It is not that we did not know overturning thirty years of neo-liberalism would be a huge job. But last week’s budget began to bring into focus how big the gap is between a decent society and the rampant inequalities, shortcomings, failures to provide and so on that we currently have.
The only transformation in the budget is a transformation in the meaning of transformation.
Can Neoliberalism build a wellbeing budget? Has the Government been transformational?
Is there really no more money for teachers when we are running a $5 Billion surplus and have one of the lowest rates of government debt in the OECD?
So holdup … the National Party is attempting to make a big deal out of the person whose photo’s on the cover of 2019 Budget having moved to Australia at some point in the past few years, yeah?
The parents of Nicky Stevens, who died in 2015 while in the ‘care’ of Waikato DHB’s acute mental health facility, have welcomed the focus of the 2019 Budget on Mental Health.
Back in 2012, when the Ministry of Social Development made a whole swathe of highly sensitive information about its clients and operations (including case-notes, personal details of at-risk children, medical records, legal paperwork etc. etc etc.) available to literally anyone who walked off the street into a WINZ office and used a self-service kiosk, I don’t think I recalled Paula Bennett appearing behind the National Leader of the day to demand that the minister in question responsible resign forthwith?
They served him breakfast and it was only at 10am when they came to get him for court they found he was dead – and had been for probably 6 hours.
Labour are lucky that the Treasury mishandling of the budget has become the story rather than the fine print reading of the budget because the lack of anything remotely representing transformation would have killed voters who had put their hopes into Jacinda’s politics of kindness. The truth is this budget falls far short of anything meaningful.
Can Neoliberalism build a wellbeing budget? Has the Government been transformational?