke Wellington Twitter Activists are all in that Wellington world of public service and Unions and NGOs and they don’t bite the hand of those who feed them and socialise with.
The biggest enemy of the people of NZ are the Wellington Bureaucrat Elites.
Their abuse of power is never held to account.
We are never going to get real transformative change if we don’t have a 100 day plan to ram through legislation before the Public Service can kneecap it.
Labour didn’t think they would win in 2017 so didn’t have a 100 day plan and they didn’t think they would win a majority in 2020 so didn’t have a 100 day plan. If the Labour/Greens/Māori Party don’t have a 100 day plan for radical action against the interests of the neoliberal public service, it will be a failure.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Keep going on this Martyn….a bit of sunlight on this will kill it off …fast!
Or maybe the Labour party really does not have a hundred day plan on anything as they are not going to ram any legislation through that will in any way provide a longterm benefit to beneficiaries, underserved kids and adults (what is happening in resthomes in NZ is equally a shitshow), and the ‘left’ still hast to accept that.
As for politics, no one in this country really supports Labour on the grounds of them being good for working class people. Labour is the bureaucratic class of NZ working for the bureaucrast of this country. They, like N or A or G do not give a fuck about poor people and their children.
SADLY they DON’T want to fix what really matters.
Everything is just an excuse, as is the ‘first 100-day’ line of thought.
They simply do NOT want to fix anything, they just want to keep us quiet enough, whilst the rich suck us dry, or whatever the great plan is, that we aren’t privy to.
Keep up the good work Martyn.
We must all stand against this.
While we as individual citizens may not be able to stop unconscionable acts within we all fall sway of them once they are in place.
I take the view that we must dissent massively, as social and legal settings move toward the removal of the evidential threshold and the concomitant erosion of the presumption of innocence.
Stand up and oppose this brothers and sisters, before the state gives itself the power to silence you as a citizen by accusations alone.
You are right but who do you protest without looking like you side with Tamaki and Co.The ballot ox used to be the way but government debts go unchecked which ever party is in power
leave Babylon
Labours plan seems to be to hire ever increasing numbers of bureaucrats, mostly in HR or comms
Very true. The Nat-Lab uniparty doesn’t give a f**k what happens to kids.
Well put, the uni-party.
They don’t give a F about anything that really matters to the 90% of Kiwis.
It’s just a big con, that they’re getting away with, whilst the sheeple ‘get programmed’ by the media and TV.
Remember jenny shipley coming up with a ‘dob in your neighbour’ initiative back in the late 80’s or early 90’s asking people to check up on neighbours on the DPB who were having lovers stay for more than three days, and to keep an eye out for pot growing while they’re at it
Do we have a spare farmer with a John Deer tractor to park on peter huges’s desk. It’s OUR desk after all.
I think we need to crowd fund an investigation into our politics and economics by a forensic accountant and a private investigator. But not from Aotearoa/New Zealand though. They’re already engaged.
Oh my God! You must watch this while being mindful of the NZ Herald link, also found just below-below.
NZ Herald.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-power-of-three-ardern-shipley-and-clark-and-how-we-made-that-photo/56ZTXPKX2VTP2ZNGA54MNGBVVQ/
Russell Brand.
“As Masterclass launches President George W. Bush’s class on ‘tough calls and life lessons’, we ask, what are these life lessons, and what is the campaign to normalise war criminals really all about? ”
https://youtu.be/SngIOFISbC4
Oooh I like that idea!
100 day plan, I’d love to believe it..but going by previous performance I’m skeptical to say the least.
And here I was, hoping for a porno.
NZ Herald.
“The power of three: Ardern, Shipley and Clark and how we made that photo”
( Did my comment seem a tad distasteful? Well, too bad. So is seeing homeless people, some with kids, out on the streets while con artists and banksters gorge themselves on our hard earned money. )
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-power-of-three-ardern-shipley-and-clark-and-how-we-made-that-photo/56ZTXPKX2VTP2ZNGA54MNGBVVQ/
Let’s crowd-fund a team of forensic accountants and private detectives to look up our wondrous leaders? Go on! It’d be fun.
Are you still banking with ASB @ MB? You should check out a couple of the cooperatively owned AO/NZ banks available.
Warmest congratulations Martyn. For your courage and persistence. It show that you genuinely care about these kids…..
I wouldn’t have followed this story much (we all have our own issues that we focus on). Thanks to the Streisand effect, I am listening now.
Within the appalling state of broadcasting in NZ, there are some who shine a light…..you are one of the few Martyn
I was a state ward from about 1987 (under “care n protection” rather than “youth justice”). Mercifully I was 13 years old by then and managed to side step the horrific sexual and other abuses that went on, but I did experience lesser abuses and I heard about them from other kids. My takeaway from my experiences of being one of the great unwashed and unwanted are numerous, but it has always bewildered me the foster “parents” I was placed with and shipped around too were mostly all single women with grown up kids and no job. They had zero experience or skills in nurturing young troubled kids. One was an alcoholic who drank daily and only ever got dressed to go out grocery shopping or if a social worker was coming over. One used another foster kid I lived with as per personal slave, doing all the household chores, shopping, food prep, dishes, washing, foot massages! Later I found out how much they got paid for each of us. It was very lucrative for the otherwise unemployed and unemployable. Thankfully I had some sense back then n got the hell out by the time I was 16, educated myself, sustained a career, had my own family etc. My heart goes out to all my fellow foster siblings of decades past and present. I guess I was one of the lucky ones, in a decade slightly less horrific than the previous, but I still have healing to do yet. I have so many many first hand stories of the shit that was endured and the system whose aim was to break vulnerable kids. There’s no other explanation for it. MSD broke kids, with their ignorance, ineptitude, disdain and cruelty. We should wrap around these kids now, and the adults they’ve become. We/they fucking deserve our love for what they have endured. It’s time to acknowledge and own our own shit so we can all heal. Fuck MSD and the horse it rode in on
Sinic Thanks for solid anecdotage. And don’t give a horse to the MSD – horses are noble animals and such ignoble MSD people shouldn’t have command and neglect of them.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018855561/the-hazards-of-helicopter-parenting”’
Helicopter parents can seem too overprotective, Johal says, perhaps wanting to oversee everything their child is involved in and sometimes even acting on behalf of their child, particularly when they’re in a group.
These parents are coming from a good place, but their behaviour can have unintended consequences.
“Often they’re trying to think about protecting their child from harm. It’s not that they don’t trust their child, it’s just that they prefer not to see their child in emotional pain, not letting them get into trouble, perhaps.
“But it can take its toll as well, not just on the child, but perhaps interfering [with] some of their developmental pathways.”
Not only does overinvolvement impact a parent’s time and energy, Johal says it can also rob the child of life experiences and opportunities to learn and adjust to the world.
So not any old foster parent can manage to help the children in their care. But not even the real parents can This shows how hard it is to parent well and that it needs education for the parents to strike the right balance to bring up a child who can cope in our complex and often contradictory, often lying society.automatically gtow good tall, not bent, strong children.
” The biggest enemy of the people of NZ are the Wellington Bureaucrat Elites ”
AND neo liberal economics supported and upheld by LINO and the Nasty Natz and the donors who pay for staus quo policies and all the parties sitting and earning in the current parliament and the 1% who are untouchable.
The press gallery has no credibility because it simply reports the neo liberal consensus and is susceptible to being coerced or threatened with an enemy’s list that Key had and being pressured to report what keeps the status quo in control …no toleration for any other independent opinion that challenges the neo liberal all wealthy are winners economic approach.
” The biggest enemy of the people of NZ are the Wellington Bureaucrat Elites ”
AND neo liberal economics supported and upheld by LINO and the Nasty Natz and the donors who pay for staus quo policies and all the parties sitting and earning in the current parliament and the 1% who are untouchable.
The press gallery has no credibility because it simply reports the neo liberal consensus and is susceptible to being coerced or threatened with an enemy’s list that Key had and being pressured to report what keeps the status quo in control …no toleration for any other independent opinion that challenges the neo liberal all wealthy are winners economic approach.
The Stuff article was like a PR piece trying to downplay things whereas the newsroom article showed some real journalism. Peter Hughes is another of these CEOs who like the fat salary but don’t want any accountability to go with it and resort to the ‘I was unaware of this’ line. It’s staggering when CEO’s profess to have no idea of what is going on in organisations that they are paid hundred’s of thousands to manage.
I was particularly disgusted with his final statement: “Then he focused on the 14 public sector chief executives, who, he said, had listened carefully to survivors’ evidence, and fronted the commission over the last fortnight.
“I’m proud of them for doing that. That is not an easy thing to do, and they did that. That is the start of change.”
Courageous? Give me a break. They’ve overseen this travesty. The very least they should do is front up. Talk about trying to frame the abuser as the victim.
Look this has been happening under both National and Labour – and by extension their coalition partners – but Labour’s reluctance to address it and hold these organisations fully accountable and on top of that remove their independent oversight is nothing short of staggering. Even more so when they have a clear majority. Add in things like the refusal to investigate the response to the Parliament protests and the subterfuge with things like 3 waters and the government that promised to be the most transformational and transparent is turning out to be the least so.