What do proposed New Right social welfare privatisation initiatives have to do with New Zealand’s LGBT communities? Plenty.
Think about it. Religious social service providers constitute much of the alternative social security network if central government income assistance proves insufficient. If these religious social service providers are affiliated to the Methodist Church or other inclusive denomination or faith, then all is well. However, what if it isn’t?
In the mid-nineties, the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives privatised social welfare in the United States wholesale, although it had to be said that it was already meagre and limited, from the perspective of European and Australasian welfare states. It trumpeted “faith based initiatives,’ which would have been fine, if there had been proper regulatory oversight and strategic management, with specified goals and outcomes for these organisations. There wasn’t. Federal and state Republicans engaged in wholesale pork-barrelling, giving contracts to their Christian Right cronies, with predictable consequences. These fundamentalists had negligible skills in actual social service provision, and made ridiculous statements that inferred that individual behaviour was at the root of poverty, not entrenched institutional discrimination and social service cutbacks. Predictably, unemployment, homelessness, family disintegration, youth suicide, youth criminality and gang formation, and adolescent substance abuse have all risen sharply since the advent of welfare privatisation within the United States.
Later, the Howard administration followed a mitigated model. In that case, there have been some difficulties too- regular readers of this blog will remember Mercy Ministries, an exploitative fundamentalist racket that provided negligible proper medical and social work services for young women in crisis, which has given rise to an heroic young women’s group called “Mercy Survivors.” Would this rort have been allowed to operate if proper supervision of such outsourced social services had been forthcoming?
The oncoming global economic crisis will result in rising unemployment and probably greater levels of mental illness and other hardships. Now is not the time for New Right nostrums like “work for the dole”, penny-pinching approaches to provision of Invalids or Sickness Benefits, and categorically, any New Zealand version of radical welfare privatisation.
It is time that National’s New Right throwbacks, ACT, the Business Roundtable, Maxim Institute and the Centre for Political “Research” all realised that social cohesion is paramount in this time of adversity, and that their right-wing radicalism and its destructive social consequences are not what this country needs. From the United States, we know that there are particular consequences that ensue from such carnage.
And let us not fool ourselves that there are not gay men, lesbians, takatapui, whakawahine and fa’afafine whose lives will be damaged or destroyed if the advocates of radical welfare privatisation have their way. It is time that this foolish and barbaric wish-fulfilment fantasy was discarded, once and for all.
Not Recommended:
Maxim Institute
New Zealand Centre for Political Research (Muriel Newman)
Recommended:
http://www.justiceandresponsibility.net.nz
New Zealand Christian Council for Social Services.
Books:
Amy Black and David Ryden: Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W.Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives: Washington DC: Georgetown University Press: 2004. Joanne Formicola, Mary Segers and Paul Weber: The Faith-Based Initiatives and the Bush Administration: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield: 2003: (see esp. p.63-184). Pew Forum: Backgrounder on Faith-Based Initiatives: http://pewforum.org/faith-based-initiatives/Ira Chernus: “The Dark Side of Faithbased Initiatives:”http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~hns/articles/2001/022101.html Alex Epstein: “Bush’s Faithbased Initiative Against Freedom” (1.02.03): http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1472 Kevin Eckstrom: “Gays Express Concern about Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative:” http://www.belief.net/story/66/story_6635.html Michael Kress: “Separation of Church and Gay:” http://www.beliefnet.com/story/74/story_7435.html National Lesbian and Gay Task Force: George W Watch: Faith- Based Initiatives: http://www.ngltf.org/federal/wwfaith.htm ”Exgay group applies for federal funding”http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?id=11084&sd=01/24/04-01/26/04
2 responses so far ↓
1 Craig Young // Oct 15, 2008 at 10:43 am
Today, the Maxim Institute made a media release that launched a new anti-tax publication. It made much of the current range of central government projects funded through progressive taxation, like Working for Families, interest-free student loans, childcare subsidies, KiwiSaver and different tax brackets for different income categories.
Does this serve the interest of “justice” and “freedom”? What about devolving these responsibilities to communities and individuals? Taxation is coercion!
Once again, the Institute has demonstrated its current New Right orientation, through attacking progressive income tax. Sorry, but unless we have that, we do not have fair and equitable social services.
It’s as simple as that. Granted, they may need better strategic management and should face efficiency audits, but progressive taxation mitigates social injustice. In the LGBT context, it delivers accessible public health services for PLWAS and suicidal LGBT youth. It is therefore moral and ethically necessary, as far as I’m concerned.
2 Craig Young // Oct 19, 2008 at 3:33 pm
And while we’re on this particular topic, I see that Family First and the Destiny/City Impact hybrid “Family Party” are attacking the Greens for the latter’s population policy.
Uh huh. Is this the same Family Party whose recent media release attacked immigration levels to this country? Does that include refugees and asylum seekers, Messrs Lewis and Adams?
Is this the same “Family First” which suggested policing benefits to ‘insure’ that they were spent on food instead of alcohol and cigarettes, on anecdotal evidence? What about supporting energy and food supplements for family benefits, Mr McCoskrie?
Or is it true that “Family First” isn’t interested in families outside single income small business or rural families, and to hell with anyone else?
*Here’s* a novel idea. Try supporting people’s families regardless of whether they’re heterosexual married nuclear, cohabiting heterosexual, LGBT, solo, of whatever ethnicity and income level, and whether or not their children have intellectual, physical, developmental or psychiatric disabilities.
C.
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