John Banks and Dotcom: A love most misunderstood

I don't know what's the most embarrassing thing about the whole John Banks scandal, that apparently our politicians can be bought off for such a relatively paltry sum (Sarkozy was allegedly offered $50 million Euro's from Gaddafi, now that's helicopter money) or that Banks has been reduced to a doddery old man, remembering nada, screaching out "I know nothing" to the media in true Sargent Schultz style, nervously eyeing the exit door as the Government dangles the fear of imaginary boat people above the public in order to try and distract them.

No reasonable person could think anything other than Banks has been purposefully hiding the identity of his donors. Kim Dotcom, Skycity...it begs the question of who else contributed to the almost a million dollars raised for his failed Mayoral campaign. Are we talking cigarette companies, oil, a baby killing factory for petfood? If Banks was happy to pocket $50k from Dotcom (sorry, my bad, 2 x $25k, lest we forget), to then go on to lobby on his behalf to Williamson (whom he is both, according to Dotcom, very, very close to, while concurrently, according to Williamson after the scandal broke, nothing more than a co-worker), who else has he been lobbying for?

It would be very interesting to see whether names crop up that are tied in any way to potentially profiting from the legislation that ACT has been putting forward to as part of their confidence and supply agreement with National.

Talking about National: Key has shown himself to be a politicians politician. Congratulations to the man for showing that nothing can get in the way of keeping hold of power, and that includes ethics which is an area that is so wide in it's meaning to be absolutely meaningless. These are the people that are in control of our legislature, and these are the same people that have been misusing it by pushing through an unsurpassed amount of legislation through urgency which means pesky things like the democratic process in the form of select committees and public submissions can be skipped over.

Our parliament is vested with a ridiculous amount of power, more so than any other democratic first world country. This means we have to be very, very careful about the people we elect and the standards that they hold. People who don't know what ethics are, people who are more interested in pursuing the interests of political donors...as a country we should be extremely concerned right now. If ever we needed the Fourth Estate to stand up and do their job it's now.

Let's hope to god Kim Kardashian doesn't get married again and sidetrack the lot of them.

Paula Bennett Digresses All Over the Buffet Table

Address to New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services
Introduction

E nga mana, e nga reo, e te iwi o te motu, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

Hello. I’d like to start with some solid ass kissing where I describe how wonderful you all are and make a bad joke that will have you politely laughing, but more importantly, warm you towards me and have you on my side. 

As long as you’re not still standing there once I reach the buffet table, because that gets messy.

Who were we?

We are a proud people because we have learned to stand.

We believe that this is a land of hard work, work being defined as working for commercial interests and reward for effort being defined by the amount of one’s pay packet.

Flashback: Think of our ancestors.

From Maori who looked after each other and fought for what they believed in, whatever that was.

To our first visitors, who chopped down all the trees, lived off it and then forgot to leave again.

But are we still proud? 

We are proud of the All Blacks...when they win. *pause for laughter* We are proud of our flora and fauna. *pause for standing ovation, hat throwing*

But are we proud of each other? *pause for head scratching, murmurs of confusion*

Is our society really as simple as the haves and have nots? 

Do we like each other? 

Do we have to? 

Should we wish for society to always remain how it was? 

Personally I think not. We shouldn’t be proud of each other, divisions of wealth is made up commie crap, let’s punch our neighbours in the face and set fire to our history books. 

To stand still is to stagnate, so surely we should take the best of what we have known, the best of who we were and look to who we can be… But I digress. Sorry, nipped over to the buffet table.

We used to have a benefit system that provided for a few because only a few needed it.

We were a nation that saw welfare as a backstop, as something you went on if you hit dire straits, cracking your favourite tape and needing a replacement.

Welfare was for sympathetic figures like beaten women or widows, so that was okay then. 

But what about today?

In the context of welfare; who are we now and why am I shouting this?

Now we have 220,000 children living in welfare dependent households. 220,000 teeny tiny parasitic leeches suckling on the teats of the nation, stealing the milk from those that are worthy of not having been born into the homes of the poor.

We have nearly 7,000 babies born to teen mums, most of who will be on a benefit for at least seven of the next 10 years and many for a lifetime. I think we all just threw up a little bit in our mouth out of disgust.

One third of women currently on the DPB started on the benefit as teen mums. That is more than 30,000 people and I refer to them as people lightly.

Is this the system we envisaged? Giving welfare to people who need it?

It is not who we were. It is who we are. But is it who we want to be? Who are you and why am I at the buffet table again?

I am the Minister of Social Development. I probably should have explained that earlier. You probably thought I worked as part of the catering crew.

I head up this mammoth beast we call the welfare system and I will not sit back and accept that this is the best we can do by people.

I do not apportion blame because I certainly hint at it and it starts with p and ends with oor people.

I think no less of someone on a benefit than I do on any other New Zealander the parasitic greedy low lives.

In fact I often think more of them because I acknowledge and respect how damned hard a life it can be since we make it so.

So, I will believe in them, their ability and their contribution. For they certainly exist, we know this because of statistics pointing out how many of them there are.

I will believe in their path out of welfare into a path with opportunity. An opportunity of removing welfare.

I will reform the system. Just me. Because we fired all the public workers.

Welfare reform

Solo parents. Nobody likes them, so I’ll bring them up. Nobody likes snooty ‘thinks they’re better than everyone else’ UE grads, floating back in from overseas, using the system to get jobs because they’re too lazy to do it themselves. They probably even ask for a handout for clothes and they’ve already got a wardrobe full of recent purchases when they weren’t filling up their suitcases with duty free. Bastards.

Just in case you’ve got a kid that’s an unemployed recent graduate, I should mention that I’m not talking about your kid. Just those other ones, the ones that are using a service we provide when that money could go to sick, disabled children with wracking coughs who have a puppy with only three legs.

We need to help people off welfare and what better way to do that than to stop giving them welfare. No welfare equals no welfare dependency. We’ll having finally won the war against welfarians.

Benefit changes for those on DPB

Historically the system hasn’t expected sole parents to look for work but legislation is changing this by creating more jobs and providing affordable childcare. *pause for laugh*

It is time to make the hard calls. Not the hard calls of tackling the reasons behind welfare dependence such as the poverty cycle, alcohol and drug dependency et el, that would be too hard. But telling people that they have to be ‘work ready’ by sitting by the door with an empty briefcase ready in one hand and a one-paragraph CV in the other, that’s doable.

This is just the start. Invalids can get off their asses as well.

Transforming contracting

Government is no longer going to be providing services because by the time National is done there won’t be much of Government left. This is why we’re going to be contracting work out so that taxpayer money can go towards funding ideologically driven organisations to get their hands on the most vulnerable of our society. We won’t tell you what to do, because we don’t really care.

Family Start

We’re paying $5 – 6k per baby under Family Start when babies would only be worth $300 - $400 in the private sector as they’re terribly unproductive. 

Some providers are doing a great job, but some aren’t. Instead of implementing what works across the board we’re going to close sections down and contract it all out to the private sector. 

I know what you demand of me as your Minister. Mind reading just being one of my many skills.

You demand that I provide quality services to those families that need it most and that I do it in partnership with you, Christian Social Services.

Green Paper to White Paper and Action Plan

We’ve used a lot of paper during my term as Minister. Some of it green, some of it white, a lot of it money coloured as we pay out massive amounts to consultants so we can delay any kind of action plan.

Conclusion

So who do we want to be? 

A society that stands next to each other, that supports those who need a space to learn. Henceforth the poor will be used as desks.

A society that develops and brings out people's potential. The poor will be used as human bras.

A gutsy, smart little country that thrives and develops. Giant human bras and human corsets.

It’s who we were, who we should have always been and who we will become. Who? Also: What?

It’s time to make the hard calls. Let’s cast the poor adrift and use their children as pet food.

Original Speech: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1204/S00264/bennett-nz-council-of-christian-social-services.htm

Ruth Richardson Speaks to a Nation. A Nation is Confused.

A year ago God struck down Christchurch with an earthquake in retaliation for NZ clinging to social democratic values.

The worlds tectonic plates are sentient and possibly communists. Change is coming for the beautiful people, like Steve Jobs, though he is possibly not so beautiful now. iThings have transformed the very fabric of how we function. Politics, public policy and the public sector have been absent from this revolution except for all those revolutions that have been happening around the world, but that’s neither here nor there.

The relationship between the individual and the state has evolved fitfully and incrementally in developed nations and latterly more violently in nations where citizens struggle to overthrow despotism or escape the tyranny of the elites. Nations such as the United States, Greece and the United Kingdom.

On the upside, the i-era means the locus of power is with the individual. Never before have the iDesitute and iHomeless been more powerful.

iIndividuals are DYNAMIC, know no BOUNDRIES, with FORCES UNLEASHED.

On the downside, the bankruptcy of big state "solutions" has exposed economies and populations to wrenching change of business as usual. Big state “solutions” like bailing out all the finance companies with tax money so they have the opportunity to cause yet another global recession ten years down the line while CEO’s make millions in bonuses.

So against this backdrop here is my sketch of what the new institutional order might look like for politics, policy and the public sector over the next ten years.

There is a pervasive worry that the politicians are not up to it and I can confidentially suggest that this will be the case after people have read this; that much of political discourse has degenerated into a form of reality TV contest, but that may be my inner-Snookie speaking.

The democratically elected who are answerable to the public are no longer capable of fixing things. Instead of voting them out and putting in place those that can improve things we should instead hand over the power to the private sector, for they are like gods. Worship them, iMortals.

The Generation Z politicians, the so-called digital natives, will have chips in their brains that will enable them to instinctively understand the demand to constrain the reach of the state after hours and hours of playing SimCity and reducing taxes to 1%. The style will be one that celebrates diversity of the wealthy and the elite, honours personal opportunity and responsibility, and eschews the privileges of insiders, with outhouses to be installed in all corporate owned housing sectors. The focus will be on outcomes and a championship of the individual choices that can better lift performance and so promote better outcomes. If you choose to be poor the outcome will be starvation which will mean less welfare and more money for shoes for the rich.

The sacred cow of the state as the primary economic driver and social crutch will be well and truly slaughtered and the new generation of politicians will live to tell the tale. Hindus are therefore not invited to this new Utopia but the bbq promises to be amazing. Ladies, bring a plate.

Policy will be radical, we’ll keep hold of a pretence of regulations within the financial world and money will rain down on the rich like slaughtered holy cow blood.

As the dawn breaks and we realise that we’ve spent all our asset sales money that was keeping us temporarily afloat, we will embrace the noble and achievable mission to finding a mate for our money.

All this is known as drunk typing.

The big policy reform is de-friending the state for being a loser.

This friendless loser has traditionally been evil enough to monopolise health, education and social welfare, areas which are disgustingly enough not generating profits for iIndividuals.

These "Dirty Commie Berlin Walls" that stop the making of profits out of education and health will slowly but surely fall with personal technology aiding the exercise of personal power and control as I use my iPhone to buy stocks in Auckland Girls Grammar and asset strip Starship Hospital.

The consequences of social welfare without personal responsibility has been cruelly exposed time and again with people daring to be poor and kept alive by the noble elite.

Burke's "little platoons" have much to commend them and efforts to pass the baton from the state to the non-state sector will surely intensify as more Corporations step in to sponsor sports events at military bases.
The problem is that the private sector has innovated apace, but the public sector has not. The private sector both innovated a global financial breakdown and innovated away to subsequently tap into public sector funds.

In New Zealand we still insist on providing public education and health and doing so to some people who might otherwise not be able to afford this. Thankfully we have seen sense and have begun massive public sector cuts, but we need to define what the state should be doing, which is quickly disappearing, never to be seen again.

Governments must be determined to make a fist to take the public sector by the tail and to really swing it about until it hits the private sector ceiling and is finally put out of its misery. The mandarins are the unelected government with real staying power and have every incentive to entrench a discredited status quo unless reformed root and branch. I must remember to eat lunch and tidy up the backyard.

The evidence is overwhelming that a large state makes for low growth. The evidence is my say so, and truly what more is needed.

The DYNAMISM waiting to be UNLEASHED over the next ten years drives my optimism that the economic and social ambitions that nations hold dear can be achieved. That ambition is that every rich person will be able to buy the luxury car fleet of their dreams.

However, if you don’t let us dismantle the public sector to make way for the private the hand break will be applied and the country will surely crash into the “Berlin Wall” while the social powder keg explodes killing us all.
Steve Jobs gave us phones and music players and different types of computers. We must build on this success by selling to Apple and becoming iNew Zealand.

* iRuth Richardson is a former Finance Minister. This article was the result of a drug binge drinking session while reading Ayn Rand and listening to Pink Floyd.

Original article can be found here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10799315