PPTA president Robin Duff's address to the 2011 New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) Annual Conference.

Greetings to you all and as I have just said - special greetings to our colleagues from Christchurch, Greymouth and now the Western Bay who continue to struggle with the aftermath of national disasters.

Business as usual for global financial systems

Last time I spoke to Annual Conference was in 2008   when we were still coming to terms with the biggest financial disaster since the great depression of the 1930s.  As we learned about the shady and unethical dealings of banks, finance companies and audit firms, financiers and politicians we waited for justice.  Perhaps it was naive but, at the time,  we imagined that the perpetrators of  the various scams and frauds that turned out to constitute "business as usual" for the global financial system  would be rounded up and if not publicly  executed, at least subject to some public humiliation and be required to make amends.

It has not happened.

There hasn't been a single prosecution of the main Wall Street players because the American government has instead agreed to "deferred prosecution agreements” which means that court cases will not pursued providing the companies agree to investigate and report their own crimes.

New Zealanders exposed to similar shady deals

In this country, crooked financiers have stripped over $20 billion from New Zealanders for which crimes they have received a slap with a wet bus ticket and a tax cut.

Wall Street banks continue to pay huge bonuses out of taxpayer bailout money while at the same time resisting the regulation that is needed if global citizens are to be able to trust financial institutions ever again.   As the Wall Street protesters put it:  “You get bailouts; we get sold out.”

Debt crisis reconstructed as the responsibility of the public sector

And sold out we are.   How can it be that after all this excess and greed and huge government bailouts, the debt crisis has been reconstructed as  the responsibility of the public sector?  In Greece, public servants are being tossed out of jobs because Greece apparently has a “bloated public sector.” Excuse me?  Shouldn’t that be a “a bloated world financial sector?”

Teachers, nurses, firefighters, civil servants made scapegoats for financial crisis

According to our minister of finance, he has only just got started with the public sector in NZ.   So … teachers, nurses, firefighters and civil servants are to be held accountable for the financial crisis and indirectly, the young, the sick and those who, for various reasons, find themselves dependent on the state,  are going to feel the lash.   The logic runs like this:

"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and then call  whatever you hit the target.    "

Incredibly, the very same economists who never saw the crisis coming, continue to be wheeled out to offer advice on the future. It’s not like we haven’t seen this snake oil before.   What’s their advice this time?  Privatise, sell state assets, cut jobs in the public sector and introduce user pays into health and education.