Friday, January 22, 2021

ACT response to Grainne Moss resignation

 ACT's response to the resignation of Oranga Tamariki CE Graine Moss is spot on. Karen Chhour is part-Maori and grew up in fostercare so has firsthand experience of CYF intervention:

“Oranga Tamariki (OT) will remain ungovernable and continue to fail children unless it’s allowed to focus on the one thing it was established to do, ensure the wellbeing of children,” says ACT’s Social Development and Children spokesperson Karen Chhour.


“Until OT’s mandate and rules are tidied up it is unlikely anybody of high quality will put themselves forward to run the organisation.


“Well intentioned as it might have been, making the chief executive of the agency focus on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi when responding to the needs of Maori children does not always result in the right outcomes for those children.


“Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its Act should be colour-blind, utterly child-centric and open to whatever solution will ensure a child’s wellbeing.


“Looking at decisions through the lens of s7AA imposes unworkably competing duties on the chief executive.


“Ethnicity and culture should not be a determining factor in deciding what is in the best interests of our children.


“Shortly ACT will be proposing a Member’s Bill that addresses these issues.


“The Government should drop the politically correct façade that’s holding the agency back and address s7AA itself.”

 

You can read more about OT's responsibilities under Section 7AA here. 

Statistic of the Day

 Statistics New Zealand released latest migration data yesterday. This fact is incredibly sobering:

From April 2020 to November 2020 there were 77,600 arrivals and 133,000 departures, compared to 4.44 million arrivals and 4.43 million departures in the same period in 2019.

There are lots of interesting graphs as well.

I often muse that if a historian was looking back from the future and saw just the graphs (these and the very many others displaying economic activity,etc) they'd be totally non-plussed at what could have caused such a catastrophic and rapid impact. I'd have guessed at a massive war ... but that would leave more questions than answers.

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Appreciating our essential services

 A courier driver gets caught short and pees out of sight of the road on a plant.

The property owner is disgusted and in her fury releases the footage to the media.

Now that's what I call appreciation for our essential services.


John Bishop: "Smiles all very well but we need a bold vision"

That's the title used in a column by John Bishop (father of National MP Chris Bishop) published in today's DomPost.

I used to think the PM so loved her position and the cheers of the adoring crowd that she would not do anything that risked losing or lessening her position at the pinnacle of admiration.

I have now moved away from that to the much less charitable view that she doesn’t know what to do. She has no real vision of what she wants New Zealand to be like, beyond the usual clichés.

I shared the second view when she was an opposition MP with the social development portfolio and have never had reason to change it.