Thoughts on news

2024/11/13

Political rivalry hurting the country

The National and Labour parties have agreed to take politics out of infrastructure.
This means that the successive governments delaying and halting projects while promising to start new ones were merely tactics designed to deny the previous government any credit and intentionally undermine its initiatives.

This approach should extend to other sectors as well—such as education, healthcare, the economy, housing, and addressing social issues.

Questions:

1- How can the two major parties claim to be serving the country and its citizens when they succumb to their rivalry, wasting money and depriving the country of valuable projects?

2- Where is the civil society and the public in these maneuvers?
Why doesn’t civil society and the public draw a line in the sand for projects that were agreed upon by the previous government?
Why do they allow the animosities between the two major parties to affect them, their tax dollars, and the country?

2024/11/12

Official apology for abuse in state care

Some thoughts and questions on the official apology to survivors of abuse in state care.

1- Una Jagose, the Solicitor-General of New Zealand, admitted to using "delay tactics" when handling cases against survivors of abuse in state care.
She also acknowledged that the survivors were not treated with dignity.

For years, she worked relentlessly to discredit the survivors, using aggressive and unethical tactics.
This included hiring a private investigator to dig up damaging information on at least one survivor, all in an effort to deny their claims and strip away any recognition of the abuse they suffered.

And yet, all Jagose had to do to make amends was read an apologetic script.
There were no consequences for her job, career, or wealth. (Her superior, Attorney General Judith Collins, still has confidence in her.)
There is no plan in place to ensure that Jagose or her team improve their ethical standards.

2- Along with delay tactics, what are the other tactics the Crown Law Office employs to deny people their rights?
- Also, we've long heard about the government and the state ignoring and flouting the law and justice, whenever it suits them. Isn't the use of these tactics evidence of that?

3- Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins have apologized on behalf of their respective governments as well as previous ones.
The fact that they apologized so readily, without hesitation or reservation, suggests that there will be no real consequences—neither for them nor for the ministers of any past governments.
This only indicates that those responsible have essentially gotten away with their actions.

4- Some figures:
4.1- It is believed 200k people were abused in state and faith-based institutions between 1950 and 2019.
4.2- As of 12 November 2024, only 4k people had received financial redress, at an average of $18k.

5- Why should the government use taxpayers' money to redress these injustices?
The taxpayers aren’t the ones responsible.
The real culprits are the career politicians and public sector leaders, past and present, who, for years:
- Allowed these injustices to occur day after day.
- Ignored the mounting evidence of human suffering on a daily basis.
- Relentlessly and unscrupulously fought against the survivors to quash their court cases.
Shouldn’t these individuals be the ones held personally accountable, paying from their own money and facing prison if bankrupt—just like any other citizen who commits wrongdoing?

6- Civil society and people of goodwill must come together to stand by the survivors.
- They should organize protests across the country.
- They should educate the public about the ordeal this community faced and the treatment it continues to receive from the government and state agencies.
- They should rally more organizations and individuals to join in these efforts.
- They should add the developments on this issue to a lest-we-forget list that they could use during election campaign to remind the public of the behavior of the ministers on this matter.

Without continued pressure on the government, this issue will not be treated with the seriousness it deserves.
The redress will drag on for far too long, with state agencies blaming each other, forming commissions, launching independent reviews into delays, and so on and so forth.
In short, we might once again witness the use of delay tactics.

Solidarity on this matter has an additional consequence:
Given that career politicians are primarily focused on maintaining their top jobs and enjoying the perks that come with being MPs, such solidarity will compel them to seek the favor of the public by truly serving it.
True and widespread solidarity on this single matter could ignite a social and political movement against all forms of injustice and political negligence in the country.

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MylfT10hOU4
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/11/12/emotions-run-high-as-abuse-survivors-hear-apologies/
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/11/10/abuse-in-care-survivor-wants-his-precedent-setting-case-to-be-revisited/
https://www.crownlaw.govt.nz/

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