Tim Howard is a CAFCA member who works for the Northland Urban Rural Mission.

The stories of the elusive John Key are starting to come out now. In hushed respectful tones. The State-house-to-millionaire story. The mother escaping from Nazi Europe. Let’s not be mesmerised by respectful personal stories. Better to ask : what is Key actually planning to do? Specifically, what’s National’s plan for social services?

Social services, and the wider tangata whenua community voluntary sector – the not-for-profit sector – have been left guessing. But there are hints. John Key has been talking about “turbo-charging” the sector. What’s that about? Incentives for corporate donations? Favouring a corporate culture in the sector?

Bill English has been understood to favour reducing Government’s contractual relationships with the sector to a few large contracts. National has openly spoken of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) - in ACC, roading, broadcasting, prisons…Corporate culture and privatising economics are likely to blunt the best of what the not-for-profit sector has to offer.

“Super Contractor”?

Recently John Key has been quietly floating a model for the sector. A large corporate entity, a “Super Contractor” to control all Government contracts with the sector. Key has linked the “supercontractor” concept with the name of Mission Australia. National admitted ( NZ Herald, 17/7/08) bringing them to NZ for discussions on “work-for-the-dole”. But Mission Australia’s broader interest to Key (and, it appears, to senior Government officials now talking with them) is worth considering.

What Can Mission Australia Reveal About Key’s Plans?

Mission Australia was formed from the combination of six Church-based social services missions ten years ago. It is a sizeable corporate-style organisation – employing some 3,500 people, with 300,000 “clients”, and an annual turnover now of some $A250 million and still rising – it was $54 million in 1998). It thrived under the Howard government. Its Board members come from major accountancy, merger management, corporate recruitment, property, investment firms. While Australia is ethnically diverse, Board and management reflect both the Anglo bias of “White Australia” and disconnection from indigenous and post World War II settler communities.

Its partners are from large corporates or their foundations : from telcoms to international accounting; major law firms to financiers; pharmaceutical to energy companies. A key partner is the Foundation set up by the large international banker Macquarie Group Ltd (it appears that Key’s main mentor is Jim McLay of Macquarie NZ [a former National Party Leader. Ed]; and that Key has been talking with Macquarie about it building our public hospitals and schools).

Such corporate values and assumptions have an impact. They might believe in “community” for example, but what do they mean by that? What would they want “community” to mean? How would that differ from the perspectives of tangata whenua, of not-for-profit groups, of flaxroots NZ communities? Because of its size and budget, Mission Australia has the capacity, planning and well-paid skilled workers to do some things well – especially in a numbers-driven approach to contract delivery. But it is also widely said that they end up competing with smaller agencies and “gobble up” the available contract monies (though sometimes subcontracting groups for work-for-the-dole projects). Groups advocating for marginalised people in particular are starved of funds.

Ethical Money?

Mission Australia’s former Chief Executive Officer Patrick McClure headed John Howard’s review of social services, with increasing numbers forced on to work-for-the-dole programmes. It proudly owns as a key activity those schemes that many see as immoral and repressive. It displays no ethical doubt about tightly controlling beneficiaries’ lives, and seems distant from the marginalised and their advocates. In the 1990s the National government tried to implement the repressive “Wisconsin Works” model from the USA. National’s benefit policy announcements in August 2008 echo an aspect of this model. It is not surprising that this facet of Mission Australia’s money-making may have been of interest.

Lessons From Mission Australia?

What can be inferred about National’s social policy plans? State house to millionaire John Key is looking at large contracting arrangements as in Australia. And National’s consultee Mission Australia reveals :

• Using large corporates to control Government social service contracts, to shield Government, with smaller groups effectively starved of funds
• Contracting as the centralised model of relations between Government and the sector
• Relationships with tangata whenua, with communities in need, with the not-for-profit sector, being less important
• Sidelining the advocacy work of groups working closely with the disadvantaged
• Questions about the morality of how the money is gained
• Possibly the look of a church-based social service shielding from criticism

Enough to raise concerns, when National soon announces its social service policy.

Implications

The tangata whenua community voluntary sector is uniquely placed to be close to our communities, to hear their issues, to advocate with them – and to be accountable to them first. At their best, the sector’s groups are not large corporates. Not an industry generating case numbers, nor just contractors. And we work best where the unique role of Tangata Whenua is respected and endorsed.

New Zealand gains from the sector. Hugely. National may not want to clash with the sector as it did after the 1996 election. But it could be dividing the social service organisations - seeing who fit in with its supercontractor model, and who won’t. This move will effectively privatise chunks of the sector. Private public partnerships tend to socialise losses and privatise profits – including social service PPPs. Where does privatising leave small Maori and community groups serving their communities? The smooth corporate style, centralised contracting, is not the way groups best support communities’ hopes.