Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, immigrant Pacific Island families in poverty, and a thoughtful and challenging piece on the role of philanthropy in NZ.
It’s now clear that National are unfit for office anywhere but Planet Key. Which is unfortunate, because here on Planet Earth, things aren’t going so well. We need new ideas, we need action, we need results. We aren’t going to get them from National.
Today there have been protests around NZ, against Paula Bennett’s punitive welfare reforms.
Updates: Include ODT article link and extract, photos of Henderson protest, and links to several news articles.
Draco T offers a radical formula for economic renewal.
As Key heads off to the US to promote the NZ film industry, I look back at the Hobbit union-busting case and the issues it raised. Will Key’s latest mission to Hollywood, boost the economy, increase jobs and provide benefits to the NZ film industry? Or will it actually undermine the NZ’s economy and democracy, further Americanising NZ’s culture along with it?
Kim Dotcom was arrested on charges related to copyright infringement, not national security or “terrorism”. There is a worrying trend that the GCSB is part of an international security networks that have shifted from their original mission related to national security and is providing support to corporate interests.
“TPP Watch” has a shiny new web site, with great resource and events coming up. Check it out.
We’re told 36,000 workers are needed for the Christchurch rebuild. But since the earthquakes began 2 years ago, 9,000 people with the skills needed for the rebuild have left New Zealand. We’re making no effort to keep the skilled workers we have but the Government thinks those 36,000 workers will just magically appear when needed.
‘Business Business Business’ is the endless chant from the Nat’s business will be our savour, all business is good of-course. Bad businesses, well they will go out of business, generally because they cant compete or are poorly managed, but mostly not before they have stolen all your savings, which in the case of a good bad business you will never have any chance of recovering.
David Cunliffe has given another excellent economic development speech. I think what’s interesting is that he’s not really proposing new policy – what he’s saying is largely in line with the platform Labour ran in on 2011, but he’s articulating the vision behind those policies – the why, rather than just the how – which was lacking from Labour in 2011. Great stuff.
David Shearer still doesn’t get why judging beneficiaries from across the road isn’t compatible with leading the Labour Party. QoT perseveres in trying to explain it to him, using short words.
Split Enz once sang, “History Never Repeats”… Or does it? Destructive prejudices separating ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor have been around a very long time. When the likes of Paula Bennett pander to such ill-informed vindictiveness with punitive social welfare reforms, they will damage large numbers of children – our future citizens.
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, right wingers whine about the focus on poverty, 3 News and Kidscan try to do something about it.
Draco gives his long awaited second part on his views on a social democratic economy.
..the present socio-economic system that we use, namely Free Market Capitalism, is a failure. When thinking about the economy and how it works I realised I had to go back to basics as almost everything that’s taught about economics in the mainstream theories is bollocks – most of its assumptions aren’t even close to being realistic.
The UK and USA make for interesting case studies in their differing responses to the global recession. A pity that NZ followed the wrong leader.
Colin James writes good political analysis. His ODT article from yesterday resonates with me. It is time to look for a new economic model as we watch “..central banks – supposed to epitomise the straight and narrow – print money like 17th century monarchs.” as they recirculate the stupidities of the past like any National government.
Bennett’s reforms aim to cut the costs of government spending on welfare. But what this means is that more of the necessary caring and service work in NZ will be unpaid, or underpaid. It doesn’t mean people will necessarily work harder or longer, and that they aren’t making a significant contribution to society and the economy.
Welcome to National’s economy: Kiwirail has just announced 158 infrastructure and engineering job losses, and this afternoon Solid Energy will probably announce the loss of 300 jobs at Spring Creek, and 200-250 elsewhere. This on top of the swathe of job losses in Huntly and Christchurch Solid Energy announced a month ago.
Paula Bennett on Q+A: “I don’t think that every child actually needs to be in early-childhood education” says Bennett. There will be cases where parents can do just as good or better job for their child. Yet, her policy is to take away half the incomes of parents and children on benefits who don’t go to ECE. The gap between Bennett’s spin and what she is actually doing has never before been so clearly revealed.
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: taxes and growth, foreign wars and the quality of MPs. And the Ig Nobels.
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, a new Labour Bill, an Otago University study, and Live Below the Line.
John Key on the impoverished Chatham Islands, holding a huge crayfish. He says ‘big as a horse, freshly cooked, $80 a kilo.’ He kisses the cray, then looks at the camera and says ‘jealous?’ Christ, what a cock. Those 270,000 kids aren’t jealous, arsehole. They’re hungry. The fact he knows the price of cray off the top of his head but not how many Kiwis are unemployed tells you all you need to know.
John Key is one kind of Wizard all right – a Wizard of Oz. He can make people disappear there. Duncan Garner rips in to him.
Grant Robertson, in the House yesterday speaking on Paula Bennett’s “Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill” – First Reading, gave an impassioned speech. He said many some great points about social obligations and a mutually beneficial social contract (between the state and beneficiaries. However, will the Labour Party’s policies match up to the rhetoric?
The ever forward looking and even-handed Herald devotes its editorial to attacking Labour for supporting Winston Peters’ Bill to make some small changes to the Reserve Banks’ objectives to bring them more in line with Australia’s. Leaving aside the fact that the Herald hasn’t attacked NZF or the 3 other parties who support this, only Labour, isn’t it time Granny got with the programme?
National is celebrating the creation of 1300 jobs (only 300 permanent) with a prison. How many more prisons would they have to build to reverse the increase in unemployment under their watch and create 65,000 permanent jobs? Only 217. It’s ironic that the only job creation the free-market loving Nats can trumpet is a government-paid for prison.
Does anyone have the number for John Key’s supplier? Because when he answered a question in the House yesterday about poverty and low pay by saying that in his paradise, Planet Key, there would be no toilets and no jobs, my first thought was ‘man, that guy is on some good drugs’. My second thought was he’s gone and made that Planet Key tease into a meme that’ll haunt him.
David Clark’s private member’s Bill to increase the minimum wage was voted down 61 to 59 last night. Shame on John Banks and Peter Dunne.
Over the last week, the government’s off-world set of distorted realities has come to the foreground: those of “Planet John Key” and “Planet Paula”. These worlds highlight the way Bennett’s latest welfare reforms wage war on the poor and undermine fairness and democracy.
I saw this story on Friday saying about how the number of jobs available on seek.co.nz is up. Paula Bennett and John Key regularly come up with stories about how many jobs there are out there – you only need to look at trademe or seek – but they don’t mention that…
In the House yesterday, Metiria Turei threw National’s ‘Planet Labour/Planet Green’ line back at Key, asking if ordinary people get to break the law too or if that privilege is reserved for ministers on Planet Key. Like all little bullies, Key couldn’t take it back. He lashed out and, like Romney’s fatal gaffe the same day, it exposed something of Key’s real world view.
Paula Bennett’s second welfare changes bill is out – with a nasty added sting in the tail: anyone who refuses a ‘suitable’ job will be blocked from getting a benefit for 13 weeks. Work testing for sole parents with 5 year olds, compulsory ECE for beneficiaries and the widows benefit cut are all in there.
With proposed ETS changes National is abdicating our responsibility on the world stage, and sending the bill to the taxpayers. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment calls it ‘a farce’. It’s cowardly, it’s weak, and it’s shafting the working Kiwi.
Things are going to get tough at the Ports of Auckland again.
Which means two things – the workers will win again, and they and the people of Auckland will pay the price.
In the meantime the has-been corporate warriors who are trashing the port will walk away with their bonuses.
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week: Shearer’s education speech stirs up the debate, the Greens start Champions for Children, and the Nats are in denial…
The government recently released a figure of $78 billion as the ‘lifetime cost’ of the benefit system. That number is the estimated answer to the question: ‘how much would we have to have put aside now to pay for the expected future cost of benefit payments to all current beneficiaries’. But the really question is: why would you want to know that?
