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As I predicted in my blog post last week, John Key’s Government has announced today what amounts to a nil increase in the minimum wage – a paltry increase of 50c an hour. The nominal increase is 3.8% – but at the same time the Consumer Price Index increased 4.6% in the year to September 2011 and 1.8% in the year to December 2011.  So it is not “boosting incomes” at all, as Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson claims, it is just keeping pace with inflation.

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.

Today, there was a ballot at Parliament for two Member’s Bills – they get drawn by a Lotto-style “numbers in a bucket” system as there are always many more MPs outside the Cabinet wanting to progress legislation than there is time in Parliament to deal with their Bills.

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.

 

It is great to see the Herald launch a six part series highlighting the impact of inequality and poverty in New Zealand. They started yesterday with a front page piece talking about inequality in New Zealand. The piece highlights the plight of families not considered poor:

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.

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This has been a week of disturbing announcements by the National Government although the leader of the pack was actually John Banks – the lone ACT MP.

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.

The Ministry of Economic Development’s Briefing to the incoming Energy Minister predicts New Zealand could become a net exporter of petroleum by 2030 if new oil fields are developed.

It’s a laudable goal to reduce our expensive dependence on foreign oil but it would be a lot smarter to invest in alternatives like better public transport, renewable electricity and sustainable alternative fuels.

Even if New Zealand is the ‘Texas of the South’, it is unlikely to benefit New Zealand. New Zealand sells itself cheaply with the forth lowest royalty rates in the world and gives subsidies and tax breaks to foreign oil companies. So there will be hardly any royalties, hardly any taxes and hardly any jobs for Kiwis, and the profits will flow offshore. We won’t pay any less for petrol at the pump if we produced more than we consumed because we are still unlikely to process it here or pay less than the international market price.

We know Kiwis face 100% of the environmental risks for only 5% of the value of the oil. The only way to massively ramp up oil production is to drill in hostile, risky environments in deep-water like the Great South Basin or the Raukumara Basin, more than 1000m down. This brings its own risks as we saw only too graphically in the Gulf of Mexico. Our clean, green brand is too valuable to put at risk from a catastrophic oil spill.

The Rena demonstrated we do not have the capacity to adequately deal with even a moderate spill let alone a deep-sea well blow-out. The tax-payer has already forked-out $25 million in costs associated with the Rena and our oil drilling insurance rules don’t even demand oil drilling companies have insurance to cover the full costs of a spill.

At a time when globally, renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels and other governments, businesses and militaries are planning to reduce their dependence on oil, our Government isn’t even planning to start planning. But they are planning to increase it by borrowing billions to pour on uneconomic motorways.

If oil is the problem, more of the same isn’t the answer. As the International Energy Agency’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol says, ‘we should leave oil before oil leaves us’.

 

 

 

United States Republican Presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney is getting a pasting for his comment:

…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.

This week the UN Security Council is meeting to discuss the situation in Syria.

The Council has the opportunity, along with the obligation, to lead in the international community’s call for respect for human rights and political freedoms in this latest country to enjoy the warmth of the Arab Spring.

Manoeuvring delicately within the grey area of state sovereignty, popular will and universal rights is one tough challenge. Especially in the Arab world where the political culture is significantly different from the prevailing Western norms that inform Security Council strategy.

Western support for popular uprisings in that region faces the inevitable road-block. The West finds it easier to be clear-eyed over Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Libya, and even Syria, than it does over Palestine.

Deriving from the Libyan experience, the rhetoric surrounding Syria is embedded with the principle of non-intervention. The League of Arab States has made it clear its draft resolution would avoid foreign military intervention.

Echoing the aspirations of the League, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for the Syrian President to ‘heed the people’s call’, and urged the Council to ‘start a credible political solution’. This would be an internally-driven peaceful political transition, compelled by international consensus in the form of economic pressure “so that the Syrian regime might realise that it is imperative to meet the demands of its people”, as the Chair of the Arab Ministerial Committee on Syria explained to the Security Council.

The power of the UN lies in its ability to act collectively. A UN mandate, albeit often complicated and politically subjective, holds global legitimacy because it derives from a collective decision-making and consensus-building process. Nothing else, including US engagement in the Palestine issue and Russian engagement in Syria, does.

In approaching the Security Council, the League strengthens the power of this collective legitimacy, as opposed to the singular power of a large nation such as the US.  Hence, the UN Security Council has the opportunity to take the global lead on Syria.

Amnesty International calls on Russia not to veto the draft resolution. Neither should it.  But the Security Council will never attain the objectivity required for full global legitimacy until it applies an even-handed approach to the comparable forms of repression in the region. Syria and Palestine stand as a twin litmus-test of transparency and objectivity.  Ramming through a resolution on Syria and continuing with US vetoes on Palestine will not do, from now on.

Sometime around now, Cabinet will be undertaking its annual review of the minimum wage, which currently stands at a lowly $13 an hour. My bet is that we will see another effective nil increase, with the minimum wage being adjusted upwards no more than the level of inflation over the past year. That would be consistent with what John Key’s government has done since it came to power.

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 Green Party supports NZEI’s call for schools not to share their  Nationals Standards information because it could lead to the publishing of league tables that unfairly rank schools and infringe on pupils’ privacy.

Schools must protect this information from publication because once it is centralised, there is no guarantee it can be kept out of the media.

The Ministry of Education not only requires schools to report how pupils are progressing in relation to the standards, but it also requires “the numbers and proportions of students at, above, below or well below the standards, including by Māori and Pasifika”.

This might be useful information for school boards planning the following year but providing detailed data to the Ministry in the annual report is a different story. We see a real risk of individual students being identified and schools being inappropriately ranked.

The Minister calls this “transparency” but league tables of student achievement across the country will be damaging to many students and their schools. There are major privacy issues for small rural schools and for ethnicity-related data.

Almost 1000, or about 45 percent, of New Zealand’s primary and area schools have less than 150 children. Another 567 schools — another 25 percent — have only 150-300 students.

Many of the children at these schools are at risk of having their personal level of achievement exposed to the public through simply deduction.

Furthermore, National Standards are not the best measures to help students progress at their own rate.

Publishing results of this flawed and confused system of narrow measures will unfairly rank schools. This ranking of the public school system would lead to odious comparisons and pressure on teachers to teach a narrow curriculum to make their school look good on the league tables.

Considering schools already have a range of tools to measure achievement, the Minister of Education’s enthusiasm for this form of accountability is misguided and fails to recognise how it’s failed to improve educational outcomes where implemented in other countries.

League tables are for sports teams not children’s learning.

The Ministry of Economic Development have released their Energy Outlook for New Zealand and it should be a wake-up call for the Government.

The report projects New Zealand’s future energy supply, demand, prices and greenhouse gas emissions but the major challenges identified in it are at odds with the Governments  ‘drill it, mine’  fossil-fuel-focused Energy Strategy.

The report acknowledges oil prices will be up, greenhouse gas emissions from energy will be up a staggering 40-50% on 1990 levels by 2030 and transport will continue to be oil dependant. This is a huge economic and environmental threat. It beggars belief that the Government continues to borrow billions to pour on uneconomic motorways when the report itself says ‘Historical travel data indicates that personal road travel is already near saturation, with little additional per capita travel likely.’ This scare money could be better spent preparing us for oil and carbon constrained world.

New Zealand’s dependence on imported oil is a huge strategic worry and should be the subject of an urgent inquiry. However unlike many governments, militaries and businesses that are planning to reduce their dependence on oil our Government won’t even plan to start planning. We have so many options in New Zealand from energy efficiency, 90%+ renewable electricity production, better public transport, walking and cycling to increase resiliency, reduce emissions and benefit the economy.

At the household level the report also says people will continue to struggle with energy bills because the price of electricity will remain higher than inflation for the next 18 years.

There is some good news in the report including promising renewable electricity production and New Zealand’s energy intensity is forecast to improve 21 per cent by 2030 however many of the challenges forecast in the report will just worsen given the Government’s Energy Strategy.

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On a lighter note than this morning’s post, I’ve been inspired by Julie Anne’s epic ride to Southland to set myself an insurmountable biking challenge. Unlike Julie, I’m unlikely to actually achieve it!

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 Dominion Post leads today with a story about “keeping kiwi kids safe”, especially those who are born into families from which previous children have been removed because of abuse.

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.

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