Category: imported_weekly
On Thursday the Minister of Social Welfare announced “the biggest changes to the benefit system in 50 years”. This latest announcement follows a proclamation last February by the previous Minister that the introduction of a single benefit was “the most significant reform of New Zealand 's welfare system in seventy years”.
It was Thomas Jefferson who warned, The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
There was a time when New Zealand was one of the most progressive countries on earth. Most famously, we were first to give women the vote, but we also led the way in our early approach to social welfare, and in the economic reforms of the eighties. What we failed to do during that period, however – due largely to Prime Minister David Lange’s thirst for a cup of tea - was to implement a much-needed social reform programme.
Allegations of corruption in New Zealand’s Parliament have now escalated to new heights. During a radio interview this week, Tariana Turia described how the Maori Party was offered $250,000 in return for supporting the Labour Party after the election. This “inducement” was intended to secure Labour the numbers to govern.
The whole country continues to wait anxiously for news that the killer of Chris and Cru Kahui, the twins brutally murdered in July, has been arrested.
This week’s column looks at three anniversaries – the first anniversary of the formation of the New Zealand Centre for Political Debate, the five year anniversary of 9/11 and the ten year anniversary of US welfare reform.
With last week’s newspapers headlines warning: “Keep kids inside after dark, police tell parents”, the public could be excused for thinking the reports were about Soweto, not Auckland.
Next week is the tenth anniversary of MMP, the Mixed Member Proportional voting system that was introduced as a result of a binding referendum in 1993. It was meant to deliver a better standard of government to New Zealand.
As a highly taxed country with the highest interest rates in the western world, it is little wonder that the spectre of local authority rates escalating - seemingly out of control - has the nation up in arms.
Over the last week, three controversies have served to undermine confidence in the effectiveness of state education: the threat of strike action by secondary teachers, the decline in primary school children’s maths skills, and a religious instruction debacle that looks set to result in a massively unworkable bureaucratic nightmare!
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