A Cautionary Tale

Obese on the Taxpayers' Dime

They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant.  Sadly the sunlight is not found too often on the pages and screens of the archaic media.  So, letting the searchlight shine has become a responsibility of the new media.  Here is the latest thrust and parry.

The NZ government has been trying to move the delivery of social services away from bureaucrats and government ministries to the private sector.  The government is attempting to recast its role to be funder and auditor, with the delivery of services contracted out to the private sector.  The rationale behind this change is that historically government bureaucracies have failed systematically and repeatedly to deliver services efficiently.  After all, in this country we have seen  a nationalised train company employing 18,000 people, largely to shuffle paper, not trains.  But more "employees" were being added by the day to help keep the country's unemployed numbers down.  In other words, the train business had become an arm of social welfare services.  [See Richard Prebble's account in I've Been Thinking (Auckland: Seaview Publishing, 1996)]


Now it is essential that if services are to be sub-contracted to private providers (charities, community groups, companies) they must be allowed to fail or contracts must be withdrawn if they are performing badly.  It's the "right" to go bankrupt which makes the private sector exponentially more effective than perpetuating, feather-bedding state bureaucracies, which, by their very nature, never fail.  So, one of the larger state-funded private providers of assistance to victims of violent abuse is on the verge of failure.  This is the sort of weeding out that is not just expected in the new policy: it is essential.

But the media have been full of Left wing criticism of this "debacle".  Here is Labour's Finance Spokesman, Grant Robertson:

The National Government has big questions to answer about how a provider of services to thousands of vulnerable New Zealanders is set to fold, Labour’s Finance spokesperson Grant Robertson says. Relationships Aotearoa which provides support and counselling to families, individuals and survivors of domestic violence is set to shut its doors, minus any last minute intervention.

"There are thousands of vulnerable people and families who rely on Relationships Aotearoa for critical services. The government cannot leave them in the lurch.  Like other non-governmental organisations, Relationships Aotearoa has been seriously underfunded in recent years. It has been asked to do more with less and the strain has clearly started to tell.

“National has serious questions to answer about how things have been allowed to reach this point.

More money.  Dollops of it.  And all would be roses and chocolates.  The media love this sort of mindless pablum.  Fortunately parts of the Fifth Estate--the free media--have been on to it.

This is typical Labour. If an NGO ["Non-Governmental Organization"--bureauc-speak for the "private sector"] has financial issues, then the answer is the taxpayer must throw more money at them. In the same breath they expect us to believe they would ever have lowered the deficit.
Let’s take a look at the latest accounts for this NGO:

• Income of $9.8 million – mainly from the Government
• Expenditure of $10.3 million
• Central expenditure has doubled in one year from $984k to $1,957k
• Equity of $1.5 million
• Cash in bank of $3 million
• Central salaries doubled from $551k to $1,065k

So the obvious conclusion from all this is it is all the fault of the Government – yeah right.
Does Labour ever find an issue, where the answer isn’t tax people more and spend more. [David Farrar, Kiwiblog]

The real message to Relationships Aotearoa is cut costs and live within your means.  If you cannot, you need to retire from the field or otherwise cease to exist.  Stop slurping at the trough of government funding to line your own central staff pockets or else.  Relationships Aotearoa must be made to face up to the chill winds of competition.  That is the whole point.  The Left will never get it.  People who demand careful stewards of taxpayers' hard earned funds will. It's a matter of sacred trust between government and the people.

Let's be thankful for the new media--for all its faults.