The neo-cons’ attack on public education in New Zealand has been resurrected. And the Maori Party is an accomplice.
The neo-conservative Act Party, along with the right wing rump of the National Party, is keen on privatising education. That’s mostly because of their neo-con religious zeal for private enterprise first at all times and for all things. But they knew they’d never succeed in the wholesale transfer of public education to private companies, so now they’re trying to do it piecemeal.
In reading about the neo-con proposal, I was reminded of the old university term paper axiom: “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit.” The “modified” voucher proposal reflects this in abundance.
Act’s assistant leader Heather Roy said there wouldn’t be an increase in costs. When a politician tells you that, hide your wallet—they’re always either wrong or lying. Using the usual neo-con rhetoric, Roy bristled at the word “voucher”: "In essence we are providing choice, we are not talking about vouchers here, we are talking about providing choice." She’s lying.
The only “choice” will be for the rich in choosing which private school taxpayers will pay for. And as the richest opt out of pubic schools—at taxpayer expense—the only kids left will be from ordinary families and, of course, the poor.
Why is the Maori Party even considering working against the interests of their constituents? If Act gets its way, poor people will be stuck in public schools because they won’t be able to afford the difference between their vouchers and what private schools charge. So, the rich will get taxpayer subsidies for their private schools and poor people will give their tax money to pay for the rich people’s taxpayer subsidies. But, importantly, there won’t be any money to help poor people send their kids to better schools.
What an ingenious scam Act is selling: Get ordinary people to pay for rich kids’ private education, force poor kids—especially Maori and Pacific Islanders—to stay in underperforming low decile schools and convince those people they’re getting “choice” instead of the shaft.
The National-led Government must stand up to Act and reject privatisation of education by stealth. And the Maori Party needs to wake up and realise that Act is playing them for fools. The children of New Zealand deserve world-class education, not more right wing ideology and profit-motive masquerading as rational policy.
2 comments:
Heather Roy stood up in front of the national conference of the New Zealand Universities' Students Association (NZUSA) a couple of years ago and, rather than outline her party's policies for tertiary education, as she was invited to do, she proceeded to spout obnoxious generalisations about how tertiary students all just abuse taxpayers' money, wasting it on booze and drugs and failing their papers as a result. Student leaders were, understandably, unimpressed.
It's frightening how quickly poor and underpriveleged New Zealanders are these days to give power to political parties who will simply sell them out to keep the already-priveleged on top. At my own university, students overwhelmingly voted for Act and National, those very parties who most wish to further restrict students' access to financial assistance and cut government support for the tertiary sector, and why? They can't even tell you, when pressed they just spout the campaign rhetoric employed by those parties in the last election - 'It's time for a change,' etc. They can't tell you any of those parties' policies or pre-election promises.
Maybe it's a good thing that it will be harder to get into universities, if they're fostering that level of idiocy.
I agree with you. That's the way neo-cons work: Hoodwink people into supporting parties/candidates that will actively work against them and their interests. It's the only way Act gets any support beyond neo-cons (a tiny minority in NZ) and the generally selfish and greedy.
National, on the other hand, seems friendlier under Key than under the the so-cold-he-was-frozen Don Brash. Key's worked hard to yank his party back toward the centre from the far right where Brash had dragged it. National Party policies haven't actually changed all that much, really, but Key made it easy for people to vote for National.
Against all that, Labour has done a terrible job of selling itself (and they made mistakes in Government), and the Greens continue to allow the right to define them.
All of which is why we have a National Party-led government in coalition with Act.
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