Dear Labour – we need urgent kindness now
Dear Labour.
With an unprecedented MMP majority, you not only have a mandate for change, but an obligation and responsibility for change.
The pandemic is the first wave of unstable late stage capitalism where the biosphere simply breaks down and causes enormous damage.
The climate crisis is in acceleration mode. It only gets worse with every passing month.
The pandemic is a symptom of that climate crisis. It is generated by species transfer due to over crowding and habitat destruction.
Radical change is required, I know that is frightening, but we have no options now and now Labour have been entrusted with a Democratic Majority, then that transformative change requires an immediate harvest to sustain it.
People are frightened, people are stressed out, change is uncomfortable and painful for many.
Kindness has been our strength.
We have an urgent need of kindness right now.
Here is the first 100 days list of urgent kindness the people of NZ require right now.
-Lower Voting Age to 16
To strengthen the franchise of democracy we need to expand it to 16 year olds. They will live with the realities of the climate crisis, they need a voice at the table. The naked truth is that Political Parties will only listen to their concerns when there are votes in it. At a time when our democracy is going to be stressed most, we need young peoples drive and vision to consistently challenge the foot dragging.
-Double Welfare Payments
We have been kind to the newly unemployed by providing them with a welfare payment that is twice that f the ‘normal’ benefit. This has painfully reminded everyone of the hurt being unemployed generates. We must be kind right now. This pandemic isn’t ending until there is a vaccine, and that’s not going to be until the end of 2022 – and that’s the best case scenario. We need to lift ALL benefits to the higher level until there is a vaccine universally available. We can not pretend this economic downturn doesn’t damage the poorest amongst us hardest. We must support them during this pandemic or the social damage will be explosive.
-Free mental health counselling services
The stress that is rupturing throughout our communities comes on top of a mental health landscape that is blighted by some of the worst stats. We simply need to expand counselling and make it free. Not targeted. Free. It is incredibly important that these services are all universal because that’s the only way to ensure the need is being met. Free counselling services are one of the ways the State can safeguard the mental health of the nation during this crisis.
-Free Public Transport for registered Hop Cards
One of the problems with the public transport system during the current lockdown is that unregistered hop cards provide no info to the track and trace teams. Make all public transport free but only with a registered Hop card. This would reduce costs to public transport users while providing essential information during an outbreak.
-Overstayer Amnesty
We have over 11 000 overstayers and tens of thousands more migrant workers and tourists currently in NZ. Until a vaccine is available, we must have an overstayer amnesty, we can’t have effective track and trace if people are too frightened to come froward. Just pass an amnesty for everyone currently here. It’s not right to force people out of a country that doesn’t have Covid into a world full of it. That’s not us as a people.
-30 000 new green State Houses plus rent to own options for state tenants
The only way the failed rental market can self correct is if the desperation is removed from the bottom of the market. Remove beneficiaries and the working poor out of the private rental market and the slumlords will be forced to upgrade their slums. Provide a State House for life with a means to own that house via rent to own methods and we could lift an entire class of NZers out of poverty. Building the state houses in the most sustainable way is an immediate need.
-Freeze on all rents until a vaccine is available
The amputation of vast chunks of our economy can’t be ignored. Expecting renters of commercial or residential properties to pay more in rentals is free market capitalism at its most broken. This moment requires an agreed understanding that the rents don’t go up until a vaccine is available, and when I say agreed, I mean the renters. Landlords will get told what we’ve agreed to.
-Carbon neutral with agricultural emissions included by 2030
The current plan to be carbon neutral by 2050 is a mockery of the problem we face with the climate crisis. I appreciate the climate crisis is an issue in of itself, but the urgency that it demands requires a change of gear expressed in the first 100 days. Bring it forward to 2030. Include agricultural emissions. History is watching.
-Feed the Kids – free breakfast and lunches across all schools
Feed all our children healthy food that will provide them with the best fuel to learn while building community with the breaking of bread daily. It is obscene that we aren’t doing this already. This isn’t about letting parents off from feeding their children, it is providing the basic level of kindness we extend to all our children.
-Remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables
This truncated economy and elongated hardship requires changes that are immediate and long lasting. Removing GST from fruit and vegetables is a way of making good choices at stressful times easier. That’s what the State is supposed to provide. Reward people for making better choices.
-Sugar Tax
These sugar pimps who push an addictive and lethal drug must be hit with a 20% tax. Everyone has to help pay for the damage they do and it’s time Big Sugar paid for their damage.
-Free Dental for all children & beneficiaries
This is urgent and needed now.
-Digital tax on Facebook/Google used to fund NZ Journalism
We have seen an explosion of conspiracy theories damage the credibility of our democracy. This is being driven via Facebook and Google, two international entities that currently gut the mainstream media’s revenue streams. We must join with Australia and hit them with a media tax which is ring fenced and ploughed into NZ journalism alongside a major boost for public broadcasting including a youth radio station and 24hour TV News service.
-Financial Transaction Tax
The wealthy speculate off the exploitation of greed. Tax them with a Financial Transaction Tax, bring in huge sums of revenue from those who speculate so we can afford these social programs and actively attempt to rebalance the inequalities.
-Immediate expansion of State capacity
35 years of amputation under neoliberalism has left a state barely able to function. The NZ public sector employs 295 800, the pandemic has highlighted what that shortage of capacity does. We need a wholesale boost to the capacity of the State so that we can handle this ongoing issue and have the capacity to deal with the next crisis.
-10 sick days
Just do it already.
What is the point of winning an outright majority if you aren’t going to use it?
What is the point of kindness if it can’t stop suffering?
Replacing Winston as a handbrake with every landlord in NZ isn’t progress.
History is watching.
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The Rent Freeze is at the top of my wish list at the moment.
It would bring stability to many aspects of life in AO/ NZ.
Yes, this should be near the top of the list. You can up benefits etc, but we all know where a lot of the benefit increases end up going.
The outdated and no longer fit for purpose Reserve Bank mandate needs addressing to rein in the property ponzi scheme. This monetary policy madness has already done untold present and future damage.
Adrian Orr is champing at the bit to inflate house prices even further with negative interest rates.
Yes Polly, benefit increases are immediately factored in by landlords, and ZZZAPPP! they’d be gone in a blink. So, rent freezes first, or at the same time.
Increase in Natl Superannuation is what I & many, many other super annuitants urgently need – every time I go to buy food, prices of some items have increased. I NEVER drink “out” nor do I eat “out” EVER. No films EVER, no concerts EVER. No money for subscriptions to any organisations. In my eighties I still have $25k mortgage to pay off. As a NZRN I was paid “sixpence” all my working life – which Multiple Sclerosis cut short by many years. Even the Winter Energy payment is calculated so as to be unfair to solo super annuitants. It costs as much to heat a lounge for 1 as it does for 2. I barely use my heat pump – I use a hot water bottle on my knees.
Why don’t you run for office in the next election instead of just writing and demanding and talking but actually get nothing done? Is this a joke or what, Mr Bradbury? Stop giving the left a bad name.
Hard to see why advocating on behalf of poor and downtrodden people should be a bad thing to be doing.
Hard to see why Mr Bradbury should be criticised for not actioning what pollies keep failing to action.
As a pensioner myself I felt sad to read your comments. I am not wealthy but am able to enjoy doing thinks with friends.
Without knowing your circumstance can I suggest you look at a reverse mortgage. You obviously have a property which in the current climate would be worth good money . Many of our generation seem to feel they owe it to their children to leave a legacy but it should not be at the expense of your own enjoyment which you deserve.
I think that’s good advice, Trevor. Isabel, maybe have your place independently valued. You might be surprised, as even in the last few months almost all property values have ballooned further. Then consider a Reverse Mortgage?
Trev many retirees with families know if their home is not passed on then their kids will have little chance of ever owning a home.
Isabel are you eligible for an accommodation supplement with that mortgage and your relatively low income.
Isabel – If you do look at a reverse mortgage they may want you to get it valued by a valuer of their choice, at your expense, ok ? This is what happened to me when I considered it a while back.
Four years ago a chartered accountant explored it for me, and told me the best choice – hopefully I still have that info somewhere – but whether it still stands as best choice, I wouldn’t know. The Consumer website may have something. If I can find mine I can let you know – I have rather a lot of paper files, not all well organised.
I mentioned doing it to one of my kids once, and got a negative reaction, but they’ve had inheritances already, and are much better off than me, so I decided that if I do it, and they’re in no great need, then I will.
Do try and keep warm – too long being cold, does have a health impact, no matter how stoic one may be!
Also, if you sit in your property and the value increases, and the proposed Green wealth tax rears it’s head, the govt may hit you with their millionaire tax, but your needs are much more important, especially if you live to a ripe old age. Kia kaha
The cold can be very restricting. A body needs warming rather than a room.
Op shops may have some warm layers of clothing to keep the legs and arms cosy. The main central body can respond well to warm layers but circulation to the extremities has to be watched. Fingerless gloves are a help as well as mittens when it is really cold. You can use both if not active with your hands.
Warming a house is just too expensive on a pension
Where will you get the money to do all this? From the Reserve Bank of course, by creating our money supply from nothing as the banks currently and disastrously do. But you cant say that because that would mean supporting Social Credit policy and you will never do that.
What is the point of removing GST on food when you can drop GST on everything by introducing a Financial T ransaction Tax. The rate required to do that is quite small and wouldn’t be noticed by the man in the street. Only speculators will be hurt. But you cant say that because it Social Credit policy. Tough.
Now someone will claim how Saint Mike Savage saved the day in the ’30’s by introducing similar policies. Totally wrong. Savage was a conservative like Adhern. The man who promoted those policies and deserved the accolades was John Lee and he was a fervent supporter of Social Credit. In 1940 he was sacked from the Labour party for being a nuisance. Read the book “The Scrim /Lee papers”. On the other hand dont bother, you might learn something.
I only hope that Jacinda and Labour are as useless at implementing their policy over the next three years as they were in the last, quite frankly its the only chance that we have got to get the countries economy back on track!
Hear hear
Their new National Party rural supporters voted for such.
FTT is not a good tax btw as it like a CGT requires a disposal….land taxes far better and more immediate especially on rural communities who support the new way even in the mighty Waikato Party vote Labour! ;). The family trusts already prepare annual accounts, easy to clip that ticket.
Party Votes
Candidates Party
AL-BUSTANJI, Ala’13392
Labour Party16558
UPSTON, Louise18646
National Party12781
FREEMAN, David1519
ACT New Zealand3889
GLENDINING, Danna1570
Green Party1325
New Zealand First Party1050
QUINN, Jan-Marie533
New Conservative591
The Opportunities Party (TOP)477
Advance NZ
Look just tax Elon Musk and tell him share the weed ok?
Or Jeff Bezos!! Some sort of class action suit from Aotearoa, for billions. Bezos filled oceans with plastic, in effect, yet is celebrated as “Richest man in the world”. How does that work again?
There really is something in what you’re saying. Those few individuals who have hoarded up all the world’s free flowing cash, instead of clapping them on the back and saying, “Good bloke”, they need to be given a sharp tap on the shoulder, and then some reckoning. We just need to sort out the “Hows” and set the ball rolling.
How their rotten system works, global billionaire wealth surged to record trillions
While Covid-19 has taken the lives of over one million people across the globe and exacerbated economic precarity for millions more, the combined wealth held by the world’s 2,189 billionaires has skyrocketed—increasing by 27.5% between April and July 2020 and reaching a record high of $10.2 trillion.
“The super-rich got even richer while millions of people around the world lost their jobs,” tweeted Richard Burgon, a British Labour Party parliamentarian. “That’s not a coincidence,” Burgon added. “That’s how their rotten system works.”
And your answer to the problem is?
Repeal the Employment Contracts Act, and encourage Unionisation. Cost – nothing!
Yes I am looking forward to some kindness and the Maori lens promised to us by Ruawhe ( from the Te Tai Hauauru electorate)
The idea of rent to own state housing is absurd, state housing should be provided by the government for a limited term as a safety net. It is not the role of government to be both a wholesale housing developer and mortgage lender to beneficiaries.
It is NOT a right to own a home, for most, it is an aspiration that takes considerable effort and sustained dedication to achieve. Why deplete the state housing stock and provide a shortcut for people who by all objective measures have not earned it, this only serves to increase the burden these people are upon the rest of us.
Currently the government charges as little as $100pw; if i rent to own a 400k property, for 5 years, i pay 26k – in reality most of this would have come from a benefit anyway so did i really pay at all? in this interim, the property has likely increased in value by 100-150k, i then sell the property and pocket the difference. I didn’t address my dysfunctions, i didn’t study, i didn’t apply myself, i didn’t take a risk, i didn’t reign in my vices, i didn’t earn a thing, yet i walk away with a fortune courtesy of the tax payer.
How is this fair? where are the fraction of market rate mortgages for the rest of us?
Digital extortion like the one proposed in Australia – hm, the phrase don’t bite the hand that feeds you seems utterly applicable here, if i were in charge of google i’d simply remove you from the results rather than pay you – media companies of old need to adapt, traditional broadcast media is awful, any time i turn on the TV i am reminded how horrid it is, it needs to die.
Lowering the voting age, this is the opposite of voter suppression yet is motivated by the same intent, the perceived benefit of one end of the political spectrum.