Just how dirty are the Nats?
Dirtier than any sane person could have thought possible.
We've seen the corrupt actions of an arrogant government, documented time after time. We even have the revolting spectacle of Gerry Brownlee throwing his weight around just two days ago.
But what many people do not realise is that the government has willingly put thousands of our youngest and most vulnerable children at risk.
Despite ruthlessly cutting budgets across the board, including subtracting the entire billion dollars of the climate change budget, National were unable to give Bill English's cry of "Balanced Budget!" any credence, so the cuts became deeper still.
I'm not close enough to health to know how many Kiwis have died on waiting lists for heart or other organ surgery thanks to reduced health department budgets, but due to having a five year old son, I know just where the budget cuts have hit education - smack in the five-year olds.
Our suburb, Ormiston/Mission Heights, in Flat Bush, south-east Auckland, is the single most-important development region for the entire city, with huge tracts of land available for development, with up to 1000 houses under construction at any time. To cope with the enormous influx of people, new infrastructure is obviously required, and new schools are being built, along with parks, shops and roads.
The city council has lagged behind, cutting budgets and taking away swimming pools, but the government action in delaying opening new schools is much, much worse.
Our chap started school at Mission Heights Primary this week. The influx of children is so enormous that no fewer than 23 children started school at the start of this term! That is an entire class of new entrants starting on the same day. The picture gets worse when the school is already bursting at the seams because the Ormiston Primary that should have opened January 2014 was put off to January 2015.
These 23 new entrants do not have a classroom, so two resource rooms have been turned into classrooms to give them somewhere to go. Kiwi schoolkids generally sit on the mat. These kids sit on vinyl over concrete floors.
They have one girl and one boy toilet being shared between some 35 children right now. That is three times as many as the toilets are supposed to cope with, and it is a recipe for disaster.
Instead of being introduced to schooling in a manner befitting a developed society, we are throwing our kids into badly-resourced areas, crammed into overcrowded situations, and left to cope with what will very quickly become unsanitary areas.
Thanks, National. You balanced the budget at the cost of our kids' right to decent surroundings.
Irony: this photo:
Copyright © Alan Charman