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Dear Holly,

Thank you for your letter dated 5 April 2012 regarding affordable housing in Christchurch. I have outlined the Government’s responses to this issue below.

The Canterbury Earthquake Temporary Accommodation Service (CETAS) is a joint service provided by the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Building and Housing. It provides:

• a matching and placement service into appropriate temporary accommodation
• financial assistance for additional accommodation costs
• social wellbeing coordination for earthquake affected households

Since April 2011 the CETAS team has dealt with over 1800 people who have asked what to do about housing and at present is helping over 300 households needing temporary accommodation. The team looks to the private rental market first, and has assisted more than 500 households into accommodation there.

As you are aware, the second option is for CETAS to place people in temporary villages in Linwood Park and Kaiapoi and soon at the new village at Rawhiti Domain. The existing parks are being well-used, with 71 families having stayed before shifting back into repaired homes. The average time in residence is 12 weeks.

Providing affordable long-term accommodation for people in Christchurch is a key policy issue that officials at the Department of Building and Housing and officials from the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority are tasked to investigate and to inform relevant Ministers. The Minister of Earthquake Recovery and I have also asked Housing New Zealand Corporation to accelerate the repairs of 500 quake-damaged state houses in Christchurch.

You mention in your letter the influx of tradespeople to begin rebuilding and repairs in Christchurch and the effect this may have on the availability of appropriate housing. I can assure you this matter is being considered by me and other relevant Ministers.

Thank you for taking time to write to me.

Kind regards,

Hon Phil Heatley, Minister of Housing

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Dear Ms Walker,

Thank you for your letter which I received on 5 April 2012 about the lack of affordable housing in Christchurch.

I am pleased to read that you have also sent your letter to Hon Phil Heatley, Minister of Housing as he is the appropriate person to address this issue.

I would, however, like to mention that any person having difficulties meeting their accommodation costs can contact Work and Income to test their eligibility to an Accommodation Supplement. This supplement is income and asset tested and is available to people on a benefit and also to those in work.

If you have a specific case, I am happy for you to raise it with my office to consider further.

Thank you for writing.

Yours sincerely,

Hon Paula Bennett, Minister for Social Development

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What do you think about their responses?

While the inquiry will look into a number of areas (including the conduct of the MMP referendum and the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes), the issue that I believe needs to be focused on is voter turnout.

Last year’s election saw the lowest voter turnout in over 100 years. Only 74.2% of the New Zealanders who were enrolled to vote actually voted on Election Day. What this number doesn’t take in to account is the number of New Zealanders who could have voted (i.e. were eligible) but were not even enrolled. This takes voter turnout down to only 69.57%, a 6% drop from 2008).

Enrolment statistics show that 92.55% of the voting age population (VAP) were enrolled to vote on Election Day. When this is broken down by age, it shows that only 75% of 18-24 year olds were enrolled. That means that ¼ of 18-24 year olds in New Zealand were not enrolled to vote. This is a scary statistic and shows that we need to do a lot more to make sure that young people feel that they can and want to engage in the political process. It’s also concerning that for the first time, enrolment was very low in the 24-29 age bracket. This suggests to me that a trend is emerging where young people who don’t vote early develop a pattern of non-voting into adulthood. We can’t allow this trend to continue.

When submissions were first called, I blogged about this issue, and suggested options like online enrolment, and possibly online voting, need to be explored. I was pleased to see the Electoral Commission agreed in its report on the 2011 election yesterday – it’s just a shame that the Government has not granted them any resources to explore these options.

The Electoral Commission has recently released research on why some people didn’t vote. Over the weekend, Radio NZ also had an interesting piece looking at why people are not taking part in elections and what can be done to turn the trend around. I was quoted along with MPs from other parties, and most interestingly, non-voters themselves about what puts them off.

We need to have a real conversation about how we can turn this trend around and get more people participating in our democratic process, particularly young people. A good way for this conversation to start is for the MPs in the Select Committee to hear your concerns about this important issue.

Please, take the time to write in to the Select Committee and have your say.

This was the symposium where John Key made his surprise announcements about youth mental health interventions, which I’m cautiously going to say look positive to me.

It was abundantly clear from the research presented that we need to do things differently to improve youth health and wellbeing. You can see what I mean from the notes that I took. I tweeted a number of these at the time.

• 30% of same sex attracted young people have clinically significant depressive symptoms.
• Half of young males and a third of females have suffered an assault.
• 20% of young females and 5% of young males report unwanted sexual experiences. Of those, only 40% told someone.
• 16% have witnessed an adult hitting a child at home.
• 10% have witnessed an adult hitting another adult at home.
• Family violence is strongly associated with suicide and depression.
• Students have concerns about privacy when accessing health care, especially for sensitive conditions – they just dont seek help, and therefore don’t get the healthcare they need. Not accessing healthcare is then linked to adverse outcomes like depression and unsafe sexual behaviour. The GP model does not work well for young people.
• There is a clear linear relationship between school-based nursing and doctor hours and lower rates of self reported pregnancy.
• This is not just about contraception and condoms. School-based healthcare professionals can also address other issues like mental health and drug and alcohol use that affect mental health, wellbeing, and contraception use.

Some of these stats are downright scary, especially those relating to violence and abuse. But there is some hope in the results too, when it comes to designing health services that work better for young people.

The survey is a great source of important information about the health and wellbeing of young people in New Zealand, and could be used to create really effective policy interventions to help.

If that’s what John Key has done with the help of Sir Peter Gluckman, then that’s good. We need more evidence-based policy that works.

I just hope the school-based healthcare announced by the Prime Minister is not just diagnostic, but resourced to treat and support young people as well, and I hope it doesn’t put extra strain on schools and teachers. And of course the elephant in the room is where the funding is coming from. With the recent announcement of another zero budget, I think it’s safe to assume this is not new spending, so what’s going? I guess we’ll find out in May.

An Open Letter to

Hon Gerry Brownlee, Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery
Hon Paula Bennett, Minister of Social Development
Hon Phil Heatley, Minister of Housing

Dear Ministers,

I am alarmed at reports in the media and phone calls to my office regarding the lack of affordable housing available in Christchurch.

I write to you to enquire what measures you will take to combat this growing problem to ensure that people do not have to resort to sleeping in their cars, moving house numerous times, or live in cramped and substandard housing. These are just a few examples of the symptoms of a much wider problem which must be addressed urgently.

Many people are having to move out of rental properties while their landlords have earthquake repairs attended to, either at the rental property or the landlord’s residence, leaving these people without a roof over their heads and in a bidding war with many other renters seeking a rental property in the shrinking market.

As the Department of Building and Housing survey released March shows, rents in Christchurch have increased by 11%. The Government should step in and help this situation by temporarily raising the Accommodation Supplement for people in earthquake affected areas of Canterbury.

Leaving the market to ‘sort its self out’, as has been suggested, is not a viable option in this extreme case and I ask you to make money available for social and state housing in Christchurch to be prioritised and fast tracked.

Whilst I understand that the temporary village at Rawhiti Domain is soon to open, taking the total of temporary units available to 126 (counting the additional 43 not yet in place), temporary villages are not an adequate solution to cope with the growing number of people needing affordable long term accommodation.

With an influx of tradespeople to begin rebuilding and repairs, the housing crisis will only get worse before it gets any better, so I urge you to look into this issue and take action now. I look forward to your response.

Kind regards,

Holly Walker
Green Party Spokesperson for Housing

I inherited the Lobbying Disclosure Bill from former Green MP Sue Kedgley when she retired, and I’m thrilled that I’ll get a chance to continue Sue’s great work on transparency and open government with this bill.

The public has a right to know who is engaged in lobbying activities that seek to influence public policy. Many other countries already have lobbyist registers, including Australia, Canada, Germany and the United States. In the United Kingdom, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has also recently committed to bringing lobbying activity into the open. The OECD recommmends that countries should legislate for the public disclosure of lobbying and introduce a code of conduct for how lobbying is carried out.

The ongoing growth of lobbyists’ influence has shifted the political landscape in favour of corporate interests overtime. For an example, we need look no further than the Government’s shameful deal with SkyCity to increase the number of pokie machines in their casino in return for a new convention centre. We need to know when deals like this are taking place.

Real democracy should be a battle of ideas, not a battle of who has the most expensive lobbyists.

I’m delighted that my bill has been pulled, and look forward to it being debated in parliament. I hope to have cross-party support for such an important bill that concerns the reputation and transparency of Parliament.

You can read the bill here, along with some questions and answers about what it does.

The Select Committee has allowed an extremely short timeframe for submissions on this Bill.  Submissions close Friday 13 April 2011.

Despite its Title, the Bill is not about work focus. It doesn’t create any new jobs or develop any training opportunities. It is not about youth support. It doesn’t help young people to take responsibility for their lives and finances or support them into employment.

It is about dismantling the social safety net and casting a generation of vulnerable children loose for the sake of a few votes for the National Party. One in three women, and their children, are likely to be victims of physical or sexual intimate partner violence in their lives. Extending work testing will threaten women’s ability to leave violent relationships, maintain their anonymity and hold their families together. By their own admittance, the Ministry of Social Development does not have adequate systems in place to ensure everyone who needs a work test exemption can gain one.

If you are able to find the time, please support the Green Party in opposing this Bill by making a submission to the Select Committee. My colleague Jan Logie and I have prepared a submission guide to assist you in this.

You might also like to see my First Reading speech on the Bill before making a submission. The video and a transcript are available here.

In last year’s referendum, New Zealanders voted to keep MMP and now we get the chance to make it even better through the Electoral Commission’s MMP review public submission process.

MMP is a great system – it’s fair, it means that everyone’s vote counts, and makes parliament a more diverse and representative place.  

Through the public submission process everyone gets the chance to have a say on what we love about MMP and what we’d like to see changed.

We’ve created a submission guide that outlines the submission process and the issues under review.

This submission guide emphasises the principles of fairness, diversity and proportionality, which are so fundamental to MMP, and identifies three issues covered by the review (dual candidacy, thresholds and ratio of list to electorate seats) that could have the most impact on these principles.

It’s so important that we all take this opportunity to have a say on how our voting system works and make sure that any changes strengthen, not weaken, MMP.

It’s easy to submit – you can email or post one in or use one of the online forms (standard online form or a quick five minute submission).

I hope our submission guide helps!

When I get a spare moment to do big picture thinking (which is not often enough these days), I often find myself reflecting on the links between the environment, the economy, and social justice.

Broadly speaking, these are the Green Party’s three major priorities: protecting our precious natural environment, putting our economy on a sustainable footing, and reducing social and economic inequalities. Before the election, we used the examples of jobs, rivers, and kids, to illustrate these priorities.

Greens are about joined up, holistic thinking, which means finding the links between these priorities, and articulating why all three are equally important. Sometimes people express the view that the Greens should be a party that focuses solely on the environment, and we respond that a narrow approach like that fails to recognise that the environment, the economy, and social justice are intrinsically linked. To address one we have to address them all.

In recent years, I think people have come to understand much better why the environment and the economy are linked. Sometimes you hear the expression “the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment”. The National Government still seems hell-bent on a “drill it, mine it, sell it” economic strategy, but lots of other New Zealanders realise that our long-term economic wellbeing rests on protecting and enhancing our clean, green reputation.

Similarly, I think the links between how we structure our economy, and fairness, are pretty well-known. We know that there are ways to structure our tax system – for example, a comprehensive capital gains tax, and a more progressive income tax scale – that can reduce income inequality, and policies like where the minimum wage is set can have a huge impact on fairness and quality of life.

What’s less well understood, I think, is the direct link between social justice and the environment, which can seem less obvious. As someone who came to the Greens with a primary interest in social justice, but a no less passionate commitment to environmental protection, I’ve spent some time thinking about why the two are linked, and had a number of productive and interesting conversations about this with friends both in and outside the Greens.

So I was pleased to see today that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been thinking about this too. In an address delivered on his behalf to the first Global Human Development Forum in Istanbul yesterday, Mr Ban’s message was that social injustice and environmental risks need to be tackled together:

“Sustainable development recognizes that our economic, social and environmental objectives are not competing goals that must be traded off against each other, but are interconnected objectives that are most effectively pursued together in a holistic manner,” Mr. Ban added in his message. “We need an outcome from Rio+20 that reflect this understanding and that relates to the concerns of all.”

Hearing Tim Flannery as part of Writers and Readers Week recently really helped me to put this stuff together in my mind. Flannery contends that the greatest challenge facing humanity – that threatens our very survival as a species – is global climate change and environmental destruction. We won’t have a planet left to live on if we don’t put our collective heads together and start finding and enacting some global solutions.

But we’re hardly in a position to do this when a huge proportion of the global population is living in abject poverty and misery every day. In some of the conversations I’ve had with people about putting environmentalism and social justice together, they say that it seems like a bit of a luxury to be worrying about conservation when there are kids going without food every day, and in a sense they are right.

Flannery talks about this using an idea called the “discount factor”. He explains it well in this radio interview:

Every species has a discount factor. Birds have been shown to have a discount factor. What it means at its most toxic is that you’ll make decisions about the immediate future, which may be beneficial or high risk, but which will have a very deleterious impact in the longer term.

A classic example of the discount factor that sociologists have been discussing, I talk about it in the book, is angry young men. You know, you go and do something unbelievably stupid like hold up a bank with a gun. So there’s a prospect of immediate return, incredibly high risk, but also the chances of those kids being alive and out of jail 20 years from the time they do that are very, very small. So they’re trading their future for the immediate.

Even young men in a bar who, over some trivial insult, will get up and stab someone – unbelievably counterproductive, but done for the same reason. It turns out that people who have nothing to lose are those who have the steepest discount factor. So they’re the ones who are willing to trade-off future benefit at the steepest rate, for some immediate gain, often because they’ve just got to survive day-to-day.

If significant proportions of the population are  living hand to mouth, with steep discount factors, unable to contemplate the long-term best interests of their own families, let alone the planet, then we don’t have a hope of enacting collective, global solutions to halt climate change and environmental destruction. If we can’t do that, then we put our own survival as humans at risk, and probably condemn future generations to lives of misery and pain that could have been prevented.

So we have to be in the business of reducing inequalities, ending child poverty, and promoting a fair society. To do this, we need sustainable, progressive economic policies that preserve the environment and work for everyone. And when we have those, we might just save the planet and ourselves.

Many families need short term rental acommodation while repairs are undertaken on the homes they own. Many others need long term rental homes because their landlords have opted to move back into their properties rather than maintain multiple rental houses. And the influx of tradespeople into Christchurch, which will only gather pace as the rebuild gets underway, is putting extra pressure on the housing market as they look for accommodation.

Rents have increased by at least 11 percent across the board in Christchurch in the last year. Reports of people lining up around corners for open homes of rental properties, and bidding, auction-style, for the lease, are common. Really stuck? Try this $700 a week caravan. That’s almost twice what I pay for my three bedroom house in Lower Hutt!

The Government’s response: let the market sort it out.

Well, that could take years if it means waiting for houses to be repaired and rebuilt. And the market favours those who are willing and able to pay, which means those worst affected by this crisis will be those on the lowest incomes, beneficiaries, sole parents, and people with disabilities. Letting these people suffer while the market sorts it out is not just inhumane, it will contribute to a raft of other social and economic problems in the meantime. It’s simply not an acceptable response.

The Government has stepped in with temporary accommodation before – in the aftermath of the quakes themselves. The need is no less dire for some of these families now. Why can’t we look at temporary support? Cheap, relocatable, temporary housing could be a good option to explore for the influx of tradespeople, who won’t be permanent residents in Christchurch. And what about a grant from the Government to help Christchurch City Council quickly rebuild damaged social housing units? Oh that’s right, that’s probably not a core function of Local Government any more…

Long term, a key solution to the housing supply crisis is the construction of new state and community houses, with a focus on Christchurch. This also creates sustainable employment, and is something the Green Party has been pushing hard for since before the election.

In the shorter term, there’s no excuse for the Government not looking into temporary solutions. Letting the market decide won’t cut it. The people of Christchurch have endured enough already.

While it’s great to see a focus on solutions, I’m concerned that there are now so many processes looking into the issues of child poverty and vulnerable children, we risk botching the opportunity to address the crisis. If ever there was a time for a coordinated Government strategy to end child poverty in New Zealand, it’s now.

We have had the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children, a new Ministerial Committee on Poverty, and the Maori Affairs and Health Select Committees are both about to embark on inquiries into aspects of child wellbeing. Now there’s a new Expert Adivsory Panel under the auspices of the Children’s Commissioner.

If we don’t put all these parallel processes together we risk pursuing piecemeal or contradictory approaches that won’t help. Who is overseeing all these processes and making sure their recommendations are coordinated?

Hopefully the new group can put together the diverse work on child poverty and form the basis of a strategy to end child poverty in New Zealand. I’m pleased to see the group will be focused on solutions, because we have had more than enough evidence documenting how bad the problem is. We know that 1 in 4 New Zealand children are now living in poverty, and this is totally unacceptable. It’s well past time for action.

I must say though, I’m a little perturbed at the membership of the panel. While there are some undoubted experts and leaders in the field of child poverty and inequality, there is also business lobbyist Phil O’Reilly. O’Reilly himself has acknowledged that he was taken aback by the invitation and that he’s never done something like this before – so why is he there? There are plenty of economists who understand both the labour market and poverty and inequality who could provide expertise on the links between the two.

After every General Election, the Justice and Electoral Select Committee undertakes an inquiry into the election. Conventionally these inquiries have been limited to looking at the administrative conduct of the election, taking quite a narrow view so as to ensure cross-party participation and support. For an example see the 2008 report.

After the 2011 election, however, with the lowest voter turnout in over 100 years (just 74.21 percent)  it was obvious that a deeper inquiry was needed. My colleague Gareth Hughes called for the inquiry to address low turnout late last year.

That’s why I’m pleased to see that the terms of reference of the recently announced inquiry include voter turnout. It’s also great news that as well as presenting a formal chance for the agencies involved in the election to submit on their work and experiences, the inquiry has also been opened up for public submissions. Detail of how to make a submission is here. Submissions close on 4 May.

(Other additions to the terms of reference this time around include the merger of the Electoral Commission and the Chief Electoral Office, the conduct of the MMP referendum, and the impact of the Christchurch Earthquakes).

I hope there’ll be lots of submissions addressing the specific issue of youth enrolment, which reached new lows last year. Only 77 percent of eligible voters aged 18-24 were enrolled to vote, down from 82 percent at the previous election. Just as concerning, last year’s statistics showed for the first time a creep into the 25-29 age bracket of low enrolment that we haven’t seen before, down from 93 percent in 2008 to just 85 percent in 2011. This is really worrying as it suggests that if we don’t engage young people early, they are likely to stay disengaged.

While the terms of reference don’t specifically mention youth enrolment, they do cover “the maintenance of accurate enrolment data”, and I’d argue that this needs to include ensuring that as many eligible young people as possible are on the roll.

One way to do this is to update the current enrolment process. This is now woefully outdated, especially for overseas voters who are required to return their ballots by fax. Who uses a fax these days!? I’ve lost count of the number of my overseas friends who said they tried to enrol and cast special votes, but gave up because the process was too hard.

I think we need to introduce online enrolment before the next election, and in the middle-to-long term, explore the option of online voting. In an informal online poll that Gareth conducted late last year, two thirds of the 1000 respondents indicated they would have been more likely to enrol if they could have done so online. It’s well past time we updated this process and brought electoral enrolment into the 21st century.

I’m also interested in the broader reasons why young people might be feeling disengaged from politics and disinclined to enrol and vote. I have some theories about this but am hoping to talk to young people directly about it in the coming months and start to build a picture of how politicians could better engage young people, as well as structural and educational changes we could make to engage young people in politics.

What do you guys think? Why are we seeing declining youth engagement, and how can we turn this around?

PS remember to make a submission to the inquiry! Submissions close 4 May.

It’s been fantastic to get out to clubs days, almost all of which have been in the scorching summer sun, and talk to students about their hopes and plans for the year, and their political opinions. Lots of people have been signing up to join the Greens on campus – the best so far has been Canterbury, where over 200 people joined the UC Campus Greens. It was awesome to see such a vibrant campus at Canterbury after the obvious challenges of the past year.

Recurring themes of political discussion with students have been the quality of rental housing and the cost of living. Rents have been steadily trending upwards, as have food and transport costs, but there’s been no corresponding increase in student allowances or living cost payments to cover the shortfall.

As the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations pointed out this morning, students are the only group who are routinely expected to borrow to cover their living costs – and the result is over $12 billion of student debt.

The rationale is supposedly that tertiary students can expect to be high earners after they graduate, so will be in a position to pay back their loans – but in a climate in which it is increasingly difficult for even highly qualified graduates to find work in New Zealand, this argument doesn’t fly. On the other hand, borrowing to live does put many potential students – especially those from low-income backgrounds – off studying, when these are exactly who we should be encouraging to up-skill and seek higher education.

The interest-free student loan policy is at least a partial incentive for graduates to stay and work in New Zealand – but if Treasury’s Briefing the the incoming Minister of Finance is anything to go by, we should keep a close eye on on that. We also need to defend student allowances and work towards extending eligibility. The eventual potential of a high income (tenuous as it is) does nothing for students struggling to pay for rent, food, power and transport while keeping on top of their work right now.

To give credit where it’s due, I applaud the Government’s efforts to solicit submissions on the Green Paper. From its online and social media presence, to the series of public meetings Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has attended around the country, to the poster I saw on my Wellington commuter bus the other day urging me to “say something“, this has been one of the most effective efforts at consultation (in terms of getting the word out) I have seen this Government undertake.

Thanks to these efforts, thousands of submissions will now be winging their way to the Ministry of Social Development. I hope the rumour that a draft of the resulting White Paper has already been circulated is not true, because submitters will have a lot to say, and their views deserve to be taken seriously.

One unintended consequence of the Government’s efforts to foster engagement in the Green Paper process is that there is a widespread perception that the Green Paper is about how to address the issue of child poverty in New Zealand. When I was in Whangarei in January at the same time as the Minister, the local paper called it a “poverty roadshow.”

In fact, it is anything but, though it should be. As you’ll find if you click through to make a submission, there’s nothing in the Green Paper about addressing family incomes, or material hardship, or child poverty, or inequality, even though we know these things are major contributors to the high rates of child abuse and neglect that the paper seeks to address. This is a major shortcoming.

Instead, it’s focused on quite narrow responses to child abuse, like information-sharing between agencies and mandatory reporting. There might be some improvements to be made in how agencies share information – though there are privacy considerations – but mandatory reporting could be downright harmful if it puts families off accessing support for fear that they will be dobbed in. Many of the NGOs, social service providers and individuals I’ve been speaking to about the Green Paper in recent months share these concerns, and say they have robust information-sharing and reporting practices already.

Perhaps more importantly, many if not all of the people I have spoken to have indicated their intention to address the issues of poverty, material hardship, financial stress, poverty, and inequality in their submissions even though the Green Paper doesn’t ask for views on these issues, because they seem them as so fundamental to effectively tackling high rates of child abuse and neglect.

Still more will no doubt make submissions addressing these issues due to the widespread (and understandable) perception that these are what the Green Paper seeks to address.

My challenge to the Government is this: take these submissions seriously. You’ve made a mammoth effort at consultation, now listen to what the people have to say. If they ask you to address child poverty, if they say that family incomes and financial stress are major contributors to child abuse and neglect, if they ask you to address these things in the White Paper – then do it! You owe the children you’re trying to help that much.

I tried to secure a commitment from the Minister that such submissions would be taken into account in my first question in Parliament earlier in February.

Paula Bennett was away and Judith Collins answered on her behalf. Her answer was that the Minister “is also going to look at what the submissions actually say before she comes to a conclusion.”

Jacinda Ardern asked a similar question the following week, this time answered by Chester Borrows, who said: “We look forward to everyone engaging with this process and bringing his or her submissions to the table, including submissions around child poverty.”

I hope very much that what these acting Ministers have said on behalf of Paula Bennett is true, and we can look forward to a White Paper that addresses the root causes of child vulnerability – poverty and inequality.

Because of legislation already passed through parliament, the issues that will be considered as a part of the review have already been decided. These are:

• the thresholds for the allocation of list seats,
• list members contesting by-elections,
• the rules allowing candidates to both contest an electorate and be on a party list,
• the rules for ordering candidates on party lists,
• the effect of a party winning more electorate seats than its party vote share entitles it to,
• the effects of the ratio of electorate seats to list seats on proportionality in certain circumstances, and
• other matters referred to the Commission by the Minister of Justice or Parliament.

It’s important to note that two areas are not included in this review:

• Māori representation, and
• the number of members of Parliament.

MMP is a great voting system. It’s fair, has made parliament a more diverse and representative place, and gives voters choice. In last year’s referendum, voters chose to keep MMP and now through this review process we get the opportunity to make it even better.

Changes to some of these areas could have real implications on the way that our elections and our parliament look. It’s important that through these changes our voting system is strengthened, not weakened, and that our right to representation is protected.

In particular, removing ‘dual candidacy’ (or the option for candidates to contest an electorate seat and be on a party list), would have a real impact on smaller parties. By not being able to stand in an electorate, list candidates would be limited in their ability to campaign locally, i.e. by not being included in debates. This could see a return to FPP-style politics as only those with a strong chance of winning an electorate seat would be likely to stand.

Given that the referendum gave proportional representation a clear mandate, I hope we don’t see changes that take us back in the direction of FPP coming out of the review.

MMP has shown that MPs can represent people across different kinds of constituencies, like age, gender, ethnicity, or their areas of interest, not just their geography, and so limiting the options for list MPs would undermine their ability to represent national constituencies.

This review gives all New Zealanders a unique chance to be heard on how our representatives are elected and I hope that everyone takes this opportunity to get involved.

The deadline for submissions is Thursday 31^st May, or Thursday 5^th April if you’d like to make a submission in person.

More information on the submission process, the MMP voting system, and the areas being considered can be found here – www.mmpreview.org.nz or by calling 0800 36 76 56

On the one hand, the plant has a shocking history of resource consent breaches, dangerous waste disposal, and toxic pollution. It’s located in a residential area, most of which is social housing, meaning the residents had very little choice about moving in next door to a lead emitting factory. A local stream where many children play (but probably shouldn’t) runs right behind it, and joins the Hutt River right near the mouth where others fish for kai from the Waione Street overbridge. The existence of the factory so close to residential homes should never have been allowed – it’s a strange anachronism that it was.

So in many ways Exide’s closure is good news, not least for the vege garden at my place, just two streets away.

But Exide’s closure will also mark the loss of New Zealand’s capacity to recycle lead batteries on shore. This is no small thing: if our vision of a waste-free Aotearoa is ever to be realised, we must retain the ability to deal with our own waste. Shipping it overseas – in contravention of our international obligations under the Basel Convention – for someone else to deal with is not a viable solution. Information about the plants the batteries are sent to, in places like Korea, is scarce, and there is a good chance we are simply polluting someone else’s backyard.

There is a very real chance that once we lose this capacity to recycle lead batteries in New Zealand, we will never get it back.

Last year, I submitted on Exide’s application to renew its resource consent, suggesting that it should be allowed to continue to operate for a shorter period, conditional on the plant either meeting international best practice standards, or relocating to a non-residential area like Seaview. A pre-hearing meeting between Exide and submitters was due to be held next week – I guess this won’t take place now, but it would have been good to hear whether the plant’s managers were open to addressing these conditions.

Once Exide closes, there seems to be one other option for retaining battery recycling capacity in New Zealand. Last year a company called ChemPro Logistics signalled its intention to establish a lead battery recycling facility not far away in Seaview. This proposal is looking increasingly attractive – they say they would use state of the art equipment and meet international best practice standards; they are already in an industrial zone, and there would be potential for some of Exide’s 40 sacked workers to be re-employed.

However I have no idea how realistic these plans are. When I met with ChemPro and toured their facility during the election campaign last year, they told me their plans – like Exide – relied on the Government stopping exporting batteries overseas. An unsuccessful court challenge last year seems to have dashed these hopes.

By ignoring our international obligations and sending our toxic waste overseas, the Government is probably kissing goodbye New Zealand’s capacity to recycle our own lead batteries. Whatever you think of Exide, this is a decision we may well live to regret.

P.S There will be significant clean up concerns associated with Exide’s closure. It would be great if, once closed, Exide is added to the list of Toxic Sites Catherine Delahunty has negotiated with Environment Minister Nick Smith.

Auckland couple Craig and Carla Bradley often have only $150 a week left for food. “We have gone two days without food just so the kids can eat. That’s when I was pregnant, too,” says Mrs Bradley, 29.

Monday’s Herald piece focuses on Auckland and looks at the census data. Good reporting has highlighted that median incomes for areas across the city have departed from their historical tie to the regional average income. Basically this provides evidence that the earnings gap between rich and poor parts of Auckland has increased. We must remember this data is from the 2006 census before the financial crisis and so we can expect the current situation to be somewhat worse given that the number of people unemployment has risen from 80,792 people when the census was taken to 171,225 part way through last year.

The National Government has no clear economic plan to address poverty. Its 15 post-election economic priorities do not address the issue of poverty. Mums and dads who go without food so that their children can eat will not have spare change to invest in SOEs. National and Labour’s tax policy have left NZ with lower tax rates in the OECD for those in the highest income bracket.

On the other hand, we have the world’s most comprehensive GST, one of the most regressive taxes that impacts those on lowest incomes disproportionately. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is busy consulting on her Green Paper on vulnerable children, but until we address the root causes of inequality and child poverty we will simply be papering over the cracks.

The most chilling part of the Herald series so far has been a quote from today’s article on tax from a mother described as “comfortable”:

“During the election was when it really hit me,” says Anita. “I had been to have a facial. Then I went to a supermarket and did the weekly shop. “I drove past one of the Labour billboards about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That’s $600 a week. I thought, ‘I’ve just spent that this morning having a facial, buying products from the beauty therapist and doing the shopping. How can a family live on that?”

Compare that to the plight of Lisa, a mother Metiria spoke to last year as part of our plan to bring 100,000 children out of poverty by 2014:

“How do you budget when your necessities cost more than you earn? An extra $60 a week would mean I could provide healthier food, my daughter could participate in more out of school activities, I’d get my bills paid faster so I could benefit from prompt payment discounts, and I wouldn’t have to panic if one or both of us needed the doctor unexpectedly.”

The Green Party takes an holistic view of inequality and poverty. New Zealand’s appalling rates of violence are partly a result of growing inequality. In its Green Paper, the Government seeks merely to address the results of poverty.  By contrast, the Green Party has a plan to address the causes. Until we start to do this I anticipate more sobering stories like those in the Herald this week.

I’ve participated in the Bike Wise challenge for the last two years, trying to clock up more kilometers on my bike during February than anyone else the Green Party office. Not satisfied with failing to beat my nemesis/friend/colleague Robert Ashe two years in a row, I’ve decided to set my sights even higher in 2012 and take on that doyen of the cycling world, Hutt South MP Trevor Mallard in a head to head challenge.

I should have been suspicious when he so readily accepted – turns out he’s in training for the Graperide, a 101km race in March, so is relishing the opportunity to intensify his regime. I should also have checked his facebook page first, for such gems as “did Hutt to work via Makara” to give me an idea of what I am in for.

However, I am undeterred, and my approach will be to use my bike(s) as my primary form of transport for the month and see how many kms I can rack up going about my daily business – and in a frock as much as possible of course.

I warmed up today by taking my “pretty” bike, Prudence, for a leisurely cruise around Wellington Harbour to work from Petone. I truly believe that with the right cycling infrastructure, this could be one of the best cycle commutes in the world – it’s all flat, round a gorgeous harbour (where on a good day you can see dolphins, like I did yesterday) and with plenty of good coffee pit stops on the way (like the cart on Petone esplanade, the french cafe on the Hutt Road, the the bike shop/cafe on Thorndon Quay).

However it’s severely let down now by the lack of a dedicated cycleway from Petone to Ngauranga, and the poor quality of the existing cycle lane the rest of the way. On the way from Petone to Wellington it’s okay-ish – you ride on the shoulder of SH2 for about a kilometre before the cycleway starts (though you take an increased risk of punctures by actually using the cycleway as it’s often covered in broken glass. Many faster riders than me opt not to use it).

On the way home from Wellington to the Hutt Valley, you’re faced with the unhappy choice of riding on the shoulder of SH2 the whole way, which is in that direction very narrow and often invisible to motorists around the sharper corners, or riding back on the cycleway, which leaves you stranded to ride the last kilometre on the shoulder of the motorway GOING THE WRONG WAY. Not a happy conundrum. I usually opt to take my life in my hands and ride on the shoulder the whole way, but that hairy moment when you wobble uncontrollably as a huge track or bus takes a corner 10cms from you is not cool.

Urgently upgrading the Petone to Ngauranga cycle route as part of the Great Harbour Way project was identified in the Hutt Corridor Plan as a key priority (after lots of submissions urging for it, including mine), but action is still slow. I hope to keep pushing for improvements and to use my riding in February to raise awareness. I’m sure there are many more casual riders like me who would love to ride from the Hutt to Wellington but who are put off by safety (and maybe the fear of lyrca).

Despite these concerns, I had a beautiful ride to work today – which is good ’cause I’ll be doing it a lot in February. Who knows whether I will topple Trevor (the odds are not good), but I do at least have a secret weapon – as well as Bike Wise, I’m doing FebFast and giving up alcohol for the month of Feb. Who’s laughing now, Trevor?

The story was prompted by the release of two studies by the Families Commission on the risks to subsequent children in such families. The Commission makes a number of suggestions: improved information sharing between agencies, improved reporting processes, consideration of mandatory reporting, complementary interventions rather than single focus programmes, culturally appropriate services, and long-term more intensive follow-up.

The release of these studies comes while Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is in the middle of an intensive road trip consulting on her Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. She was in my town, Lower Hutt, last night, and in Whangarei earlier this week while I was there. From local reports, it sounds like the consultation process has been somewhat fraught, with locals in Whangarei frustrated that the Minister wasn’t open to hearing from people directly, insisting instead that they “put it in a submission“. Nevertheless I applaud the proactive way that the Government has approached the task of consulting on the Green Paper – they’ve really gone all out with meetings, websites, social media, and NGO engagement. Submissions close on 28 February and I do encourage you to make one.

The problem is I think they might be asking the wrong questions. The Green Paper makes similar recommendations to those of the Families Commission today, with a focus on mandatory reporting and prioritising social services for young children and families over older children and individuals.

There is no doubt that there is much that can be done to improve Child Youth and Families processes, better integrate services between Government agencies, improve information-sharing, and “wrap around support” (a current buzzword) for families at risk, to reduce the horrific rate of child abuse in New Zealand. To the extent that the Green Paper can achieve this, I applaud it.

However, I remain concerned both with the more controversial recommendations like mandatory reporting. As Metiria pointed out when the Green Paper was released in July last year, there is a very real risk that mandatory reporting of child abuse will be counter-productive, because it can frighten vulnerable families from access the support that is available to them. There is a huge stigma attached to having CYFS involved with your family which would only be intensified by mandatory reporting. In acute cases there are already very good best practice reporting guidelines for health professionals and social workers.

More fundamentally, I’m concerned that the Green Paper’s jurisdiction doesn’t extend to the underlying causes of abuse and neglect, namely poverty and inequality. The Northern Advocate called Paula Bennett’s consultation tour a “poverty roadshow“, but sadly, it is anything but. The submission template asks for opinions about prioritising services, monitoring families, sharing personal information, connecting families to services, and encouraging communities to take responsibility for child abuse, but nothing about poverty and how the  Government should address it. I’ve heard from those who were at the Lower Hutt meeting last night that the cost of living and inequality were are major theme of responses from the audience, but that the Minister’s focus was very much on reporting and information-sharing.

We know that financial stresses are a major contributor to child abuse and neglect. Beyond physical abuse itself, family financial hardship often exposes children to adult stresses that are detrimental to their wellbeing. This is a phenomenon I discussed with the team at 155 Whare in Whangarei on Monday, and one which is very real for children. When Metiria interviewed children at a Decile 1 school in Dunedin to produce our podcast of kids talking about poverty last year, they talked about loan sharks, credit cards, interest rates, and their parents “doing silly stuff” when financial stresses got too much. These are adult concepts and stresses that children simply shouldn’t be exposed to.

They also talked about going without shoes, parents going without meals to make sure their kids had enough to eat, living in cold damp homes that made them sick, and the unfairness of tax cuts that only worked out for the wealthy (yes really, with no prompting!).

Until we address child poverty and inequality, we can’t hope to make serious inroads on the child abuse issue.

The main purpose of my trip was to meet with Jazmine Heka, the 16 year old from Whangarei who has started the Children Against Poverty campaign. Jazmine was inspired to take action when she watched Bryan Bruce’s controversial Inside Child Poverty documentary which screened last year in the week before the election (and is available to view on demand for three more days). You might have read about Jazmine and her campaign in the Sunday Star Times a couple of weeks ago.

Photo: Northern Advocate

Jazmine is seeking signatures on three petitions: to introduce warrants of fitness for all rental houses, to provide free healthcare for all children including prescription costs, and to provide free healthy school lunches to all children attending schools. She is hoping to come to Wellington and present the petitions to Parliament in the middle of the year, which leaves plenty of time for collecting signatures: you can download the petitions to print, gather signatures, and mail them back.

It was both exciting and challenging to meet with Jazmine. Exciting to see the issue being taken up by a young person who can speak directly and passionately about it, and who can raise awareness and take the campaign to another level. Challenging because her campaign is confronting all politicians to put their money where their mouths are on the issue of child poverty.

I talked about how the Greens made bringing 100,000 children out of poverty one of our top three priorities during the election campaign, about our Warm Healthy Rentals bill, which would achieve her aim of having a “warrant of fitness” for rental properties, and about our work to establish a cross-party group of MPs working on child poverty and inequality (The Aotearoa Equality Group, which so far has members from the Greens, Labour, and the Maori Party).

I left feeling there is even more we can do. I’m determined that Child Poverty will stay at the top of the political agenda until we get some meaningful action from the Government. As luck, or coincidence, would have it, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett was in Whangarei yesterday too, consulting on her Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. I know she met with Jazmine too, and I hope she takes Jazmine’s challenge seriously.

In the afternoon I took the opportunity  to visit 155 Community Whare. Carol Peters and the team at 155 (named after its address of 155 Kamo Road) know lots about child poverty from their frontline community work. Indeed, researchers for the Inside Child Poverty documentary that inspired Jazmine to take action did much of their research in the area, and spoke to 155 and its affiliated services in preparing the documentary.

Over a cup of tea at the kitchen table (the 155 kaupapa is to build a better world over a cup of tea, a philosophy with which I wholeheartedly concur) I spoke with members of 155′s legal advocacy, whanau support,  youth, and housing teams and was blown away at what they are able to achieve with scarce resources.

Since it was established in the 1990s, 155 whare has established a patient-owned health service, a school for young people at risk of disengagement, an emergency housing service, a community law centre, and even a television channel! Many of these are now fully independent entities but remain affiliated with 155. It’s a truly inspiring place, founded on principles of community ownership, and achieving great results.

155 and other community services are up against it though, with the scale of poverty and disengagement in the North. We talked about increasing demand for food services (both for food parcels and for food in schools), long waiting lists for budgeting services, the harmful effects on children of increasing sanctions against beneficiaries as a result of the Future Focus changes last year, the adult stresses children are exposed to when their parents experience financial hardship, the growing pressures on emergency housing services in Whangarei, and the ever-present dynamic of gangs and the black market economy.

I left Whangarei feeling overwhelmed with the scale of the issues, but buzzing from the connection with people doing great work, and inspired about the task ahead of me as the new Green Party Spokesperson for Children, Housing and Youth. These issues are why I got into politics – now I get to tackle them head on.

If you’re a landlord.

If you’re a potential tenant, it’s crap news. It probably means endless rejected applications, missing out on the rare gems that are suitable and reasonably priced in a matter of minutes, and ending up signing a lease for an overpriced or unsuitable home just because you’re scared you won’t find something else. It means landlords can charge what they like because they know they’ll find someone willing to pay more than you. If you have children, pets, or other special circumstances, you probably won’t even get a look in because it’s just easier for the landlord (or property manager) to let to someone less complicated.

So yes, good news is definitely in the eye of the beholder. TradeMe’s stats also add weight to evidence of an emerging housing shortage, which is also bad news for all of us. As Metiria pointed out to interest.co.nz last year, a lack of supply drives rents up, and the Government foots part of the bill via the Accommodation Supplement (AS).

The AS is a government payment to people deemed unable to fully meet their housing costs (board, rent, or mortgage) and it cost the Government $1.2 billion in the year to June 2011. The Government’s official projections don’t predict a major increase in spending on the AS in the next five years, but the Housing Shareholders Association and the Salvation Army say a combination of lack of supply, increasing rents, and an increase in the number of people claiming the AS as the recession bites mean the real cost could be much higher, perhaps as much as $2.2 billion per annum by 2016.

So not only will more people struggle to make ends meet paying higher rents (one quarter of all New Zealand households now spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs), with the resulting poor consequences for children and families, but the cost to the Government is significant. And instead of improving outcomes for those to whom the AS is targeted, the main beneficiaries are landlords and property investors, to whom it is effectively a subsidy. There’s something very wrong with this picture.

Without messing with the AS (which hundreds of thousands of people now rely on), wouldn’t it be wise for the Government to invest in the easing the supply side of the housing market, by increasing the provision of affordable state and social housing?

The Green Party has proposed building 2,000 new state and community houses before the rebuild of Christchurch gets underway, to create employment, help to ease housing demand, and keep skilled builders in New Zealand where they’re desperately needed.

What do you think?