August 10, 2020
Willie Jackson is right – Oranga Tamariki is out of control
Martyn 'Bomber' Bradbury: His comments on The Hui over the weekend come on the heels of yet another damning report into Oranga Tamariki's uplifts.
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier's report finds that the process to uplift children is being used as the rule rather than as the exception.
Of the 74 cases investigated, Oranga Tamariki were aware of the pregnancies months before birth and only scrambled at the last minute with zero interaction with the Māori support networks that are supposed to step in and simply uplifted the newborn infants.
None of the supposed dialogue to prevent uplifts occurred at all.
That's because the lip service to dialogue is just that, lip service.
Oranga Tamariki is a neoliberal welfare experiment. The point is to intervene early and save the taxpayer downstream justice and corrections costs.
Oranga Tamariki is there to look after the welfare of the state, not the welfare of the children taken.
This is part of an attempt by the Right to rationalise welfare to just the worst examples so as to save on universal provision of benefits.
To do this National weakened legal rights of parents, denied parents access to legal aid to combat uplifts and streamlined 0800 numbers to immediate response teams.
This entire model is based on Big Data so that once certain risk indicators are ticked off, immediate uplift without notice can occur.
The question must be asked why Labour are so prepared to die in a ditch for a right-wing experiment in welfare that is failing.
Any new Labour Government must look to radically reform the values of this monstrosity because enabling the taking of children with almost zero oversight is simply not a protection agency worth protecting.
Martyn Bradbury
Editor – TheDailyBlog.nz
Radio Waatea and it's board would like to advise that the opinions posted are those of Martyn 'Bomber Bradbury' and not the views of Radio Waatea, it's Management or it's Board.
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