Labour released its excellent children’s policy yesterday that will lift 150,000 children out of poverty and enhance families’ quality of life. The Right is wailing. Fuck ’em. They’ve turned a blind eye while 32,000 more kids have fallen into poverty. Only a Labour-led government will have the policies for a truly brighter future for all Kiwis, especially our kids.
We’d been missing the Dimpost lately but it seems there was good reason for Danyl abandoning his blog – as of Sunday he’s a […]
It’s great to have North Shore candidate Ben Clark writing for us here at The Standard. This is a Guest Post from brother and Dunedin North candidate David Clark (a dynamic duo indeed!). David writes about the just released government report on the early childhood education sector…
Under Key’s government we are seeing an escalation in violence committed by children. Why? TV and media violence hasn’t noticeably step-changed in the last year. More likely it is a symptom of the stress that families are under. Children are the canaries in the coal mine…
I was going to have my first post on the economy, but that will have to wait until the weekend as I’m all inspired after hearing Judy Bailey give a Brainwave Trust presentation this week. The incredible importance of providing the best possible start to our children in those very early years was good to have reinforced…
John Key has tidied up the confusion he caused yesterday and says that the quakes will cost the government $5 billion in rebuilding and $5 billion in lost revenue over the next 4 years. Big bikkies but easily covered by an emergency levy and canning the white elephant motorways. So, why are the Nats obsessed with tinkering with Working for Families?
English on Working for Families cuts: “around 1,000 families earning over $100,000 receive WFF, and payments to those families total only $1.1 million … Taking higher-income families out of WFF saves very little money …
In this uncertain economic climate, we want to give all families certainty about their incomes”
The Welfare Working Group wants to get poor women to breed less by giving them free long-term contraception. Sure, this is all an ‘Overton window‘ exercise but eugenics? Seriously? Trying to stop one ‘undesirable’ strata of society from breeding is one step from forced sterilisations. Has the Right reverted 80 years?
Good news for families of the Pike River miners. The Police have shown them video proving their mens bodies are still intact. It raises questions about the government’s actions. Why was this footage previously withheld? Why were the Nats spinning that there was nothing left to recover? And why was the recovery really abandoned so hastily?
The UN committee on the rights of the child has had some harsh things to say about New Zealand’s performance in looking after our children, especially on our infant mortality and childhood poverty rates. With National cutting ECE and lowering criminal responsibility and Labour proposing longer Paid Parental Leave and increased support for children under-5 and their families, will this please become an election issue?
Like smiling and waving, frowning and looking sombre, is easy. But satisfying the expectations you create can be hard. This is where Key consistently fails. He has failed again over Pike River. The sudden and inadequately explained end to the recovery operation is bad enough. Lying about the promises he made is gravely insulting.
Child poverty is on the rise again. My question to the National government is simple. What are you going to do to reverse this trend and lift children out of poverty? It’s your watch. What are you going to do?
The recommendations of the Nats’ welfare working group are, predictably, good old fashioned Tory welfare bashing. In contrast a report released last week by the Anglican Social Justice Commission shows just how misguided the ideology underlying this attack on welfare is.
The Nats’ stupid slash and burn approach to early childhood education (ECE) is about to hammer families. And once again Anne Tolley is in complete denial about it.
It can only be an unthinkably tough time for all Pike River miners, their families, and the communities on the Coast. I’m sure I speak for all The Standard writers and contributors when I say that our thoughts are with them. Despite all the dire news so far three days after the explosion, we simply don’t have the full story till the rescue team get down there and try to bring these guys back to the surface. Till then, we can only hold on and hope.
The news coming out from the Pike River mine disaster is not sounding good. Spare a thought tonight for the miners and their families.
The last Labour government introduced 20 hours free early childhood education. It’s a resource that many parents have since come to rely on, taking some pressure off household budgets as every other cost seems to keep on going up and up. But now we have the latest in a series of indications that the Nats are going to cut the programme…
The Labour conference this weekend is expected to release new “policy directions”. One of them is out already — and it’s good. What could make more sense than putting children first?
Here’s a compilation from TV7’s Russell Brown from April this year, highlighting the value for money taxpayers get from paying Breakfast Bigot Paul […]
Sir Peter Gluckman wants more investment in early childhood. $1 invested in young children now gives $13 in adulthood, but his day-trader DonKey’s short-termism sees only cuts and short-change for our greatest resource.
According to the headlines “Inland Revenue is owed more than $1.8 billion by parents who have shirked their financial responsibilities”. Dig a bit deeper and the picture is not as bad as it looks. “Absent dads” don’t need to be demonised by the likes of Bob McCoskrie.
Stuff reports that under Minister Phil Heatley, Housing NZ will manage additions of only 275 houses for each of the next two years. […]
A thought provoking piece from Bryan Caplan ponders “”Having kids—what’s in it for me?” An economic perspective on happiness, nature and nurture provides an answer: Parents’ sacrifice is much smaller than it looks, and much larger than it has to be.”
Today, all the Herald’s political commentators talk about Key’s decision to come back from his Middle East trip after the ANZAC Day helicopter crash. My immediate impression was that it was right for the Prime Minister to come back after a national tragedy. But the revelation that Key’s return meant Tim Groser had to stay with the delegation despite his mother’s death changes things.
Not content with raising the cost of living through a GST increase, the Nats are clearly planning another blow to young families. In a move that breaks yet another election promise, Bill English is preparing the ground for the axing of 20 hours free early childhood education.
At the end of the month the new kindergarten year begins. Reading this article in the SSTimes from yesterday reminded me of just […]
Labour leader Phil Goff has called for a temporary relaxation of the rules for getting the dole. Too many Kiwis on low and […]
Missed this from a couple of days ago: For the first time in 25 years, the incomes of those in lower brackets grew […]
A recent piece in the New York Times highlights the absurdity of going backwards with the apparent reorganisation of the Families Commission around […]
I know it’s not The Standard’s style to follow the media in the disgusting practice of turning real people’s lives into soap opera but there […]
According to RNZ: Official papers confirm low income families will be worse off under the National Government’s tax cut package, compared with Labour’s. […]
Parents around the country are counting down the days until school starts for the year – but for some the NZHerald had some […]
I know I won’t be alone in being disappointed in the results of the Unicef survey, which says that “New Zealand has an […]
We live on a finite planet. We can’t just keep adding 75 million people a year to the human population while also increasing […]
National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the […]
A few thoughts from today’s Agenda: Questioned about why National would introduce another tax rebate, having endlessly criticised Working for Families because of […]
