Rebuilding a new Public Service
David Seymour says the Public Service is Left wing, bullshit!
If only this was true!
The Wellington Bureaucracy isn’t left wing! It’s a self interested Professional Managerial Class who use identity politics to mask their neoliberal hands-off-do-nothing-but-build-glass-palaces fiefdoms.
Oh they do the reo, and expose their pronouns and militantly ride bikes, they are effortless in their use of inclusion as a means to dominate and control the narrative, but they are a middle class clique, not left wing egalitarianism.
The Wellington Bureaucracy is a culture war of woke middle class Identity Politics aspirations backed with State funding, they may aesthetically be Left but they sure as fuck aren’t economically Left.
To brand the Public Service as ‘Left’ misdiagnoses the disease, symptom and patient!
Seymour is doing this to justify the 14 000 jobs they want to cut as part of their political project to strangle revenue off to the State so it can’t redistribute it in the first place.
Short term the Government has to be focused on deflationary spending, mid term economically we need radical climate change adaptation, long term they need to start navigating a post growth economy.
The best way to push those values is via the Public Service Culture and processes.
For essential state service workers like teachers, like police, like Drs, like nurses, like ambulance and Firefighter services, we can match the rising inflation in wages, but the focus needs to be on expanding capacity, expanding State responsibility and expanding quality of work experience.
It is insane that our Ambulance Service is privatised, and the State should nationalise it immediately. As first responders, their obligations and responsibilities will only climb as society continues to rock from the shockwaves of Covid.
Professional Firefighters must be expanded to acknowledge the danger we are under from climate change and fire seasons.
Rather than compete with inflationary wage rises, focus on better conditions. 11 weeks paid holiday each year, 4 day weeks plus housing projects where subsidised rentals are available for houses.
We also need to start bonding Teachers, Drs and nurses with free education in exchange for bonded work around NZ.
We shouldn’t be looking to slash public servants, we need more!
ACT want to amputate 5 Ministry’s while Luxon is promising to slash 14 000 jobs!
That is ideological vandalism, that’s not an actual plan!
Covid showed us the need for a strong State with capacity to step in and with the climate crisis here, we will continue to need a strong State with capacity!
The Right’s never ending march to amputate and slice down the State is so that the people don’t get used to a well functioning public service and so will politically agree to starve it of funds via tax cuts.
Global free market capitalism is dead, hyper regionalism is here. We need a bigger State with actual capacity rather than the threadbare barely regulated joke that it currently is.
We shouldn’t agree to cutting public services, we should fund their capacity and infrastructure rebuild while making the working conditions for those there a better quality!
Where should we get that money? Windfall taxes on the corporations and banks!
We need better conditions for those workers and the values of working 4 day weeks, extra holidays and housing solutions are aimed at making better working conditions as opposed to never ending inflationary wage pressures.
We need a sustainable bureaucracy rather than 7 figure technocrats who see their own fiefdoms and glass palaces as the measure of public policy achievements.
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Yep, The header diagram says it all. And corporates move in to fill the conveniently empty space and Governments collect even more shit. And economic and political power moves on up the chain. The effect is as neoliberal as it gets.
I think the biggest issue with making this happen is a lack of political organisation within the working class.
In the past, these things were won because labour movement organisations developed demands and a detailed platform, and then used the power of a mass movement to wage a political struggle for them.
There is such total disorganisation within the working class today that the labour movement has virtually collapsed. There is nobody to even create a political programme, or print mass publications promoting it, let alone millions of members to hit the streets in support of it.
None of these problems would have existed in the first place if the trade unions had called a general strike in 1987.
Until there are new organisations which take this task seriously, nothing will change.
1991 was the year a general strike was needed as the union busting Employment Contracts Bill was about to become law.
I was in the National Distribution Union whose leaders Bill Andersen and Mike Jackson, did support a national stoppage as did thousands of our members who had been marching and rallying for months along with so many other workers around NZ. But the pro strikers were narrowly outvoted by “technical democracy” where the leaderships (not memberships) of PSA, EPMU and other more conservative unions egged on by class traitor Ken Douglas voted against. A class error we have suffered from ever since.
There is indeed an urgent need for a new organisation of socialist activists, and a fighting central labour organisation.
It absolutely needed to happen by 1991, and it’s scandalous that a self-proclaimed revolutionary like Ken Douglas would be against the strike!
The reason I mention 1987 is that we needed to quickly reverse the mass job losses at the state industries, stop them from being privatised, stop the tarriffs from being axed, and kill the G.S.T. within its first year.
By that stage it was obvious that Lange needed to go, and we may have had a chance of getting someone like Jim Anderton in as leader to stem the bleeding.
Eleven week’s holiday and 4 day weeks. It would 1,200 hours work a year instead of the current 1,700 hours work. And you want more from the public service?
You would need another 100,000 public servants just to do what currently gets done.
Plus of course substantial tax increases to pay for them. All to get nothing more than at present.
Not going to happen, as I am sure you know.
Parkinson’s law says that’s nonsense
There have been complaints in some places over the response people get in their dire straits produced by the floods in their regions. The problem is that the capacity of the Government and Local Bodies has been constrained by the vocal public demands for lower taxes and lower rates. No wonder there has not enough help to go around. It is simple arithmetic. As it must be known that things are only going to get worse as the greenhouse gasses keep increasing. Therefore the capacity of both Local Government and central Government must be increased significantly in order to be actually able to help in disasters. There is no profit for private business to have such capacity as no income can be generated directly from tragedy. The Government needs to move away from ‘cost benefit analysis’ to social benefit analysis.
Perhaps start with people working in government that have some sort of real qualification apart from woke law and marketing – subject matter expertise – is needed who are actually in charge!
There will be more media interest in the CHCH lady working in the health system and her ‘racist’ tweets than the media pointing out that the government has been too incompetent to organise to train more doctors in NZ – that was called for in 2022.
Auckland Uni calls for more medical student places to help ease doctor shortage
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300614570/auckland-uni-calls-for-more-medical-student-places-to-help-ease-doctor-shortage
Auckland’s medical school says Government won’t let them increase student numbers to fill dire shortages
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/06/auckland-s-medical-school-says-government-won-t-let-them-increase-student-numbers-to-fill-dire-shortages.html
So did the government and all their new agencies in NZ manage to increase medical training places… nope too busy restructuring and renaming the DHB’s to bother on that one!
Fakes will do in NZ – we are now exporting them as well as importing them!
Fake doctor examined dozens of patients over six months at busy Auckland hospital
https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/fake-doctor-worked-for-six-months-at-auckland-hospital-examining-dozens-of-patients-20220907-p5bg76.html
‘Cunning’ fake doctor jailed for seven years after forging Auckland University degree
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/131355129/cunning-fake-doctor-jailed-for-seven-years-after-forging-auckland-university-degree
Rank and file public service workers do a good job and need more. It’s just to mi spend on consultantancy and change MGMT
Maybe this carries on from the covert Rogernomes 1980s reforms. In other words there are plants inserted the political movement to carry on the neoliberal agenda. Who those plants are is the question could be burocrats behind the scenes aswell. But the legacy as it were continues on.
You have to wonder about public service.
This woman was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business in 2008. She was named businesswoman of the year in 1986.
Judge to businesswoman – sell your mansion to pay your $10m debt
https://www.stuff.co.nz/bay-of-plenty/300819955/judge-to-businesswoman–sell-your-mansion-to-pay-your-10m-debt
“Adlam is a convicted fraudster. In 2012, she was convicted of 24 charges brought under the Tax Administration Act and fined $75,000.”
“In 2008, she was suspended by the Māori Land Court as a trustee of the Savage Papakāinga Land Trust after she admitted taking trust funds for her own use. Adlam was orignally ordered to repay the trust amounts totalling approximately $15m in a 2014 Māori Land Court judgement.”
Pretty concerning and becoming more frequent, that NZ business people feel entitled to defraud large amounts but also holding New Zealand Order of Merit and business of the year!
Says a lot about NZ business, and it’s lack of due diligence – more interested in looking at personal money made off others and titles rather than ethics and trustworthiness.
No jail time while owing $10million plus and defrauding IRD as well as Maori trust!