Congratulations Keith. It is great to see Keith recognised for his passionate hard work standing up for human rights both at home and around the world.

Keith was awarded Amnesty International Aotearoa’s 2012 Human Rights Defender award over the weekend.

We could devote pages to the campaigns, issues and individual cases (not just high profile but the many more that didn’t make headlines) but instead we invite readers to browse through some of Keith’s posts and remember all the work he did before becoming an MP.

It was an honour to work with Keith and we look forward to the next opportunity to catch up with his latest work.

For those that didn’t see Keith was on Firstline this morning you can catch the interview here.

- Metiria and Russel

There are some other startling similarities in the statements between the two Prime Ministers over their mutual failures, when the votes were down:

Clark: “I’ve made it clear all the way through this round of allegations that I accept an honourable member’s word as his bond unless I have reason to doubt it. I don’t have reason to doubt it at this point.” (29 July 2008)
Key: “I have to believe what they tell me or how can I possibly enjoy their confidence? I’ve dealt with John a lot over the last couple of years and I’ve found him to be honest.” (30 April 2012)

Clark: “What I have to be assured with respect to Mr Peters as a minister is that he is acting lawfully and I’ve got no reason to doubt his assurance on that” (29 July 2008). “I’m not a private police force” (14 July 2008)
Key: “I know John well, I’ve known him over a number of years, he’s never misled me … if people don’t like it, go to the police, that’s their job to go and do an investigation. (30 April 2012)

Clark: “…there is a distinction between whether someone gives to a party, whether someone gives to a person and whether someone gives to their expenses. On that basis the donation did not appear to have broken any rules” (21 July 2008)

Key: “I’ve asked directly the question, I’ve been given an assurance by Mr Banks that he complied with all the local government regulations and laws and I accept him at his word” (30 April 2012)

John clearly needs Banksy on board. And if the history runs true, this will go on for a while yet.

A vote for the Greens is a vote for a richer New Zealand in the things that really matter. A richer New Zealand will have clean rivers, healthy kids, and jobs that are good for our environment and our economy.

We are ready and rearing to get back into Parliament with more MPs and more energy than ever before to start working on our priority areas of jobs, rivers, and kids.

We’ve got costed plans to bring 100,000 children out of poverty by 2014, clean up our rivers, and to create thousands of new green jobs.

The Green Party will make Working for Families work, provide better study support for sole parents and beneficiaries, raise the minimum wage to $15, and make sure rental properties are warm and healthy. By doing this we will reduce inequality and make sure our kids get the best start in life possible.

We will create thousands of new green jobs because it is vital for New Zealand’s families, environment, and economy. A reminder: a vote for the Greens is the best way to keep state assets in Kiwi hands.

We will create green jobs by ensuring our state-owned energy companies capture the massive export opportunities in renewable energy. We’ll also shift the drivers in the private sector towards sustainability and increased productivity.

The Greens will also clean up New Zealand’s rivers and lakes to make sure we can swim in them again. Over half of our monitored rivers are unsafe for swimming, one third of our lakes are unhealthy, and two-thirds of our native freshwater fish are at risk or threatened with extinction.

We will set standards for clean water, introduce a fair charge for irrigation water, and support water clean-up initiatives.

So there you have it. Jobs, rivers, and kids: It’s a pretty compelling vision for a richer New Zealand and with your support we can make it happen.

Let’s make history tomorrow,

Russel and Metiria

They took me on a trip around the coastline, with the safety officer and team leaders to check for oil and debris. There were lots of stranded containers and timber piled up on unreachable rocks. But, for the time being at least, on the surface it was pretty clean.

Under the surface is a very different story.

Under the surface kina are blackened and dead. Crayfish are found smothered in oil and dead. Under the surface, the fish and shellfish are polluted and cannot be eaten.

Under the surface of this disaster are the families who eat everyday from the ocean but cannot anymore.

John Key talks of compensation for business, tourism and the fishing industry, and rightly so. Peoples’ livelihoods are in peril and financial support is needed. That is the right thing to do.

But what about those hundreds of families on low incomes who supplement their meagre incomes with the bounty of the sea? There are hundreds of families on minimum wages or benefits or superannuation who cannot afford seafood, so they get it straight out of the ocean—as is their birthright.

That is how the ocean is used by coastal communities every day in this country: as a daily source of fresh healthy food.

So, who will compensate their food budgets?

Does John Key understand that his failure to take the warnings seriously means that families have lost a food source on which they and their kids depend?

No, he clearly does not. His glib comment that this will be all ‘over by Christmas’ underlines his shallowness.

The shellfish could take many months to recover back to a healthy, safe state. They are filter feeders and there will have to be rigorous on-going testing of shellfish beds all along the coast and on every island and reef. The cost to the fish stocks is unknown, as is the impact on the phytoplankton at the beginning of the food chain. It could be months before the shellfish can be declared safe to eat. That means months without this food for those who rely on it.

On Motiti, throughout the day, the clean-up crews were well feed and cared for. That is the way of manakitanga and for coastal peoples, kuia and kaumatua, seafood is a source of pride and richness.

John Key has an irresponsibly shallow understanding of the consequences of his failure.

So she’s announced an extra $2.8 million for out of school care programmes, while lowering the standards for those programmes so they can fit more kids in without having to worry about “ticking boxes.”

Quality out of school care is critically important for many parents balancing full or part-time work with child rearing, and more funding for the sector is certainly welcome. However, I’m pretty concerned at the moves to reduce standards at the same time.

As a parent, it can be incredibly hard to leave your kids with carers – even the most trustworthy and able carers – without feeling stressed, anxious, or guilty. You want to be certain that your kids are safe and well looked after, and it helps if they’re with carers who will get to know them as individuals.

It’s about more than just knowing your child is physically safe – it’s also about knowing that they are being nurtured and extended and enriched socially and culturally, and cared for with attention and affection. Some people are lucky enough to have family members to help with this care. Others have partners who can care for their kids full time. Sole parents who don’t have this level of family support deserve the same peace of mind, and their kids deserve the same level of care.

All parents should be able to choose to care for their kids rather than be guilt tripped or worse, coerced by WINZ, into working late and long hours, losing precious parenting time with their children.

Lowering standards to allow out of school care programmes to cram more kids in so their parents can work longer hours is an anti-child policy. It’s symptomatic of this Government’s whole approach to issues of work, welfare, and children: an inflexible, ideological fixation on paid work at all costs – costs borne by the children in the end.

Moving off a benefit and into paid work that is flexible, appropriate, pays a living wage and can accommodate your children’s needs and fulfill your own aspirations is a great thing. There is much we can do to encourage this, like providing better study support for sole parents and beneficiaries to upskill and retrain for new jobs, and raising the minimum wage to help working parents provide the basics for their kids.

But this Government has it the wrong way around: force people into low-paid, unskilled jobs (if they’re lucky enough to find one) and lower child care standards to accommodate their kids while they work the long hours required to make ends meet.

It’s a poor policy that will result in poor outcomes for parents and kids.

In late 2008, the Tribunal found that the package did, indeed, amount to prima facie discrimination on the ground of employment status, but that such discrimination did not impair the right to freedom from discrimination more than is reasonably necessary for sufficient achievement of its legislative purposes (being to incentivise beneficiaries into work and to minimise complex assessments of need).

In making that finding, the Tribunal commented:

We accept that issues of child poverty are real and pressing in New Zealand; no other conclusion is possible on the evidence that we heard.

The reality, however, is that any scheme that includes financial incentives to encourage those who are on benefit incomes to move into work necessarily involves conferring financial advantage on those who can make the move. To the extent that people in that class have families, it follows that their children have the chance to access the advantages as well. At the same time the children of those who cannot or will not make the move will miss out. That is so whether or not there is a formal connection between the incentives and children (as there is in the case of the IWTC). Unless one takes the extreme view that the Government cannot create financial incentives to work at all – because they infringe the right to freedom from discrimination on grounds of employment status, and are inherently unjustifiable – then a level of harm to that right (here, experienced in the sense that those who do not qualify will be ‘left behind’) is inevitable.

The current proceedings are an appeal against the Tribunal’s finding that the infringement against the right to freedom from discrimination is justified.

I agree with CPAG’s argument.  I fail to see how providing lesser assistance to someone who cannot work because of their own disability or because they care for a disabled or young child can be justified. It is ridiculous to argue it provides an incentive to work to someone who simply cannot work, and it denies additional assistance to those who have the least capacity to improve their financial circumstances.

Working for Families can be made to work for all families, without the discrimination against those who need it most, while still retaining incentives for those who can work to do so.

Last month, I announced how the Green Party would do this, and bring 100,000 children out of poverty in the process through extending the IWTC part of WFF to beneficiary families, while increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.  That would put an end to the discrimination in WFF, while maintaining, or in some cases increasing, the financial incentive for those beneficiaries who can work to do so.

Minister Bennett was, as I expected, a no-show at the $8.95 Welfare Forum.  She seems to only listen to those she wants to hear, and beneficiaries and those working to support beneficiaries don’t appear to be among them.

I found Alternative Welfare Working Group Chair Professor Mike O’Brien’s address particularly interesting.  He said that several social policy academics had commented to him that the Welfare Working Group’s report [PDF] was one of the most academically unsound pieces of social policy work they had seen.  Professor O’Brien said the Welfare Working Group had started with the “answer” which the government wanted, which was a crackdown on beneficiaries, and then posed the questions that led to that answer.

Professor Paul Dalziel from Lincoln University pointed out that the Welfare Working Group attempt to portray some sort of “crisis of sustainability” in the welfare system was not backed by the evidence.  Welfare payments as a percentage of GDP are actually dropping and will continue to drop, even under the Welfare Working Group’s worst case scenario.  As I suspected, the whole basis upon which the Welfare Working Group’s report was based is flawed.

Kay Brereton from the Beneficiaries Advocacy Federation followed Professor Dalziel, saying that there was a crisis with Work and Income, but that the crisis was operational, not fiscal.  She talked about the difficulties people have getting benefits already.  She produced figures showing that a full 46% of people who attempt to apply for an unemployment benefit haven’t been granted it within 28 days.  That is something I am going to follow up.

Even more bizarre was Kay Brereton’s revelation that people were having their benefits stopped for failing to turn up to job-search seminars because – wait for it – they have taken on some part-time or casual work on the day of the seminar.  And these things are happening now – before any of the recommendations of the Welfare Working group have been considered.

The most inspiring part of the $8.95 Welfare Forum was that so many groups are planning to take action to oppose the Welfare Working Group’s punitive recommendations being introduced. Actions proposed ranged from sending postcards to direct action protests at National MPs’ offices.

And here’s an action you can take right now.  Send Paula Bennett an e-card asking her to reject the Welfare Working group’s report. New Zealand kids deserve access to essentials and opportunities, especially in hard-times. Cutting benefits, work-testing parents, and targeting the disabled will leave many people and their children out in the cold.

We know that 1 in 5 children live in poverty in New Zealand. That’s more than 200,000 kids. They go without breakfast (and other meals), raincoats, and shoes, and they often live in crowded, cold, damp houses. They get sick, with preventable illnesses like glue ear and rheumatic fever, which hamper their educational opportunities and shorten their lifespans. In short, they lack the essentials, and thus are denied opportunity to have a good start in life. I was deeply shocked to learn recently at a hui with Whakawhetu on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome that there may be a connection between SIDS and malnourishment of mothers during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Hunger is hurting our kids before they even had a chance. And its killing some.

The idea that we could have “sponsored” children in New Zealand is unpalatable to many of us, but that is essentially what KidsCan are promoting with their new ‘In Our Own Backyard’ campaign. While I applaud the work KidsCan and others are doing, we should never have let things get this bad. These programmes will help deal with the immediate crisis, but we urgently need big picture policy changes that can permanently change the picture for our kids.

In my speech to the Green Party AGM recently, I outlined the Green Party’s plan to bring 100,000 kids out of poverty within 3 years. There are three bold but simple things we could do right now that would achieve this:

1. Extend the so-called ‘In-work Tax Credit’ to children whose parents rely on a benefit. Denying them this support is supposed to incentivise work, but it’s in breach of human rights law, and in an environment where jobs and money are painfully short, all it does is deny some of our most at-risk kids the essentials they need. Extending this support would provide an extra $60 per week to these families, which could be the difference between paying the power bill, or not, or putting fresh veges on the table, or not.

2. Reinstate and extend the Training Incentive Allowance to help sole parents, and those on the sickness and invalids’ benefits to study degree level courses. MSD’s own evidence is very clear those who used this allowance to study moved off the benefit on average 6 months earlier than those who didn’t, and moved into higher paying jobs when they did. The outcomes for their kids (and the positive impact of seeing their parents seek higher learning) are incredibly positive.

3. Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour immediately, and eventually to 2/3 of the average wage. Many parents who do move off benefits and into work find themselves no better off financially – and sometimes worse off – on the minimum wage, once childcare, transport, and food costs are taken into account. If work is to benefit families, it must be for a decent, living wage, and sadly this is not the case for thousands of families.

With these changes, we’re confident we can bring 100,000 kids out of poverty. As this morning’s story shows, we need this urgently. Governments have choices, and this Government’s choice not to support kids out of poverty, but to actively punish them for their parents’ situation is both negligent and callous. We would choose differently.

Key maintains Department of Labour advice supports his claim.  So I had a look at the advice, contained in the Department’s 2010 Minimum Wage Review (PDF, 2MB).

At page 15, I found that the Department of Labour calculated that increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour could result in a “potential loss in job growth” of 4,280 – 5,710 jobs.  That’s very different from putting 6000 people out of work.  A potential loss in job growth can occur without a solitary person being put out of work. It all depends on the wider economic policy settings.

Furthermore, the Department fails to show the methodology it used to arrive at its figures, merely citing “Source – Department of Labour calculations”.  For all we know, and Key presumably knows, the Department could have used the same sort of maths as Harold Camping to arrive at its conclusions.

As the NZ Council of Trade Unions pointed out, citing supportive studies, in its submission (PDF, 58 kB) to the Minimum Wage Review:

…any analysis in a New Zealand context needs to draw on the more recent analysis of the behaviour of the labour market. What this has shown is that it is unlikely that an increase in the minimum wage would have an impact on employment.

And does anyone apart from me find Key’s faux concern for some low paid jobs that may potentially be created a wee bit hypocritical in the context of his government directly presiding over the loss of 2000 real jobs in the public sector over the past two years, with the promise of many more job losses from the latest round of Budget cuts?

It has never made much sense to me that the Dunedin City Council controls the planning of the road network, including parking and zoning amongst other transport focused things but the Otago Regional council controls the bus services. This might make sense if like Wellington and pre super city Auckland the public transport network spanned several city councils, but Dunedin City? Staunch and luscious it certainly is, but actually not that big.

This decision is a critical social and environmental one that our community deserves to be part of. With rising petrol prices can we afford to see bus fares increase any more?

“In the case of the 2008 price spike, residents reported riding the bus, but then the fares increased substantially so people went back to private vehicles.” – DCC Peak Oil Vulnerability Analysis Report -

This report also highlights that,

“Travel behaviour change in private transport could easily respond to a major fuel crisis without disrupting social or economic activities, as long as the bus system could continue to function.”

So having a back stop of a community owned bus service will be important if we see the price of fuel spike suddenly.

Some might remember when the DCC owned a power station. We all know how power bills increased following electricity market deregulation. Might we expect an increase in bus fares? Previously there have been basically two bus operators in Dunedin, and this sale would see them combined. While Ritches have won some contracts off Citibus this is still a very small market. One assumes that Invercargill Passenger Transport Ltd are buying Citibus because they think it will increase their profitability, despite Citibus posting losses.

So either:

• By running a bigger operation they are going to lower overheads reducing total staff numbers, reducing working conditions, lower wages; and/or
• By reducing competition they will be able to put in higher tenders and increase their margins.

We are being told that the sale will not result in a reduction in services or staff. This is what concerns us. We need to keep jobs in Dunedin, we need to lower transport costs for families in Dunedin.

So why is Invercargill Passenger Transport Ltd interested in buying Citibus, and why is our council selling off our assets without talking to us first?

While I acknowledge that the court is not perfect, I’m sceptical that this review will be about identifying areas where it can be improved. It seems to be much more about identifying areas from which to cut.

Any review of the Family Court must ensure that certain services to protect children and non-negotiable. To quote Caroline Hannan from the family law section of the Law Society, all children who find themselves the subject of court proceedings are vulnerable.

The Greens have argued in the past that every child affected by Family Court action should have guaranteed access to counselling services. We need to be open to ways in which we can better look after children, not just ways to cut costs. Guaranteed counselling for kids is a good example of where things could be improved.

It’s also vital that the court continues to offer “lawyer for child” services, where a lawyer is appointed to represent the best interests of a child in a family dispute. Often, the best interests of the child will be different from the best interests of either parent, and it’s very important that this independent advocacy service is available. The suggestion that parents should start paying for this service would undermine the important independent advocacy role, and could lead to adverse outcomes for vulnerable kids.

In any review of the Family Court, there must be some bottom lines. Continued access to counselling, mediation, and support services should be non-negotiable, because they are absolutely key to ensuring that family court decisions and settlements are fair and durable.

For the first time in Germany the Greens will lead a coalition government with the traditional left party, the Social Democrats, taking the minor party role.

The road to political success for the Greens has been a long one. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt dismissed the Greens saying, “They’re just environmental idiots who will have disappeared again soon,” and similar things have been said about us here in Aotearoa.

It isn’t surprising people around the world are rejecting this analysis and changing their vote to Green in big numbers. We currently face the triple threats of inter-connected environmental, economic and social problems of a scale unseen in human history. Climate change, peak oil, the global financial crisis, and massive social inequality all stem from the traditional political orthodoxy and the traditional political parties have no new ideas on how to fix these problems. As Einstein said, “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Green parties across the globe offer new thinking to address these problems we all face. Whereas ten years ago we may have been seen as fringe and the thought of voting for us a luxury, our issues are now at the centre of the political debate and our alternatives form serious policy options.

German voters have turned their traditional political structure on its head by voting Green in big numbers due to the failure of the traditional left and right parties to deal with the issues their country is facing. New Zealand voters face similar dilemmas. At our election in November we too can vote for real change by giving smart Green ideas the big tick at the ballot box.

From the modelling reported in Chapter 10, we are of the view that the evidence from welfare reform in New Zealand and overseas indicates that a reduction of around 100,000 people [in receipt of working age benefits] is very ambitious but feasible.

Let’s put that into context.  In the two years between December 2008 and December 2010 the number of people on working age benefits increased by 67,000. So the Welfare Working Group’s target for reducing the number of people on working age benefits over 10 years is only one third more than the increase in beneficiary numbers over the last two years.

And in the five years between December 2000 and December 2005 the number of people on working age benefits dropped by a whopping 90,000 (or 90% of the Welfare Working Group’s 10 year target) from 392,000 to 302,000. That was without the punitive measures the Welfare Working Group is proposing to introduce – in fact the work-for-dole schemes and work-testing of single parents that had been implemented by the last National-led Government were abolished early in that period.

So much for ambition!  The Welfare Working Group doesn’t have any more ambitious target for reduction in beneficiary numbers than would seem likely, given past experience, to occur anyway given reasonably favourable economic conditions and sound economic management.

So why is the Welfare Working Group proposing its beneficiary bash-fest?  One clue can be found at pages 155 and 156 of its report:

Some submissions on our Options Paper argued that Government should be more proactive about creating a vibrant labour market that generated more jobs. For example the New Zealand Chambers of Commerce argued that ‘reforms to increase flexibility of the labour market and remove barriers to employment are possibly the single biggest thing the Government can do to reduce benefit dependency’.

Mandating minimum terms and conditions – for example through minimum wages, dismissal provisions and minimum leave entitlements – involve a balance between job creation and protection of vulnerable employees. The OECD urges care in the use of such policies as they sometimes have the unintended consequence of reducing employment, often among the vulnerable workers the policies are designed to address.

We are of the view that employment growth is an important area, and Government should undertake an investigation into whether labour market barriers to employment need to be addressed as part of a strategy to reduce welfare dependency.

The agenda they are promoting is that of the far right.  It’s all about forcing upwards of 100,000 more people into the labour market to compete for jobs that don’t exist.  More competition for the same number (or fewer) jobs helps to drive down wages.  That dovetails nicely with National’s other policies, such as its 90 day fire at will law, its restrictions on union entry to worksites, and its nil (real) increases in the minimum wage.  Nicely for employers, that is.

People in employment on low and middle incomes have as much to fear from the Welfare Working Group as beneficiaries as they will all be forced to compete for the McJobs these policies will create.

…a credible work for welfare scheme be established, in order to test the willingness of a small group of recipients to comply with their job search obligations, such as in situations of six months on welfare for no apparent reason, or earlier if there are successive work test failures. The work for welfare scheme could require a recipient to engage in a compliance activity for a period.

I recall reading a Ministry of Social Development and Department of Labour joint report evaluating the efficacy of the 1990s work for welfare schemes shortly after I was elected to Parliament.  So I went hunting for it, and here is what I found (MSWord, at pages 60 and 61):

The evidence from New Zealand is that work experience programmes have mixed results.  As Table 16 illustrates, participating in Community Work Experience programmes with no wage subsidy decreases the probability of becoming independent of W&I assistance in the first two years after starting a placement.  After two years there is almost no difference in the probability of participants and non-participants being independent of W&I assistance. … (my emphasis)

Table 16 Estimated probability of being independent of W&I assistance as a participant and non-participant in a Community Work Experience programme with no wage subsidy (MSD 2002)

	Lapse Period	0.5 years	1 years	2 years	3 years	4 years	5 years
Programme	Group
Community Taskforce	Participants	20%	31%	39%	44%	49%	53%
	Non- participants	26%	33%	40%	45%	50%	54%
	Impact ratio	0.77	0.94	0.97	0.97	0.97	0.98
Expanded Community Taskforce	Participants	20%	28%	39%	47%	51%
	Non- participants	23%	30%	39%	46%	51%
	Impact ratio	0.83	0.94	1.00	1.02	1.00
Community Work	Participants	17%	26%	38%	47%
	Non- participants	24%	31%	40%	48%
	Impact ratio	0.70	0.85	0.95	0.98
Activity-in-the-Community	Participants	18%	26%
	Non- participants	25%	32%
	Impact ratio	0.75	0.80

Notes: Estimation Technique: Outcomes regression of propensity weighted comparison group and participants. Population includes all Community Work Experience participants between 1996 and 2001 inclusive. Source: MSD administrative data, 2002.

Yes, that’s right – work for the dole schemes such as the Welfare Working Group is promoting are not just degrading to beneficiaries forced to participate in them.  They undermine real job creation by displacing paid workers, actually reducing employment opportunities.

Work for the dole schemes, on the evidence, simply do not work to get beneficiaries into employment.

They actually decrease the likelihood of people moving off benefit into paid work. What sort of ideological, evidence-averse parallel universe do the members of and advisers to the Welfare Working Group live in? But Paula Bennett still rules nothing out from the Welfare Working Group’s bizarre recommendations.

At page 107 of the Welfare Working Group’s report (PDF) the Group proposes changes to benefit abatement – i.e. the way benefits are reduced in response to income earned by the beneficiary.

Currently there are two separate abatement regimes.  So-called short term benefits such as Sickness and Unemployment benefits are reduced by 70 cents for every dollar of weekly income in excess of $80.  Longer term benefits such as Domestic Purposes Benefit and Invalid’s benefit are reduced by 30 cents for every dollar of weekly income between $100 and $200, and then by 70 cents for every dollar of weekly income in excess of $200.

The Welfare Working Group is advocating a single abatement rate for the Jobseeker Support it proposes to replace all these benefits – a reduction in benefit of 55 cents for every dollar of weekly income earned in excess of $20.

I have graphed how that would affect someone meeting the current qualifications for Domestic Purposes Benefit (post 1 April 2011 benefit and tax rates and assuming an ‘S’ tax code):

The blue line is before-tax weekly income earned in addition to benefit, the red line is what the beneficiary is currently left with in-the-hand each week, and the green line is what the beneficiary would be left with in-the-hand if the Welfare Working Group’s proposals were implemented.

Every sole parent beneficiary earning more than $20 a week would be worse off under the Welfare Working Group’s proposal.  And, of course, most sole parent beneficiaries will be required to seek work.  The proposal is effectively a benefit cut by stealth.

Other types of beneficiary don’t fare much better.  Here’s how the Welfare Working Group’s regime would affect a single person aged over 25 without dependent children who currently qualifies for Sickness Benefit (again using post 1 April 2011 benefit and tax rates and assuming an ‘S’ tax code):

Under Jobseeker Support, this beneficiary would be worse off at all weekly income levels between $20 and $300.  Of course, many and possibly most people who meet the current qualifications for Sickness Benefit do not have sufficient capacity for work to earn $300 a week, so they will be worse off whatever they do.

The Welfare Working Group’s report is an extremist beneficiary-bashers’ wish list and should be promptly consigned to Paula Bennett’s rubbish bin.

Active job search and retraining is also likely to increase the total number of jobs available. This is partly because of the multiplier effect of higher incomes on the rest of the economy. Active job search will also lead to increased employment because of the dynamic nature of the labour market. Even during a downturn there will be some firms and industries that are expanding, and some regions will have increased numbers of new job opportunities. In this context labour mobility is an important driver of overall job growth.

More generally, the evidence suggests that if there are well functioning labour market institutions, over the medium term the total number of jobs will expand to equal the number of people who are available and actively seeking work (my emphasis).

The Welfare Working Group doesn’t state any mechanism for the number of jobs expanding to meet the number of people wanting them.  It could be Adam Smith’s invisible hand (the more likely suggestion imo, given the membership of the Welfare Working Group), the Hand of God, or little green humanoids from Mars creating the jobs for all we know.

Assuming it is the invisible hand of the market that supposedly creates the jobs, I accept that having more people competing for the same number of jobs has the effect of constraining wage levels, and that may in turn encourage employers to employ more people in the short term.  However, in the medium term, lower wages result in less demand for goods and services and consequent reduced need and capacity for employers to create jobs.

The job creation impact of lowering wages is therefore short-lived, and the jobs created tend to be “bad” jobs (i.e. casual or temporary and paying at or around the minimum wage).

The Welfare Working Group’s assertion that “the evidence suggests” the jobs will be magically created isn’t accompanied by any reference to what that evidence is.  No examples of where this has happened, no footnotes to the assertion, nothing!  I can’t think of any examples, either in New Zealand or overseas, where nations’ economies have magically responded to more people wanting jobs by creating one for everyone who wants one.

Because of the curious way in which the Welfare Working Group was set up (hosted by Victoria University’s Institute of Policy Studies, rather than under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Development) they are not subject to the Official Information Act. So we can’t even ask them what their “evidence” is.  My suspicion is that it is nothing more than ideology plucked from the air by some neo-con advisor to the Group.

The Welfare Working Group’s report is an extremist beneficiary-basher’s wishlist.  It lacks any academic rigour, and should be promptly consigned to Paula Bennett’s rubbish bin.

We have heard a concern among some people that setting a work expectation for parents when their youngest child reaches three years or six years may create an incentive for a small minority of parents to have additional children to avoid this work expectation. Should this eventuate, this would likely contribute to worse outcomes for the parents, their existing children and the family as a whole, and make it even harder for parents to regain their independence from the welfare system. The Working Group considers that one component of addressing this incentive is to provide support for people on welfare to manage their fertility, including through contraception and information about expectations.

There can be no other interpretation except that if a woman gets pregnant while on a benefit, she must accept state enforced contraception if she wishes to continue to receive her $194 per week social support. Despite dog whistling to misogynists everywhere, most New Zealanders would consider it abhorrent that the state would force women into contraception. This is an extreme form of state violence against women. The state has no right to control a woman’s fertility, under any circumstances.

Note that the report talks about “long acting reversible” contraception. To fit that description it is most likely referring to Depo Provera (the “injection”) or the Intrauterine Device (IUD).

Both are highly invasive. Both are linked to serious health problems.

Depo provera is especially problematic.

First, for health reasons. In 2004 The USA Food & Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Black Box warning about long-term use of the long-acting, injectable contraceptive drug, Depo-Provera stating [that] recent research suggests prolonged use of the drug may result in the loss of bone density.

Women report anaphylactic shock, severe and prolonged menstrual bleeding, or the reverse lack of menstrual bleeding, sudden partial loss of vision, unexpected dizziness or fatigue, sudden signs of allergy – among other symptoms when using the drug… women’s health groups also highlighted potential future risks to women’s health such as increased risk of breast, uterine and cervical cancers, and the potential for osteoporosis to develop in Depo-Provera users.

And second, because in New Zealand it has a history of being used as a form of social control over Maori and Pasifika women.

During the 1980s in New Zealand there were regular reports that obstetric hospitals with a largely non-Pakeha population administered Depo-Provera injections to women before discharging them, and to women being discharged from or on leave from prisons and girls’ homes. There were also occasional reports of Depo-Provera being a condition for women obtaining an abortion. In the NZ Contraception & Health Study 1986, 60% of Depo-Provera users enrolled in the study were Maori and 66% were Pacific Island women. A study of contraceptive use in Hamilton in 1983 had previously shown striking variations between races. Only 6% of single Pakeha women were using Depo-Provera, compared to 31% of Maori women.

I can personally attest to the insistence and impatience with which pro-Depo health professionals dealt with Maori women in the 1980s, as does Dr Rawiri Taonui. The pressure was powerful then. Imagine what it will be like if the threat is to take the benefit away from you and your children.

Women on the benefit are among the most vulnerable, are in invariably in need because of circumstances beyond their control. The state must not be allowed to use threats of destitution to physically victimise volunerable women, Maori women, young women, Pasifika women.

This recommendation from the Welfare Working Group shows so clearly what an extremist group it is. The report must be dumped – for the sake of your sisters, your mothers and your daughters.

This is not enough. A sole parent working 40 hours a week on $13 an hour will earn just $520 per week before tax – not much to pay rent, feed kids, and pay the power and phone bills with, let alone pay for school trips and warm clothes.

As many of our colleagues in the union movement have pointed out this afternoon, increasing the minimum wage by just 2 percent when inflation is running at 4 percent is actually a backwards step that will widen the growing chasm between the rich and the rest of us.

We have been a proud partner in Unite’s campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, and would legislate to introduce this immediately if we were in Government. In fact, we are probably nearly at the point when $15 an hour is no longer sufficient, thanks to inflation. We’d also ensure that there was a built-in mechanism to increase the minimum wage in line with inflation automatically.

Everyone deserves decent work, a living wage, and to be treated with respect. Today’s announcement is a step away from this goal, not towards it.

Today, we’re launching a ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ campaign urging New Zealanders to guarantee the essentials for every kiwi kid this Christmas.

Our Christmas wishlist for every child includes a warm, dry, secure home, safe food to grow healthy and strong, a quality public education, and a safe environment. Simple things, yes, but too many of our kids don’t have them, when they should be non-negotiable.

The way we see it, when we guarantee these things, we guarantee our kids the best possible opportunity for a great start in life.

Each working day between now and Christmas (“the 12 days of Christmas”), we’ll be highlighting an issue related to inequality, and presenting Green solutions to those issues – solutions like building 6,000 new state houses, extending Working for Families tax credits to the children of beneficiaries, making the first $10,000 of income tax-free, and introducing a progressive pricing system for electricity, all of which are outlined in our ‘Mind the Gap‘ package to reduce inequality.

It’s a good time to reflect on inequality, and its impact on children. Not only is Christmas a great time to look around and reach out to each other, but today, December 6, is St Nicholas’ day, the traditional day for gift-giving to children in many parts of the world. What better day to reflect on how well we’re providing for all our kids?

It’s also timely because an important report was released last week by Unicef examining the impact of inequality on children in so-called wealthy countries.

The report by the Innocenti research centre entitled The Children Left Behind looks at “bottom end inequality” – the gap between children at the median, and those with the worst outcomes – in 24 OECD countries, to test how well wealthy countries are doing at having “no child left behind”. The answer is not very well. The countries with the worse outcomes are the United States, Greece, and Italy.

New Zealand wasn’t included in the study, but Unicef New Zealand has looked at other studies and concludes that we rank poorly for child material wellbeing and health, and about average for education. Clearly we could be doing a whole lot better for our kids.

As this report points our, children are not in control of their circumstances, but these circumstances have a profound impact on their health, wellbeing, and future prospects. Starting life in poverty, without secure housing, healthy food, quality education and a safe environment puts kids at a significant risk of poor health, underachievement, low skills, and intergenerational disadvantage.

Kids can’t choose these things, but our Government can choose to help guarantee them.

That’s what we’re asking for on the first day of Christmas.

The Greens have lead this issue from the start, with other MPs only coming to the party when they saw the writing on the wall. Yet John and Lockwood continue to fiddle about and delay the solution. Taking genuine action will no doubt cause a little turmoil, but the public deserve more that this weak response.

We need a full independent review of all the allowances and expenses and until that happens any incidental action by Key or the Speaker is just weak and waffly.