Just throwing money at the problem
May 30th, 2005 at 5:26 am by David FarrarLabour has never met a problem that it doesn’t think it can solve by just throwing lots of money at it. Hence the massive increase in expenditure and taxation in the last six years.
They have thrown $3 billion more at health and $3.3 billion more into education (the wananga thanks you for your generosity). So what do the public think of these portfolios under Labour?
Well only 16% of NZers think education has improved under Labour and 44% say it has got worse. And for health 18% say better and 38% worse. A dismal failure in both areas.
The best spin Mallard can come up with is that the survey is of all NZers, not just of parents with school children. I’d bet a lot of money that it would be even worse amongst those parents.
The poll shows that tax has rocketed to the the second highest issue of concern. The 2005 budget is going to soon get its own dictionary definition under own goal.
UPDATE: I win the bet. A Colmar Brunton poll shows only 27% of parents have confidence in the value of NCEA.
No tag for this post.
May 30th, 2005 at 6:54 am
They make parents work like niggers to keep Primary Schools running through cake stalls and the like but then they throw money at a useless Maori University where the fraud and abuse is rife.
Vote:May 30th, 2005 at 6:57 am
State education is a disaster but then it will suit certain people within it. There are students from overseas that are three years ahead of the same age students here. Their are good teachers in the state system but they are penalised by the bad teachers because of unionisation. New Zealand’s public spending on primary and secondary education is highest-equal (with Iceland) per GDP in the OECD. It was 4.6% of the GDP in 2000.6 Despite this, the average New Zealand student scored in the bottom third of two major international tests on reading, mathematics and science.
Vote:May 30th, 2005 at 7:50 am
As usual for an education thread, I’ll add my 5 cents that I am very happy with the education my children are receiving in the State system, and that my perception of the education system was a lot worse before I experienced it directly through sending my kids there.
It has certainly improved enormously since I went to school 20 – 30 years ago.
(RIDER: My kids aren’t at NCEA level yet)
Vote:May 30th, 2005 at 8:25 am
Hopefully the public will realise that Labour has wasted public money on feel good social welfare programs and educational studies that have no purpose.
Vote:Labour makes a big fuss every time they announce an increase of funding, however its how that funding is used that really makes the difference, and we all know that Labour has wasted Tax payers money not put it to good use.
May 30th, 2005 at 9:17 am
The moral of this story: Public policy isn’t like casting a porn film – where the only thing that matters is the size of the ‘actors’ equipment, and everything else is pretty much beside the point.
Vote:May 30th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
And I would not bet against you on this David.
I returned to NZ after many years overseas with my two foreign born kids (and now have a third born here). My kids are all primary school age so I’ve been involved with schooling and school funding quite a bit since I returned. Every school my kids have been involved with has been underfunded in various areas, some critically. Auckland has been in our experience the worst, with things like school swimming pools closed, reading and extracurricular activities curtailed and the dreaded “requests” for money for extra activities/school trips being sent home disguised as invoices to be paid. In our experience, we got better access to services once we removed ourselves from Auckland, but all of education is feeling the pinch.
Vote:When I visited Clayton Cosgrove to moan about a license fee I had to pay for a car I had junked (the ultimate in user pays: charge the silly taxpayer for a vehicle nobody has the use of anymore), he trotted out this Labour line with me that everything had never been better since they started to throw all this cash at things, but most people will have experiences that suggest things to the contrary. More Labour spin really. “Hey look, we say it is so, so it must be so.”
May 30th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
The NZ Herald survey represents a dark day for supporters of the ‘statist quo’.
Student loans. Not surprisingly, we have heard little from the New Zealand University Students’ Association (NZUSA) given that the survey found that student loans were only the 12th most important issue (and it migh have been worse if respondents had been asked to rank the upcoming British/Irish Lions tour or the absence of Desperate Housewives from New Zealand TV!) All of 1.2% of respondents rated student loans as the most important issue. The constant flow of ‘Day After Tomorrow’ style propaganda from the NZUSA about the impact of student loans would have suggested a much higher figure. Maybe all those people going overseas are actually doing so because they rank tax cuts/high taxes (39% top tax rate) as a more important issue than student loans (10% repayment rate).
Things were not much better for supporters of the ‘only money matters’ education lobby. Seems respondents to the survey were able to distinguish between education spending and results and recognised what countless studies have shown – more money does not necessarily mean better education outcomes. In fact, 44% of respondents thought that things had gotten worse, despite an additional $3+ billion in education spending.
Vote:May 30th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
Tim Barclay – did you really write what I think you did?
And is that an acceptable statement?
Are you suggesting that “niggers” work harder than we poor white folk?
Comments like that make me despair for race relations in NZ, and also worry about who is going to quote it out of context as an example of what the “right” think. I believe that term has generally been agreed to not be acceptable for use in polite conversation, and I thought that DPF’s blog was generally a home of polite conversation. Maybe you didn’t get the memo?
Vote:May 30th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Norman LaRocque that is not a very perceptive argument – just because it is not the SINGLE BIGESST issue for everyone at this election does not make a non-issue. For a lot of people it will be a deciding factor in their vote, along with taxes, public spending, health, education, transport…
Its why single issue parties don’t do well, otherwise all parties would simply focus on health and taxes and never mention enything else this election.
Vote:May 31st, 2005 at 12:37 am
Stephen, you write: “For a lot of people it will be a deciding factor in their vote, along with taxes, public spending, health, education, transport…”
Mate, when only 2.4% or however many it is rank student loans as their most important issue, it means it will NOT be the deciding factor in their vote…. that’s what ‘most important issue’ means.
Vote:May 31st, 2005 at 11:13 am
Throwing money at a problem ?
Vote:Like throwing an extra $100 million at roads every year for 6 years , to make $600 million extra a year. Must be a bad thing… hang on who is doing the throwing