If National won’t investigate historic abuse by the State is it time to boycott NZ products because of human rights abuse?
The National Government refuse point blank to investigate the 100 000 children who were taken into State care for historic abuse claims.
What The Hui has uncovered is a sick damaged secret of State abuse that continues to this very day.
Now the Government has refused to investigate, conscientious New Zealanders must consider waging an online campaign asking overseas consumers to stop buying NZ products because of human rights abuses that have occurred and are being hidden by the Government.
The simple truth is the pricks don’t do anything until you start bleeding them financially.
We refuse to look at abuse in state care because our cultural need to blame the beneficiary for being in such personal circumstances that require state intervention is what most angers middle Nu Zilind, NOT that the state then goes onto abuse, assault and sexually molest the taken children.
We have the same headspace when prisoners are abused by prisons (they wouldn’t be in prison being abused if they didn’t deserve to be there in the first place).
We refuse to blame the system of poverty that sees tens of thousands of children go to school hungry each day and we blame the parents for the 220 000 kids who live in poverty.
30 years of neoliberalism has concreted in the belief that success and failure has nothing to do with the hegemonic structures within society, it’s all a personal dynamic.
You are rich because you are smart. You are poor because you are dumb. If you get caught up in the horrors of the neoliberal welfare state, well you deserve all you get.
We can not acknowledge the past abuse and we can not acknowledge the ongoing abuses that WINZ, Housing NZ, MSD, Corrections, CYFs and Probations provide.
If we can’t force change domestically because National knows their voting bloc despise beneficiaries then let’s start a campaign off shore that begs consumers to avoid our products for human right violations.
Watch how quickly the National Government would buckle then.
Yet again, the failing of our corporatised public service.
And again I am at a loss as to why opposition political parties don’t see mileage in public service reform.
And again, this is not about over-worked and under-resourced frontline staff, it is about middle and senior management running their various domains as little feifdoms and taking Ministerial ‘whispers’ as directives.
You mention a few of them above, but the culture is now so entrenched and across the board. MPI and the fishing industry; education and really weird decisions; health and the application of cutbacks in funding; etc., etc., etc.
Currently we have an SFO investigation into CERA, senior employees who saw no conflicts of interest in what they were doing.
No one in Immigration seems to see any problem with former staff going out and setting up consultancies on their own – effectively walking out the door with the Roladex (whilst in the private sector there are often constraints put on staff working in the field for a period of time).
There are countless other examples.
Nor does anyone show much concern for the excessive use of consultants and contractors as standard practice. They trot out trite little explanations like “we need independent opinion”, or “taking up the slack”.
Our public service is NOT serving us well, and just as it seems the only time large corporates will do anything to mend their delinquent ways (Unisted Airlines case in point) until their bottom line is affected or their competency is questioned to a level of embarassment – the same is now true of out public service. And why shouldn’t it be – it’s a series of corporatised entities that allows political ‘representatives’ off the hook. How often do we hear Ministers bleat “I can’t comment on operational matters”? – unless of course it suits them.
No one even respects transparency or the checks and balances that were intended – such as through the OIA process.
Nothing is going to change this until their is a total re-evaluation and reform of the structure and the culture that’s grown out of 30 years of this bullshit and was inevitable – it’s actually working as designed.
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/a-betrayal-of-public-service-values.html
Idiot/Savant states it more clearly than I have, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think this sort of thing is limited to CERA
– the Roladex I mentioned
– purchasing, ‘preferred suippliers’ et al
– the use of contractors – especially where recruitment agencies or others clip the ticket and the contractor gets a cut of what’s paid
– appointments of CEO’s by Minister alone, rather than by some cross-party mechanism
– the casual approach to the protection of private and personal data where no one is ever sanctioned over breaches
The problems at CERA/PIML simply reinforce the idea that the problems are both structural, and (now given that structure) cultural
The the OIA process was once a reputable process. Now it is just another arm of the National party to protect the National party. A bit like the N.Z. Herald really. Some honest analysts stories get withdrawn rapidly:
Liam Dann
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/liam-dann/news/article.cfm?a_id=106&objectid=11836445
whilst poor columnist pieces stay on their website for days:
Claire Trevett
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/claire-trevett/news/article.cfm?a_id=74&objectid=11836372
If Trevett gave the same amount of column space on an arrogant and corrosive Government, N.Z. would be in better hands. Sadly it will now take years, or if at all, to erode the damages caused by, what will go down in history, as the most divisive Government in history.
This dictatorship Government even shut down an Edgecumbe resident live on T.V. 3 news last night because he confronted the Government about it’s poor response. The T.V. presenter even stated that this was only ever about a photo op for Nathan Guy rather than anything meaningful and when confronted by the resident, Guy was quickly ushered away. Sadistic pricks.
hmmm…a Western Democracy that’s happy to abuse/neglect and then criminalise its most vulnerable and marginalised citizens…
and then create a market place so that those very same people can be exploited by some of the most feral private companies known to man….
we really are a fully paid up member of the Brave New Corporate World.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11837914
National promote this as a win win, whilst most see this as disgusting.
Funny thing is the people taking advantage of this housing speculation, have Asian sounding names. How dare I. So while people see me as xenophobic, they forget that the evidence is real.