Waatea News Column: Sweeping public service cuts hurt Māori, Pacifica, Beneficiaries, Renters and the working classes

ByMartyn Bradbury

The sheer scale of public service cut backs is starting to become horrifically apparent as over a 1000 public servants inside Education and Oranga Tamariki are cut in a single day.

The new Government argues they are simply living up to their election promises, but when those promises amount to the mutilation of the common good and vandalising the egalitarian framework of our nation, keeping those promises and pretending that is ‘Democracy’ is nothing more than the tyranny of the majority.

Our public services have been stripped to the bone following our 40 year neoliberal experiment, and the recent slow gains under the last Labour led Government are being thrown out so that this new National led Government can find $2.9billion in tax breaks for the richest landlords!

Oranga Tamariki needs MORE staff, not job cuts!

Our Education system needs MORE staff, not job cuts!

Our Police, our Drs, our nurses, our teachers, ALL our public servants need more money and more resources and that can be done by properly taxing the richest amongst us!

Instead of a progressive taxation framework to properly fund our infrastructure, we are borrowing for tax cuts and taking out of the mouths of hungry children to put more into the pockets of the wealthiest landlords!

This isn’t social policy, it’s culture war revenge fantasies masquerading as social policy so that the Right’s rich donor mates get their interests looked after at the cost of our most vulnerable children!

These public service costs will hurt those with the least most!  Māori, Pacifica, Beneficiaries, Renters and the working classes, people who are reliant on public services will be the ones damaged most by these cuts, while the very rich will gain.

This Government is like an anti-Robin Hood, they steal from the poor to give to the rich!

New Zealand should be deeply ashamed of this week.

 

First published on Waatea News.

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23 Comments

  1. As Susan Edmonds said in Stuff on 18 April
    “Just over 3000 public sector job cuts have now been announced.
    The sector grew by 2582 in the six months to December last year, and by more than 2700 in the 12 months to June 2023”. This is not a big thing.

    1. And was Susan talking about the entire public service, or just Education and Oranga Tamariki? Because the difference in context does make it a big thing, doesnt it?

      1. I accept that the government’s blunt 7% reduction assumes chief executives will cut the right roles. CEs might cut front line roles and keep diversity and inclusion or managers for example.

        1. The point i am trying to make is that if there was increase of 5000 odd jobs over 32 different ministries, the government has just axed 1000 from just 2 ministries, then there are serious problems with the scale of cuts to two essential government departments.

  2. So all these groups did so well when all these extra public servants were looking after them.
    Less quantity more quantity should be the name of the game .

  3. They porked up by the 6.5% in the last year after being told by Labour there were going to be 2.5% cuts
    Going back to those levels is sensible. There has been no visible improvement in services

    1. Public services and public spending are good. Things will not improve until the public service is restored to where it was on 31 December, 1983.

      1. The country was heading for bankruptcy about that time drastic steps were needed to get us back on track similar to the present time

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