Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, September 24th, 2012 - 45 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 23rd, 2012 - 11 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, September 22nd, 2012 - 7 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, September 22nd, 2012 - 39 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, September 21st, 2012 - 51 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, September 21st, 2012 - 52 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 21st, 2012 - 16 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, September 21st, 2012 - 16 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 20th, 2012 - 17 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, September 20th, 2012 - 51 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 19th, 2012 - 67 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, September 19th, 2012 - 19 comments
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…
Written By: - Date published: 6:40 am, September 19th, 2012 - 58 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 6:27 pm, September 18th, 2012 - 101 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, September 17th, 2012 - 175 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 2:17 pm, September 16th, 2012 - 42 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, September 15th, 2012 - 36 comments
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…
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, September 15th, 2012 - 41 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, September 14th, 2012 - 126 comments
Yesterday’s national hui on water rights has resulted in the best possible outcome for Maori, a decision to present a unified front in the face of National’s divide and rule tactics.
Written By: - Date published: 12:16 pm, September 13th, 2012 - 22 comments
So the current people on benefits will cost $78 billion over the course of their lifetime. To get this useless $78 billion factoid, National have given an Australian company $1 million of our money – next year, they’ll do it again, to see if the number has changed any. What use is this number? It’s not good for budgeting and doesn’t seem to actually tell us anything useful – so why is the government wasting money while telling us times are tight?
Written By: - Date published: 11:44 am, September 13th, 2012 - 47 comments
Some excellent myth-busting via Facebook. What isn’t a myth is that there are 80,000 more people on benefits under National. As with their economic management (which is integrally related) their management of the welfare system has been a complete disaster. They’ve given people no option but the benefit. They’re punishing people for falling into the safety net.
Written By: - Date published: 8:26 am, September 13th, 2012 - 17 comments
Over 2,200 children, according to the Government’s estimates, will end up living in households with their already meager benefit incomes cut in half under National’s plan to punish families who can’t afford to or don’t want to send their children to supposedly voluntarily early childhood education. I’ll give Bill English credit – he at least looked sick as he defended a policy of starving kids.
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, September 12th, 2012 - 30 comments
Fresh from having to delay the sale of Mighty River for 6 months because of sheer incompetence and on the back of hundreds of jobs losses in our largest employing sector – manufacturing – Key went overseas to boost our exports. His Russian FTA talks were a dismal failure (wonder why) and, now, he’s re-heating a failed attempt to boost tourism.
Written By: - Date published: 10:49 am, September 12th, 2012 - 13 comments
Families will lose half their Working for Families payments if they don’t put their kids in ECE or make sure they have the Well Child checks, under reforms to be announced by Paula Bennett the next time National needs a distraction from its failed economic management. ‘When you’re getting public money, the government can demand anything of you: even if it isn’t compulsory and even if you can’t afford it,’ said Bennett.
Written By: - Date published: 6:31 am, September 12th, 2012 - 248 comments
So the government is announcing the “lifetime cost” of social welfare payments today to soften the ground for cracking down on beneficiaries.
By coincidence they’re also in the process of rushing through changes to the emissions trading scheme that will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in corporate welfare.
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 pm, September 11th, 2012 - 33 comments
The Greens have started a new programme – Champions for Children. We should all sign up. We need to make alleviating child poverty the election issue of 2014.
Written By: - Date published: 2:35 pm, September 11th, 2012 - 23 comments
Since 2006, 66 New Zealand finance companies, funds and mortgage trusts have failed (closed, liquidation, receivership, moratorium, suspended). An estimated $3.5 billion has already been lost with another $8.6 billion still at risk.
Guest poster Adele shows the need for a week of events and activities to raise awareness about how people can better manage their money (if they have any) and get help to do so – Money Week.
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, September 11th, 2012 - 15 comments
Talk fast, shoot the messenger, and spin like a top. That’s Joyce’s style, trying to defend the indefensible; National’s neglect of New Zealand’s manufacturing industry.
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, September 11th, 2012 - 44 comments
If Europe can ban incandescent light bulbs, if America can legislate to require 54.5 MPG fuel efficient cars, why can’t New Zealand make some progress on energy efficiency?
Written By: - Date published: 8:06 am, September 11th, 2012 - 57 comments
Shearer’s speech on Sunday has sparked the discussions that this country needed to have about education, about poverty, and about the sad link between them. With every statement the Nats show how deeply in denial they are about these issues.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, September 11th, 2012 - 56 comments
The paper mill at Kawerau is halving its production, and its workforce. Another hundred plus jobs gone. Meanwhile, Norske Skog, which owns the mill, is expanding production at its paper mill in Tasmania. What’s the difference? In Australia, the government is investing in local production and local jobs to substitute imports. Here, our government doesn’t give a fuck.
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