Logie Jan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: General Debate[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4712. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): New Zealand is facing what may well be an unprecedented attack on State and social services. Just this past weekend we found out from the Minister for Social Development that she is open to considering Serco and we must assume other transnational corporations to provide community care for our most vulnerable children and young people as well as victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Serco is the company that is running Mt Eden prison which has the highest inmate-on-inmate violence in the country according to a recent UN report; Serco in early audits was found to have failed to reach 40 percent of its targets. But this is not an isolated announcement. This is part of a pattern of the implementation of an ideology of this Government.Last week we found out that the Government is looking at using people accessing mental health services as a cash cow for its mates in the form of social bonds a model where businesses are encouraged to invest in the provision of something that we used to consider a core function of Government—a role a service for some of the most vulnerable people in this country. To be able to turn this into an opportunity for profit for a business is this Government’s agenda. Only 2 weeks ago we saw the largest counselling provider in this country close its doors because of funding pressures—after having been required to cut $4.5 million from its operating budget. This is a service that had existed since World War II. Relationships Aotearoa has been quite blithely criticised by this Government without being given a chance to be able to stand up and defend its good name. And I must say that what I heard in the community was roundly positive about that organisation. But no that is not what the Government said. It has just been happy to see it close.These three cases are just part of another stage of a significant attack on services. We have seen Child Youth and Family operating under a differential response model for a while where two-thirds of notifications for Child Youth and Family are put out to community organisations community organisations that are struggling to survive organisations whose staff members have not had a pay rise in 6 years who are saying that their skills are undervalued and they are struggling to cope with the massive increase in complexity of the cases that they see—children like we have seen in front of the courts in Auckland this week—because the Government is reducing its role in providing these essential social services. We have also now seen a review of Child Youth and Family. Rather than having a response to the reports that are telling us it has been underfunded and understaffed for a long time we have a review happening headed by Paula Rebstock.We have seen functions of Work and Income also contracted out to the community and businesses which are no longer under the same level of democratic scrutiny. We cannot see what is going on and it is much harder to get the stories from those communities in order to be able to hold the Government to account. And now we hear the Government’s Better Public Services model is going to be applied on to our community sector. Whereas before the community used to identify its needs do its research come together as people and provide the best responses now the Government is going to be reducing its funded work down to this Government’s political goals not the democratic political needs of that community.This is part of the sale of State houses into the community the privatisation of prisons ACC contracts going to businesses Australian insurance companies picking up services for specialist sexual violence services charter schools—the list goes on. This is a comprehensive unprecedented attack on the role of the State and the undermining of our communities. It is something that this country should be very very wary of. We are being told it is all about better services but this is the most significant and pernicious political agenda we have seen in decades.