Disability and dysfunction
The Government should have been shaken by the reaction to the shambolic announcement of disability support cuts this week. The sudden intervention of Finance Minister Nicola Willis suggests it was, and hopefully lessons will be learned about the limits of budget cuts and the very real human impact that follows.
When National was in opposition, and openly warning of significant public service cuts to come, it made a point of reassuring New Zealanders that frontline services would not be axed. Instead, an image was created of offices full of nebulous backroom paperpushers who added nothing, as though the public service was still stuck in Gliding On mode.
Of course that is a horribly cliched and old-fashioned stereotype of the public service, and it was bound to be a distressing one for the 400 or so actual human beings who may lose their jobs in this week’s proposed Health Ministry and Primary Industries cuts. And there will be many more to come.
But the idea about the frontline services was that ordinary people would hardly notice and that services they rely on would be unaffected.
Yet the changes to support services announced by Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, could hardly be more frontline. They directly affect the quality of life of family members and carers who work with disabled people every day and they will obviously have a deleterious impact on the lives of disabled people themselves.
Disability Issues Minister Penny Simmonds, who also has Environment and Tertiary Education portfolios to grapple with, told Parliament on Thursday that she learned of cost overruns before Christmas but the ministry believed it could manage the situation. By March 14, she was told about changes that would come into effect just four days later, without any time to consult or even warn the community.
Instead, the community learned via a social media post on Monday that criteria were changing. It will be remembered as a textbook example of poor communications. As the Disabled Persons Assembly NZ put it this week, it “caused alarm and distress to many, fearful of what these changes may mean and scrambling for information”.
One hardly needs to say that the alarmed and distressed community are often under great financial and emotional pressure to start with.
The changes affected access to technology for disabled people, and funding for respite and other costs for their carers. To add insult to injury, these needs were grotesquely caricatured as luxurious manicures, massages and holidays by Simmonds.
Simmonds eventually apologised but Nicola Willis’ intervention on Wednesday showed that more competent members of the Government could see the social and political damage caused by this debacle. As stories ran in the media about stressed and even suicidal parents, Willis called Simmonds in for an urgent briefing.
Willis said this week the news about funding came as a surprise, and she had not been told how dire the situation was at Whaikaha. That is not good enough. It suggests a dysfunctional relationship, or basic incompetence on Simmonds’ part.
Willis said this week the news about funding came as a surprise, and she had not been told how dire the situation was at Whaikaha. That is not good enough.
New Zealand is just four months into a Government that promised quick and decisive action. That unsentimental approach may be what voters wanted. But we should not have to say that the Government needs to take care to consult, inform and consider the impacts of policies. That should be the most basic rule of governing.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said this week all politicians need to tone down extremist language about each other, such as comparisons between co-governance and Nazi Germany, or the use of words like “dictatorship”. That seems fair. But we hope he also reminded ministers to be mindful of their tone when talking about changes that cause genuine pain and anguish.
One of the most glaring examples this week came from one of Luxon’s coalition partners. The ACT Party’s X (Twitter) account posted that it was “good” that major job cuts are starting in the public service. ACT leader David Seymour reposted that message.
ACT might argue it is “good” that a long-announced strategy is now unfolding. It is a strategy aimed at reducing what ACT sees as wasteful spending and bloated bureaucracies. But Seymour and other ministers must remember not to add a layer of glib callousness and indifference to the bad news that is being delivered to ordinary New Zealanders, even those who work in “backroom” offices.
It’s going to be a bleak winter, especially in Wellington. Let’s not make it worse.