The greatest enemy of the new Government isn’t the National Party, it’s the Public ‘Service’
Govt considering ditching fishing boat camera plans
The government is considering scrapping the rollout of cameras on commercial fishing vessels altogether.Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash said many in the fishing industry were unhappy with the camera proposal and all options were on the table – including dumping it entirely.
One of Mr Nash’s first moves when he became the Fisheries Minister was to put the brakes on the rollout of electronic monitoring of the commercial fishing fleet.
The former National government came up with the plan last year, saying it would protect the sustainability of fish stocks and act as a deterrent against illegal activity, like fish dumping.
The greatest enemy of the new Government is not the National Party, it’s the self interested Ministry fiefdoms whose internal right wing ideological stance will strangle any real attempt at culture change or left wing policy implementation.
I’ve heard from numerous sources within the new Government over concerns that Ministers have been swamped by their Ministries and the vested interests of the Ministry Officials are what are being promoted and real change stymied everywhere.
Some Ministers are fighting back vigorously and some are demanding real change, but many are being swamped.
The Labour Party, Green Party and NZ First Party must urgently look to spend a percentage of their Leader’s budget to group fund a special joint politburo who can support Ministers in their battle to implement Party policy rather than get tricked and trapped by their Ministry’s.
This politburo should promote an 0800 whistle blower number to call on public servants with ethos to dob in their managers for not implementing compassion.
The ideological right wing acolytes who have taken up residence in our public service, must be cut from the body public as one cuts out a tumour. These spiteful people have spread their hateful right wing beliefs and infected every inch of what should be a welfare system designed to protect and help rather than punish and torture.
We have seen example after example after example of how these ‘servants’ damage and kill the poor they are supposed to serve. Hounding a beneficiary into suicide for a debt that never existed is an abomination…
MSD is treating loans as income in the courts – Child Poverty Action Group
Borrowed money should not count as income that can reduce benefit entitlements, saysChild Poverty Action Group (CPAG).
In a case being heard in the High Court, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is arguing that a sole mother who took out loans to pay for her home repairs and to support her children – because she could not otherwise afford to on the benefit – should have to repay more than $120,000 in so-called ‘over payments’.
This Friday, October 27 is the last day of the hearing. Ms X. has name suppression and is represented by Frances JoyChild QC.
No form Ms X. ever filled out for her benefit asked her to list loans as a form of income. The cost of the nearly eight years of reviews and appeal is huge, both financially and in terms of her health.
“It has created libraries of decisions, exhibits, letters, submissions and court time. To say nothing of the costs of Ms X’s time or her lawyers,” says Associate Professor Susan John, CPAG economics and welfare spokesperson.
“It is very worrying that mothers are treated this way and that MSD takes such a narrow view of the law,” says Associate Professor Susan St John, CPAG economics and welfare spokesperson.
New Zealand currently has a punitive welfare system that reduces support for sole parents who repartner, and applies sanctions to those who do not name a father on benefit applications. In finding loans as declarable income, it further reduces the ability of low-income families to support their children, resulting in deeper and longer term poverty and more unfair prosecutions.
…this isn’t an isolated case. When asked by the Judge why the MSD was chasing another beneficiary in another ‘fraud’ case, the lawyer from the Ministry said, ‘in case she wins lotto’!!!!!!!
Our civil service has become uncivil.
Our Public Services are supposed to be the bastions of egalitarianism which are essential for a progressive liberal democracy progressing. Instead, spiteful zealots mutate it into the cruelest of torture devices used by the State to keep the poor too terrified to fight back.
Just like CYFs abusing kids or Housing NZ evicting tenants for 12 months and then wondering about the rise in homelessness or throwing beneficiaries off welfare and not recording what happens to them or Ministry of Development giving the homeless motel bills worth $50000, just like Corrections miscalculating Prisoner sentences – all of them don’t care about the actual welfare of the people they are supposed to care about.
Prisoners, the poor and beneficiaries have no rights as far as our burnt out and mutated public services are concerned, and attempts to push through new Government policy will fail if there isn’t a vigorous counter attack inside the Ministries.
Start at the top with Treasury…
These spiteful people have spread their hateful right wing beliefs and infected every inch of what should be a welfare system designed to protect and help rather than punish and torture.
get rid of the bastards if they ain’t adhering to the kaupapa or ethos of the welfare state they simply should not be there
Unfortunately these people are far too well paid to willingly step aside, or allow significant change to occur…
Yes I have also heard this in fact i wrote to Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran with a complaint against RADIO NZ CEO Paul Thompson and I got a disappointing letter back excusing him as no worries so you can see these national planted senior public servants are ’embedded’ in the system.
Martyn we need a good clean out like what Labour did in 1984!!!
With “their great kwango hunt” remember when they canned all those log jammed committees and boards National had set up before then?
Labour for Christ sake get some balls the clock is ticking.
Martyn said;
“the vested interests of the Ministry Officials are what are being promoted and real change stymied everywhere.”
Doubt it mate. I’ve worked in or provded consulting services to over 20 government agencies and there are very few right wing beuraucrats outside of corrections and defence. No need to make excuses for the new government yet.
Perhaps start with a new code of conduct applicable to ALL.
And make sure those on temporary contracts are directly covered by it.
ALL Public SERVANTS.
I ‘ve been banging on for years about Snr Management running their own fiefdoms.
Since the 80s reforms, exactly the opposite has happened to what was promised.
Who else remembers those promises of greater efficiency and effectiveness, accountability, depoliticisation.
Many / most ethical PS work in spite of their master-of-the-Universe snr mngmnt rather yhan because of them.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. This has always beeen one of the big problems I think. The people at the top of the ministry run the portfolio not the minister. I remember have a conversation with Jeanette Fitzsimons back in 2005 and me saying that surely you have to remove those at the top of these deapartments if you are truly going to run your portfolio in the direction you want it to go, not where officials want it to go.
(To me it is a bit like the police, they think they are ‘the law’.)
Having said that I was impressed with the report for the incoming minister of the environment(?) that stated very clearly the appalling state of our rivers and our environment. No what the previous minister would have wanted to hear, however I think that report should have been public prior to our change of government.
In my experience, if you write to government minister and point out serious deficiencies in policy and complete lack of appropriate planning you will get a ‘don’t worry’ response, pulled out of file of standard responses in computer somewhere, that is full of platitudes and completely fails to address the matters raised.
In my experience, if you write to a regional council and point out a serious deficiencies in policy and complete lack of appropriate planning you will get a ‘don’t worry’ response, pulled out of file of standard responses in computer somewhere, that is full of platitudes and completely fails to address the matters raised.
In my experience, if you write to a city or district council and point out serious deficiencies in policy and complete lack of appropriate planning you will get a ‘don’t worry’ response, pulled out of file of standard responses in computer somewhere, that is full of platitudes and completely fails to address the matters raised.
The ‘little empire builders’ remain totally unaccountable and everything that matters continues to be made worse by them.
Quote from above:
“I’ve heard from numerous sources within the new Government over concerns that Ministers have been swamped by their Ministry’s and the vested interests of the Ministry Officials are what are being promoted and real change stymied everywhere.”
That is exactly what I thought and meant with a comment I made under another TDB post many weeks ago. I wrote something like that it would tend to be government departments or Ministries, who do in the end decide what policies would be introduced and implemented.
I was heavily criticised by one commenter, for my comment.
I know it is a fact that large Ministries like MSD have their own departments for research and policy formation, and they propose changes they see fit to any government of the day.
In these government Ministries are pro neoliberal and pro market solution ‘experts’, who have been hired with a certain mindset to serve in a certain kind of bureacracy we now have had in this country since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Hence some of these bizarre exaggerations of the system, where beneficiaries are rather seen as a liability and threat, rather than people with needs, requiring effective and constructive assistance. Thanks to the MSD legal experts, they do all to maintain the status quo, as they fear a flood-wave of claims by others may follow, hence the hard line.
It is a nasty system, and Crown Law, paid for by all us taxpayers, is used to keep us certain rights denied, so the government can wash its hands and say, it is all ‘legal’ what it does, that is government departments.
This post proves to me that I am right with my concern, as any effort by this government to bring real change, will be attempted to be stymied and suffocated in its early beginnings.
Those in charge must be told, this is how we work now, this is our policy, these are our priorities, if you do not want to work with us, go and find a job elsewhere.
Is the Nash/fishing industry story meant to be here? because it looks like a Government/Minister lead back down on one important tool in the fight against overfishing.
Name and shame, Martyn. Let’s take a closer look at the manipulative parasites.
Ministry.
Ministry’s = possessive, as in “the ministry’s arguments are wrong”. Also as an auxiliary verb, as in “the ministry’s been wrong before”.
Ministries = plural forms, as in “several ministries have been wrong”.
Aside from that you’re bang on with this.
My own experience with working for a government department was the countless subterfuges used to delay or thwart the intent of government policy.
Civil servants build micro-empires and move heaven and earth to protect them. Public interest is not part of the deal unless it can be employed as a lever.
The attitude towards beneficiaries in this country is like something out of the Victorian era. Nothing highlighted that more than what happened to the Green party co-leader before the last election. The outpouring of middle class rage against someone who’d had flatmates while getting a benefit was so deranged and hysterical that at first I thought there’d been a serious crime committed.
I don’t think the venom you describe in the public service is unique to the Beehive – it is a venom that runs through the blood of working and middle class NZ and the current government are probable nervous about challenging it in any serious way.
This article over blames the current civil servants – when in reality both Labour (the excellent Working For Families policy excluded beneficiaries and part time workers) and National have been kicking the poor since the 1980’s and are likely to continue doing so until there is a Corbyn type revolution in NZ politics.
Also – blaming the civil service for a lack of progressive change on the ground is a cop out for the new government. Of course it’s difficult for a new government to deal with an incumbent civil service but that is not an excuse for weak leadership and apathy in the face of such challenges.
A convinced and genuine political leader will be able to bring about change if that is what they believe in – we know this because we’ve seen it done in the past. The – if that is what they believe in – part is what many on the left now fear may be lacking but it is early days.