Waatea News Column: National’s new draconian Oranga Tamariki welfare reforms are anti-Māori, anti-women and anti-human
It’s difficult to know where to begin in attempting to sift the outright spite and maliciousness of National’s new welfare reforms. Firstly, let’s just acknowledge that while National say beneficiary and gangs, their angry voters hear Māori.
Let’s also acknowledge that these reforms are anti-Māori, anti-women and anti-human because they won’t in any way shape or form help those requiring welfare, they will only exacerbate poverty and cause a myriad of counter productive outcomes.
Punishing anyone in a gang (and their affiliates) with cutting off welfare simply pushes those people deeper into gang life.
Punishing mothers who don’t provide the name of the father simply hurts the children of those families.
Punishing mothers for not vaccinating their children avoids the obligations the health system has for reaching out to those communities.
But most egregious of all is the idea that National wants every beneficiary house with children in them that tests positive for meth to have their details passed along to Oranga Tamariki for investigation for possible uplift.
The audacity of National suggesting this after the state house meth testing hysteria that saw $120million needlessly spent for decontamination that was never scientifically harmful and saw hundreds of beneficiaries kicked out onto the street in the middle of a homelessness crisis is enough to make you gasp.
Not content to ignore their past failure on this issue, National now want to give Oranga Tamariki, an organisation already detested for their racist profiling uplift techniques, to now have the power to remove children on nothing more than a flawed meth testing regime?
Remember, the tests can’t tell when the meth was smoked or who smoked it.
You want Oranga Tamariki to have that level of unchecked power on top of their already unchecked powers?
National should be shamed for these cruel policy ideas. How dare they attempt to implement this spite as social policy.
First published on Waatea News.
More desperation as we get nearer to the 2020 elections soimon knows its his last chance so he is throwing everything at it. As for the chosen one lux-on who knows buggar all about out politics after listening to his outdated noahs ark ideas on RNZ I can’t see anything world class about him when it comes to politics.
Yes Martyn they are spiteful but we have known this what about the 40% that vote for this lot and what does it say about our country and some of the very spiteful people here
“Oranga Tamariki, an organisation already detested for their racist profiling uplift techniques, to now have the power to remove children on nothing more than a flawed meth testing regime?”
Please provide some evidence for the profiling comment? You won’t be able because you are so wrong it is laughable. You really do need to do some proper research before you start firing from the hip. Any option to uplift any child would need to approved by a Family Court Judge – and their really don’t like to allow this, so, once again, please provide some evidence to substantiate your ridiculous claim.
In terms of the meth testing – Oranga Tamariki would need a hair follicle test of the individual before the extreme action of an uplift. Just having evidence that meth was used at a residence would not be enough to justify an uplift.
The meth tests themselves are also suspect BECAUSE THEY RETURN A POSITIVE TEST FOR FLY SPRAY RESIDUE
FFS. I’ve been making this point since 2015 at least, and everyone’s still blathering on about the meth tests instead of looking at the MASSIVE underlying failings that the meth tests have.
How many houses use fly spray? A lot. Go on. Spray fly spray on the five surfaces that get swabbed with the same swab and sit there and wonder if you were sold a lie that perhaps the “contaminated” rental property you paid thousands to remediate was nothing more than ….
Fly spray.
Good luck shaming National. They don’t feel shame. Or pity, or remorse. There are two things that motivate the National Party — money and power, and they’re inextricably linked. The more money you have, the more you can spend on smear campaigns, social media misinformation, and carpet-bombing electorates with unsightly billboards full of disingenuous arse in order to get elected. The more power you have, the more tax-payer money you get to fritter away on really important stuff like corporate welfare, tax cuts for the wealthy, pointless flag referendums, or $70,000 stone signs for the MBIE. You can’t embarrass people who exhibit all the human warmth of a fucking glacier. They just don’t give a toss. We’re grubby proles whose only purpose is to shut up, keep our heads down and be thankful for the scraps they toss us.