Jarrod Gilbert: Why I’d happily shout Bill English a beer
The evening I first met Bill English, I had committed — deeply committed — to an afternoon of drinking beer. He’s a very straight guy; no good should have come of our chance meeting. This was back in late 2015 and the then Finance Minister in the Key Government was working up an idea of a social investment model.
I’d like to write about it, I told English at the party we were attending. With what can only be a hat-tip to Heineken-inspired diplomacy, he invited me to the policy launch and a sit-down interview. He probably regretted that. The piece I wrote carried a headline calling him boring. The article itself was more generous.
I liked English’s ideas then, and I’m pleased the National Party is attempting to breathe life back into them now.
I love Jarrod Gilbert and believe he is one of the most important voices in social policy and I respect him immensely, and because he is such a genuinely kind bloke, he would have a beer with Bill English for his social investment model.
I however would not have a beer with Bill English.
Oranga Tamariki is a Frankenstein monster, a neoliberal welfare experiment conjured up by Bill English and big data.
Luxon has already promised to revive this horror process if elected in 2023.
So what is the ‘social investment’ model?
Let’s look at Oranga Tamariki.
The argument is that children from backgrounds with specific features were the worst in terms of cost to the state, so if the State stepped in and removed the children quickly enough, that cost will fall.To do this they passed law reducing the legal rights of parents, streamlined their 0800 numbers and weaponised uplifts.
They also ensured that people with children taken from them are ineligible for legal aid so they couldn’t fight back legally.
Oranga Tamariki has always been about saving the State money and the welfare of the child is secondary to that!
Since the Royal Inquiry into Historic Abuse, the Public Services Commission has done all it can to remove OT oversight and roll it into the ERO so that it saves the State money if children are abused in our care.
That Labour have acquiesced to this and removed the Children’s Commissioner from providing OT oversight is disgraceful.
MSD in the 2000s oversaw obscene tactics that included hiring private detectives to dig dirt on victims who were complaining about being abused in state care in a Test case that if MSD had lost would have cost the State untold in damages.
The elite Wellington Bureaucratic class wanted to remove the threat of costs and damages from poorly funded social services and the ‘social investment model’ is a means to spend money on the most costliest of those social problems without actually universally funding services.
For the State, amputating social responsibilities and the legal threat of damages frees them up from having to spend any money in the first place.
Rather than creating more taxes like a Capital Gains Tax or Financial Transaction Tax to properly funded the welfare of children in State care, it’s easier to amputate the responsibility altogether.
Social Investment is a bullshit term for ending universal provision of welfare under the guise of providing more resource for the most at risk target demographic.
Beer is too good for Bill and his hyper religious perspective that believes the Church should be the welfare provider of choice rather than the State. Using neoliberal dynamics to do that doesn’t make any child safer, it just makes it cheaper and that makes us all poorer.
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Good bloke Bill.
We missed the opportunity for a great Prime Minister.
No doubt this comment will draw attention from the usual naysayers.
Bill was guilty of housing benefit fraud and when he got caught said, “Oopsie daisy, aren’t I a naughty boy!”
If Bill had been illegally receiving his housing benefit from WINZ rather Parliamentary Services, he would have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Technically he hadn’t broken any law but what he did was silly and there’s no excuse really.
“Why I won’t be buying Bill English a beer”
What do you buy a traitor then? He’s a traitor to his colleagues and he’s a traitor to his country, so what, exactly, do you buy a traitor other than beer perhaps? A one way ticket to Hawaii ? The Jonk could probably do with a mate. (cell)
The greatest threat to our agrarian primary industry, and city people by extension, are the traitors slithering around within it.
Traitors and corruption, two principles for a Knighthood, who would have thought?
Well Bob it may have been problematic having a PM that found it necessary to send over 450 text messages (some around 1.00am) to an individual on a topic ‘ he had little knowledge of’. Imagine how many message he would send on topics he was involved with!
100%, more corruption Wheel.
Bill also wanted to introduce an overnight charge for public hospital patients. That would have massively impacted on the children of the poor who don’t have private medical insurance or workplace insurance schemes.
Depriving legal aid to parents deprived of their children is discriminatory and wicked.
SW wasn’t aware of that.
Thought you had to be referred by a GP to be admitted?
You can get in via A & E or if you are having some procedure (transfusion etc) and a problem develops where they want to monitor you. That was in the good old days when the hospital system had spare capacity, nowadays even doctors have to wait to get people admitted to hospital.
Thankyou Bonnie.
Bob the first. Correct, but then there’s emergency admissions at 2 am for littlies with bronchitis having trouble breathing, and babies wth the dreaded RSV virus crowding the children’s wards, emergency appendectomies, battered toddlers, conditions requiring admission and overnight(s) stays; Bill mooted a $50 a night charge; that would totally wreck many household budgets. There was quite a lot of privatisation by stealth too, and a complete shafting of some services, some perhaps by the hospital boards.
Ok SW thankyou.
The type of policy English wanted should never ever see National elected again.
National are Squeaky Clean Bill’s big flaw here was in apparently seeing children as economic units, part of the state apparatus, because of his background working for Treasury. The bigger picture, of working towards an egalitarian society in which the sort of inequalities which cause some infants to be born disadvantaged and ergo a cost to the state, doesn’t suit his sort of short-term thinking.
Similarly, his objection to abortion, which most of us don’t really like, saw him trying to force unwanted children to be born with disregard about what happens to babies once they emerge, incredibly vulnerable, into an unwelcome milieu. He just wanted them born, and that’s that, and quite ruthless, and ironically disregards the fact that they may end up a cost to the state – apart from having miserable damaged little lives.
He had many great policy ideas did our Bill.
I thought he had retired?
I always felt he did whatever he could for his own kind and not for anyone who was in need. We’re a liberal democracy. Even National claims to be a liberal political party. We should always endeavor to have a caring, generous, social and economic liberal prime minister. We don’t want or need any divisive social or economic policies such as those that have rocked the UK economy in recent times.
Daniel Lang. He’d be an interesting case study. He always struck me as a Peter Pan sort of character, the boy who never grew up, and he did seem to live a very narrow and circumscribed life from Dipton onwards, whereas others have had more interesting lives than they had ever wanted. The career politicians are possibly worse though, psychologically, male and female; I know a friend of Bill’s Mum, Norah, who says that she was a lovely Catholic woman.
Also let’s not forget Bill’s extremely favourable payout to South Canterbury Finance investors and the fire sale of its assets off-shore interests. Tax money spent for the benefit of the wealthy.
Peter Kelly. And let’s not forget that in spite of wanting to save the state costs, he was perfectly happy trying to claim a paltry housecleaning allowance for his own children’s home. He had six kids including five sons, a few of whom should have been capable of wielding a vacuum cleaner, or a duster, or a dish cloth, by the time that they started school. I was.
Peter, the payout was a result of deposit guarantees that were put in place by Michael Cullen and honoured by National when they got into govt – God knows why they let finance companies into the scheme. Don’t know about the fire sale of assets but I believe the Crown managed to get back a decent chunk of its $1.5 billion.
Hapuku, SCF was admitted to the scheme on the day the National Government were sworn in, 19 November 2008 – maybe to protect investors in Bill’s electorate? I recommend ‘The billion dollar bondfire’ by Chris Lee.
Yes, funds were recovered by selling assets like HNZ off-shore so profits now flow overseas.
“The argument is that children from backgrounds with specific features were the worst in terms of cost to the state, so if the State stepped in and removed the children quickly enough, that cost will fall.” What about if Bill’s idea was modified somewhat and instead of removing children from such families, more wrap around services were provided to those identified families?
the thing with dysfunctional families is they are beyond help, they’re dysfunctional…and no amount of ‘services’ will help…so what do we do for the kids?
At least Bill’s version of Oranga Tamariki wasn’t taking children from foster parents on the basis of race!
There’s always and excuse for the right, always.
Yes that is correct but the left are so blatant there’s no room for an excuse.
Thankyou NSC.
Bill Double Dipper and the huge household expense allowance claims flatly lied to NZ public about his deliberately hidden privatisation agenda.
He is scum.
” Why I’d happily shout Bill English a beer ”
With his parliamentary super and parliamentary privilege’s I could never or would ever shout the man anything.
I have paid for him and his whanau to live comfortably from my hard earned taxes. !!!!!!!
Cripe Martyn, what waste your virtual breath on this article? I’m not sure anyone on this site would want to buy Bill English a beer.
I quite like Bill English, as idiots go. He tort he was right.
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