“Marching in the streets”
Thousands of people protested and marched around the country against the secret and anti-democratic TPPA negotiations. Reports & pics. Updated
Economy
jobs
The future of work, income
Automation is changing everything – faster than we think…
Opposition to Nats’ attack grows
Labour’s petition against National’s attack on Kiwi’s rights including the right to a break at work is growing like topsy with over 22,000 people signing up to it in the last day and a half.
Boots Theory: Numbers are meaningless when families are living in cars
There’s something obscene about the way the economic story gets framed: the figures on a page, the points on an index, the number of dollars someone can swap for a number of different-coloured dollars, when people are suffering.
NZ Inc
David Cunliffe has announced his final big policy. It’s called NZ Inc and it’s a bloody smart move.
The working poor
National is not interested in doing anything about poverty in NZ. They won’t even officially measure poverty, because they don’t want to know.
NRT: 32,000 out of work under National
The latest Household Labour Force Survey was released today, showing a drop in unemployment. But while its an improvement, there is far less employment than when National came into office 5 years ago. That is a monumental fail.
Labour – Raise the minimum wage
Labour is promising to raise the minimum wage to $16.25. It’s the right thing to do. And it doesn’t cost jobs.
Tales from the left ground
I was uplifted by seeing Team Carmel Sepuloni out campaigning in Henderson today. Marama Davidson has been out on the ground in Otara. The Internet-Mana Party have gone on a Road Trip. There’s been an on-going left campaign in Ohariu…. what are the tales from the left, campaigning on the ground?!
NRT: So much for the surplus
As was generally expected by anyone who’d been watching the actual economy rather than just the dairy exports, business profits are lower than expected. And there aren’t the jobs and pay increases in our “rockstar” economy. So consumer spending measured by GST is low as well. Meanwhile the price inflation keeps increasing government costs. So we are already on track for a large deficit next year rather than the government’s much-touted imaginary surplus. You have to ask why we deserve a government that appears to live more in a universe of wishful thinking than reality.
The real aims of National’s “Education” policy.
If the aims of National/ACT’s education policy were, genuinely, to to improve the learning, education and career choices for our children, including the ones that are failing at present, they would not be following policies which have signally failed to achieve any of these goals, anywhere else they have been tried.
Green Party pre-budget policy launch
The Green Party will do a pre-budget economic policy launch: livestream here 11am 11.30am-12.30pm.They are pretty adept at interacting with Kiwis via social media, and on TV. They are grounded in grassroots activities, that link to their policies aimed at making life better for low-to-middle income Kiwis. [Updated#1: got start time wrong: #2 policy here – Green Investment Bank; news reports]
NRT: All about distribution
Distribution – who pays, who gets what – is one of (or perhaps the) key question in politics. It is the big problem with Labour’s new monetary policy. We’ve all seen how the theoretical ability to compensate the losers of policies which produce net gains tends to be forgotten in practice. Which means that the acceptability of the policy is going to depend crucially on whether Labour follows through on this promise.
National’s exports – how to lose value and jobs
Manufacturing exports dropped by 3.3% over the last year. Manufacturing businesses and their jobs disappeared with them. Meanwhile the National MP’s with dairy farms and interests will today be proclaiming a buoyant economy based on them selling barely processed milk-powder to China. It is good for them but as they gut the manufacturing jobs few other kiwis will reap any benefits.
LB: Bill’s Busted Budget and Tim’s Exploding Emissions
Local bodies points out a couple more of the National government’s sad-sacks. For some strange (but obvious) reason a warmish market for milk powder doesn’t do much for NZ apart from destroying our environment. English’s taxcuts for his wealthy mates have destroyed the fiscal base of the government and done nothing to cause any investment in the productive and employable parts of our economy. Tim Groser has also made an artform of making NZ worse off.
Poverty denial – NZ Herald editorial
Today’s NZ Herald editorial joins Paula Bennett’s beneficiary-bashing stunt, asking for flying privileges to be cut, & denying there is a lot of poverty in NZ- a view from the privileged part of NZ’s inequality gap.
Invermay: Meddling Joyce Ignores the Evidence
My brother has posted across at Red Alert on Steven Joyce’s bungling oversight of AgResearch’s current $100 million restructure. The Crown Research Institute […]
Opposing the PM’s statement
The PMs’ statement todaywas a bit of a fizzer: lacking ideas, a lot of waffle. Some opposition speeches were more inspiring, & laid out some real alternatives: like the speeches from Cunliffe (on fire), Norman (inspiring), Ardern (animated) & Harawira (real people; real struggles).
Local Bodies: Shell and the Great South Basin
The Southland Times devoted the whole of the front page to celebrate Shell’s decision to do some exploratory drilling in the Great South Basin. The best scenario will be that they discover a sizable gas field similar to the one in Taranaki. Then royalties we will get are only 5% of the value of what is sold, almost 40% less than the OECD average AND we will have to pay full commercial rates to have any of it ourselves. The worst case scenario…. Well that is really bad and has no effective cover
John Key’s patchwork ‘job machine’: user pays
John Key’s great idea for job creation – his cycleway project – has produced some benefits, but is a patchwork production. Some sections will be user pays to fund maintenance. Meanwhile the job creation benefits have been limited.
Making sense of the (un)employment stats: Census 2013
A Statistics NZ Census quick stats page is both useful and puzzling. Nearly a 3rd of adults are not in the “labour force”, unemployment stats mask true unemployment, the young and low income women particularly are struggling, distorted occupation categories, and more….. [Update: Occupation categories]
Smile and Wave
Confronted with a protest about the government’s lack of action on child poverty, John Key’s response is: “So yeah, they just protest because […]
NZ’s struggling screen industry
The NZ screen industry is in a precarious state, unable to compete with incentives in other countries to attract the crums from Hollywood productions, impacted by the currency high dollar rate. Innovative ideas needed for an independent NZ industry, linked with public broadcasting TV & online viewing. [Updated: Maori TV & Barry Barclay]
Cunliffe stands strong for fair pay and your work rights
David Cunliffe showed that he wasn’t just pandering for votes in the leadership race by reaffirming and strengthening his commitment to work rights at the CTU conference yesterday. When David is PM the minimum wage will rise to $15 an hour, the public service will set an example by paying the living wage, and the Nats’ attacks on rights will be reversed – no more Fire at Will, no more youth rates.
The cleaner & the ugly face of National
Imagine that your job was to clean 130 toilets every day. Imagine the grinding unpleasantness of it. Imagine the horrors some disgusting person would regularly leave for you to deal with. Imagine you do that for just above the minimum wage, barely enough to support your family, far from enough to live a real life. And imagine seeing one of the people whose shit you clean sneer at you.
New Lynn Impact against poverty – action
Last December I reported on the Auckland Action Against Poverty, Advocacy Activism in Onehunga. There’s another one happening this week in New Lynn – starts tomorrow at 9am outside the WINZ office. [Update:] Press release from AAAP. Tales of despair: from the streets of New Lynn.
It’s about jobs … and social security?
Cunliffe & Robertson stress the need to improve employment laws, jobs, wages, the economy, workers’ rights. Cunliffe invokes Savage-like social security & the need to end the Nats beneficiary bashing. Wider community pressure is needed for there to be real political change away from the destructive neoliberal scam.
UBI. (Universal Basic Income).
The concept of UBI has a long history in New Zealand.
Of course, we already have a UBI for those over 65. Which has been extremely successful at eliminating poverty amongst the elderly, at a very moderate cost by international standards.
Selling our soul for 18 jobs
The Greens have got hold of an official report that National has had for 2 years showing that the SkyCity deal will add just 18 jobs to the economy as a whole. Joyce in his ‘defence’ says the report looks at the wider economic impact on Auckland city, rather than the number of workers needed at the convention centre. Uh, huh. Everyone thought they were promising 800 extra jobs for the country, when the real number is 18.
‘Mind the Gap” – the way forward
TV3’s Mind the Gap documentary (Bryan Bruce) is very important because it put before the general population the damaging impact of income inequality in a clear and and straightforward manner. The solutions? Ideas from academics, journalists, campaigners & opposition politicians/parties.
War on the poor: flexible super
Dunne’s proposal for flexible superannuation is a U-Turn for Key, while he hides behind it being a Dunne and flexible initiative & good for low income people. Sue Bradford argues against Dunne’s initiative, saying it will benefit those on higher incomes. She prefers better and universal benefits.
Why I electorate vote Cunliffe: op ed
I wasn’t going to express my opinion on the upcoming Labour leadership selection process. However, the usual right leaning MSM hacks seem to have been following the current Labour caucus leadership in naming Robertson as the frontrunner. This is my op ed testimony for my frontrunner, the MP for my electorate: Cunliffe.
Losing your job
David Shearer is not the only one to lose his job this month. It’s quite a list, when you add it up…
The opportunity cost
National spent $30m of our money to save (some of) the 800 jobs at Tiwai Point (for an extra year). People have reasonably pointed out that’s the a lot of money – especially when government agencies are routinely destroying jobs by sending work overseas over contract prices that save far less. But what about the broader picture: did the Nats consider the opportunity cost?
The magical world of New Zealand’s, Neo-Liberal right wing.
It has been obvious that some people live in a different world than the rest of us. One where Chicago school economics, work! […]
War on social security: demonisation of beneficiaries
Sweeping changes to NZ’s Social Security system begin today. This is a major shift from the the 1938 Social Security Act: a shift from support of those in need, to treating them as potential criminals, self-serving addicts, and malingerers. Shame on John Key & Paula Bennett! [Update: RNZ & BAF & AAAP]