Why should the taxpayer have to pay for this? The Government could, under current legislation, implement a permanent solution for e-waste, which would not require a taxpayer handout.

In fact, just today councils in Wellington are calling on the Government to implement a scheme whereby the producers of electronic goods pre-pay for the recycling of their products. I believe this mandatory pre-pay e-waste scheme is the way to go.

Our current system where people voluntarily pay for recycling at the time of disposal isn’t working: only about 20% of our e-waste is recycled. But a mandatory pre-pay scheme would dramatically increase this rate.

If we had more recycling of products worldwide, then we have to build fewer mines, and the world would be a cleaner, greener place. E-waste products contain gold, silver and rare earth metals.  Let’s mine our used electronic waste rather than our treasured places.

It’s time for the Government to set up and implement a permanent solution for TV waste and other e-waste. Pre-pay is the way forward.

This move is partly inspired by the Living Wage campaign.

The Green Party has been actively supporting this campaign that would see big employers sign up to pay a living wage.  This is the wage that would allow their employees to achieve a decent standard of living and also enjoy proper time off with their families.

Employers in the retail sector employ thousands of workers and this is why it is essential that workers, and their unions, and employers work together to try and tackle the growing inequality in New Zealand society.

In the post war period the minimum wage used to be close to 80% of the average wage.

Since the 1980s this figure has dropped to around 50% of the average wage making New Zealand one of the most unequal societies in the OECD.

The retail sector can be great agents of change.  It’s great to see the bosses of the Warehouse looking beyond the cost to their bottom line and seeing that an engaged workforce is just as important.  The Warehouse considers that this move will lead to greater worker engagement, lower staff turnover, and improved sales and higher productivity.

This move will also pay dividends for both the Warehouse and other retailers. More money in the pockets of low and middle income New Zealanders means more money spent in the grocery and retail sector.

Now is the time for some other big organisations to step up to the challenge of providing a decent standard of living for their workers.

From today mean spirited employers have an opportunity to push down rates for young workers.

One such employer actively cheerleading the re-introduction of youth rates is Pak and Save.

Pak n Save and its owners Foodstuffs have made themselves a target of those fighting the re-introduction of poor pay rates based on age due to Pak and Save’s active support for this policy.

Many other big firms have thankfully ruled out paying people doing the same job different rates of pay based on age.

The problem with youth rates is that it will see unscrupulous employers game the system. As well as being a really bad deal for young people it will also likely see older workers displaced as some employers look to maximise the opportunity this Government has given them to pay below the adult minimum wage.

This policy will not create jobs or job opportunities.  This is not a policy for a brighter future it is a policy of slashing wages and grinding workers down.

This year’s event highlighted the appalling health and safety record of the forestry industry. While the workers in this industry are highly skilled and frequently well trained the pressure to work harder and faster has resulted in four deaths since the beginning of the year.  In the last four years there have been over 900 serious accidents and 26 deaths in our forests.

The loved ones of six of those workers spoke to the 150 or so people gathered in Auckland for the Memorial event.  They spoke about the pressures their loved ones were under before their deaths; they talked about the concerns these men had already raised about the terrain and weather they were working in; and they also talked about how the forestry industry had frequently tried to blame the victims themselves or attempted to minimise the seriousness of the health and safety risks these workers faced – and their colleagues face – every day.

Despite the tears – and there were many – these families were determined to tell the stories about how their loved ones had died in an effort to stop other needless deaths. Ken Callow’s family are also fronting a CTU-lead public campaign about forestry deaths which includes a petition and a call for an inquiry into the forestry sector.

Most foresters are contractors working long hours, frequently trying to meet unrealistic deadlines and quotas set by the forest owners.  But the forest owners are never ever held to account about the accidents that happen.

And to add insult to injury on Friday the government announced a host of changes to the employment relations law that will result in workers having even less say in their workplaces. Many of the proposed changes attack union rights and collective bargaining and many unions have expressed their concern about how wages and conditions will be eroded.

Unionised workforces have safer working conditions and better pay rates because workers are free to participate in dialogue with their employers about health and safety and negotiations around their wages and conditions. The National Government changes are simply a mechanism to further reduce union rights and it puts workers at risk.

The slogan for Workers Memorial Day is “Mourn for the Dead and Fight for the Living.” – The Greens are backing the call for an inquiry into the forestry sector. Now is the time to fight for the living.

Since 2004, the manufacture, import or use of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) – found primarily in old electrical equipment – has been prohibited in New Zealand. However there is legacy waste that still needs to be collected and disposed of in a safe way. So the government has allocated $550,000 to Transpacific, an overseas-owned company, to make sure it happens.

Clearly there is money to be made in the safe disposal of hazardous waste, but instead of New Zealanders getting the profits, the profits are going off shore.

The Waste Minimisation Fund is an initiative of the Greens’ Waste Minimisation Act that was introduced in 2008, and it was envisaged that the fund, which is collected from a levy of $10 on every tonne of waste that goes to landfill, would be used to increase innovation in the waste/recycling sector, create jobs and help build the New Zealand economy.

The Greens maintain the Waste Minimisation Fund should be used to assist smaller New Zealand businesses rather than be allocated to large foreign-owned companies. In the case of hazardous waste, Transpacific seems to have taken over the market. And while we acknowledge there may be no New Zealand firms that could do the job, we believe that for many other waste products, it points to a failure of the government to invest in local solutions and local businesses.

The government could create an integrated system to deal with waste, but instead are dealing piecemeal with specific legacy issues. The TV Takeback is another example. The government is subsidising the recycling of analogue TVs without a plan for how the newly purchased TVs will be dealt with when people replace them in four years.

It’s time the government tackled the issue of mandatory product stewardship, where we ensure that products are responsibly recycled at the end of life, rather than leaving it to the market and subsidies from the Waste Minimisation Fund.

Fast food chain McDonalds joined other retail and fast food companies Bunnings, Farmers, K Mart. Starbucks, KFC and Pizza Hut in promising to pay young workers at least the minimum adult wage of $13.75 per hour. And Countdown supermarket also agreed to ignore the $11 per hour youth rate in favour of the adult wage.

Pak ‘n Save, Four Square and New World supermarkets on the other hand have confirmed through their parent company Foodstuffs that they will discriminate against young workers by paying youth rates where they can.

I’m deeply disappointed about this – because as well as having the Industrial Relations portfolio for the Greens I’m also the Waste spokesperson and this week Foodstuffs was lauded for responding to public pressure and upping their game on their packaging practises.

In last years’ Unpackit Awards Foodstuffs had the dubious honour of winning the Worst Packaging Award for laying fresh vegetables like carrots and parsnips on a polystyrene meat tray and then wrapping the whole lot in glad wrap-type plastic.

The Unpackit Awards are a clever tool to engage ordinary New Zealanders in discussion about good and bad packaging.  Basically they call for nominations for the best and worst examples of product packaging and then they draw up a short list and encourage people to vent their fury at bad packaging and share their delight at good packaging solutions by voting on them.

Foodstuffs were one of the eight finalists last year for the worst packaging and just over 10,000 votes were cast.

Unpackit Awards media spokesperson Gina Dempster said that as well as changing their vegetable-wrapping practices Foodstuffs have also announced that they will look at the way they choose their packaging with a goal of moving towards 100% kerbside recyclable packaging for both produce and private label in future years.

People power clearly works for Foodstuffs.  As Gina says in her press release:

 “The Unpackit Awards are decided by public vote, and the message was given loudly and clearly to Foodstuffs when they won the Worst Packaging Award in 2012 that some of their packaging was frustrating customers.

“It’s to their credit that instead of getting defensive and hunkering down to protect the status quo, Foodstuffs have taken action to improve their packaging.”

Now we just need to enter Foodstuffs in some kind of competition for the Discriminating Pay Rates for Young Workers Award.   Thousands of people would vote for them. Maybe that’d make them change their ways.

NOTE:  Nominations for this years’ best and worst packaging awards are now open.  Check them out at the Unpackit website.

It’s not often I agree with Sir Bob – and I certainly don’t agree with his description of problem gamblers – however it’s undeniable that the presence of pokie machines makes pubs look dodgy.

The pokie industry is rife with rorts and is very poorly regulated in New Zealand.  And according to the Problem Gambling Foundation pokie machines are designed to get people hooked with two out of every five regular pokie players likely to develop problem gambling behaviours.

The industry targets lower socio-economic communities so that those less likely to afford to gamble are affected the most. Then to sanitise this money thirty seven per cent of the proceeds are distributed for grants  -and as we have seen time and time again in the media frequently to well-heeled sports, culture and arts groups.

The pub, Wellington’s Old Bailey, will miss out on about $5000 – $6000 per week. However  I reckon they may win on the deal.  Australian evidence shows that when people don’t gamble there’s more money to spend on hospitality.  There will be a nicer pub with a more salubrious atmosphere that won’t be profiting from anyone else’s gambling problem.

The rehabilitated Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith has been loudly declaring to all and sundry that the council needs to free up the rules in the Unitary Plan so that more green field development can occur.  This would mean that the rural edges of the Auckland region get  swallowed up by new suburbs and – as I said last year – costs twice as much as developing housing inside the city’s existing boundaries because of the expense of building new roads, water and waste water supplies and providing transport options all from scratch.  Invariably this cost is born by the ratepapyers and the developers who make the profits from the subdivisions tend to benefit.

And now he’s also saying that the notification rules around housing developments should be set aside so that they can happen more quickly – essentially cutting out the democratic process enshrined in the Resource Management Act (RMA) that gives citizens a say on what gets built in their communities and how it will impact on them.

And ominously the Environment Minister Amy Adams – who is responsible for the current process of eviscerating the RMA – has been hinting that the government could set up a new crown enterprise to take over the planning functions of the Council in order to release more land for development.

At the same time both ministers have accused the Council of being anti-democratic for wanting to take a fast track approach to implementing the Unitary Plan.  The mayor maintains that this would that would still involve community engagement and the ability for the Plan to be challenged.

The accusations of lack of democracy seem a bit rich coming from a government that seems determined to undermine Auckland democracy at every turn because this criticism comes on top of the government’s insistence that they (the government) will appoint the members of the Unitary Plan’s hearing panel.  Given the Government’s propensity to cronyism this doesn’t bode well.

The government is doing its best to undermine Auckland Council at every step despite the Council and the Mayor jumping through every hoop that this government set them with the legislation that forced the council amalgamations in 2010.  Guess they’re still punishing us because we got the Mayor we wanted in those elections.

In 2011, according to the International Trade Union Confederation 29 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia.

Colombia is a violent society where helping to organise a union can lead to death sentence.  Nearly 4000 Colombian trade unionists have been murdered over the last 20 years.

Until 1990, Colombian trade unions were among the strongest in Latin America. However, as paramilitary groups formed in the mid-1980s in response to the internal civil conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Government, unionists began to be targeted.

Colombia is now by far the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. More trade unionists are killed in this country than the rest of the world combined.

Concerns about violence against trade unions have delayed United States-Colombia trade agreements.  Though in October 2011, the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement was signed.  This move was criticised by labour leaders in both Colombia and the United States for not doing enough to assist Colombian trade unionists and workers’ rights.

When John Key is trying to advance New Zealand’s trade policy he needs to push the rights of workers in both New Zealand and the countries he is dealing with.

It is hoped he raises the appalling violence against trade unionists on his visit.

Marketing for Lotto has become more aggressive – it’s everywhere – the jackpots are higher and Lotteries Commission gambling is more easily accessible because it is the only form of state sanctioned on-line gambling. (As one wag put it to me recently you can lose the house without leaving the house.)

For a long time Lotto has been seen as a benign form of gambling however the latest figures from the Ministry of Health show that problem gambling with Lotteries Commission products (that includes scratchies ) has increased from nearly 9% in 2009 to over 12% last year. Hauora Waikato, the Māori problem gambling service that blew the whistle on these figures suggests that Lotto outlets are also being targeted to poorer areas.  Just like pokie bars.

The Lotteries Commission is also fighting against the Ministry of Health’s suggestion that they should be paying a larger problem gambling levy to recognise the increase in harm from their products.

It’s alarming that a state run organisation is behaving like a greedy commercial operator to increase the revenue from harmful products.

Mind you, this Government has taken a very lax approach to other gambling operators so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise.  (Sky City and their convention-centre for more-pokie machines comes to mind.) It’s about time the Lotteries Commission had a close look at what harm they’re causing and at the very least set up host responsibility programmes like other gambling operators.

So said Samuel Duncan Parnell when he emigrated to New Zealand in 1840 and established the eight-hour day by organising his fellow carpenters to refuse to work the much longer hours that had been the norm in their native United Kingdom.

The eight hour working day (and the 40 hour week) was a standard that was rapidly picked up by workers across the land as they sought to create a fairer society from the one they had left. It became enshrined in workers’ employment conditions and lasted until the international move towards ‘labour market flexibility’ of the mid-1980’s and was pretty much dismantled by the bargaining reforms of the Employment Contract Act introduced by the National government in 1991.

At the second day of the Precarious Work and the Living Wage in our Community Symposium, the focus has been on how to ensure that workers can once more enjoy a standard of living that enables them to participate fully in society.

We’ve all heard the appalling statistics around inequality in New Zealand (we are placed 23^rd out of 30 OECD countries for how well we’re doing on equality) and we know that 270,000 children are living in poverty with two out of five of those kids coming from families where one adult is in the paid work force.

At today’s workshops we heard from Deborah Littman, who is involved with the London Living Wage campaign and also the Metro Vancouver Alliance.    Her message was that these campaigns are affordable and are winnable but the community has to be pushing for it because workers cannot do this on their own.

She spoke about how communities had come to realise that poor wages affect everyone, not just the workers.  She pointed to the costs associated with poverty wages.  These include the cost of people’s poor health outcomes, poor education outcomes for children and the loss of the economic contribution they could make as well as the cost of the justice system for those kids who slip into crime.

She also pointed to the fact that low wages weaken local economies.  Lower paid people tend to spend what they earn (they don’t keep their money in off-shore accounts for example) and economists argue that for every dollar earned in a low income family it has the value of at least $1.60 as it circulates through the local economy.

She also spoke of how communities are weakened by low wages.  As the adults in a family struggle working horrendously long hours and sometimes several jobs to make ends meet, our communities become poorer because those adults do not have any free time to volunteer. It’s hard to put your hand up to coach a netball team or deliver meals on wheels when every hour is spent trying to earn enough to feed your kids.

Several speakers today have made the point that we cannot afford to keep wages low because we all pay the cost of that.  The challenge for all of us – especially those who are better off – is to pass that message on to others in our communities so that together we can all have a decent standard of living.  Low paid workers cannot do it by themselves. I am hopeful that we can create a fairer future for our most vulnerable citizens – a future Samuel Duncan Parnell might have wanted.

For more information go to www.livingwagenz.org.nz

The Precariat refers to the class of workers who have no secure work.  For some – well qualified professionals for example – contract work suits them, they can shift easily between well-paid projects – although apparently good management advice recommends that these workers devote at least 15% of their time to learning new skills to ensure they are attractive to their ‘market’.  He calls this the ‘commodification’ of workers.

Standing makes a distinction between them and other types of workers.  He notes that with increased globalisation and an international trend to force wages down more and more workers in low paid work are finding their work is becoming increasingly insecure.

In New Zealand we see it in many ways.  In reduced hours of work.  Or spasmodic work.  Or workers being permanently on-call. Or an insistence that workers become ‘self –employed’ and are subcontracted to work in their jobs – which is becoming a worrying trend in the home care sector for example – where the workers are responsible for their own health and safety, equipment and payment of taxes and ACC.

A classic example is the parliamentary cleaners.   Mainly women workers of Pacific Island origin, most of these night shift staff have been trusted to work in parliament for years but are still on pay-rates that are just above the minimum wage.  The contract that their employer holds with Parliamentary Services is fiercely negotiated to keep costs down and over time these cleaners have either had their hours reduced or their workloads increased.  As one woman noted in the NZ Herald there are now three cleaners responsible for the work that used to be done by six.

Standing calls precarious workers ‘denizens’ not citizens.  Their unsociable work hours and the requirement for them to work all sorts of hours to provide a decent standard of living are isolating.  They rarely have access to collective agencies or rights.  And the insistence that they are individuals – selling their labour for as much as they can get – means they have no ‘future shadow.’

Work relationships are transitory so there is no need to invest in them.  This has massive negative impacts in terms of how people participate in society and their levels of reciprocity.   Basically it can break down the social capital in communities – the ‘glue’ that holds people together.

Participation in our communities is a key strand for the Living Wage campaign too. The definition adopted by Living Wage Aotearoa New Zealand is ‘…the income necessary to provide workers with the basic necessities of life.  A living wage will enable workers to live with dignity and to participate as active citizens in society.’

After a lot of research economists have determined the hourly rate that would allow a family of two adults (one working full time and the other part time) and two children to be $18.40 per hour.

We must lift New Zealand families out of poverty and into a decent standard of living.  This is a sensible way to do it.

Check out the full living wage report:

Councils across New Zealand have some control over the number of pubs and clubs with pokie machines. The policy review will be the first time Auckland Council has brought together all the different gambling policies from the seven legacy councils that were in existence before the Super City merger. The Council does not have any control over gambling at the Sky City casino as this is regulated by government legislation.

Across the Auckland region there are 4,183 pokie machines at 305 different venues. In 2011, $245 million dollars was lost on them. Problem gambling figures suggest that around 40% of that money came from problem gamblers who are usually those who can least afford it.

Pokie machines are the most harmful mode of gambling in New Zealand. They are designed to be both costly and addictive, and are often targeted to areas where there is low household income and high deprivation. For example, the Orakei Local Board area – which covers Remuera and Epsom – has the lowest number of pokie venues and pokie machines in Auckland. By comparison, they are far more prevalent in the Papakura and Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board areas. The social harm from problem gambling is enormous – for every problem gambler there are an estimated 9 – 12 people, mainly children, adversely affected by it.

Auckland Council is considering having a ‘sinking lid’ policy for pokie machines that will cover the entire region and the Greens are supporting this. A sinking lid policy means that the Council will act on their responsibility to reduce harm from gambling by not allowing any new pokie venues to be opened – and where pokie venues close, they will not allow them to be replaced. This means that over time the number of pokies in Auckland will reduce.

I am trying to maximise the number of submission in support of a responsible policy that minimises gambling harm, so I’m hoping Frogblog readers can find the time to submit. To help you write your submission I have prepared a submission guide and mail form. I am also organising four submission-writing workshops to be held in Central, South, West and North Auckland. The dates and venues for the workshops are:

• Thurs 14 Feb, 5:30pm-7.00pm, Auckland Green Party Office, 17 Mercury Lane, Newton
• Thurs 21 Feb, 5:30pm-7:00pm, Mangere Community Centre, 141 Robertson Road, Mangere
• Mon 25 Feb, 5:30pm-7:00pm, Ranui Community House, 474 Swanson Road, Ranui
• Mon 25 Feb, 7:30pm-9:00pm, Glenfield Community Centre, Cnr Glenfield Rd & Bentley Ave

Used tyres are a problem to dispose of and tyre companies often pay people to dispose of them. Many people who obtain used tyres no doubt dispose of them safely. But as Jo Knight, Chief Executive of Zero Waste New Zealand says (3’13), “This is a place where there have been a lot of rorts and it is really time and a case for the disposal of tyres to be regulated.”

I couldn’t agree more. Tyres can be a valuable resource, rather than a waste. They can be used for many things including as an ingredient in long-lasting and quiet roading surface, rubber bollards and rubber road dividers, and as a base material for shoe soles, rubber floors and waterproof membranes. It can also be used in the manufacture of sports-ground surfaces and even for the backstop at shooting ranges.

Luckily for New Zealand, we already have legislation in place that could be used to ensure that we treat used tyres as a resource rather than a waste. Under the Waste Minimisation Act 2008, which began as a members bill by Green MP Nandor Tanczos, the Minister for the Environment has the power to create a mandatory product stewardship scheme that requires the recycling of tyres. 

The Minister also has the power to put make the tyre companies pay up front for the recycling of the product. The companies would be charged up front for every tyre they make or import, and that money would be used to ensure the proper disposal of the tyres at their end of life. This is called an “advanced disposal fee”. Advanced disposal fees are a great idea because the funds generated can be used to build the necessary recycling infrastructure. This has been working effectively in places like Canada for decades.

Mandatory product stewardship schemes and advanced disposal fees are tools that can be applied to tyres, but equally to other valuable resources which are often consider waste, such as electronic goods.

This year the Minister for the Environment needs to make some positive moves towards a waste free New Zealand. Declaring tyres a mandatory product and introducing advanced disposal fees could be the first step.  

In my own community of Waiheke, where we have a population of around 8000, we have 198 community organisations that rely on volunteers. Between them they contribute in excess of half a million dollars of volunteer labour every year. People like Hera Mohns – a local stalwart who set up Friends of the Street and who, every weekend for the last 10 years, has driven our local teenagers home from parties and kept them safe and out of trouble. There are hundreds of others.

Who volunteers? It’s your neighbor, who delivers meals-on-wheels, or takes books to someone who is homebound. It’s the brave souls who referee at our thousands of sporting matches every weekend, or the kids who bake to raise funds for their pet’s favourite charity. Volunteers are the families who head down to their local stream to get their boots in the mud at a community planting event, the people who give you all kinds of information at your local Citizens Advice Bureau, the group doing the sausage sizzle or the person rattling the bucket on the street in the rain. It might be your Mum who has spent the last 20 years taking care of her partner or your Aunty who has given her time with our little ones at Kōhanga.

According to the Office of the Community and Voluntary Sector, the not for profit sector contributes 2.6% to New Zealand’s GDP and if you add up all the voluntary hours of work it comes to 4.9% of our national GDP – about the same as the construction industry. In dollar terms that’s $6.95 billion per year. The OCVS says that in the not for profit sector around 1.5 million volunteers give more than 270 million hours of unpaid labour to the sector annually.

The Greens support a well-resourced, well-connected and well-funded community and not for profit sector. Too often our community and voluntary organisations become the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Ongoing cuts to spending in the public sector mean that, in effect, more and more work is being devolved to the community sector – which is increasingly under-funded and under-resourced to do what it needs to.

At the same time, we are increasing pressure on families as they work harder and longer at low wage jobs. This impacts on their ability to volunteer or do the things that contribute to our civil society. This is the stuff that ensures we have safe and healthy communities – and volunteering is a huge part of that.

So if you see a volunteer today, please make sure they know their contribution is valued and say thank you. And, if you are a volunteer yourself, you have my support and gratitude.

I loved Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.  It was a blast seeing our gorgeous scenery and local actors on the screen.  I swear half the population of Auckland was an extra in the movies. Half the fun of watching the movies was spotting familiar faces in the background.

And while it’s great that Jackson is getting to make another three fantastic movies on the Hobbit, it’s not so great that the National Government pandered to the union-busting wishes of the American film industry – Warner Brothers – and changed the laws around collective bargaining and contractors in exchange for a bunch of industry jobs in New Zealand that are cheaper than their international counterparts.

And frankly last night when the Prime Minister was on the red carpet at the premier of The Hobbit: An Unexpected journey and thanked the people of New Zealand for ‘allowing’ his government to change the law it was a huge affront to Actors Equity and the workers who were told they could not bargain collectively for their wages and conditions and were deemed to be ‘contractors’ while working on the movie.  It’s an affront to all workers actually, because the law weakens the rights for workers on other movies and in other industries.

The New Zealand public did not support or allow this law.  It was passed under urgency – so the basics of democracy were suspended to get the legislation passed.  The law was not needed.  Official Information Act requests showed that the government was on track to change the law – at the request of Warners – despite the fact that the dispute around pay and conditions had been settled so the problem was over.

The Greens support a strong vibrant film industry for New Zealand.  We support jobs in what is on the whole a ‘knowledge industry’ sector.  We acknowledge the marketing benefits the Hobbit movies offer to our economy and we also acknowledge the fact that New Zealand taxpayers gave over $100 million in subsidies for the making of these movies.

Selling our laws to give fewer rights for workers on top of this is too is too high a price.

Minister Jo Goodhew said that one of the main reasons for her decision was because of the ‘continuing constrained fiscal environment’.

But the postponement of the review is really much more likely to be about that long standing and gnarly issue of advocacy.

Community organisations already spend much of their time advocating. They shouldn’t be excluded from getting charitable status (and tax exemption) because of this. Organisations of long standing repute including the National Council of Women have been denied charitable status on the basis that advocacy is their primary purpose. Advocacy  is not currently deemed a ‘charitable purpose’ under the Act, and therefore they are denied  tax exemption for donations.

While Greenpeace has in the last couple of days won its case to have its charitable status reconsidered, and that in itself is a great step forward, it hasn’t won its case yet. I know of other charities that are still being excluded and it is a further insult to the sector to now be told that the review may simply never happen.

The Minister has said herself that the government is frightened that if advocacy is included as a charitable purpose that it will reduce the tax take, the logic being that commercial entities currently not able to register for charitable status will set up dodgy ‘advocacy’ fronts in order to secure tax exemption.

I would make two comments about that:

1)      If advocacy is included in the Act as an ancillary (i.e., secondary, rather than primary) purpose then this would preclude such groups from registering

2)      In postponing the review, the government has missed the chance to address the issue of dodgy outfits who have already set up charitable fronts and are already benefiting from tax exemption, and weed them out.

On the back of the government’s announcement I have drafted a simple Private Member’s Bill to write advocacy into the definition of charitable purpose in the Charities Act as an ancillary purpose. I’ve been holding off for ages because I kept hearing that there would be a review and this would be the main focus of it.

Private Member’s Bills  are drawn by ballot every few weeks when the House is sitting. I would like to extend an invitation to my colleagues in the tangata whenua, community and voluntary sector to let me know what they think about this proposal and to please let me know if they can see any problems or fishhooks associated with this idea.

The first member’s ballot for 2013 will be around the 13^th of February, so we have the summer to consider this. If people or organisations have thought or comments, please feel free to email me at denise.roche@parliament.govt.nz.

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou

Denise

My own grandfather was a miner at Waihi. He died when my mother was small and my grandmother said that working in the mine meant long hours and poor conditions.

Discontent with injuries and fatalities in the mines was one of the major causes of the industrial unrest that bubbled over into violence a hundred years ago during the long strike by the miners of Waihi.

Poor ventilation and respiration meant miners health was often terribly compromised after only a few years.  Miners suffered from dust on the lungs.  And then there were the industrial accidents and rockfalls which killed and maimed miners on a regular basis.  Needless to say, pay was also poor.

This weekend just past the Labour History Project and Auckland Labour History Group marked the centenary of the 1912 Waihi strike.

History tells us we should learn from our past mistakes.  The Royal Commission’s report into Pike River shows us we haven’t learned enough in the hundred years since the Waihi industrial action.

Denise

Today, the public service performs a wide range of vital roles helping to keep our country functioning and to support all those who live in New Zealand. Unfortunately, all is not well in the sector.

Since coming to power, the National Government has repeatedly cut jobs across the sector, which has had negative impacts not only on the staff being made redundant and their families, but also on the services that the sector delivers to other New Zealanders. Over 5000 jobs have been lost in the last four years, with approximately 200 of these losses in an 18 km radius in the Hawkes Bay area. Many public servants are feeling the pressure of increased workloads, pressure on wages and conditions and increasingly hostile work environments.

The National Government is also introducing a range of amendments to legislation that will further harm the public sector and those who work in it. The Public Service Association, a union that represents tens of thousands of workers in the public and wider state sector, is launching a campaign called More Reforms, Fewer Rights to fight against these dangerous changes.

The public sector is an important part of New Zealand. We all interact with different parts of it each and every day, and we need to stand together against the Government’s attacks in order to ensure that the promise that began in 1912 can continue to flourish for the benefit of us all.

I’ve said before that casinos are an engine of crime. Their very existence requires they make a profit from the proceeds of crime – typically money laundering – and problem gambling. A cursory glance at the newspapers will reveal regular stories of gamblers committing fraud and crime to get money to feed into the pokie machines.

Famously, two of the biggest drug dealers in Auckland spent nearly $20 million at SkyCity, while using the casino as an office to plan P deals. Casinos are also a magnet for loan sharks.

Metiria’s bill is a simple change in the law that beefs up the government’s own legislation around preventing money laundering. It will mean that casinos will have to return money gambled by people who have stolen that money – where it has been proven that the casino could reasonably know that the money came from dubious sources.

Mr Barnett would have us believe that theft, problem gambling, money laundering, drugs, gangs and all the other crime associated with casinos are minor issues – and that the need for a Convention Centre is more important. He tends to ignore the fact that the tender process for the Convention Centre is the subject of an Auditor General’s investigation because it smacks of cronyism and the Prime Minister has been heavily involved. And that’s quite aside from the fact that he seems prepared to sell our laws for it.

Auckland may well need a Convention Centre. But a centre that taints the government with criminality and that increases the harm and crime in our city is a pretty hefty price tag.