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.

g.blog was set up before the 2008 election, but has been in hibernation for a while.  It is a blog where any Green Party member can post. If you are a Green member,  all you need to do to get posting rights at g.blog is to email the g.blog administrator.

So why not do it?  Whether you have the time to manage a post a day or a post a month, the more Green voices we have out there the better.

The most recent g.blog post is from Green Party member and regular frogblog commenter “Toad”:  – on misogynist, homophobic and Islamophobic (Toad missed those bits) former National MP Bob Clarkson lending his weight to the Act Party:

Just when I thought the ACT Party couldn’t get more dominated by wealthy, bigoted, elderly white men, Bob “Left Testicle” Clarkson joins up.

Former National MP Clarkson was the subject of sexual harassment allegations made by a former employee. Clarkson claimed the allegations were the result of a misunderstanding arising from a mention of his left testicle to a colleague. Clarkson, in the heat of the controversy, grabbed and talked about his crotch to a female reporter.

Clarkson’s sure to work wonders to improve ACT’s 0.00% polling among female voters achieved in the latest Herald Digipoll.

Cheers, Toad.  I agree completely.  And your post was picked up by The Standard, so got much wider coverage.

Let’s get the grassroots Green voices out there via g.blog.   And no problem if you want to challenge Green policy – g.blog is an open blog for any Green member to post to, but remember that anyone in the blogosphere will be able to read it.

If I was a member of the ACT Board, I would be asking why are all these National Party members trying to take over ACT.

This is major Don to ground control, I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way

Don Brash and John Banks are both members of National. The rumoured financial backer is not a member of ACT as far as I know.

And the stars look very different today

Not exactly a deep devotion to ACT then. I won’t join your party unless you agree in advance to make me leader, and if you don’t I will set up my own party.

Here am I floatin’ ’round my tin can far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do…

Can you imagine if ACT get 3% but loses Epsom and a Brash led party gets 4%.

Ground control to Major Don, your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong.

Best result possible, DPF!

Somehow, I think I prefer the original:

If this vile affront to human rights and democratic principles that will strip all sentenced prisoners of the right to vote was not one of Hilary Calvert’s favourite things, then why the hell did she support it?

I’ve avoided commenting on the ongoing train wreck [mixed metaphor corrected] slowly sinking ship that is the ACT Party until now.  They are doing well enough at self-destructing without any assistance from me. But I couldn’t resist giving this from a comments thread at The Standard a wider audience:

A highlight of the new farce is a scene at the beginning of act III, where the captain attempts nailing the rats to his ship.

ROFLMAO!

Hat Tip: Pascal’s bookie.

Following ACT on Campus President Rick Giles’ profound argument in denial of human induced climate change on TV3′s Sunrise earlier this week:

I think my argument is so powerful, it’s not necessary to talk about it;

ACT Party activist and blogger Clint Heine wasn’t satisfied with just the Facebook response to Giles’ intellectual profundity.  Heine decided more decisive action was necessary.

So Heine further denigrated his fellow Party activist Giles on Heine’s own blog by posting a video comparing Giles with Hitler:

Wingnuts, the lot of them!

I’m planning to do a series of frogblog posts on National’s plans to gut ACC, highlighting the devastating impact of each of them on people who have been injured and their families.

But before I even got to post the first one, ACC Minister Nick Smith has revealed how badly National has politically managed their pernicious proposals.

Green MPs and staffers were all geared up today to oppose the Bill to implement the ACC cuts, which National had intended to introduce under Parliamentary urgency – a far too frequent and undemocratic tactic of theirs.  But when the Parliamentary Order Paper appeared, the Bill to gut ACC wasn’t on it.

The reason, as Radio New Zealand reports – National can’t get the numbers, even from their own support parties!

Act won’t vote for it because it doesn’t go far enough towards the privatisation they want, and the Maori Party won’t vote for it because they have some serious concerns about the unfairness of aspects of it – particularly to those in their voter base.

So, who knows when the Bill will surface in Parliament.

As suggested at The Standard, National fudge the numbers for the ACC accounts so they can claim a “blow out” to justify their cuts, but they didn’t even bother to ensure they can get the numbers in Parliament to pass their legislation through its First Reading.

Anyway, I’m a somewhat more relaxed frog now than I was this morning, because, thanks to National making such a mess of it, I have a bit more time for getting the nasty detail of this pernicious Bill out to frogblog readers.

Watch this space – there is plenty more to come on National’s plans to gut ACC.

• Go to: Gutting ACC – it’s just not fair: Vocational independence
• Go to: Gutting ACC – it’s just not fair: Hearing loss
• Go to: Gutting ACC – it’s just not fair: Sexual abuse claims

Greens Sport the 350 Look

Green MPs support Bill McKibben’s campaign to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, down from the current 389 ppm which is going up every year.  Scientists believe this would keep the global temperature rise to less than 2C.

Meanwhile, the NACT government struggles with denial.  National’s “target” is a 50% reduction by 2050.  And while the Nats have also adopted the IPCC target of 450 ppm, they’ve ignored that the IPCC also says an 80% emissions cut is needed by 2050 to achieve it.  

National’s targets are meaningless without a programme for reaching them.  After complaining last year that emissions went up during Labour’s reign, they’ve done little besides reverse the few positive steps Labour took during its last term and create confusion in the market by delaying the ETS.

New Zealand is looking increasingly silly overseas, last week “winning” the Fossil of the Day award in Bonn, given by a group of environmental NGOs to countries that block progress at the United Nations climate change negotiations.   With the successor agreement to Kyoto to be completed at Copenhagen in December, our Parliament is still mired in a false debate about the science. 

Perhaps they’re not bothered by this confusion as their true intentions were signalled in the budget.  Roads, roads and more roads will see any target not only missed, but will send Aotearoa in the opposite direction (and “clean” coal is just around the corner?).   Nick Smith says everything will be fine, but he seems to be talking to himself these days. Certainly his government is not listening.

If the government had a Green New Deal type of approach, it could put forward solutions that would build resilience into our economy by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, while at the same time allowing us to take a meaningful part in the global discussion on climate change mitigation.  Instead, this NACT government is making sure New Zealand won’t be joining the international consensus anytime soon.

Image crafted by
Lyndon Hood

This morning I just about choked on my breakfast of lilies and insects as I was reading the New Zealand Herald (online version). The Herald had an article implying that the Ports Of Auckland chairman Gary Judd thought now – as in right in the middle of an economic recession – was the right time to consider privatising the Ports of Auckland.

This news that an economic recession was the right time to get rid of any publicly owned company seemed pretty darn crazy. To me it seemed like the kind of lunacy practiced by those on the economic fringe – say Richard Prebble, Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas.

Out came the Green Party rightfully concerned that a fire-sale was imminent. The blogosphere was also bemused at the economic idiocy.

“This simply makes no sense. To point out the blindingly obvious, the people of Auckland will not get a good price for their asset by selling it in the middle of a recession. Instead, they’ll get screwed, while the buyer laughs all the way to the bank,” wrote the mysterious Mr No Right Turn.

Some time later in the day I was contacted by Mr Judd’s PR person. There were claims of a media beat-up. I was even sent a letter – which I liked as it was a good source of recyclable protein. Lo and behold when I went to check out the Herald story from this morning it had been updated.

I also understand that Mr Judd may want some sort of acknowledgement in tomorrows’ Herald regarding the fact he is adamant he never called for Auckland’s port to be sold and didn’t suggest that now was the right time for the Ports of Auckland’s privatisation.

I reckon Mr Judd must have been pretty mad at the Herald for making him look like the kind of crazed economic vandal that would flog off a vital piece of economic infrastructure in the midst of a recession. There’s a gang devoted to that sort of hooliganism – the ACT Party – and I hear they meet every second Thursday at the St Mary’s Bay phone booth.

It would seem however that the Crown Law Office reckon that what they have with the ‘three strikes’ Bill is a ‘failure to communicate’ with New Zealand’s premier human rights legislation.

Worryingly this news doesn’t seem to much worry the crime fightin’ Mr Garrett who would no doubt clap the hapless crown counsel that objected to his kneejerk legislation in leg irons and send them to work on a chain gang.

From the NZ Herald: Mr Garrett, a former legal adviser to the Sensible Sentencing Trust, said the concerns were not Mr Finlayson’s personally but those of “some oik in Crown Law.”

It scares this amphibian that the new sheriff in town – Mr Garrett – reckons any legal opinion different than his own blinkered world view is ‘oikish’.

I guess to Mr Garrett the Bill of Rights is his Billy the Kid. I reckon Sheriff Garrett’s approach to New Zealand’s legal framework is more Judge Dredd(ful) than anything though!

“New Zealand is at serious risk of becoming an international Pariah over climate, and jeopardising its international standing and trade relations. The last thing we want is to become the equivalent of the French Government during nuclear testing in the Pacific.”

Yeap, it seems after years of carping about the importance of relations with the United States, Act’s climate denial stance and demands for a select committee to investigate whether the earth really does revolve around the sun will be moving us in exactly the opposite direction to closer friendship with the United States.

This warning follows a speech by American President-Elect, Barack Obama, to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Global Climate Summit to which Obama pledges sweeping action to combat climate change but notes that the United States cannot meet the challenge alone:

Now’s the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high…

Anyone that is willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States.

So, Rodney Hide, How about it?  Can you put aside the denialism, if not for science at least so we can stay cuddling up to that country with all the big shiny nuclear weapons?

The British Government Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in March, was blunt.

“The scientific evidence is now overwhelming; climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.”

The review warned that “our actions now and over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes”.

And these are the cautious, official pronouncements. Many scientists are much more apocalyptic. Alongside this overwhelming consensus, Mr Hide’s flippant naysaying was easy to laugh off when he was a gang of one. But for Mr Key to now give these views credibility risks making New Zealand a laughing stock as well.

National campaigned on reviewing the way New Zealand meets our Kyoto treaty obligations to reduce our carbon footprint. That’s fine. Act’s global warming denial policy was not part of the deal. Mr Key should spell this out pronto.

I would have said though that scientists are currently apoplectic rather than apocalyptic.  Climate change is a relatively easy thing to combat, if only we want to. We have already developed all the technological solutions we need. We just need to start using them. But first we need some greater responsibility shown by Hide.  If he is a scientist, as he claims, he should understand what a scientific consensus is and what it means.

Have we wasted the whole last decade debating climate change policy, if we need to go back and start from scratch with a select committee review of ETS? No party was happy with the scheme that was finally passed in September. It took years of negotiation and huge political compromise from those who voted for it. Now National will consider “any amendments or alternatives to it, including carbon taxes”. Are we just starting again then? Given that US president-elect Barack Obama is committed to a cap and trade scheme and even the United Nations is working on plans for a “Green New Deal”, why on earth are we choosing to give up our competitive advantage (ie years of policy work)?

At Hot Topic:

To avoid further damage to our international credibility, National should immediately issue revised terms of reference and a tight timetable for their “special” select committee: taking out all references to considering the science of climate change and the possibility of a carbon tax, and explicitly limit the committee to considering amendments to the ETS framework. To do less (or nothing) will do further damage to business in NZ and our international reputation.

And also:

Time for the NZ scientific community to make it clear to Nick Smith and National that the starting point for any review of climate policy has to be an acceptance of the IPCC’s Fourth Report, and the NZ Royal Society’s statement issued earlier this year. Anything else would be like appointing Ken Ring to run MetService.

And Audrey Young at the Herald:

Act’s position has changed markedly over the years. When Labour proposed a carbon tax, Act opposed it and National wanted an emissions trading scheme.

When Labour proposed an emissions trading scheme, Act supported a carbon tax. It has now won a review that will include looking again at a carbon tax.

During the short space of the campaign Act has argued that climate change is not happening and it is a hoax, that it is happening but it is a good thing, and that it is happening but we should not do anything because we are too small to matter. Now it seems, because Rodney Hide can’t make up his mind about climate change, the rest of us are to be subjected to further delay.  And all just at the time when the rest of the world is arguing we must act now if we are to take our best opportunity to avert a crisis (and embrace an opportunity).

“I am sure the new Minister brings with him the right mix of energy and enthusiasm to take on this role,” she explained.

Coincidentally the Mayor in question is Penny Webster, former ACT MP and champion of the controversial and possibly illegal Penlink road in the Whangaparaoa.

I guess that $360 million government expenditure won’t be peeled back then and can be added to the $1 billion that extra spending each year that David Garrett wants to spend to “fix the breakdown in law and order”. It seems some government expenditures may be safer than others from Rodney’s razor gang.

Among other things Act proposes that the Select Committee will:

• hear competing views on the scientific aspects of climate change from internationally respected sources and assess the quality and impartiality of official advice

It’s a pity for Act that National managed to get the words ‘internationally respected’ in the proposed terms of reference.

• hear views from trade and diplomatic experts on the international relations aspects of this issue

That’s fine – I’ve noted before that we need a serious climate change strategy to support our two biggest exporters; tourism and primary produce.  But let’s also remember that this is first and foremost a environmental future of the planet issue, not a trade opportunity issue.

• require a high quality, quantified regulatory impact analysis to be produced to identify the net benefits or costs to New Zealand of any policy action, including international relations and commercial benefits and costs.

I’ve got a serious concern that the new government wants to look at the issue of climate change as one where New Zealand’s actions are occurring in isolation to the rest of the world.  The reality is that our efforts are and should be part of a global response to climate change.  While our contributions to both the problem and the solution are small (except on a per capita basis) they are just as important as every other group of 4 million people.  Imagine what would happen if little cities and states of 4 million people within the United States, or any other country, started opting out of climate change action because they were too small to make a difference.

• examine the relative merits of a mitigation or adaptation approach to climate change for New Zealand.

It’s not an either-or choice.  We need both urgently.

• consider the case for increasing resources devoted to New Zealand-specific climate change research.

Yup, we desperately need to do something to clarify the misinformation and lies that climate change deniers are spreading in the media.

• examine the relative merits of an emissions trading scheme or a tax on carbon or energy as a New Zealand response to climate change.

Oh look, deja vu, we’re back at square one again. This is a slap in the face to all those hard working public servants under both the previous National government and the last Labour government who have been working on this issue, in good faith, for more than a decade. Act wants us to forget that it was National who signed us up to Kyoto and Labour who ratified it. Under both governments, those who wanted delay won the day despite scientific evidence to the contrary. Now Act has secured yet another round of delay.

However, that has not been Act’s record to date.  It has continually favoured businesses’ right to obfuscate and confuse over consumers’ right to information.  It will be interesting to see whether Roy, if appointed to this post, continues to oppose measures such as country of origin labelling or whether she takes what I would suggest would be a more liberal line, and advocates consumers the right to make rational informed market place choices.

Two parties which New Zealand has just elected into power, National and Act, voted in favour of the New Zealand Government joining the USA-led war coalition. This coalition invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003. For those of you that missed my previous post here’s that vote from Parliament’s “Debate on Iraq” held on 18 March 2003, two days before USA led the invasion of Iraq:

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader-ACT NZ): I move, That this Parliament

recognises the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions and 4126 Debate on Iraq 18 Mar 2003 proliferation of weapons of mass destruction pose to international peace and,

noting the UN Security Council on 8 November 2002 in resolution 1441 unanimously voted that Iraq has not complied with previous UN resolutions and was in material breach of its obligation and gave Iraq a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations or “face serious consequences”,

further notes the report of the UN arms inspectors that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full and complete disclosure,

this House disassociates itself from the New Zealand Government’s position at the United Nations to oppose a second UN Security Council resolution and deplores the announcement of France to veto any such resolution and this House records its support for the United States of America, Great Britain, and Australia’s preparedness to enforce UN Resolution 1441 and calls on the New Zealand Government to offer all practical support to the “coalition of the willing”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 35
New Zealand National 27; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 84
Labour 52; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2

It’s a while ago now and National seems to have learnt its lesson since then. Let’s hope Act has too. Otherwise Peacenik Dunne is going to be feeling rather lonely in his new homeland.

“three strikes” law and order policy, cutting government spending and dumping the emissions trading scheme.

All of which sends shivers down many Green spines.  Act does empty bluster and noise better than most parties so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how many wins Key is willing to allow his junior partners. 

We already knew that National would support a cut in government spending and tougher law and order policy (it’s hard to imagine that it could get too much more punitive than it already has under Phil Goff, but there you go). So those are easy for Key to agree to. But the Emissions Trading Scheme will hopefully be a sticking point in these negotiations for two reasons;

1. While Act is rejoicing in its bizarre climate change views, National has moved away from that kind of anti-science stance and now agrees that there should be an Emissions Trading Scheme of some sort. National, which has worked so hard to capture the middle ground can’t afford to go off on internationally discredited tangents such as Act’s climate change denials represent.
   
2. National has no credible plan with which to replace the Emissions Trading Scheme. It has opposed it, knowing that lots of its constituent vote doesn’t like the direct economic impact it has on them personally. But that does not change the fact that we have Kyoto responsibilities and liabilities.  National has never articulated an alternative and has given the impression that its alternative would be, at most, be minor tinkering.  We have a bill to pay and we need some mechanism, other than just increasing taxes, to pay that Kyoto commitment.

I think this issue is probably the most important one to watch in the next few days of negotiations between National and Act.