Live streamed 7pm tonight on thedailyblog.nz, waateanews.org and simulcast on Sky TV and Iwi Radio stations.
The manner in which National have swamped the Members Bills with nonsense legislation like luggage rights and now mail-out reform is a total abuse of power.
It costs $45 000 per hour to run Parliament, including select committees, this is going to cost half a million dollars easy.
How can we justify wasting that on politically motivated spite legislation when we have 40 000 homeless, 300 000 children in poverty, kiwis living in cars, a housing crisis, a trade war with China, a weak steel scandal brewing and water polluted by the Government’s political allies to solve?
Why are we bloody wasting time on luggage rights and mail-out reform when there is so much suffering?
Wanting kids taught online shows Government’s utter contempt for teaching as a profession.
National see teachers as Taxi drivers in an uber world.
The latest attack on our cultural fibre and sense of collective citizenship is National’s plan to start bringing in more on-line ‘learning’.
This is an all out war now on public education. It has started with the funnelling of millions into private education and secretive idealogical Charter Schools and it ends with the National Government effectively killing off Teachers altogether.
This is such short sighted madness driven by budget cutting needs. All National see when they look at state expenditure is huge money sunk into education. This desire to attack Teachers was a key theme of rich lister Stephen Jennings when he paused from plundering the planet to spread his neoliberal wisdom to us all on TV last month.
The truth is that we have one of the best public education systems in the world. Where we fail is with those living in poverty, the solution is more money into education, not eliminating the Teachers!
It takes work to be a nation. It takes work to agree on a set of universal expectations and values we place on ourselves and society. If you remove Teachers, you are removing one of the most important social influencers in your child’s life, alongside the need to socialise with other children. On-line teaching has a place of course, but to consider replacing Teachers suggests an utter failure of recognising what our education system is supposed to actually do!
We are teaching citizens, not just cogs in the machine, (even if the machine is a fancy computer). We are teaching about the human experience, what it is to be part of a wider society, considering the challenges ahead of us. We are trying to equip tomorrows citizens with a critical mind and self autonomy with a strong sense of common bonds and sharing. Removing young people from that vital social interaction only serves to diminish the individual, it doesn’t celebrate it.
Wanting kids taught at home would be the last nail in the coffin of a progressive liberal democracy – solitary units powerless in their individualism is a neoliberal wet dream.
No wonder National are pursuing this.
The RMTU is strongly supporting and participating in a public meeting to debate the omission of rail from the transport plan for Auckland airport in Onehunga:
Haskell Room, Pearce Street Hall, Onehunga
Tuesday 30th August, 7:15pm for a 7:30 start (Onehunga train departs Britomart 6:49pm)
Speakers include:
• Auckland City Councillor and AT Director Mike Lee, a long time advocate for rail in Auckland
• Graham Matthews, General Manager Airport Development & Delivery at Auckland Airport
• Jim Jackson, The Onehunga Enhancement Society
• Graeme Easte from CBT
• Stuart Johnstone – Rail and Maritime Transport Northern Regional Organiser
We need your active participation to help us to grow rail in Auckland and to make life better for the travelling public and citizens of Auckland. You can help by just attending!
Please distribute far and wide amongst members in Auckland. Put this message on facebook and all noticeboards.
This decision by AT is a mistake – Rail is the Answer for transport to the airport!
The Palestine Solidarity Network says the New Zealand Superannuation Fund must exclude Israeli banks from its investment portfolio, instead of increasing the Fund’s links with them. The PSN has referred to the Fund a Human Rights Watch Report into the role of Israeli companies in the occupation of Palestinian territories.
‘Attention at the moment is justifiably on Kiwisaver companies which invest in anti-personnel weapons in other parts of the world. But we would like to remind the Superannuation Fund that it has unfinished work in cleaning up its Israeli investment portfolio,’ says Janfrie Wakim spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network.
‘In 2012 the Fund pulled its investments in companies which were building illegal settlement colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. At the time we pointed to three Israeli banks which were blatantly funding settlement construction. The Fund however claims that funding the construction of illegal settlement colonies is somehow different to actually building them. We can’t understand this. Neither can Human Rights Watch, which condemns the role of Israeli institutional and often subsidized investment in exploiting Palestinians and depriving them of their rights and land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
Wakim says the Super Fund has increased its holdings in the three banks since 2012 (see attached graph).
‘This is completely the wrong signal. We were shocked to discover recently that despite a clear message the Fund was giving itself in 2012, that the occupation activities of the Israeli government in the OPT were illegal, and condemned by the United Nations and New Zealand government alike, that the Fund has bought up even more shares in these banks.’
‘The Human Rights Watch Report makes is clear that the confiscation of Palestinian land by settlers and the exploitation of the Palestinian population is inextricably tied to both to the Jewish-only settler policies of the Israeli government and the ongoing role of Israeli business enterprises in the OPT making it all happen.’
‘ Occupation, Inc. How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights’,Human Rights Watch, 19 January 2016, available here;
King Tuheitia’s words of discouragement towards the Labour Party and NZ First have shaken the corridors of power and re-ignited the political flame of an independent Maori voice in Parliament.
Dear Minister McCully,
There are currently many thousands of Palestinian prisoners, men, women and children in Israeli jails. Some 750 are in prison under ‘administrative detention’ which means no charges, no lawyers, no trial.
I am writing to you about one particular case, that of Bilal Kayed, which is receiving international attention because of, not just the case itself, but the precedent that it sets.
Bilal Kayed, from Nablus, West Bank has been imprisoned since 14 December 2001, when he was sentenced to 14.5 years for his affiliation with the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was 19 at the time.
While in prison, Bilal has been repeatedly punished, with family visit bans and solitary confinement. On the day he was due to released, having served his 14.5 year sentence his sister who had flown in from Germany, joined the parents to welcome Bilal home. That very day, the family was told that Bilal would not be released, but would be held under ‘administrative detention.’ Administrative detention, as I have explained , means no charge is made, no trial is held. Bilal, in protest, went on, and remains on hunger strike.
As of this writing, he has been on hunger strike for nearly 70 days. He is still alive, but shackled hand and foot to his hospital bed. Other prisoners are on hunger strike too, in sympathy. The fear is that the Israelis will make a normal practice of renewing arrests after prisoners serve their sentences.
Concerned citizens around the world are holding public protests demanding that Bilal Kayed be released and that the practice of ‘administration detention’ be condemned.
Demonstrations have been held in many countries including Ireland, Spain, France, Australia, USA, Iceland, Turkey, Jordan, Naples has made Bilal an honorary citizen.
UN Official Robert Piper, Coordinator for Humanitarian and UN Development Activities for the occupied Palestinian territory, has called on the Israeli occupation to “charge or release” Bilal Kayed.
Mr Piper has said “I am deeply concerned about the deteriorating health of Palestinian detainee Bilal Kayed, after 67 days of a hunger strike protesting his detention without charge or trial. This is an egregious case, in which Mr. Kayed was placed on administrative detention on the day of his scheduled release after completing a 14.5 year prison sentence.“The number of administrative detainees is at an eight-year high. I reiterate the United Nations long-standing position that all administrative detainees – Palestinian or Israeli – should be charged or released without delay.”
Would you please speak out on this case. Do you agree with UN Official Robert Piper that Bilal Kayed must be released and that the policy of administrative detention must be abolished? Are you, as New Zealand’s representative on the UN Security Council willing to speak out publicly?
Yours sincerely,
Martin Griffiths
Christchurch
ps Several members of the European Parliament have posed behind fake prison bars to raise awareness about the over 7000 Palestinian political prisoners who are currently held in Israeli jails. Of these over 700 are administrative detainees, 6 are elected officials and over 350 are children.
A reminder of this Sunday’s dinner and entertainment evening to raise funds for the Women’s Boat to Gaza Flotilla setting sail next month. Please help to make this event a great success, and come along to enjoy Afghani cuisine, coffee and desserts, as well as performances by Moana Maniapoto, Tigilau Ness, Palestinian dancers and others, plus speaker Marama Davidson, Green Party MP, who will be our own representative on the siege-breaking flotilla next month.
What: Dinner, cultural performances and speakers.
When: 6-9pm Sunday 28th August.
Where: Mount Albert War Memorial Hall, 749 New North Rd, Mount Albert, Auckland.
Tickets: $30 waged, $20 unwaged/student, available here:
Hosted by Kia Ora Gaza and Umma Trust, this is their fundraising drive for NZ’s contribution to the Women’s Boat to Gaza Flotilla, goal $25,000.
More details here:
Members of a government-implemented super scheme will be deeply disappointed their savings are being invested in companies which make cluster bombs or nuclear weapons, the PSA says.
The State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme (SSRSS) has been closed to new members since October 2008 and has around 30,000 members invested in two providers, ASB and AMP.
Both have confirmed to Radio New Zealand that they invest in companies which manufacture cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines and nuclear weapons.
This is despite questions about the legality of these investments, raised in particular by the New Zealand Super Fund which says this type of investment is not compatible with New Zealand’s laws and international treaty obligations.
PSA National Secretary Glenn Barclay says this will be disappointing and concerning to past and present public servants who are members of the scheme.
“Last week I wrote to the State Services Commissioner, Peter Hughes, seeking clarification on this issue,” Mr Barclay says.
“Since 2008 investors in the SSRSS have not been able to switch their fund to a different provider.
“There are indications these investment practices may be illegal – and at the very best, they are unethical.”
The PSA notes the State Services Commission has asked both funds to offer an ethical investment choice.
“We do not believe any government-mandated fund should hold investments which are excluded by the NZ Super Fund,” Mr Barclay says.
“We look forward to working with the State Services Commission to make sure SSRSS members have ethical investment choices available to them.”
Last week, retirement-savers from around the country were shocked to discover that their hard-earned investment funds were potentially going towards funding the invention, sale and distribution of land mines, cluster munitions, and other nefarious products. Nuclear weapons are also apparently on the portfolio-books.
This is, predictably, quite shocking for many of us (particularly given all other Government long-term investment vehicles such as ACC and the Cullen Fund have stringent policies against pouring public money in these insalubrious directions); but sadly, what wasn’t shocking at all was the Government’s completely lackluster non-response to this pressing issue.
As in so many instances surrounding Kiwisaver’s ongoing fate under National – ranging from the official slashing of Employer Contributions, through to tens of millions of dollars effectively being STOLEN from employees thanks to bosses not passing money on to the fund, and on into the occasionally ruinously high fees charged by some fund-operators – the Government’s silence when it comes to proposing serious solutions has been deafening.
In stark contrast to this, there’s one party which has long believed in the advancement of citizen-based national savings (often in the format of state-directed sovereign wealth funds) … and it should therefore come as no surprise that New Zealand First has an elegant answer for pretty much all of the above issues:
We provide a #Nationalized option for employees’ retirement savings, called Kiwifund.
This policy was first put forward by NZF in reaction to news that private Kiwisaver providers had managed to cream off somewhere upwards of a BILLION DOLLARS worth of fees and assorted other charges thanks to lax oversight of the scheme by the state. (By comparison, the administration costs for the Government’s own superannuation vehicle – which is roughly the same size in dollar terms as the combined totals of Kiwisaver funds – comes in at a paltry 1.5% of that.)
But the reasoning for putting this idea back on the table now is a little different. The other chief advantage we have by farming our retirement savings out to the state rather than private fund managers is that there’s therefore a greater degree of ethical behavior and morality which we can thus expect from the scheme’s investment decisions. As already noted, this wouldn’t have happened at either ACC or the Cullen Fund – the Government’s other long-term investment vehicles – due to exactly the sort of legislative prohibitions which would also prevent Kiwifund from doing likewise.
What last week’s shocking developments have roundly evinced is that when it comes to managing our money, the private sector regularly engages in shonky practices. We’ve already known for quite some time that this includes rampant profiteering at our collective expense. However it is altogether disquieting to find out that their recklessness is not limited to the level of profit extracted from us, but also the specific sources and mechanisms used to generate same.
It is increasingly clear, now, that the only way to truly remedy and rectify this woeful situation is to bring a large portion of the scheme under the aegis of a public-managed and -overseen fund.
Thank goodness that one political party had the foresight and the vision some years ago to propose a policy which would do exactly that.
The #ParkUpForHomes protests will be drawing to a close over the next fortnight, with a final Auckland event happening this Thursday August 25, in the central suburb of Parnell.
Organisers are hopeful that the final events will engage many in the mission to raise awareness of growing homelessness in New Zealand, to stand strong together and drive the message home that New Zealand will not tolerate these conditions. No family should be out in the cold when a country of wealth has the means to keep all safe and warm.
The #ParkUpForHomes movement of peaceful protests all share a common goal of seeing an increased Government response to the growing housing crisis and measures to create a better safety net for the most vulnerable who are being squeezed out of housing and into cars, garages and caravan parks. The family friendly rallies will include free entertainment and sausage sizzles.
#ParkUp:Parnell is being run by members of the community, in association with Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).
As supporters of the #ParkUpForHomes campaign, CPAG has outlined a number of policy measures the organisation believes will turn this crisis around.
Since the Park up for homes movement began, the Government has responded with a number of solutions, which though are helpful in the short-term, none have directly addressed the root causes of homelessness for families, namely inadequate incomes and the increasing cost of housing.
On July 2 Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett announced a paltry $9 million over two years in what the Governments says will “Deliver Better Housing Outcomes”.
“Half this budget is for community organisations to work with state tenants when they are in danger of losing their tenancies,” says Alan Johnson, CPAG spokesperson for housing.
“In effect the Government is paying NGO’s to stop a Government agency from evicting state tenants – this is just plain crazy.”
Mackenzie Valgre, spokesperson for the Parnell event, says, “There are children who are doing their homework in a van – where they live with the rest of their whānau. This is not only heartbreaking, but it proves a failure of our nation. It is time our Government faced those facts, and enacted the bold, radical change that is so desperately needed.”
The location for #ParkUp:Parnell will be announced on Facebook on Wednesday this week. All are welcome – and organisers are hopeful that local MPs will also show up to support those who have been living rough.
The final national event will take place in Palmerston North on September 2.
Book Review by Dave Brownz
Michael Roberts new book The Long Depression (TLD) brings together much of his previous work from his blog and articles. It follows his previous book The Great Recession (TGR) that looked at the causes and effects of the so-called Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008. There will be no surprises in the book for those already familiar with his work but for those whose knowledge of Marxism is scanty or distorted by misrepresentation, it is a great read.
Roberts develops his argument that the GFC was not an accident or result of wrong decisions by central banks, or greedy Wall St traders. It was not an aberration of ‘financialisation’ where financial speculation undermined profits and created massive debt. It was necessary symptom of a crisis-ridden capitalism which since the end of the post-war boom entered a long period of stagnation, despite periodic ups and downs, signifying the increasing stagnation of global capitalism.
According to Roberts (and many others) what the GFC did was prove Marx correct. Long-term declining profits generate a massive surplus of money that loses its value unless capitalists speculate in existing asset markets creating bubbles from housing to commodities to bonds. Not until those bubbles burst and wipe out the fictitious value of inflated asset prices are the conditions for a return to profitable investment possible. The period of falling profits and the stagnation of growth which precedes the GFC ends only with massive devaluation of trillions of surplus capital to restore profitable investment is the broad definition of what Roberts calls The Long Depression.
In scientific terms, for a theory to work it has to explain not only past and present events better than its rivals but also offer predictions on future outcomes. Marxism does this well because while all change in capitalist society is explained as determined in broad terms by ‘economics’, society, culture and politics are factored into the analysis to account for variation in possible outcomes.
No other theory can trace changes in ideas and politics back to economics as clearly and convincingly. So in the first chapters of TLD Roberts shows how Marx’s theory of falling profits, the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall, (TRPF) is a law which underpins all the booms and busts from the Long Depression of the 1880s, the Great Depression of the 1930s and now the Long Depression of the 2000s.
Great events such as wars and depression which shape our history and our lives are not only explicable but inform our understanding and our actions. Not the caricature of Marxism which reduces all human activity to ‘economism’ in which individuals are reduced to ciphers or automatons with no freedom of action. On the contrary Marxism proves that it is class struggle over the share of value that propels humanity (as represented by the proletariat that produces the wealth) to rid itself of the increasingly destructive capitalist system that ultimately threatens climate collapse and human extinction.
It is this point that is the key to our liberation. Roberts touches on it but does not develop it. Capitalism is an historical society that can last only so long as it can produce to meet human needs efficiently. It came into existence with the rise of the bourgeoisie who harnessed productive labor to reduce the necessary labor time needed to produce commodities. The reduction of necessary labor time was historically ‘progressive’ yet racked by contradictions. Under capitalism ‘progress’ is expropriated as rising surplus labor time (exploitation) in the form of profits by the class that owns the means of production. This contradiction causes the TRPF where the drive for profits meets the inevitable resistance of the proletariat over the share of value intensifying the class struggle and threatening to resolve crises by revolution.
So how do we predict the course of TLD today? While ‘economics’ accounts for the crisis and its severity, already built into ‘economics’ is the class struggle complete with class ideas and class actions most notably wars and revolutions. Each historic boom and bust cycle is therefore the product of class struggle. Each bust gets stronger and each boom weaker as we can see by tracking them.
The Long Depression of the 1880s which led to a weak boom until WW1 threw the proletariat into the trenches and stimulated new production in the victors and destroyed the industry of the losing capitalist states. But war brought with it the threat of revolution and there was no guarantee that the crisis would be solved and capitalism ‘stabilised’. It was resolved temporarily (outside Russia) by the power of bourgeois ideology and politicians who disarmed and trapped workers in parliaments, and where that failed unleashed fascist counterrevolution.
But the post-war boom was weak and the crisis returned in The Great Depression of the 30’s. This led to another World War in which the victors boosted production and developed new techniques while destroying the economies of the defeated states stimulating renewed capitalist accumulation known as the post-war boom. The potential for revolution in Europe was smothered by the allied troops or steered into ‘neo-colonisation’ in the ‘third world’. Once more the boom was short lived and a period stagnation followed.
Again the TRPF munched into profits which slumped from the early 1960s until the equivalent of a new World War, the neo-liberal counter-revolution, rescued capitalism in the 1980s from its impending demise. Neo-liberalism in the name of the ‘free market’ openly attacked workers resistance to rising exploitation, restored capitalism in the Soviet Union and China, and everywhere destroyed state assets to revive the rate of profit. Yet as Roberts shows, the upturn of the neo-liberal 1980s and 1990s was too weak to restore profit rates to post-war boom levels. The result was ‘financialisation’ as the surplus capital had no place to go except into speculation in commodities.
So the historical record shows that each crisis gets stronger and each upturn weaker because the worsening contradiction between the owners of the means of production and those who produce value leads capitalism to an inevitable decline. It cannot use its expropriated wealth to generate new wealth without destroying more wealth. Here we come to the most interesting final chapters of Roberts book. He spends some time speculating about Kondratiev Curves (K Curves) which Trotsky rubbished in the 1920s as a blind alley and nothing to do with Marxism which I don’t propose to debate here. Much more relevant is his argument about whether or not the Long Depression is the ‘terminal’ crisis.
This is an old argument among Marxists. Always keen to predict the inevitable fall of capitalism, Marxists have tended to see every crisis as the last one before socialism must replace it. The general rule of thumb is that capitalism must decline but it cannot fall unless pushed by the proletariat. As we have seen every crisis is caused by class struggle in which the relative strength of the two classes determines the outcome. Roberts takes this position and argues that if the capitalist ruling class can resolve the current crisis by defeating workers then a new boom of capital accumulation is possible. While this ‘possibility’ cannot be excluded I think that the destruction of the ‘forces of production’ required to exit TLD into an historically weak boom will be such that the Long Depression will become the last, or terminal, crisis, whose outcome must be either human extinction or socialism.
Briefly in summary, in every crisis, capital has to destroy more wealth to create new wealth. As the destruction gets worse, the ability of capitalism to survive is reduced. As more and more workers are thrown out of production, as their lives become more intolerable, they rise up and “blowback”. As more and more of the forces of nature are destroyed including the pre-conditions for human life in the biosphere, then a qualitative shift takes place in the resistance of labor. As the current crisis get worse the quality of revolutionary knowledge and action will develop. The class struggle throws up mass experience of struggle that tests the limits of capital and as class consciousness grows validates Marxism as the critique of capital and the promise of socialism. The proletariat adopts Marxism as its revolutionary program and representing humanity becomes the agent of the last revolutionary transformation before capitalism kills us all.
That is the prediction; whether it comes true or not is up to you.
Dave Brownz is TDB’s guest Marxist blogger
A very special show tonight 7pm on Waatea 5th Estate with the voice of Generation X, punk oracle Henry Rollins on the US Elections, the rise of Trump and Sanders, the global elite and Fox News.
Live streamed 7pm tonight on thedailyblog.nz, waateanews.org and simulcast on Sky TV and Iwi Radio stations.
