PEDA really is just whanau ora for Pacific peoples. The Government selected a private organisation and charged them with the responsibility of resolving some of the issues that exist for Pacific peoples. From what I can see, PEDA is expected to work alongside existing organisations that are charged to achieve parallel objectives for Pacific peoples, and to fill any gaps that exist for the target group/s. It will mean that the Government doesn’t need to take responsibility for coordinating this. Ideologically it makes sense for the Nats to sink funds in to a private organisation and charge them with resolving some of the challenges plaguing Pasifika communities. It would allow them (the Nat Government) to shirk their responsibilities and shrink the bureaucracy. The National Party have made no qualms in the past, of expressing a desire to see the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs disestablished – this Pacific Economic Development Agency was suppose to be their first step towards this…but it’s backfired.
What’s worse for the National Government is that the negative reaction received by the PEDA initiative is the same type of reaction that would have been given to ‘whanau ora’, if there had been a higher level of transparency around what ‘whanau ora’ would mean in practice. Who ever has been advising the nats on the Whanau ora initiative has been smart to advise them to keep the detail to a minimum. One sniff of privatisation by the public – and an outcry similar to that received by PEDA would have been inevitable. Unfortunately – the general public is still so confused about ‘whanau ora’, that they are tentative about reacting and probably would prefer to give it the benefit of the doubt.
If you asked Tariana about ‘whanau ora’ – she’d probably start talking about ‘tino rangatiratanga’ and how this is Maori having control over who provides services and how services are provided to Maori. If you had an honest conversation with John Key or Bill English (which is unlikely to happen) – they’d tell you that it will enable the Government to devolve responsibilities for this sector to private organisations, therefore enabling them to cut back on Government spending. Personally – I don’t care whether its Maori, Pakeha or Pacific who own the private organisations, I don’t want dodgy back room deals being made where hidden agendas are rife and transparency is non-existent. Our Pacific communities don’t want that either – that’s why they’ve been jumping up and down over the allocation of funding to PEDA.
I do wonder whether the Government are now concerned about whanau ora – as more details emerge about this, it’s really just going to shape up to be a much bigger version of PEDA.
Agreed
Wonder what happens next? PEDA proposal should be published complete with date of writing. Must have been made long before the Budget to be ready, approved, and printed.
Anything that cuts down on bureaucrats is a good thing…mind you that would cut down on where Labour gets most of their MPs from (not conjecture but fact)
http://homepaddock.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/out-of-government-in-to-government/
In other words Labour gets in people who are both qualified and experienced
@Spud
Also people with little experience of agriculture (which is kind of a big deal in NZ), business, law and health but hey thats all good
Isn’t Dalziel a lawyer? King dental health, mmmm?
Didn’t Mallard do some farming stuff? What about farmer Phil?
@Spud
Thats why I said little…all theory little practical
It also suggests that Labour gets a whopping 2/3rds of its MPs from unproductive sectors: Govt 28%, Union 19% and Education 16%
Unproductive in that they don’t create jobs or employ people as such (in comparison to Business and Agriculture)
In fact I probably shouldn’t have posted this because it will help clue them up about how to reconnect with their people
hint: attract more people from a Business and Agriculture background and less from Education and Unions
I completely disagree about the practical experience thing, but too tired to argue
Chris 73 said:
Sure mate…until an unchecked oil well blows, the power and mobile phone companies rip us off, someone dies because the wrong drugs got approved, an airline’s planes fall out of the sky, and an insider trading scam wipes out a bunch of mum and dad investors.
Then its “woe, woe, woe”
@Loota
So remind me exactly what Govt it was that sold off Telecom and has allowed them to rip us off…I do recall a scandel about improper drugs a few years back as well as a certain little problem with blood testing…and oh yes how many finance companies fell over during a certain govts reign while they increased the numbers of govt workers
Great load of good that did
Chris73 said:
Hahahaha I’m going to fall over laughing
that’s right, business don’t like to hire employees who can read and write or think and stand up for themselves,…
It so weird that you are trumpeting the lines of the neocon no-Government is Good Government free market idiology from the US Republican party
LOL Chris73, market regulations and oversight were insufficient in those instances – often because of politicians kowtowing to ridiculous free market ideology – so lets fix things by taking away all market regulation and oversight?
Marvellous powers of logic
Still laughing
@Loota
I actually said as such because of course education, unions and the govt are importent but remember they get the money to operate from business and agriculture (mostly)
I guess the main point is maybe Labour could try expanding where they get their candidates from
Maybe a small business owner/operatore rather then a union rep…a farmer as opposed to a lecturer etc etc to help balance out the perception that most voters have of Labour
@Loota
So I guess you don’t know which Govt was in power at that time then
@ Chris73
doesn’t really matter does it, because its the free market neocon low regulation ideology which is the fail – whichever party happens to espouse it at the time.
And who broke the telco monopoly? It certainly wasn’t Maurice Williamson, who deliberately did nothing about it.
Well actually as I recall I suggested less bureaucrats is a good thing and you said that if that were the case then lots of bad things would happen
I then pointed out that most of the bad things happened under a govt (i cant quite remember which one it was
) which increased the number of bureaucrats
So I’m basically saying that we have too many and we could lose some without much repercussions
Chris73 said:
Well yeah, Labour seems to have an image in some quarters of being anti-business, anti-money, anti-rural, while National has the image of being the natural home for private enterprise and financial ambition
So I think your points here have merit.
@Loota
In that case I’d like to have my comments removed as it might help Labour
Social services provided by private companies out to make a buck is the most inefficient means available to get those services out to the public. First of all the private businesses will cut personnel to the minimum which will result in services not being available in a reasonable time, then they will cut services by not giving them out at all and on top of those they carry the deadweight loss of profit.
But DTB, the NACT govt benefits by washing their hands of their responsibility and if it fraks up, they can wring their hands sincerely and blame the privateers!
A Govt with all care and no responsibility, wouldn’t that be luverly.
@Chris73: Do Treasury mandarins count as ‘bureaucrats’ too?
@Chris73: OK, so the civil service and other public employees are funded via taxes on business etc.—but those same businesses depend on the civil servants and public employees for things like roads, regulations for transport, same for aircraft etc., the courts etc.—so in other words the public service provides the framework that allows business to be conducted in a civilised and fair way.
So, without the public service, business would not be able, as efficiently as they do, to “get the money to operate from business and agriculture”.
So, who, now, depends on whom?
The truth seems to be that in a civilised society public and private need each other completely. And a mark of a civilised society is to accept this and have mutual respect, in my opinion.
This seems to fly in the face of government procurement policy which requires that there be a tender or similar competitive process before awarding a contract of this size. In New South Wales this matter would be immediately investigated by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Here the Auditor General fulfils a similar role. So is she undertaking such an Inquiry?
@Steeve Reeves
I guess one way of looking at it is what would happen if NZs govt depts stopped functioning…well bartering is still widely used so really not a lot would happen (maybe more localised produce and the greens would love it)
and agri/bus stopped functioning…well no money for govt depts
so really agri/business can function without govt depts but govt depts cannot function without agri/business
Congratulations Carmel. Glad someone else is finally on the same page
It looks as if PEDA LTD were always just going to play community providers off for the lowest bid and clip the ticket on the remainder.
Then put the squeeze on the providers to deliver it’s accountability stats.
In essence PEDA would act as a pseudo gov’t agency that the actual gov’t could offload the Pasifikan jobless stats too and be seen as being proactive while washing it’s hands of the dirty work of actually providing jobs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=144&objectid=10654252
Chris73 said:
This is the argument over whether starvation or running out of water is going to kill you first, in order to determine whether water is more important to live or food is.
Uh, all I know is that life gets pretty tough without both.