Yesterday I was at the MANA Movement policy release on “Predators on Poverty” in the Otahuhu Shopping Centre.
Successive Labour and National governments have left vulnerable communities on their own to face these merciless thieves who prey on the poor and those made especially defenceless by policies which have poured money into the back pockets of the rich while driving whole communities into desperate poverty.
And as MANA Movement leader Hone Harawira pointed out:
“They are deliberately targeting low-income areas, particularly those communities with high Maori and Pasifika populations, and they’re growing fat on suffering and deprivation”
These predator issues usually fly over the heads of mainstream media and middle-class New Zealand so I’m including here the main points from yesterday’s policy announcement:
Alcohol
The big booze companies are encouraging binge drinking by teenagers, in particular young girls, through deliberately targeted products such as Vodka Raspberry produced by Independent Liquor. The pink colourful packaging and name are a dead giveaway.
Three litre containers of this nine percent alcohol drink are available for just $21. This is a huge volume of alcohol at pocket money prices. Products like these are driving the binge drinking culture amongst teenagers and teenage girls in particular.
In April 2012 the Distilled Spirits Association were under heavy pressure over these products and promised to implement a code of practice to limit the production and distribution of new RTDs to a maximum of two ”standard drinks” per single container.
But today in 2014 their words are worthless and John Key pretends there is no problem.
The booze industry can’t be trusted with the welfare of our teenagers.
These three litre containers of alcohol at bottled water prices are John Key’s gift to teenage girls – a carelessly reckless and irresponsible gift which deeply damages so many young lives but keeps the alcohol industry profits high.
MANA Movement would ban these RTD containers, increase the price of alcohol, stop alcohol advertising and cultural or sporting sponsorship by the liquor industry.
There are far too many booze outlets in low-income areas. For example there are already no less than 105 liquor outlets in the Mangere-Otahuhu area already and yet another was approved recently for outside a school in Mangere. That decision is under appeal.
MANA Movement would give communities a veto over whether and where liquor outlets are established.
Pokies
Pokie machines are likewise targeting low-income communities
- In wealthy areas, there is one pokie machine for every 465 people.
- In poorer areas, there is one pokie machine for every 75 people.
We have 17,130 non casino machines taking $806.2 million out of the community each year – $2.3 million every day.
The pokies take $3 out of the community for every $1 put back in grants for activities like horse racing to benefit wealthier communities.
MANA Movement would abolish pokie machines from local communities and allow a community veto on pokies in casinos.
We would cancel the National government’s pokies for convention centre deal at Skycity.
Loan sharks
An August 2007 report to the Labour government on loan sharks in the Pasifika community said –
“the realities for many are that they and their families are struggling to survive, not only physically but also mentally, emotionally, culturally and spiritually
The report went on to say –
“the confusion and stress caused by hidden high costs and exploitative credit contracts exacerbates their already vulnerable positioning with negative and dire consequences in many cases”.
However the last Labour-led government talked for nine years and in the end simply refused to act while National’s new law to come in next year will have no meaningful effect. It’s a case of looking busy as a replacement for effective regulation.
Australia has 4% per month (48% per year as its maximum and it’s hard to find any so-called civilised country which does not cap rates – except New Zealand.
For example loans here will typically be 1% per day interest (365% pa) are these are making life a living misery as they cripple families.
MANA Movement would set a maximum interest rate of 20% pa – the same as that of a typical credit card.
We would also provide families with low interest loans via Kiwibank with associated budgeting advice where needed.
As some one who started drinking at 14 and then spent the next 20 years with terrible drinking habits its in sane that we have made booze more available and let companies target kids. We need to raise the age again and limit outlets in number and hours of business.
That 3L RTD product at $21 is a shocker.
The 270mls of alcohol present in that container is the equivalent to 3 bottles of wine and 20 bottles of beer.
Even supermarkets using alcohol as a loss-leader would have that amount of alcohol priced at $27 minimum.
Awesome Mana!
The ‘booze barons’, pokie machine distributors and loan sharks are intentionally targeting the lower socio-economic areas because they know that that is where they have a better chance of doing business. They are merely satisfying a demand.
Those areas don’t need a ban on business, they need to demand the services of those businesses less. They need better educational facilities. They need to be taught financial literacy. They need the likes of Harold the giraffe and the Life Education Trust mobile classroom visiting their schools to teach the kids about the effects of drug and alcohol abuse. The parents need to be given the hope in the form of meaningful employment that they need to confidently plan for the future, rather than relying on instant gratification that feels good but that they know they can’t afford.
They don’t need anything to be banned. The only effect a ban would have is to deny these people the freedom to choose what they think they need. They need hope and they need help through education to make the right choices.
Unfortunately, Mike@NZ, your fetish for “freedom of choice” ignores the corollary, Consequences of Choice. You are elevating Individual Choice above Community Needs – and that is a recipe for bad outcomes and increasing societal problems.
The “choice” you espouse impacts on those who have no little or no choice; children and those addicted to alcohol, gambling, etc. Or even the poor and alienated, who have lost hope.
That is the reality of the Black & Whyte method of viewing “freedom of choice”.
What bollocks. The ‘poor and alienated’, if such people exist, can think for themselves.
Why so hard on people without money being iresponsible with their money? More harm is done to society by people with masses of money being irresponsible with their money, where are you on that?
Individual choice dictates community needs. The two go hand in hand.
If you want to use a chicken/egg analysis, you would have to argue that the demand comes immediately before the service, otherwise the service would only last about as long as the retailer takes to find out that it is not worth his while remaining there.
I believe that what you are saying is that freedom of choice is ok as long as the government says so. That you would rather remove the consequence before you remove the reason. The poor and alienated have lost hope and the only answer you appear to have is to take away one of their only pleasures. We have a responsibility to the poor and vulnerable to help them gain the confidence and ability to make the right choices, not to use the strong arm of the state to force upon them what we think is right.
“I believe that what you are saying is that freedom of choice is ok as long as the government says so.”
I believe that is not what I said, Mike@NZ, and I made myself perfectly clear in my post above.
Mike@NZ … So no ban in exchange for exploitation? Are you saying its ok for others to come into our neighborhoods and exploit people, take advantage of those already in situations of stress and poverty and then turn around and say – its up to us to make the ‘right choices’ ? How about big alcohol, big tobacco, and big sugar, stop being greedy and have some social responsibility? Because that’s all this is about and trying to say its anything else is disingenuous. This is about lining the pockets of others in exchange for the exploitation of others. In the last week alone 10 applications for liquor licences were made in Manukau City ( some renewals and some new liquor stores) despite the outcry from the community about the liquor store given approval across the road from Southern Cross Campus school. People complain about the crime and violence in the region – yet are simultaneously prepared to hand over the tools that exacerbate it – by the bucket loads. The whole ‘personal responsibility,’ arguement is now a worn out broken record and people are waking up to it. Start finding other places to feed the greed, because an awakened people, means a revolution.
Well, yes Maria, that’s exactly what I’m saying actually. Unless of course the retailer is holding a gun to your head and threatening your safety if you don’t hand over your hard earned money…..but then again, that story is more often than not the other way around and it is the retailer being threatened 🙂
Social responsibility comes in many forms. In the 1970s, the Japanese perfected a process to extract sweetener from corn, namely corn syrup. It was seen at the time as a breakthrough because the process provided a sweetener for about one third the price of sugar. It would be the best thing we had ever seen for the benefit of people’s health because back then scientists believed that fat, and only fat, caused obesity and heart problems, so fat in food was replaced with sodium, then later corn syrup. Later again it was discovered that the corn syrup was high in fructose, and that fructose is more of a threat to our good health than fat. This information is readily available and easily taught to anyone who is prepared to listen. What of those who are not prepared to listen or an addiction makes them incapable of changing on their own? There is a myriad of help and support services available, most funded at least in part by the state. The same information is readily available on the dangers of alcohol abuse. I presume you know that alcohol is hazardous to your health when consumed in large quantities? Oh yes, and pokie machines swallow more money than they pay out.
In a country like ours where we enjoy relative freedom in comparison to other countries that actively promote the forms of state control you seek to impose, we must accept that along with our right to free choice come certain responsibilities.
You bullshit nonsense to defend vice industry that do nothing but rob from the poor and give to booze barons, gambling monsters and tobacco drug dealers is just a joke. You need to do better free market trolling else where Mike. Isn’t your hate better suited to whaleoil?
That’s simply not correct Mark. Extract from accompanying link :-
‘In fact, scientists began connecting high sugar consumption to the rate of heart attacks and diabetes for decades. Even the scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1923 for discovering insulin warned that high sugar consumption could be linked to diabetes. Dueling nutritionists Ancel Keys and John Yudkin further connected sugar and fat to heart disease in 1970s, but the scientific community eventually focused on the role of fat and consumption of fatty food. (It makes great sense: fat clogs your arteries so you should stop eating fat.’
The consumption and burying of scientific fact comes from lobbying and dis-information.
http://www.thewire.com/national/2011/04/case-against-sugar-lobbyists/36654/
Freedom of choice my ass a lot of young people need protecting from outside the home as there parents aren’t willing or able to do it. Bad choices when young can limit the rest of your life.
Amen to that B Waghorn. That’s why there are rules surrounding minimum age restrictions and supplying alcohol to minors, etc.
Mike@NZ – Reading Nicky Hager’s “Dirty Politics”, your ill-considered defence of the gambling industry is pretty much what PR-for-hire, Carrick Graham would be spouting.
He also used multiple pseudonyms to push his pro-tobacco agenda.
Could be Mike Hosking@NZ – sounds like the right wing shiite and claptrap that so-called journalist dictates into his Maserati’s built-in dictaphone.
The concept of banning alcohol advertising from sports will outrage a good number of blue ribbon voters, who will no doubt frame their opposition as a matter of “choice in the free market” or that usual automatic kind of vapid response, but really it will just be because someone dared challenge the god of rugby and beer.
After 5 years away from NZ, there is an awful lot that I miss, but the ever pervasive rugby as a religion is certainly not one of them – That nationalistic fervour has been replaced by a godforsaken rock in the Sea of Japan, and fermented cabbage. If a new Korean government tried to raise taxes on kimchi, or declared that Dokdo Island wasn’t really important, the outrage would be deafening. There are some parts of culture that are always guaranteed to provoke an angry response if tinkered with, and rugby and booze are well up there in NZ.
I personally agree with the idea of removing alcohol and tobacco sponsorship from sports, but talkback radio will be buzzing with the shrill cries of “Nanny State!” from the usual suspects.
What??!! This whole argument has nothing to do with ‘blue ribbon’ voters or any other political party supporters for that matter. Don’t try to turn this into a political football.
This is a clear example of people losing their way through poor priorities. The services of a loan shark is the only one of these three examples that it could be argued that they actually need the product or service. This is about choices, good or bad. I can walk down the street with a credit card with a $6000 credit limit and walk past all the advertising, the bright lights, the ‘free’ offers and even the odd prostitute to get to where I’m going. It’s called self control. But that is hard to do without that credit card, a well paying job and the thought of a loving family in a warm house back home.
And that is my point. These people have been down for too long. They crave a piece of the action. Instant gratification. To feel human again. They know the harm they are doing to themselves and their family but dammit, they need it. They need an escape. Well…they think they do anyway.
What they actually need is hope. A break. A job. They need help, they need an education. To promote the idea to ban the sale of the only thing that these people get any kind of satisfaction from purchasing is not a solution. Removing the demand is.
Having a job is pointless when you’re addicted to pokie machines, Mike@NZ.
There are many people who’ve fallen foul of these pernicious machines and have lost jobs, housing, businesses, etc.
Your rabbitting on about “free choice” is a shameful way to absolve responsibility for what is a social problem and your individualistic view of matters is part of the problem.
What strikes me as incredible is that with this comment –
– you have an understanding of the problem – and then parrot the rightwing garbage that a “job” and “education” will solve these problems.
You are missing the salient point that there are now (a) working poor (b) still high unemployment and lack of jobs (c) under-employment and (d) those hooked on pokies which no job or education will fix.
In short, your view of matters is not predicated on facts and reality by on ACT-style ideology.
Your ideology is so important to your belief-system that you’re blind to what is happening around you.
Then again, your September 13, 2014 at 6:21 pm post is an admission that you yourself benefit directly from this vile industry.
SEXUAL ABUSE
As single parent families struggle to get together rent it is now essential to have flatmates or boarders to get by. I expect that increasing numbers of children will be sexually abused as a result of this situation where their home is no longer a predator free zone.
Sure, most flatmates don’t sexually abuse. But with the average flatmate only staying 8-9 months (insurance stat) over the course of a childhood they will be exposed to 20+ strangers living in close proximity.
It only takes a moment to place a hidden camera, or sneek into a child’s room while everyone else sleeps.
I don’t like Hone, Minto or Dotcom’s political plaything. I do however endorse and appreciate the spotlight being pointed on these blights on our society. No more booze outlets, or pokies. Rein in the loansharks. What can be done about the mobile shopping truck/stores? Keep our poor communities safe from these predators.
I like these IMP goals ……. their aim is to lower or cease the exploitation, damage and misery these predators are inflicting on the poor and vulnerable …….. so of course the mainstream media and other right-wingers will oppose and misrepresent what is wanted.
The Liquor industry spends around $150,000,000 per year on marketing, or as I like to factually call it 150 million pushing the drug Alcohol.
The down side is a conservative estimate of 4.4 Billion worth of Alcohol damage each year in New Zealand ……… We have a HUGE drug problem with Alcohol and the failure to regulate or price this drug properly looks very much like drug corruption.
Despite Alcohol being a dangerous drug when it is abused no one is calling for it to be banned …….
Pokie machines are a scam. The are nothing more than computers programed to pay out 70 % of the money put into them. The administration and running of them has been criminal with more stealing and fraud involved than any industry I can think off. These things should be banned or failing that the industry should be cleaned up to get rid of all the white collar crime.
Finally Loan sharks should really be in jail.
Fair loans should be available ……… predators in the loan industry need to be chased out ……..
Good on IMP for trying to do something and clean up the dirt which is over running our country.
Well done Reason for having the intelligence to realise that pokie machines are a scam. Not playing them is the first and final stage of making them go away. No coercion, no government enacted bans. Just good old fashioned freedom of choice.
Viva freedom of choice!!!!!
Mike@NZ – you do realise that pokie machines are amongst the most addictive forms of gambling, don’t you? I suggest you look into it a bit more before cheer-leading a destructive and damaging problem in our society.
Your problem is that you see the world and other peoples’ circumstances through your own peculiar lens. That is a hopeless vision of how human beings live and their own specific circumstances.
Freedom of choice is an illusion when your “freedom” is controlled by limiting circumstances. Poverty and addiction being chief amongst them.
Your simplistic worldview is a form many grow out of eventually, as we realise the complexities of the human condition. In simple terms, I think you need to grow up a bit instead of spouting cliches.
Yes Mr Macskasy, I do realise that pokie machines are very addictive. I also know of the many forms of assistance offered to problem gamblers on request, the 3-1 ratio of community money taken versus given back to the community through grants, and I know (and am heavily involved with a few) of the many community-good charities and organisations that (perversely) benefit from the pokie machine grants to such an extent that they would cease to exist if not for the grants scheme.
I suppose I could accuse you of seeing the world only “through your own peculiar lens” producing a “hopeless vision.” But I realise that we all have different thoughts and interpretations and each of us has something of value to add. Obviously some more than others!
Well, Mike@NZ, if you know the high degree with which pokies are addictive, then rather than being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and espousing your “freedom of choice” rhetoric, you’d be more proactive at dealing to this issue.
Because aside from spokespeople for the gambling industry and misguided “free market” zealots, I know of no one who has to pick up the piece to this addiction who holds your bizarre views.
Your suggestion that pokies return grants to the community is bullshit. There are more problems caused to low income families and addicts than any benefits.
Then again, your admission that you are ” heavily involved with a few) of the many community-good charities and organisations that (perversely) benefit from the pokie machine grants to such an extent that they would cease to exist if not for the grants scheme” – speaks volumes.
You are more concerned with the benefits accrued to “charities and organisations” than to the damage caused to individuals; families; and communities.
The word in this case is selfishness.
You haven’t managed to justify this pernicious form of addictive gambling – you’ve admitted to benefitting from it, and to hell with everyone else.
No wonder you don’t put a name to your opinions.
I wouldn’t either.
It’s quite simple really. Learn some self control. Just say no. It works, unlike your patronising approach to people who you claim to speak for.
You are the one that is patronising. Ever noticed that all dairys are now painted out in coca cola colours all free. Then tell the 10 year old who is going into the dairy that she should choose to buy water or a fruit juice and not coca cola, advertising is responsible forf a huge amount of entrapment. Just saying learn some self control is not the answer, tell that to the alcholic, nicotine addicted person. It ain’t that simple, I am all in favour of a range of laws to limited the sale of booze and the advertising of it, removing the loan sharks (used by those on the bottom of the ladder), ditching the pokies and cutting the number of fast food outlets.
And you, Anonymous ACT Supporter, need to learn more about people rather than spouting your right-wing garbage. But then again, rhetoric like yours is easy to parrot. No thought required.
By the way, Anonymous ACT Supporter Intrinsicvalue; it’s a bit rich for you to be demanding others take responsibility for their actions when you haven’t the intestinal fortitude to take responsibility for your own statements here.
Why should we take your comments seriously when you place no value to them.
Good on you John Minto – “TAUTOKO”
Addiction is a form of psychosis.
Booze and gambling can cause addictions in some people.
Asking people suffering from a psychosis to exercise control is as stupid as most of IntinsicTrolls and others bad faith comments.
Most people support lowering the damage caused by Alcohol or other vices.
Most people don’t support exploitation and increasing the suffering of others .
Right wingers seem to argue for the freedom to do so ….. especially when there is money to be made doing it.
Go John Minto !
The dangerous consumption industries do very well out of poverty and hopelessness. The government are complicit and the Skycity deal is evidence of this. What other country in the world gives an overseas conglomerate a monopoly to run casinos and no competition except for local clubs and pubs who can only have a maximum of 18 machines. The extra pokie machines in the deal is only a red herring the real prize was the 38 year extension on the moratorium. A licence to print money. Our national parks and environment is going to the highest bidder and our urban environment is following suit.
Whatever the outcome in 7 days time John (and I sincerely hope you will be in Parliament), I hope that if not a part of a Left coalition agreement, then Private Members Bill’s along the lines outlined in your post, will be readily acknowledged and adopted by the responsible members of all Parties.
The irresponsible comments by the shadow Act commentators here, would indicate that the Right have no interest in taking on responsibility or protecting anyone (which makes one wonder why they would want to take on leadership roles in the first place).
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