Underfunded Nurses, Teachers & Midwives – the National Party legacy
So much damage was caused to our social infrastructure under National.
The reports given to the incoming Government paint a picture of a feckless National Party who kept tax cuts in place at the expense of the Teachers, Nurses, Midwives, Police, Counsellors and public servants who keep the country’s social infrastructure running.
Each of these professions are under enormous pressure, they are all struggling for pay and conditions that are crucial for our Health, Education and Welfare sectors.
The new Government MUST use this opportunity to bargain with the Unions for better pay and conditions in return for wholesale culture changes in each of those sectors.
The despicable way public servant sadists treat the poorest, the sickest and the most vulnerable amongst our nation was unacceptable under any Government! Under a Government that claims to be for the people it is an obscenity.
Let us never forget this …
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 scum from the Ministry said, ‘in case she wins lotto’!!!!!!!
Labour’s greatest challenge in front of it right now is the ideological right wing arseholes who have taken up residence in our public service. Like cancerous tumours, they 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.
We have seen example after example after example of how these smug vicious arseholes damage and kill the poor they are supposed to serve. Hounding a beneficiary into suicide for a debt that never existed should see those wealthy white Wellington bureaucrats strung up in the town square and lynched!
The Government MUST pay Teachers, Nurses, Midwives, Counsellors, Cleaners, Rest Home Workers, Police, Firefighters, Drs and public servants more money with better conditions, of that there can be no doubt. But in return the Government must demand the toxic cultures some of our public services have deteriorated into be cleansed and changed urgently.
It is not acceptable for beneficiaries to be treated so poorly and cruelly while we pay more to the Nurse who tends their physical wounds.
The new Government must look to use the huge consultancy budgets to instead fund NGOs like AAAP, PAPA, Just Speak and Child Poverty Action Group to produce reports that look into those that use the services provided to highlight the need for future as well as policy changes.
It is time for the Government to stand up to the Ministries.
Yes indeed- we need decisive political action. Looking to the legal system to right the obvious wrongs is a deadend. https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/03/13/must-read-it-needs-to-be-more-than-a-bbq-jacinda/
Lets hope some key announcments re things like sanctions are forthcoming very very soon
Yes Martyn,
It was a John Key legacy really since he is here today we need to remind him of every bad deed he committed upon us all the sorry despot he is.
First things first – we – middle class NZ – needs to pay more tax. Reducing government revenue through tax cuts and then slowly and incrementally (so no one takes any notice till it’s too late) starving the public services of funding is a common center right strategy that is playing out in the UK, the US and for the past 9 years in NZ.
We have one of the least progressive tax systems of any of our peers and a media that doesn’t connect the dots – under-funding in health, education and cruelty in the welfare system are symptoms of an entitled and gullible middle class. The same middle class that clings to it’s precious wealth with Gollum like tenacity and then acts surprised and angry when they public services they depend on for the stuff that really matters struggle to deliver.
Anyone else concerned by – or even noticed – the big push by private health insurance companies in NZ over past 2 to 3 years? Because that is the ultimate strategy behind all of this – push the middle class out of the public sector and into the expensive private sector.
Once you do this the public sector becomes even weaker and easier to starve of funding.
Will the current Labour government challenge or alter this trajectory? – Nothing I’ve heard or seen so far would suggest that it will. There appears to be political consensus in the West that citizens don’t want to pay for shared services through taxation and they act accordingly.
I heard on RNZ National news this afternoon: Jonathon Coleman, one of the most ineffective & USELESS this country has ever had, has stepped down to take up a position in the private hospitals sector.
As a retd. NZ Registered Nurse, I wrote to him a number of times over the years – was like water off a duck’s back!
Best of good riddance to him. It was too clear to me years ago that the “health” system was unbelievably underfunded by the Natl govt. Mind you, we’ve never had a health system in this country – what we’ve had & have is a sickness & disease system. The practice of allopathic medicine is a business, & healthy people don’t put dollars in the pocket of any doctor! Know too, that every single pharma drug is a toxic, poisonous chemical – I used to teach all about them! I walked away from my profession because of them (an ethical issue of some magnitude).
p.s. How come a transaction tax is shunned here in NZ? According to my understanding, it would result in a much fairer tax systemm with every single dollar going through the banking system taxed at very low value. Could/should banish GST – such a regressive tax on the poor.
Just get on and remunerate them for what their worth or more importantly, what they should have earnt over the past 9 years. When National complain about blowing the budget, just use their track record as evidence.