"Protecting frontline services"

When National embarked on slash and burn cuts to the public service, Prime Minister Chris Luxon was clear that he expected frontline services to be protected. He lied:

The government has scrapped part of a work programme designed to prevent people ending up in emergency housing because the social development ministry cannot cope with the workload, official documents show.

A December MSD report to Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka said that was partly because it was too busy with work related to changes to the Jobseeker benefit.

[...]

"We do not recommend progressing further with phase one work at this time due to insufficient frontline capacity and wider organisational pressures," the report said.

"MSD's frontline capacity is currently oversubscribed, and there are wider organisational pressures because of the focus on implementing initiatives to support other government targets, including the Jobseeker target."

Another way of saying "oversubscribed" is "understaffed". And its worth noting that MSD cut 700 roles last May to meet National's arbitrary bodycount targets. And now they can't do the basic stuff the government asks them to do.

This is what cuts give us: a dysfunctional public sector which can no longer perform basic functions. And that's fine with National, because its not like a Minister paid $304,300 a year or any of their rich wanker Koru Club friends think they will ever need those functions. Instead, they're happy to make everything suck for the rest of us, so they can posture as "fiscally responsible" and hand over billions in cash to landlords.

Wouldn't it be nice to have politicians who actually represented New Zealanders, rather than rich people?

No wonder she didn't want to answer

Last week, Parliament threatened the Chief Statistician with contempt to force her to produce basic statistics on last year's census. This morning, she finally produced them. And its become clear why she wanted to keep them secret: because the census was a disaster:

The government's chief statistician Liz MacPherson has finally revealed how many New Zealanders did not complete last year's census.

Ms MacPherson had been threatened with being held in contempt of Parliament, prompting her to write to MPs yesterday to confirm almost one in seven Kiwis didn't complete the census.

Partial responses at the 2014 census were two percent. That number more than doubled to five percent last year.

That's a hell of a data hole, and it means the information we use to plan our schools, hospitals, and election boundaries may not be reliable. As for who is responsible, it was National who pushed for the all-online census, a method which deliberately excluded anyone without an internet connection. And they did this not because the technology would work, but to save money. Instead, it looks like it is going to be a very expensive decision. So naturally, they're all pretending that it is someone else's fault...

Hopefully StatsNZ has learned the lesson: online is a supplement, not a replacement. Things like the census are too important to do on the cheap. Hopefully they'll remember that next time, and demand the money to do it properly.

The false economy of cuts

When they were in government, National cut funding to NZTA's compliance section to save a few pennies. People died as a result. But it turns out that their "savings" were illusory:

The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has planned a rebuild of its $30 million regulatory functions, but investigations into its failures are far from over.

In October, it emerged NZTA had not been properly checking up on companies who certify vehicle safety and give out licenses, and when problems were identified were often not following up.

Law firm Meredith Connell was appointed to lead the NZTA regulatory compliance function to clear a backlog of 850 open compliant files, which it has now completed.

To date this has cost taxpayers about $5m and looks set to increase by about 20 per cent during the next three months, as the non-compliance project continues.

[...]

The second stage of the project was under way with a blueprint and plan for regulatory compliance being created.

'Future State' would require about $30m to start, to "get NZTA back to the position it should always have been in" but that cost could increase, he said.

And that's the false economy of cuts. If its an actually essential service - a category which includes most of what government does - then you just end up having to repay it all later, plus interest, to get things working properly again. Unfortunately, some things - like the lives of the people National killed - can't be replaced.

And now I'm wondering how many other similar messes have been created by National's penny-pinching, and how much we'll have to pay to clean up the mess they left.

Cuts kill

Another example of how austerity kills. A couple of years ago, when National was looking for things to penny-pinch on so it could pay for its tax cuts for the rich, NZTA cut the number of checks it made on heavy vehicle certifiers. And suddenly, there was a spate of crashes involving heavy vehicles:

Newly-released information shows checks on engineers who inspect big trucks plunged at the same time as the number of large rigs on the road jumped.

[...]

The agency cut its heavy vehicle compliance staff numbers in half in 2014. Figures released under the Official Information Act show that led to the number of audits it was doing on truck-certifying engineers - who both check and design things such as towing connections and brakes - plunging from 70 a year before 2014, to just 30 a year since then.

The discovery of a mass of poor certifications, and a spate of cracked or weak towing connections, has massively disrupted the industry this year.

NZTA denies any link between its cuts and higher crash rates, but they would, wouldn't they? Meanwhile, it seems pretty intuitive that failing to check the work of the people checking safety allows them to do a sloppier job, and that these may in turn have contributed to crashes. Unfortunately - and conveniently - police record-keeping is inadequate to show any link. But there's a reasonable case here that National's penny-pinching led to unsafe vehicles - and killed people on the roads.

Does Labour support social services or austerity?

Our country currently has decrepit schools, underpaid nurses, and hospitals with sewage in the walls. To fix this massive social and infrastructure deficit, the government needs to spend more money - which means eventually collecting more money. The new government's tax working group, which is looking at taxing the land, wealth and capital gains of the rich, is an obvious way of solving this problem, and there's public support for doing so. Instead, Labour seems to be forgoing this opportunity and suggesting that any changes will be "fiscally neutral":

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says it is "entirely plausible" that any tax changes stemming from the tax working group could be balanced by tax relief elsewhere.

In a video with Stuff political editor Tracy Watkins, Ardern not only repeated that there would be no tax changes in the first term of Government, any changes which came as a result of the tax working group could well be "neutral".

"We've ruled out any changes to, you know, significant new tax changes in this first term. It was a big issue during the election and it was one that we very openly worked through," Ardern said.

"We've said we'd set up a tax working group, we have, it'll report this term, but anything it suggests wouldn't take effect until a new term and people will have a chance to vote on it, but it could be entirely plausible that it could be fiscally neutral."

Because you can always rely on chickenshit Labour to ignore a golden opportunity to do the right thing. They're so scared of National criticising them - something that will happen regardless of what they do - that they are pre-emptively taking major policies off the table, and effectively pledging to continue right-wing austerity forever.

Labour needs to decide what it stands for: social services, or austerity. And if its the latter, then they might as well not be in government. All they'll really be standing for is a different bunch of arseholes getting the big salaries, while ordinary kiwis keep on getting fucked over.

National's teacher shortage

When National was in power they increased teacher workload with national standards, while freezing pay. They also made tertiary education and teacher training harder to access. The result? A collapse in those training to be teachers:

The number of people training to be teachers dropped 40 per cent in six years, leaving a huge teacher shortage, the Government says.

A boomer-aged teachers prepare to retire, New Zealand is facing a "ticking time bomb" Education Minister Chris Hipkins said.

Figures released today showed the number of people training to be teachers dropped from 14,585 to 8895 - nearly 5700 students.

"The numbers are staggering," Hipkins said.

Early childhood education teacher trainees were down from 6760 to 3615, primary teacher trainees down from 5740 to 4065 and secondary teacher trainees were down from 1865 to 1120.

"In each case, the numbers were going in the opposite direction between 2008 and 2010."

And the result of that combined with retirements and inaccessible housing is that Auckland is expected to be short 3,000 teachers by 2027. There will no doubt be similar shortages in the rest of the country. Which is what happens when you under-invest, then leave others to carry the can.

Fixing this is going to be expensive. The PPTA will apparently be demanding a 14.5% pay rise this year, plus a housing allowance in expensive regions - and there's going to be increased costs to improve accessibility of tertiary education as well. And no doubt National will spend the next three years screaming that that's all "waste", and studiously ignoring the fact that its basicly been forced on the current government by their past penny-pinching. Just like they do with everything else.

Why the road toll is rising

After years of going down, in the past couple of years road deaths per capita have been going up - contrary to the trend in the rest of the world. Why? Because the police have cut basic enforcement:

New figures supplied to RNZ News show 1.75 million alcohol breath tests were recorded by Police last year, the lowest in at least 10 years.

It is down 43 percent on 2013 - when more than three million breath tests were carried out.

During that same time frame, 2013 to last year, the road toll rose 50 percent.

The Police Commissioner Mike Bush argues the Police are focussed on quality not quantity.

They might be - but as a matter of law, his budget appropriation requires him to do 2 - 2.4 million breath tests in 2017 [p. 24]. He hasn't. But more importantly, if you look back through past budget appropriations, it appears National cut the expected number of breath tests, from 2.7 - 2.9 million in 2014/15 [p. 58] to 2 - 2.4 million last year. And it wasn't the only decrease. Sam Warburton has documented how National has systematically cut performance expectations for road safety, resulting in fewer dedicated staff. Police officers themselves, via their union, have explicitly linked this to increased deaths.

Which is pretty obvious: the biggest thing deterring speeding and drink-driving is the risk of getting caught, and that risk obviously goes down if there are fewer police officers running checkpoints and ticketing speeders. Looking at the Ministry of Transport's historic road toll data, there are at least 150 excess deaths attributable to these cuts, and that doesn't include last year (which will probably add another 50). That's two hundred deaths from one funding decision. And those deaths were entirely foreseeable, which makes it no different from murder. Shouldn't we hold National's policing and transport Ministers accountable for that?

Justice denied

How do we enforce human rights and privacy law in New Zealand? Generally, if you have a problem, you complain to the Human Rights Commission or Privacy Commissioner. If mediation fails and/or the problem is serious, it then goes to the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT), a judicial body able to make binding rulings. And there your case will be lost in limbo, because the previous government systematically under-staffed the HRRT to prevent it from hearing cases:

People fighting for their human rights face "beyond unacceptable" waits of more than two years for justice, after politicians and officials ignored repeated pleas for a law change to help clear the backlog, documents reveal.

"Access to justice is being denied to almost all," Human Rights Review Tribunal chairman Rodger Haines said in his latest letter, to new Justice Minister Andrew Little. "For a tribunal charged with protecting human rights the situation is ironic, to say the least."

Claimant Lyn Copland – a grieving mother publicly shamed by the chief executive of the health board in whose care her son died – said the delays were disgusting, insulting and cruel and made a mockery of human rights protections.

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards also labelled the delays unacceptable and said planned Privacy Act changes would further stress the struggling tribunal: "Any justice delayed is justice denied."

The core problem is that all cases must be heard by the chair, which imposes a bottleneck. Despite repeated requests for multiple co-chairs to be appointed to allow the HRRT to deal with its caseload, National appointed only one, and refused a law change to remove the bottleneck entirely. As for why, it's pretty obvious: it would have cost money, both directly in the form of salaries, and indirectly, because the HRRT is a key institution in holding the state to account for its failures, and those failures are often expensive. The family carers case, which has seen the government ordered to pay parents who care for their adult disabled children, began in the HRRT. Stopping the tribunal from doing its job effectively is cheaper for the state.

Its also obviously unjust. Which is why this needs to be fixed as quickly as possible. The new government needs to make this a priority, so we have a functioning justice system and an effective remedy for human rights breaches by the state and by others.

National vandalised our health system

Surprise, surprise! The health system in Auckland is collapsing due to underfunding:

Auckland health bosses have revealed a picture of a health system at breaking point from underfunding and population growth.

Reporting to MPs at Parliament yesterday, they spoke of a wave of unprecedented demand for acute services and staff who were extremely stressed at having to cope with more and sicker people.

"Our staff were working unexpectedly long hours and became increasingly stressed about not just how hard they were having to work but about the numbers of extremely unwell people they were having to look after," the head of Manukau Counties District Health Board, Gloria Johnson, told the health select committee.

"The problem we have at the moment, particularly over the last 18 months, [is] we've become overwhelmed by demand."

Its so bad that the former chair of the three Auckland DHBs believes they no longer have the resources to deal with a pandemic.

This isn't surprising: National deliberately underfunded health for its term of office in an effort to pay for its tax cuts for the rich. While they played up large nominal increases, these were always less than that required to counter inflation, let alone population growth and demographic change. Instead, like the rest of the public service, the health system was expected to "do more with less". The results of that policy can be seen above. What's changed is that with a new government, DHB chairs feel they can openly say it, rather than risking dismissal and revenge funding cuts under National.

It is going to take the best part of a decade to undo this damage. And no doubt, National will spend that time complaining about "overspending" and "inefficiency" and promising more vandalism if re-elected. Just like they did during the Clark government after Jenny Shipley and Bill English vandalised the health system in the 90's.

Justice denied

How are human rights enforced in New Zealand? For a lot of them, such as the right not be discriminated against, or the right to privacy, it is done via the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT). Except the HRRT is so underfunded, it can no longer do its job:

A tribunal set up to hear breaches of human rights has become so overworked and underfunded it can't even schedule a phone conference to plan a hearing, according to an email sent by a staff member.

The amount of work handled by the Human Rights Review Tribunal has doubled over two years even though funding and staffing levels remain the same.

It has meant huge delays for those bringing complaints of discrimination, harassment and privacy breaches.

And for those who have brought cases, the Herald has learned of two that have had a three-year delay in having decisions delivered.

This is a clear case of justice delayed is justice denied. It basicly makes the complaints process a waste of time, and the law meaningless. And all because the penny-pinching previous government refused to fund the HRRT to deal with its full workload.

We've seen this before, with the Ombudsman and OIA complaints. And the answer then was to throw millions of dollars at them to clear the backlog and allow them to resolve complaints quickly and efficiently again. If we want our human rights law to be effective, then we are going to have to do the same with the HRRT. Another example of how National's short-term "savings" end up as long-term costs.

Coleman's plan for health savings: sell hospitals

Our health system is systematically under-funded. Canterbury DHB has responded to this in the way that DHB's traditionally have, by providing essential services and running a deficit. But the government wants them to stop, and instead make cuts. But don't worry, says Jonathan Coleman, it won't come from services:

In emails released yesterday, the board discussed what it said was a Ministry of Health demand for its deficit to be slashed to $17 million, down from its current estimate of almost $54m. The ministry has asked that the following year, it reduce its deficit to zero.

The DHB's former acting chair, Sir Mark Solomon, told RNZ that reducing spending on that scale would mean significant service cuts of unprecedented size.

He said it would equate to the cost of 750 nurses or 256 senior doctors, although Sir Mark emphasised those options were not being considered.

But Dr Coleman told Morning Report today that he could guarantee there was "no way" frontline services would be cut.

So where's it going to come from then? After decades of cuts, its not as if DHBs have thousands of pointless back-office staff they can cut. These people do jobs, and those jobs matter. Things like making sure everyone gets paid. Or making sure the wards are clean. Or ensuring there's enough cancer drugs for everyone who is scheduled to get chemotherapy. Or scheduling the appointments for all those hip replacements Coleman regards as the sole determinant of DHB output. Or is Coleman suggesting they sell their hospitals instead?

Oh, actually he is:

He said savings could be made by leasing facilities instead of owning them

Which is just a scam: you end up with a big capital injection (which the government steals for tax cuts), but paying more (which means providing fewer services) in the long-term. But Coleman clearly doesn't care about the long-term: he's probably opted out of the public health system by having private health insurance. And so he sees free public healthcare as a cost, rather than an enormous benefit which enables kiwis to get on with their our without fear of being completely fucked if we get sick.

(See also National's plans to redevelop Dunedin hospital using a public-private partnership: it saves in the short-term, but costs more in the long run. Another scam designed to make the books look good).

We deserve better than National's scams and accounting tricks. We deserve a health system that is properly funded to deliver the services we need. And we won't get that under National.

National's stealth health cut

Whenever they're criticised about the state of the public health system, National trots out the spin that they're spending more than ever before. Which is true, but the problem is that they're not spending enough to keep up:

Just over a year ago the health sector went cap in hand asking for funding to deal with rising immigration - but the Government shortchanged them to the tune of quarter of a billion dollars.

The shortfall is revealed in a briefing from the Ministry of Health to the Health Minister, which says to deal with immigration, as well as wage and cost increases, it needed an extra $644.8 million.

[...]

"DHBs face significant pressure in Budget 2016, due to the additional impact of net migration on population growth and aging, and anticipated wage pressure," it said.

It calculated a $379 million need for population pressure, $190.5 million to cope with wage increases, and $75.3 million to fund rising costs. All up - $644.8 million.

But in Budget 2016, they were given $400 million - a more than $250 million shortfall.

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman's reason? The $644 million figure was a "wish-list". Bullshit. It was vital just to sustain basic services at the level we already had. And by not providing that money, Coleman forced DHB's to cut services and screw down pay and conditions to make ends meet.

Naturally, the government then tried to keep this secret - yeswecare.nz had to go to the Ombudsman to extract this information, and it took them a year. This year, they may have made some of that money up; OTOH, they seem to have done it by shortchanging future years so they can get a higher election-year figure. Because with National, its all about the spin. Outcomes are irrelevant.

"Social investment" is just another word for cuts

The Spinoff interviews economist Simon Chapple on the government's new craze for "social investment". The core problem? It's just a disguise for cuts:

Bill English learned from that episode [the "Mother of all Budgets"]. In a sense the ‘social investment approach’ is pursuing the same goal – smaller government – but in a more subtle way. English’s claim is that social investment is a win-win by reducing the size of government while simultaneously enhancing people’s outcomes. However, when the nuts and bolts are examined, the principal win that government is measuring and incentivising is fewer fiscal dollars, not the secondary win which is better outcomes for people.

[Emphasis added]

That misplaced focus fundamentally undermines the entire exercise. It means for example that WINZ sets goals around throwing people off benefits, not getting them jobs, or making them better off. Meanwhile, its grossly invasive of privacy, while not really solving the problem of false negatives. What it will leave us with is social assistance that focuses on denying people the help they need, rather than helping them, solely in order to save money.

This obviously suits National, who care more about tax cuts for the rich and drowning government in the bathtub than they do about the poor. But it doesn't suit ordinary kiwis, who use and need those services. But since when has National ever cared about us?

This is why we can't have nice things

Writing in the Herald, Brian Fallow examines National's new net debt target of 10 - 15% of GDP - and specifically, what it will cost us:

We are not talking about trivial amounts of money here. Right now, 1 per cent of GDP is about $2.6 billion.

Say you wanted to keep net debt at 20 per cent of GDP. That is, after all, an extremely low level by international standards.

And let's assume nominal GDP grows by 4.5 per cent a year, which is what it has averaged over the past 12 years. Nominal GDP growth is the combined effect of real growth and inflation and is a rough proxy for growth in the tax base.

In that case, as a matter of arithmetic, a Government would be able to run a (cash) deficit of 0.9 per cent of GDP and still keep the debt ratio at 20 per cent.

Instead, the Government's fiscal priority is to reduce net debt by between 1 and 2 per cent of GDP a year over the next eight years. That will drive the target for the operating balance and limit the scope for capital expenditure.

Now, 0.9 per cent doesn't sound like much. But it is about what the Government spends on defence, or twice the annual cost of the accommodation supplement. That calibrates the scale of the opportunity cost here.

Or, its a massive housebuilding program, paid parental leave, ending child poverty, and stacking money away in the Cullen Fund to ease against the inevitable retirement of the Boomers (and its all of those things because its 0.9% extra GDP every year). And National is sacrificing this in pursuit of a debt target which is entirely arbitrary and self-imposed. Its austerity for the sake of austerity! But when we have enormous social and physical deficits from National's past cost-cutting excesses, it is entirely the wrong policy response.

This is why we as a country can't have nice things: because one of our major parties is committed to a government which simply can not afford them. But its entirely a matter of choice. If we want a government which actually can provide the services we expect, we can vote for one in September.

Utterly predictable

One of the first things National did after being elected was implement targets for A&E waiting times. Seven years later, and it turns out that hospitals have been faking their waiting-time data:

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has ordered an investigation into alleged "manipulation" of data at district health boards to comply with the six-hour emergency department target.

The first study on this since the six-hour target was introduced in 2009 was presented at a Queenstown conference today by Dr Peter Jones, an emergency medicine specialist and Auckland University researcher.

He said he had found evidence that the data had been manipulated to meet the target.

Opposition politicians have long suspected this, especially after widespread manipulation was uncovered in the UK to comply with its tighter, four-hour target. The UK's policy, unlike in New Zealand, came with incentives and penalties.

This is utterly predictable, and we've seen it everywhere such targets have been tried. When the incentives are strong enough, and its easier to fake data than meet the target, then that's exactly what institutions will do (see also: Serco). We're fortunate here that it doesn't seem to have negatively affected people's care, but that's all it is: good fortune. In reality, what this has done is shifted resources from elsewhere in the health sector to meeting National's targets - and who knows what else is being neglected as a result?

The key problem in the health system isn't slack doctors letting A&E patients suffer because they're on their tea-break - it is under-resourcing. Maybe we should fix that? But I forget: to National, having enough doctors and nurses to deal with actual demand (let alone letting them work sane hours rather than endangering patient safety with endless 14-hour days) is "waste". Better to have mickey mouse targets that everybody lies about instead.

What surplus?

Stephanie Rodgers at Boots Theory responds to yesterday's government "surplus":

The truth is, there is no surplus.

When Housing New Zealand says it simply cannot build the houses we need for families who are living on the street and in their cars, how can we have a surplus?

When District Health Boards insist that they cannot afford to deliver safer rosters for junior doctors, or new equipment, or decent pay rises for support staff, how can we have a surplus?

When public schools, built on the promise of free education for every Kiwi kid, have to demand “voluntary donations” from parents in order to keep operating, how can we have a surplus?

When sick people have to run public campaigns ask for donations to fund the medicine they need, because Pharmac has to prioritise which life-saving treatments it subsidises, how can we have a surplus?

When the people who clean the ministerial toilets in the Beehive aren’t paid a living wage, how can we have a surplus?

If you aren’t providing the services you are contracted to do – in this case, maintaining the public services and promoting the welfare of New Zealanders – and declaring a profit, you’re not running a successful business. You’re running a Ponzi scheme.

The only reason we have a "surplus" is because the government's failure - or rather, refusal - to provide those services does not appear on their balance sheet. If they did, then the trick would be laid bare: all National has done is pump up the government's books by giving us public squalor. And now they plan to leave us that mess, and the long-term costs it entails, while letting the rich run away with the profits as tax-cuts.

This isn't government. Its pillage.

Another failed privatisation effort

This year the government outsourced food at Southern DHB to international tax-cheats Compass. But the food was awful - so awful it endangered the safety of hospital staff. Other DHBs were understandaby reluctant to join the outsourcing deal. And now, the government has been forced to renegotiate it:

The 15-year hospital food service contract with the Compass Group had to be renegotiated because so few DHBs had joined, it has emerged.

Just six of 20 DHBs signed up, and others need to join in order to realise anticipated cost savings.

Official advice released by Dr Jonathan Coleman shows that officials told him earlier this year the deal was being renegotiated.

''Health Partnerships is working with Compass to renegotiate the contract to take a more holistic view of benefits, and derive improved value''.

Its unclear how much money this misguided "cost-saving" measure has lost so far, but its clearly significant. Sadly, the government has retained it rather than just sacking Compass and getting DHBs to do it themselves again. Which shows you that the real point of the policy wasn't cost-savings, but funnelling public money into the private pockets of multinational tax-cheats.

A two-tier police force

If you get burgled, you're lucky if the police do anything more than give you a form for the insurance company. But its a different story if you're a National MP...

A burglary victim is questioning why a break-in at the mobile electorate office of National MP Jami-Lee Ross was given higher priority than her own.

National MP Jami-Lee Ross's mobile electorate office was burgled twice in a week - with police responding to the first burglary "immediately", and apprehending a suspect within days.

But an Auckland mother of two who lives just 900m away had a very different experience when her burglars targeted her home.

[...]

Police failed to show up more than 24 hours later, by which time rain had washed away any chance of finding fingerprints.

I guess Jami-Lee Ross isn't just ordinary people like you or I. Instead, he's Someone Important (and in particular, someone who gets to vote on the police's budget every year) - and therefore someone to be toadied to, crimes against him zealously investigated and crimes by him zealously ignored. But I don't think most New Zealanders would agree with the idea of a two-tier police force, one paid for by all but protecting only the elite. Ross should have waited his turn in the queue like everyone else. And if he didn't like that, maybe he should fund the police to investigate crime at its actual level, rather than relying on privilege to get special treatment from an underfunded agency.

A complete waste of money

The government is currently cutting health spending. Meanwhile, it plans to spend $11 billion over the next ten years on new toys for the defence force:

Simultaneously, a government that’s willing to slash the health system is planning to spend $11 billion dollars in the next ten years on new gear for our Defence Forces. That’s not a misprint. The scale of the Defence spend-up over the next decade is truly stupendous. As yet, it simply has not sunk in with the general public just how much they stand to lose in order to keep the military in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

[...]

The money will be spent on new frigates, new cargo planes to replace the C-130 Hercules and new surveillance aircraft to replace the Orions. That cost by 2025 will be three and a half times more than the most fanciful MFAT estimates of what the TPP will deliver us by 2030. How on earth can John Key be talking about tax cuts in 2017 when this country is facing a state spending programme of this magnitude?

And most of these toys are absolutely irrelevant to our real defence needs, let alone the NZDF's stated priorities of "cyber threats and terrorism". It is, by any measure, a complete and absolute waste of money. And to do it while slashing health spending is simply monstrous.

(Cyclone Winston is showing us what we actually need: a long-range plane with a camera in it to do initial damage surveys, and a basic airborne cargo hauler like the C-130 to deliver aid afterwards. High-tech airbone ASW platforms, Globemaster jets to fly non-existent tanks around the world, and dedicated ASW and anti-air warfare vessels are not what we need to do, let alone what we want to do. But NZDF isn't interested in our actual needs; rather they're interested in prestige and getting us involved in other people's wars through "interoperability" (which is just prestige by another name). And if we want to stop them, we need to do to the navy what we did to the airforce: gut it).

Austerity kills

The British government has been slashing social services budgets, throwing the disabled off benefits, cutting health funding and cutting meals on wheels to the elderly, all in a mad pursuit of austerity. And its had the expected results: once-falling death rates are now rising, as the poor are starved to death or humiliated into suicide:

Government cuts to social services could be the “largest factor” in the biggest annual rise in deaths in England and Wales for nearly half a century, according to an adviser to Public Health England.

The new preliminary figures, from the Office for National Statistics, claim that mortality rates last year rose by 5.4 per cent compared with 2014 – equivalent to almost 27,000 extra deaths. The increase is the highest since 1968 and took the total number of deaths in 2015 to 528,340.

Death rates in England and Wales have been steadily falling since the 1970s but this trend has been reversed since 2011.

This of course was an obvious outcome of the cuts, but the Tories went ahead and did it anyway. There's a name for knowingly pursuing a course of action which will kill people: its called "murder". And it sounds like the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be charged with 27,000 counts of it.