Written By: - Date published: 7:36 am, December 14th, 2012 - 34 comments
Tariana Turia’s on-again off-again retirement is on-again. She will not be standing in 2014, and is looking to her “legacy”. Unfortunately, Whanau Ora is profoundly flawed. But if Turia wants a legacy to be proud of she still has time…
Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, November 15th, 2012 - 38 comments
I don’t really have time to write something, but there’s just too much stupid this morning to let it pass. Nathan Guy heads today’s list, but Craig Foss, Tariana Turia, Bill English and Hekia Parata also need mention.
Written By: - Date published: 12:50 pm, June 28th, 2012 - 23 comments
It’s not acceptable for the government to keep funding a service provider after fraud has been clearly reported. It’s not acceptable for a Minister to be aware of “problems” and not even read the audit report before allocating further funding. Will anyone be held to account?
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 pm, February 7th, 2012 - 129 comments
Tariana Turia is making hollow threats to leave the government but she might be pushed first. Winston Peters has wasted no time showing how opposition politics is done, using his first question time back to skewer Turia, exposing the massive rorting her Whanau Ora programme. Turia made a slush fund for her mates with our money. She has to go.
Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, March 23rd, 2011 - 10 comments
Turia’s learning the price of loyalty. Her Whanau Ora is getting cuts. Key knows she’ll roll over and vote for any budget to keep her seat in the limo. Hide’s 2025 Taskforce is for the chop too. Key says it’s not worth the money. Never was. 300K down the drain. Brash off the gravy train; back to corned beef and peas. Bet Key’s silly cycleway won’t be cut.
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, November 18th, 2010 - 10 comments
Back in April Marty G raised questions about the accountability of Whanau Ora providers. The fiasco of the Taeaomanino Trust shows that those concerns were well founded. Why has $1 million in funding been awarded to a Trust with an extremely chequered history, and that is the subject of an open Police investigation? Is this an example of the kind of accountability that the government promised for Whanau Ora?
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, November 17th, 2010 - 33 comments
What little we know of Whanau Ora is that it is essentially the privatisation of government delivery of social services to private groups. Rather than deliver services themselves, government departments entrust taxpayer funds to small groups that often have little or no track record to do the job instead. It’s an invitation for corruption.
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 pm, May 11th, 2010 - 56 comments
You can’t mix oil and water. You can swirl things about for a while and it may appear you’ve mixed them but there is an essential difference that can’t be crossed. Likewise, there is an illusion that John Key, like some alchemist of old, has magically transcended fundamental political facts to make a National/Maori Party relationship work. But illusions can’t last forever.
Written By: - Date published: 3:17 pm, May 8th, 2010 - 23 comments
Bill English is trying to assuage National Party member who are concerned that the Party is betraying its principles (ha!) and giving too much to the Maori Party saying “all those decisions are being made in the context of the longer-term view, reaching our objectives over the next four or five years” – winning a second term trumps principle. It’s about power for its own sake.
Written By: - Date published: 1:36 pm, May 6th, 2010 - 25 comments
The budget for Whanau Ora, which has been billed as a magical, ineffable revolution in social welfare will be just $33 million a year. What a joke. Whanau Ora’s budget will be less than twice that of that other great fizzer, the John Key Memorial Cycleway. I predict it will have about twice the effect as well.
Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, April 9th, 2010 - 21 comments
Even Guyon Espiner is concerned about the lack of quality analysis and policy design. If the government were serious about helping families in need it’s priority would be getting people back into work and better pay and conditions for low income workers. The fact that is has gone with this Whanau Ora nonsense shows it has no real intention of tackling the causes of this country’s social ills.
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, April 9th, 2010 - 13 comments
Maori activists who want a better deal on the foreshore and seabed can rest assured that the Maori Party is about to sell them out. Tariana Turia just got herself a shiny new portfolio as Minister for Whanau Ora, whatever it is. Do you really think she’s going to give up a control over a policy that National has agreed to just for her? Do you really think she’ll stand strong on her principles over the foreshore and seabed if it means losing the Crown limo?
Written By: - Date published: 6:42 pm, April 8th, 2010 - 41 comments
The Whanau Ora Taskforce report is out and it fails to even attempt to answer simple questions like ‘why is Whanau Ora the best way to help families’. It provides no evidence it will work. Check out the graphic to the right – what does it even mean? All we do know is Whanau Ora will put public money in unaccountable private hands and be privatisation by stealth.
Written By: - Date published: 11:48 pm, April 7th, 2010 - 40 comments
Whanau Ora is, apparently, about giving a big pile of money to private groups under so-called ‘high trust’ contracts and expecting them to get on and deliver a whole range of public services that have previously been the responsibility of accountable government departments. What could go wrong? Quite a bit suggests this story
Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, March 12th, 2010 - 8 comments
Cuts to prisoner rehabilitation, night classes, and the Super Gold Card aren’t about saving money. The government is only too happy to sign blank cheques for stupid projects like Transmission Gully and the Holiday Highway on the vaguest cost estimates. No, these successful policies are having the financial life bled out of them because they contradict National’s ideology.
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 13 comments
It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 41 comments
Asked to explain his billion dollar policy Key says: “Whanau Ora is a way of saying we’re going to measure outcomes, instead of just inputs into a family to give greater flexibility to a third party private providerâ€. I take that to be a long way of saying “I don’t know what Whanau Ora isâ€.
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