The providers of social services to children and whanau who contract to Oranga Tamariki but sometimes other state institutions like health and education, are currently under attack by the coalition government who seem dictated to by ACT and NZ First to a surprising degree. As Gordon Campbell has pointed out the minor parties, cobbling together something like 12% of the vote are running the policy show. It is far worse than First Past The Post.

The neo liberal and managerial ‘revolution’ in the late 1980s and 1990s created social dislocation and unemployment as production moved offshore or became centralised. The agenda: rid the state of assets and their management, plus the management of social provision, because the state’s bad at management for a variety of reasons: its staff are comfortable, in a job for life, bureaucrats and the system is subjected to vote grabbing, political opportunism.  Where the state must still be involved, separate funder and provider (that is, operate within the structure of managerialism). The state becomes funder of what the private sector cannot really do (although the private sector would like to do everything where there’s a possible profit) and maintains accountability. The providers(whether for profit or not for profit) provide diversity and efficiency.

Initially the community providers were critical of what was happening (and were promoting a better model, or at least a return to social democracy) as, at the same time, they picked up some of the pieces. But by the end of the 1990s the state as funder was controlling the providers through criteria and reporting requirements. Some providers grew as the requirements became stricter and more voluminous – getting rid of the small scale and the amateur (running a performing arts course for 10 students involved as much policy as running a polytech).   You even began to get multinationals entering the scene. Any criticism of the system per se, other than administratively, disappeared.

There have always been tensions: Corporates making product can separate divisions: management, R&D, design, production (go where labour is cheap); and the market (plus the brand) is the reporter of outcomes. But even in business there were problems. The state has sometimes had to buy back assets (Kiwirail, Air NZ for example) for the private sector can sometimes just asset strip then bugger off and then there was the subprime mortgage fiasco …

And when it comes to social provision it is much more complex.  Provision is not a product and outcomes are harder to measure. Sometimes, as with Oranga Tamariki, the state, as well as the funder, has remained one of the providers. In fact, the state continues to provide a great deal: the corrections service, education and health; even though the private sector tries to get hold of as much as it can (private hospitals, private schools, radiology etc). The community-based, not for profit provider has become the NGO, with tendencies toward expansion into corporate scale, even some multinational sinews forming. Tino rangatiratanga makes it even more complicated and dense. Or could it provide clarity?

So, what are the politicians up to at the moment? Ideologically geriatric, they are probably just trying to strip out the state and the NGO sector is seen as part of the state: downsize the funder, downsize the provider. All these dead beats need to get their shit together and get on like everyone else rather than be a burden on the taxpayer. Or go to jail. And then we might start a factory in the prison – return to the workhouse. And get a brown face to front it.

In terms of opposing this latest piece of demolition which it will cost a lot to fix and meanwhile the most vulnerable suffer, the comparison in cost of ‘fixing’ a child and whanau as opposed to accommodating someone in prison is a key argument.

They remain embarrassed by dead or beaten up children.

ACT and NZ First are ignorant shits and National is gutless.