On the face of it, the statistics indicate a steady decrease in unemployment – and no doubt John Key’s government will be pitching it in this light.  The headline will be that unemployment has fallen to a 21-month low of 6.3 per cent. But let’s look at what’s really been happening.

In the December 2011 quarter, 7,000 fewer people were unemployed … but only 3,000 more people were employed. How can that be?  Two things have happened. Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen , but let’s look at why.

Firstly, the numbers of unemployed people have decreased – but it’s been on the back of a sharp rise in the number of people picking up part-time work. In the last quarter, the number of people in full-time employment actually decreased by 0.8 per cent – while part time employment increased by 15,000 (3.0 per cent). So, there hasn’t been an increase in people getting the kind of work that pays the bills. There’s been an increase in the number of people doing poorly paid jobs.

There’s a gender aspect to this. The number of men in full-time employment fell 1.6 percent this quarter, while the number of men in part-time employment rose 7.1 percent and the number of underemployed men rose by 6.8 percent. In contrast, the number of women in both full-time and part-time employment rose this quarter, up 0.4 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively. Statistically, it is likely due to the gender pay gap the jobs women are picking up pay less. So what we are seeing is undoubtedly a shift away from higher paid, full-time men’s jobs towards more part time male employment and towards more full and part time women’s jobs, which are more poorly paid.

Regional variations are important too. The Bay of Plenty and Northland had the worst unemployment rate at 8.3 per cent, while in Wellington unemployment rose from 6 to 7.2 per cent, an effect no doubt of ongoing public  sector cuts and their downstream impacts on the local economy.

The second important thing to think about is that the total number of people participating in the workforce has declined; this makes the unemployment rate look better too. In the December quarter participation hit a 12-month low of 68.2 per cent, with the number of people not in the labour force increasing by 11,000 to 1.107 million.  The largest increase was in the 20-24 age group – this rose from 12.4 percent to 13.1 percent. Meanwhile unemployment among 15- to 19-year-olds rose from 23.4 to 24.2 per cent.

With the total number of jobless now at 261,300, we have grave cause for concern.  In the New Zealand Herald this week Simon Collins has been running an excellent series on inequality – today’s feature was on housing. Lack of affordable housing is reaching a crisis point in Auckland and indeed many other parts of New Zealand. There is a direct and pernicious (and completely obvious) link between New Zealand’s low wage economy, the rise in preventable diseases like school sores and rheumatic fever and poor housing/overcrowding. This doesn’t just affect just the unemployed poor – it’s the working poor too. It is becoming a cliché to say that two out of five children living in poverty come from families where one or both parents are in paid work.

We desperately need the Government to make an investment in New Zealand families and communities. It could begin, as the Green Party and many others have campaigned for, by implementing an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and by announcing a proactive job creation programme in Christchurch and elsewhere – to provide meaningful, decently paid work for those who need it.

The Fund’s stake in Hong Kong-based property development company Sun Hung Kai is the tenth biggest investment the Fund’s made in an international company, according to their December performance report.

Is China the next big property bubble on the brink of collapse?

The Chinese Government has spent much of its massive export revenues on building brand new cities. Trouble is, not many Chinese people can afford the prices of new apartments and some of the cities have become ghost cities — their emptiness visible on Google Earth.

If you find the satellite images interesting, this SBS Dateline report (Australian TV) takes you there on the ground and leaves you wondering how all this building activity could possibly end well.

Russel

50c an hour is not going to help the people that need it most – people like the Bradley family who were profiled in the Herald this week, where dad is having to work three jobs just to feed the family. And even so, the parents are having to go without food some days just to feed the kids.

What we need in this country is a living wage – one which pays enough for families to be able to feed and clothe their children, pay the rent or mortgage, pay the power, phone and doctor’s bills, and not slide into debt when something unexpected happens.

The Government will tell you that increasing the minimum wage to a decent level will cost jobs. Indeed, last year John Key claimed that increasing it to $15 an hour would cost 6000 jobs. This has not been shown to be true – in fact the NZ Council of Trade Unions has done an extensive literature review which indicates there is no clear evidence, either internationally or in New Zealand, of a causal relationship between moderate increases in the minimum wage and employment or unemployment levels. But, despite the evidence not supporting John Key’s claim, Minister Wilkinson is still banging on about the fictional 6000 job losses.

What we do know is that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are experiencing poverty and hardship on a daily basis – and on this basis 50c simply doesn’t cut it.

The Green Party wants to see an increase in the minimum wage, first to $15 an hour and eventually to two thirds of the average wage. This will help both reduce inequality and poverty and reduce the reliance of many low-income New Zealanders on taxpayer-funded financial support.

We need to lift wages across the board. We need a Government that will actually care about families struggling to get by in New Zealand.

I had high hopes for a Green Member’s Bill to be drawn. The Greens had 14 Member’s Bills in the ballot, out of a total of 40, so the odds were pretty good to get at least one.  In the context of the proposed SOE partial privatisations and the Overseas Investment Office decision on the Crafar Farms sale, I would have really loved Russel Norman’s Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill to be drawn.

Sadly, that was not to be the case, and none of the 14 Green MPs’ Bills will see the light of day until at least the next ballot. The Bills that were drawn were new Labour MP David Clarke’s Holidays (Full recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill which was under Grant Robertson’s name before the election, and new National MP Simon O’Connor’s Joint Family Homes Repeal Bill.

Neither appear to be controversial from a Green perspective. David Clark’s Holidays Amendment Bill would “Mondayise”  Waitangi Day and Anzac Day for the purposes of the Holidays Act, meaning when the observation of those days falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the following Monday would become a public holiday. That is consistent with Green policy on work-life balance. Last year, because both Waitangi Day and Anzac Day fell on  weekends, workers got two days less holiday than usual.

Simon O’Connor’s Joint Family Homes Repeal Bill seems to have been a long time coming. The Law Commission recommended as long ago as 2001 that the Joint Family Homes Act 1964 be repealed, as almost all of its provisions were redundant, given subsequent legislation. I am curious as to why neither Labour or National led Governments have progressed that recommendation until now, when it finally surfaces not as a Government Bill, but as a Private Member’s Bill.

The Green Party caucus is yet to consider either of the Bills, and at there may be a few technical issues to be addressed at least with the Joint Family Homes Act repeal one.  But they both look sensible suggestions in principle, so I hope Parliament gets on to progress them promptly so other Member’s Bills get a chance to be debated.

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.

Before final sign off and maybe as a way to keep the pressure on, John announced that Catherine Isaac (number 3 on the ACT list and rumoured to be a possible new leader of the Party) had been appointed as Chair of the Charter Schools pilot. This announcement was premature but still looks likely as John Key also seems to think Ms Isaac is qualified for the task.

From their point of view, what could be more appropriate for the job than a free market business person with no qualifications except being on a Board of Trustees? What do Charter Schools have to do with knowledge of education if they are in fact a business opportunity? No one knows for sure which model of Charter School is being implemented but we do know that the ACT Party education agenda is simple – privatisation, preferably with a voucher system.

The overseas experience of Charter Schools is very conflicted. Where these schools have cherry-picked children from low socioeconomic areas and poured resources into their education, those schools get good or comparable results with public schools. However, this does little to lift the educational opportunities for the majority of children in the state system where the issues of inequality and poverty are endemic. The Green Party thinks all children deserve the best via a state system that is innovative, consistent and equitable and that special character schools are also provided for already.

The other ghastly news on education this week includes the Minister of Education Hekia Parata’s announcement that league tables of National Standards results will be compiled by the Ministry of Education.

This is even worse than National’s former Education Minister Anne Tolley saying that league tables of Nationals Standards cannot be kept from the media.  Minister Parata seems to think that publicising results which schools say are neither national nor standard will benefit parents in their choices of schools. She is proposing the Australian model which compares schools within the same decile.  There is real concern from educationalists about this because the diversity within deciles is still very wide. Crude comparisons don’t help anyone.

On top of all this, Treasury is recommending in a briefing paper that class sizes could be increased to cut costs. The argument from some is that class size doesn’t matter. I can only speak as a person who has taught in Polytechnics and communities and in my experience the difference between a class of 35 and 20 is astronomical if you are teaching with real student participation.

Everyone agrees the teacher/ student relationship is critical but Treasury say that teachers can manage more relationships if they’re good enough. I say get real. It works in lecture rooms but what about schools?

Lastly there are threats of more small school closures even as they pilot charter schools. What will happen next week to education? Anything is possible.

Fair Work Australia workplace tribunal has just made an historic equal pay decision for aged care workers. They will all now be getting big pay rises.

Aged care workers in New Zealand are a classic example of undervaluing women’s work. These workers, the vast majority of whom are women, hold the dignity, health and lives of older New Zealanders in their hands and yet they are on just over minimum wage.

With these conditions and wages it is currently difficult to recruit workers and many of our aged care workers are from overseas. According to the Thornton Aged Residential Care Service Review,2010, retention is a major issue and “Employer strategies include overseas recruitment and training packages.” This is consistent with Fujisawa and Colombo 2009, who review a broader range of strategies in the long term care sector across the OECD to adapt supply to growing demand.

Now that Australia has raised their wages significantly we may have an even bigger problem retaining and recruiting women to do this work. In New Zealand most aged care workers are on around $25,500pa and in Australia they will soon be earning up to $83,984 . If New Zealand won’t value this important work and its contribution to our society why should these women feel bound to stay here?

This situation poses a real risk for New Zealand as our society ages. As Julia Gillard said “paying a decent wage will stimulate the economy and make society more resilient. It’s time to stop the undervaluing and underfunding of women’s work.”

As the New Zealand population ages, traditional women’s work will become increasingly important and as the world population ages skilled workers will become increasingly sought after. If the National Government doesn’t care about equality and justice maybe they should think about their own old age.

The Green Party believes this is a priority for government. Sadly though the briefing to the incoming Minister released yesterday identified equal pay as a problem but did not suggest any solutions.

The Greens have been calling for the Equal Pay Act in New Zealand to be brought up to date with current employment practices.

…I’m not concerned about the very poor; we have a safety net there.

Over on Denise Roche’s minimum wage thread here at frogblog, commenter dbuckley recalls for us just what that “safety net” actually is:

Yeah… but… you have that wonderful safety net system that looks after people who fail to achieve the American Dream and fall on hard times.

I just can’t quite remember its name….

ah yes…

it’s coming…

Yes!

Jail.

I guess it’s pretty much the same here, and will become more so as the children of the Mother Of All Budgets reach adulthood and become increasingly engaged with the Corrections Department.

I also expect that the Government’s excuse for consigning workers to live on a wage that is completely inadequate to support their families will be the same as it has been over the last three years – a claim that increasing the minimum wage to a liveable level will cost jobs.  Last year, John Key claimed increasing it to $15 an hour would cost 6000 jobs. That claim appears to be an exaggeration of Department of Labour advice.  The Department  provided no methodology for its calculations, but suggested that a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour could slow job growth by between 4100 and 5890 jobs.

I find the purported Government concern about a decline in job growth completely hypocritical, given the number of jobs the Government is itself shedding in the state sector.

What’s more, John Key failed to mention that Government also had advice from Treasury that countered that from the Department of Labour – advice that suggested increasing the minimum wage would most probably not cost any jobs at all.

(It) has not been true in the past, so without new evidence the balance of probabilities is that a higher minimum wage does not generally lead to higher unemployment.

I’m with Treasury on this one.  There has been extensive research into the employment impacts of increases in the minimum wage over the past thirty years, starting with the landmark 1992 paper by US economists David Card and Alan Krueger. The NZ Council of Trade Unions’ submission to the current minimum wage review contains a literature review of that research (Appendix 1, pages 56-73).  What is clear is that things are much more complex than John Key asserts. There is no clear evidence, either internationally or in New Zealand, of a causal relationship between moderate increases in the minimum wage and employment or unemployment levels, and this has become increasingly evident over the last 30 years.

Increasing the minimum wage, first to $15 an hour and eventually to two thirds of the average wage, will help both reduce inequality and poverty and reduce the reliance of many low-income New Zealanders on taxpayer-funded financial support. It’s time for Government to listen to the Green Party on this issue, rather than submitters like Federated Farmers and the NZ Retailers’ Association who lobby for low minimum wages out of their own members’ self-interest.

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?

Ports of Auckland have consistently said that they want to increase productivity. However the hardline approach and lack of flexibility from the CEO, Tony Gibson, has resulted in days lost to strikes, and now the threat of a lock out doesn’t create a productive workforce.   I wonder what the management’s real aims are, given that the company had previously drawn up a strategy to contract out the workforce, and Tony Gibson is threatening to call for expressions of interest while the contract talks were stalled.  This is hardly ‘good faith bargaining’ – and it quite likely breaches the existing industrial relations laws.

If the Board and management of POA were so concerned about increasing productivity and increasing the profit margins, how could they possibly consider a spend of $5million on redundancies – and potentially much higher costs resulting from legal action from the Maritime Union?

In the mainstream media comparisons are being drawn between the Port of Tauranga and Ports of Auckland.  Tauranga is partially privatised and has a casualised workforce.  Undoubtedly, it is cheaper to offload freight at Tauranga. However, companies like Fonterra who have chosen to move their operations are actually subsidised by taxpayers who pick up the externalised costs of moving that freight further by paying for the roading maintenance and railway infrastructure. Taxpayers pick up other costs too. Casualised workforces have poorer health and safety procedures – in the last five years three workers have died at the Port of Tauranga.

My concerns are that the real agenda is about breaking  the Maritime Union and reducing  the working conditions of the Port workers, but also it’s about privatising our assets and undermining the new Supercity structure.  POA is wholly owned by the Auckland Council, but its Board was appointed by the Directors of Auckland Council Investments Limited, who were in turn appointed by   privatisation advocate and former Local Government Minister Rodney Hide rather than by anyone democratically elected by the people of Auckland.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown was elected in 2010 on a promise he would resist asset sales.  Christine Fletcher, who leads the right wing minority Citizens and Ratepayers bloc on the Auckland Council, has already signalled that she believes selling at least some of the Ports of Auckland will, in her opinion, make vast improvements at the Ports.

This is the same as the National Party propaganda  the government is promulgating for the sale of  our energy companies – that the private sector is better at managing our state-owned (and council owned) assets.  And this is despite reports from the energy companies that their returns are excellent and from the Ports of Auckland that their returns have improved dramatically over the last few years as well.

On the Auckland waterfront, the Auckland Council and its Mayor have already endured meddling from the National government with Murray McCully snubbing Mayor Brown and issuing directives over Queens Wharf after the opening of the Rugby World Cup.  And the Mayor and the former Transport Minister Stephen Joyce have also clashed when the Minister refused to prioritise the Inner City Rail Link as part of the Auckland Plan.   The forced amalgamation that led to the Auckland Council was sold to the people of Auckland on the basis that the Supercity would ensure a better relationship with the government – and we’d have one voice for all of Auckland.  The trouble is the National-led government doesn’t like that voice.

John Key’s government has meddled in union matters before – they changed the law around contractors and employees on the behest of an international movie company in 2010.  But this time they would do well to stay out of the Ports of Auckland dispute. It’s not just capital that has global interests and connections – organised labour has too!

A transcript is here for those who cannot access the video.

Ms Kelly was part of an Australian and New Zealand delegation looking into allegations that senior Fijian union officials have been arrested and physically assaulted. Over the last few months the Fijian Government has enacted a series of decrees that make it illegal for more than 5 people to meet and union officials have been arrested for undertaking basic organising activities like meeting workers at their jobs. Recent decrees also reduced the freedom of the media, abolished the minimum wage and banned collective bargaining.

These measures are causing grave concern for the International Labour Organisation which has an office in Suva where former Alliance Cabinet Minister Laila Harre is the officer in charge. The ILO is attempting to negotiate with the military government and has called for the government to accept a ‘direct contacts mission’ which would press the government to comply with basic international law.

It’s not just unions that are worried about the breach of human rights in Fiji. On Monday, Business New Zealand backed up the NZCTU’s call for the Fijian government to accept a mission from the ILO to look into the island nation’s labour standards. But the National government has been suspiciously quiet on the matter. It is time for the Government to join with Business NZ and the CTU and stand up for human rights and workers’ rights in Fiji.

Australia 136 and 233 (Warner 123*, Bracewell 6-40) lost to New Zealand 150 and 226 by seven runs
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

An extraordinary spell from Doug Bracewell and a horrific batting disintegration by Australia handed New Zealand a dramatic and momentous seven-run Test victory in Hobart, their first on these shores since 1985.

What a pity we can’t take the same approach with wages. Sadly, our new Government seems to be on track to deliver an even lower waged and even more de-unionised workforce:

National is of the view that this destroyed up to 9000 jobs for 16 and 17 year olds. National plans to establish a starting-out wage which will be set at a minimum of 80% of the adult minimum wage …

The Employment Relations Act 2000 (Act) originally required collective bargaining to be undertaken in good faith. This was later changed so that once negotiations begin, a collective agreement must be reached unless there are genuine reasons not to. National will return the Act to its original form, retaining the requirement to bargain in good faith, while removing the requirement to conclude a collective agreement.

We might be catching up with Australia in cricket, but we sure as hell won’t be on wages with policies like these.

Congratulations to the Black Caps, by the way, and especially to Doug Bracewell, who with 9 wickets should have been awarded Player of the Match, but due to an Aussie rort was not.

A particular perfect storm of deregulation, state asset sales, recession, cuts to welfare and entitlements, and lack of wage growth in the 1980s and 1990s has left our economy, and our society, sick at heart. More and more evidence shows how bad inequality is for our whole society – we’re all worse off in an unequal society, not just those at the “bottom”. The impact on New Zealand is well-presented by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of the groundbreaking book on inequality The Spirit Level, in this video presentation.

So what can we do about it? Well the OECD – that bastion of progressive economic and social policy – recommends policies in three key areas: making tax fairer, upskilling the workforce, and investing in human capital and education.

Funnily enough, these are key features of Green policy. Russel spoke yesterday about how a Capital Gains Tax is exactly the kind of tax change the OECD recommends to combat growing inequality – it closes the ultimate tax loophole.

In 2010, the Green Party undertook a major project on reducing inequality, and released to to coincide with the 2010 Budget. We called it Mind the Gap, and it included 10 practical, achievable policy solutions to combat growing inequality, including a comprehensive capital gains tax, raising the minimum wage, a tax-free bracket of $10,000, progressive electricity pricing, extending Working for Families Support, reinstating the Training Incentive Allowance, building new state houses, and minimum standards for rental accommodation.

Those who bat off evidence of the growing gap between rich and poor and say there’s nothing we can do are wrong. There’s plenty we can do. But we need to accept that inequality is a problem that it’s in all of our interests to solve. Then we need the will, the guts, and the political leadership to get on with it.

Being a new MP myself, Damien came up to me in the audience for some freshman hazing. He asked me what I hoped to achieve in the next three years. Quite ambitiously, I launched into a short but passionate effusion against the so-called Roads of National Significance.

Just after I sat down, a well-heeled woman of the boomer generation walked by. She turned to me and sneered, “What a load of rubbish, what you just said about the roads.”

I leapt to my feet and promptly got into a lengthy and interesting discussion with her and her husband. They seemed to be quite open to my explanation, but it took several minutes and a lot of technical detail about the traffic modeling process before they looked at me less skeptically. They live in Wellington and walk everywhere. He is trained in economics. They have every reason to be onside with Green Party transport policy, but they aren’t (yet).

Many reasonable and well-informed boomers will have a similar gut reaction to brief and impassioned statement against motorway expansion, if they haven’t studied or worked in transport planning.

“People like to drive. It’s their choice to sit in a queue for an hour.”

“In other countries they have big motorways with free flowing traffic. Why shouldn’t we?”

“New Zealanders don’t want to live in shoebox apartments. They want a quarter acre section and a garden.”

There is some truth to all of these statements, but what is missing is the understanding of how transport funding and land use planning regulations have influenced people’s choices and the pattern of urban developments in a way that is not good for anyone in New Zealand.

People can and will make different choices when the costs are more direct. Plus, the world is changing, we have only to look across the Pacific to see where the trends are headed.

This excellent op-ed in the NY Times explains why we don’t need to expand the supply of fringe suburbs, by removing the metropolitan urban limits and building new motorways, though that is what the National-led Government would have us do.

There are better changes to regulation than removing the metropolitan urban limits, including removing minimum parking requirements and providing better incentives for high quality medium density development, that will reduce development costs and improve housing affordability. But the most important thing the central government needs to do now is factor changing demographic trends and demand for transport into their funding priorities.

New motorways were never going to reduce congestion anyway, but given the high demand for walkable neighborhoods, increased cycling and public transport, we should be investing the bulk of our transport funds into projects where we will see the most growth over the next few decades. We are not going to see growth in demand for road travel at peak hour, especially if we stop subsidizing single occupant vehicle trips with free parking.

As I explained to the couple at the Backbencher pub, we’re not anti-motorway. We are aware that these motorways are unbelievably costly solutions to a problem that they won’t solve, a problem that won’t exist in the next decade. In fact, the Roads of National Significance will create different problems.

If we don’t pay attention to what is happening in the US, we may well follow them down the same short-sighted route. It would be a costly mistake, and a lost opportunity.

Julie Anne

Here is a copy of two of my questions, which are identical to the rest except they deal with different motorways.

7354: Gareth Hughes to the Minister of Transport (11 Oct 2011): What is the most recent cost estimate for the whole of the Puhoi to Wellsford road of national significance project, as well as for each constituent part?

7353: Gareth Hughes to the Minister of Transport (11 Oct 2011): What is the most recent cost estimate for the whole of the Puhoi to Wellsford road of national significance project, as well as for each constituent part?

For those of you who don’t know about QWAs, they are a tool that MPs have to hold Ministers to account. We can ask Ministers written questions on any reasonable topic, relating to their portfolios. Legally, if the House is sitting the Minister is obliged to respond to our question within 7 working days.

That’s the theory. In practise, of course, Ministers are often very busy and don’t answer all their QWAs on time. The Minister of Transport, has a particularly bad track record. Also, unlike most Ministers, he seems to treat QWAs as a game where the goal is to avoid giving any meaningful information.

In this particular case, the Minister actually never responded to my QWAs at all because he was late and when the House rose for the election all QWAs are cancelled.

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this because I appreciated the Minister was dealing with the Rena clean up at the time. I am sure we will certainly be asking for this information once the House sits again in February.

After all, there have been rumours that the cost of the Wellington Northern Corridor will far exceed expectations and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true of the second section of Puhoi to Wellsford due to the challenges of the terrain up there (as reported by the Herald). The business case for these motorways will be even weaker if their cost increase.

However, even if we can ask again for this information in February I think it shows the Minister’s disdain for democracy and open government that he didn’t bother to give us this crucial information before the election.

There was another blog post about the Minister’s undemocratic practises recently at the Standard. This covered how the Minister of Transport recently decided (in secret, against the advice of several government departments) to try and restrict the powers of the Auckland Council to be involved in transport  planning.

Instead he wants those powers to be devolved to the (unelected) board of Auckland Transport, a CCO. What’s more, 5 of the 7 board members on Auckland Transport were appointed by the Minister. Auckland Council is fighting back against this decision and I hope they’ll be successful.

Over the next 3 years we will keep up the fight to try and keep the government’s transport  planning and funding decisions transparent and accountable. But I think it’s going to be an uphill battle. What do you think?

Among those polices are several of the more extreme recommendations of the Welfare Working Group:

6. Welfare

National and ACT agree that the two most important aims of welfare reform are the alleviation and prevention of child poverty, and a focus on work as the best route out of poverty and welfare dependence for those who are able to work. Both parties also agree with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Welfare Working Group (WWG), and support their implementation.

In particular, National and ACT agree to implement in this Parliamentary term measures to promote the well-being of children in benefit-dependent households set out in WWG Recommendations 27: Parenting obligations, 28: Support for at-risk families, and 30: Income management and budgeting support.

They further agree to implement measures to improve the effectiveness of employment placement services for beneficiaries through contracting out such services to private sector and community organisations, as set out in WWG Recommendation 34: Employment services.

The United Kingdom adopted a similar contracting approach for job placement services, and it is nothing short of a corporate welfare scam.  Last year, the Public Accounts Committee of the UK House of Commons reported:

The performance by the mainly private sector providers has been universally poor in relation to their main target group, those people who are required to go on the Pathways programme. The targets agreed with providers were over-optimistic, considerably exceeding the best performing Jobcentre Plus districts in the early pilot areas, and underestimated the difficulty of supporting this client group. Providers started from a low knowledge base with little direct experience of working with incapacity benefits claimants.

So contracting out employment placement services doesn’t get more beneficiaries into employment.  It is the poverty pimps, rather than the beneficiaries, who benefit:

The woman appointed by David Cameron to help troubled families get off benefits and into work has a joint income with her husband estimated at more than £1.4m after building a business empire based on lucrative “welfare to work” contracts with government.

Emma Harrison, the chairman of A4e (Action for Employment), was celebrating another success that is likely to boost the company’s profits, after it won five out of 40 new welfare contracts from the Department for Work and Pensions. The 40 contracts, worth an estimated £3bn-£5bn in total, are part of the coalition’s new work programme, under which private companies will be paid by results for getting jobless people into work…

What a pity we don’t have a progressive Government involving the Greens that is actually interested in creating jobs for beneficiaries to go to, rather than the one that is currently forming which seems more interested in harassing beneficiaries to look for jobs that don’t exist while giving hand-outs to the already well-heeled.