The launch was a clumsy flop, but the strategy behind using MMP to beat the National Party in 2017 is actually not only possible but likely.
The real gain Labour and the Greens want out of this MoU (which is just such an unimaginative name – it should have been called ‘The People’s Revolutionary Grand Alliance’), is the change in perception by the idiot media who still can’t, after 20 years, comprehends how MMP politics works.
The sleepy hobbits of Muddle Nu Zilind don’t understand how close the election actually is. If they start seeing the Labour-Green block reported as a total each month when the polls roll out, they will start seeing National at 40 something and Lab-Green combined also at 40 something.
The real problems for the Opposition are created and projected by the way the mainstream media reports politics and if voters are constantly told Labour is languishing in the low 30s while National are in the high 40s, the perception is National are untouchable.
This change in reporting will have a big impact in reminding voters how close the election really is.
Apart from perception changes however, the real power in using MMP tactically will come if Labour and the Greens can agree to common positions on strategic electorates.
Ōhāriu allows Peter Dunne a seat in Parliament and gives National an ally. Dunno won 13,569 votes in 2014, Virginia Andersen from Labour took 12,859. The Green candidate, Tane Woodley took 2,764. If the Green Candidate stood aside, Labour have a much more likely chance of beating Dunne.
Auckland Central is another electorate. Nikki Kaye won 12,494, Jacinda took 11,894 while Denise Roche got 2,080. If Denise stands aside, Jacinda finally wins Auckland Central back.
Waiariki could be the most fought for electorate. Labour and the Greens would want to reach out to Annette Sykes voters and attempt to wrestle away the electorate from the Maori Party which would take out Flavell AND Marama Fox. That’s 2 less votes for the Government.
If the Greens and Labour can put some ego aside and actually work together in those electorates, and others, then they have a chance to eliminate National Party support parties making it more difficult for National to get to a parliamentary majority.
Much has been made of NZ First disliking the Greens, but that’s misrepresenting the reality. Politics is all about personalities, and Winston despised Russel Norman for grilling him over the donations scandal that plagued NZ First in the last days of the Labour Government. Russel has gone, and so has much of that resentment. The new Green Party Chief of Staff, Deborah Morris, is a former NZ First Youth Minister and she spoke to Winston before she took that job.
The relationships behind the politics is what makes alliances, while the launch was a bit vacant, there is a way this changes a Government in 2017. They need a shared policy platform and an agreement on specific electorates.
Open letter to: Hon Anne Tolley, Minister of Social Development
Dear Minister
Nga Tangata Microfinance welcomes the financial help for low-income earners signalled in the Government’s 2016 Budget. Funding to support budgeting advice to low-income earners is urgently needed, and it is vital to expand the capacity of budget services who address the financial challenges of the most desperate families and individuals.
With loan capital provided by Kiwibank, Nga Tangata Microfinance (NTM) works in partnership with local budget services to strengthen financial education and capability, promote financial inclusion and protect clients against predatory high interest lenders. NTM’s safe fair and affordable, nil interest loans are most effective in building family assets and tackling high interest debt.
The Ministry of Social Development has signalled a major shift in how it funds and supports budget services. We urge that the evaluation of agencies considers the expansion of budget services and capacity in areas where extreme need and urgency exists, such as in south Auckland.
NTM began offering nil interest loans in south Auckland in 2011, partnering with 6 Budget Services at that time. We regularly hear of waiting times of 2-3 weeks or more to see a budget advisor, and there is no capacity for emergencies. Advisors themselves are put under increasing stress due to the pressure. A budget advisor in Manurewa said “I often see 8-9 families per day, which I have been told will cause burn-out…you cannot turn people away as they need help that is timely.”
Social Services in south Auckland conveying support to this letter’s petition include Family Start in Manurewa, Mangere East Family Service Centre, Taonga Educational Centre Trust, Manurewa Marae, Finlayson Park School, Te Tai Awa o Te Ora and Whanau o Tumanako.They frequently encounter families confronting deep social issues or crises, financial stress, high debt, and budget difficulties. As one senior staff comments “Clients are at the end of their tether and then face having to wait for an appointment, often up to 3 weeks, with a budget advisor …this is often too late to deal with urgent demands for payment or threats of repossession”. It is essential that such clients be offered not only effective wrap around social services, but timely budgeting advice and support, financial education, and ethical lending alternatives.
The financial capability of all New Zealanders, especially those facing hardship, will remain a distant hope unless priority is given to the resourcing and expansion of budgeting services situated in localities of high need, such as south Auckland.
Yours Sincerely Robert Choy Executive Officer, Nga Tangata Microfinance
“The point is if we’re going to have a tax programme [of tax cuts] – we’re not ruling that out in for 2017 or campaigning on it for a fourth term. But having probably a bigger one, to be blunt.” – John Key, 16 May 2016
“Philosophically we believe in lower taxes and smaller government, and government’s definitely getting smaller.”- John Key, 16 May 2016
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Paula Bennett denies there is a housing crisis in New Zealand;
“I certainly wouldn’t call it a crisis. I think that we’ve always had people in need.” – Paula Bennett, 20 May 2016
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Paula Bennett announces plan to offer $5,000 to homeless and state house tenants to leave Auckland and go live in provinces;
“I would say to those that are homeless that there is a chance that they could get a house in days if they were willing to look outside of Auckland.” – Paula Bennett, 25 May 2016
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“Very quietly, a cut here and a decrease there, a failure to keep up with inflation in one place, and ignoring increasing population in another place, the Government is walking away from New Zealand’s longstanding social compact.
In his Budget speech, Bill English proudly says that government expenditure is down to less than 30 per cent of GDP, and that’s the way that it’s going to stay.
But how is this retreat from the economy achieved?
It happens by spending less on health and less on education, and not spending enough on housing for the least well off New Zealanders.”– Deborah Russell, 26 May 2016
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“While it’s true the overall numbers of Housing NZ homes haven’t risen dramatically, the mix is changing and there are more in Auckland and less in places that we don’t need them.” – John Key, 27 May 2016
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“Sadly, it seems once again that the Budget is a missed opportunity for children, while the military and Government spy agencies do extremely well. I don’t recall seeing any public opinion polls or evidence indicating the need for more investment in either of these areas, especially when there is such desperate need among families with children.
The Government has achieved its objective of appearing fiscally responsible and not much else. But through a lack of planning and an apparent lack of caring children are living in garages or cars, and do not have the nutrition or warm clothing that they need. Kiwi kids have a right to better lives than that.” – Vivien Maidaborn, New Zealand Executive Director, Unicef, 29 May 2016
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“We would like to see some tax reductions, particularly for those middle income taxpayers who find themselves getting into higher tax brackets.” – Finance Minister Bill English, 27 May 2016
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There is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that the 2016 Budget is geared 100% toward building up a surplus for tax cuts to be announced next year. Just in time for the 2017 Election. John Key and Bill English have strongly indicated as much with their “kite-flying” with hints of cuts-to-come.
Funding for various state services have either barely increased – or drastically cut. The result has been a $700 million surplus – which appears to have been achieved at the expense of cutting funding for social NGOs and state services for the most vulnerable people in our society.
Some of the winners and losers from this year’s Budget…
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Winner
GCSB and SIS;
Funding for spy agencies (GCSB and SIS) will increase over the next four years by $178.7 million.
Funding for up to seven new charter schools will be provided in the 2016 Budget, the Government has announced. – NZ Herald
…$328.9m of capital funding and $20.2m of operating funding would go towards public private partnerships (PPPs) for seven new schools and three rebuilds. – Fairfax media
Loser
Public schools operation grants – frozen;
School operational funding has been frozen in this year’s Budget in favour of targeted funding for [under-achieving, at-risk] 150,000 kids.
[…]
… $43.2 million over four years will be provided to those schools with under-achieving students, and it’s expected the money will be used to raise achievement, there’s no accountability attached to the funding.
[…]
The targeted funding works out at about $1.79 per student, per school week – schools won’t even know which students are being targeted as the policy’s designed not to identify them. – Fairfax media
Early Childhood Education subsidy-funding – frozen;
Early childhood education providers got no increase to their government subsidies for the second consecutive year. – Radio NZ
Who Pays?
Our children.
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Winner
NZ military –
The Defence Force receives new operating funding of $300.9 million over four years as part of Budget 2016 to support the work it does, Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee says. – Gerry Brownlee, Minister of Defence
Loser
Home Insulation Programme –
National has cut home insulation funding to its lowest ever level in Budget 2016…
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Budget 2016 allocates just $12 million this year for the Warm Up New Zealand programme this year and $4.5 million for the Healthy Homes programme, compared to $23.9 million for Home Insulation last year. – Scoop media/Green Party
Who Pays?
“low-income tenants, particularly those with high health needs.
…young children (newborns to 5-year olds) who are living in cold, damp and unhealthy homes.” – Jonathan Coleman, Simon Bridges
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There are three significant stand-outs for this Budget…
1 – This Surplus was achieved at the expense of the poor.
With school operational funding frozen; no increase for early childhood education funding; a dire crisis of homelessness; State houses being sold of by National; and a critical shortage of housing – it does not take much wit to understand that Bill English’s $700 million Budget surplus was achieved by under-spending in key social areas.
Worse still, National continues to doggedly pursue it’s policy to sell up to eight thousand state houses by 2017.
Compounding National’s mis-management of the country’s scandalous housing crisis is National’s unrelenting and inhumane demand for dividends from Housing NZ.
This far, National has extracted over half a billion dollars from Housing New Zealand by way of dividends.
The above figures do not include taxes paid by Housing NZ to the National government.
Imagine how many state house could have been built by Housing NZ in the last seven years.
Imagine that every low-income family that needed a warm, dry, home – could have had one by now.
Imagine that instead, National will be demanding another dividend this year from Housing NZ – and will be effectively giving it away by means of tax-cuts to affluent New Zealanders.
2 – Many so-call “increases” are illusory.
When taken over a four year period many of English’s Budget “increases” are actually a cut in expenditure. Just two examples from many;
School funding for 150,000 under-achieving, at-risk school children, was budgeted at $43.2 million This sounds good. But that figure is spread not over the 2016/17 period – but over four years.
“…to insulate rental houses occupied by low-income tenants, particularly those with high health needs” and “to reduce preventable illnesses among young children (newborns to 5-year olds) who are living in cold, damp and unhealthy homes”
The media release touted;
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But look further into the detail;
The investment includes:
$18 million of operating funding over two years to extend the Warm Up New Zealand programme to insulate rental houses occupied by low-income tenants, particularly those with high health needs.
$18 million over four years to expand the Healthy Homes Initiative to reduce preventable illnesses among young children (newborns to 5-year olds) who are living in cold, damp and unhealthy homes.
This is how English created his Budget “surplus” – with cleverly concealed cuts to social programmes that impact on the poorest; most powerless; most desperate people in our society.
And we wonder why entire families are living in garages, cars, and tents?
Make no mistake – this was an ideological budget with “Neo-Liberal Approved” stamped in big, red letters all over it. It was cold-blooded and remorseless in it’s pursuit of specific objectives;
reducing government spending on the poor, by freezing/cutting expenditure on social services
increased government spending on security agencies (spy, defence, police), in case the 1981 up-rising is repeated
satisfying demands from National’s business, conservative, and anti-welfare constituents
to give Bill English a second surplus
set the stage for tax cuts to be announced in next years’ budget
and offer an electoral bribe to voters in time for the 2017 general election
As is almost always the case, those at the bottom of the socio-economic heap are the ones who pay for National’s ideologically-inspired budget. Sometimes they pay with their lives.
Expect more of the same next year.
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Addendum
Spotted at a Z Service Station in the Hutt Valley; this Charity “voting” box, where customers vote for the charity of their choice. The charity gaining most tokens wins a $4,000 donation from Z. Of the four, Fostering Kids NZ is ‘miles’ ahead with tokens;
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Z staffer, Manpreet, standing beside Coin-Vote Box, at a Service Station in the Hutt Valley
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Note the level of support for Fostering Kids NZ;
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It is refreshing to see indications that New Zealanders are still compassionate to children from vulnerable, less well-off families. There is still hope for our society, even if people like Key, English, Bennett, Tolley, et al have turned their heads to look the other way.
Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Deborah L for her sharp eye, spotting, photographing, and sending me the above images along with relevant info.
Any new crisis is likely to be a further phase of the 2008 crisis, reflecting the fact that the causes remain largely unresolved. A future downturn will be much worse this time around
…nothing was sorted from the 2008 GFC, all Governments around the world did was kick the debt can down the road and hoped.
That hope has come full circle and the 1% elites who this corrupt system of capitalism benefits are as greedy and selfish as before and the explosion will hurt the other 99% worse than 2008 did.
Our Governments prediction of high growth rates to make the budget look less hollow than it is are optimistic in the extreme…
Low dairy prices and the end to earthquake rebuilding are expected to slow New Zealand’s growth in the next year, according to the OECD.
The global economic organisation has released its economic outlook report, stating that the global economy was “stuck in a low-growth trap”.
OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria urged policymakers to take action.
“Growth is flat in the advanced economies and has slowed in many of the emerging economies that have been the global locomotive since the crisis,” she said.
…our current neoliberal settings that build tax havens, borrow billions for tax cuts, sees 20 000 in desperate housing, allows property speculators to lock out generations from home ownership, sees 300 000 kids in poverty and is seeing tens of thousands living in cars, on the streets or in over crowded garages is a rigged crime…
Labour’s urging the Government to do something about the distribution of wealth after research found economic growth isn’t being passed on to workers.
At his pre-Budget speech in Wellington on Sunday, Labour leader Andrew Little said since the current Government came into power, just 37 percent of economic growth is heading into pay packets.
John Ryall from the Council of Trade Unions says Labour’s research shows the system is unfair.
…we need NZ solutions, a Kiwi Socialism, if we want to insulate ourselves to the massive global downturn we are facing. The problem is that no political party in NZ is even close to articulating the radical reforms we need to reverse the damage neoliberalism has created.
While NZers sleep in cars, the Greens and Labour are holding empty press conferences promising to work together to end the Government, pity they didn’t have that view in 2014.
We have NZers living in cars. We have a housing crisis that the Government is in complete denial about, we have 20 000 families urgently needing emergency housing and we have soaring inequality and poverty combined with 80 000 kids going to school hungry each day and 300 000 in poverty.
You actually can’t write satire better than this. He’s offering the homeless to leave Auckland for $5000 and offering the poor in the provinces $3000 to move to Auckland but he wouldn’t shoot a gorilla.
I’m glad we sorted that out.
So in effect, John Key will treat gorillas better than he’ll treat the homeless and the poor.
Nothing sums up the pettiness of NZ politics better than the current debate today on prisons. The Paul Henry Morning Insult Show has leaped upon Kelvin Davis’ fairly boring allegations that people are being paid to smuggle in tobacco into prisons…
Family members of prisoners say they have bribed prison guards to sneak in tobacco, according to Labour MP Kelvin Davis.
He says he was contacted by a family member of a prisoner in Serco-run South Auckland Correctional Facility, Wiri Prison about the deals made with prison guards.
“The guard will make an arrangement where they meet at a Caltex station not far from the prison,” said Davis.
…with all due respect – who gives a fuck? Of course people are bribing guards to get fucking tobacco into prisons. This isn’t news.
What IS news is the despicable blow out in cost of our slavish desire to lock up NZers and make them suffer inside prison…
Soaring prison population growth has led to a budget blowout of $45 million on jails in the last year, and forced the Government to further expand its prisons to fit more inmates.
The Government has now earmarked a further $41 million above baseline funding to cope with pressures on the prison network. Total spending on prison services is nearing $1 billion a year.
…our sensible sentencing lynch mob mentality fuelled by get tough on crime politicians and lazy news journalism that uses crime to pump ratings is so overwhelming that the idea Prisons are costing us a billion per year gets eclipsed by the idea Guards are being bribed to give Prisoners ciggies, and what will be annoying the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind most about this? Not the $45million blow out as we lock more and more people up despite a declining crime rate, but the mere suggestion that Prisoners are enjoying a single moment will have the sleepy hobbits rearing up on their hind legs snorting in fury pawing the air with their tiny feet.
We have all the social maturity of a can of coke, our ease at being manipulated and led on issues is pathetic.
New Zealand’s second-largest government is the Auckland Council. Auckland Council is in conflict with the central government, much as, this decade, the government of Greece has been in conflict with the government of Germany. Hapless Len ‘Papandreou‘ Brown versus righteous Bill ‘Wolfgang‘ English.
While Len Brown will soon depart the scene, the battleground in 2016 will be the Auckland Council election. Will the new Council be compliant to the government’s agenda, or will it be a ‘Syriza’, at least trying to resist the ruling plutocracy.
It is said by elite interests that a good crisis should never be allowed to go to waste. Certainly the US elite took full advantage of the 911 crisis in 2001 to advance its strategic interests. And Germany is creating an unholy Teutonic empire in Europe, made possible by its ability, as finance-meister of the Euro Area, to exploit the Euro debt crisis that took hold in 2010.
The New Zealand government wants Auckland Council to take actions that will give windfall speculative profits to those mainly New Zealand resident owners of rural land outside the metropolitan area. And the government, in the guise of fiscal probity, wants to force the Council to fund urban infrastructure on this rural land while making it difficult for the Council to either raise extra revenue to pay for it or to add to its existing public debt.
While the government’s power-play, if successful, will reward speculators in rural land close to metropolitan Auckland, it will also force the Auckland Council to sell its commercial assets, with the Port top of the asset list. The government is doing this by pretending that colonising rural land will solve the isthmus’s housing shortage, much as George Bush junior’s US government in 2001 created pretexts to invade Iraq by pretending that Saddam Hussein was amassing a cache of ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
I heard recently that the average residential tenancy in Auckland is 15 months (see Human Rights Commission, Right to Housing, p.218). Interestingly, this MBIE-published document (Exploring Security of Tenure through Co-design) puts a strange spin on the issue of rental tenure; it says (p.7):
“We also know that very few people are not [sic] signing up for long-term leases – on average, people in Auckland rent their homes for 15 months. There is nothing in the Residential Tenancies Act that prevents anyone from signing a fixed-term lease for longer so what is driving the desire [my emphasis] for short term leases?”)
So homelessness is presented as tenants’ own fault.
The reality is that Auckland rental-dwellings are on a sales churn, and each time a landlord sells a tenanted property there is too high a chance that neither a new tenant nor an owner-occupier resident will move in. Steadily, day-by-day, perfectly habitable (though often run-down) Auckland dwellings cease to be occupied. (Or they become family house-sits for the adult children of speculators.) These properties stand to become urban baches to non-residents, or sections which just happen to have houses on them. These properties are already served by Council-facilitated infrastructure, unlike those beyond the fringe.
The New Zealand government is trying to exploit Auckland’s housing crisis rather than to solve it or to ease it. Its agenda appears to be threefold: to unseat a non-compliant Council, to force the sale of productive assets owned by the people of Auckland, and to reward those who seek to financially profit by holding rural land. It is using Auckland Council debt as a lever, much as German politicians and bureaucrats have used debt as a lever to force the wholesale privatisation of Greece.
Equity New Zealand is disappointed to see that yet again, the wider Arts sector has been ignored in the budget. The three organisations receiving funding increases are already crown-funded and are not impacted by the decline in revenue from the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board, as the rest of the sector is. Creative New Zealand expects to receive $11 million less this financial year than it did two years ago.(1) This shortfall is a similar figure to the $11.6 million awarded to the crown-funded organisation set to receive increases.(2)
“We would like to see the whole pie grow so the industry doesn’t have to fight over scraps” “These organisations do wonderful work and we support them whole heartedly” says Equity New Zealand President Jennifer Ward-Lealand “we have no interest in being pitted against other Arts organisations over funding. We would like to see the whole pie grow so the industry doesn’t have to fight over scraps.”
Investment in the Arts provides a great return to the economy. Aside from the economic benefit arising from adjacent industries such as tourism and hospitality, the Arts are the lifeblood of our community. “Our stories, our history, and our culture are preserved and celebrated through the Arts,” says Ms Ward-Lealand. “whilst any funding increase in the sector is a step in the right direction, a rich Arts scene requires more than a handful of well funded organisations. If the Government recognises the importance of the Arts as Maggie Barry has said they do,(3) they haven’t shown it.”
Equity New Zealand believes the whole Arts sector needs to be adequately and reliably funded. It is calling upon those individuals interested in working towards this goal to make contact.
Dr Russel Norman, Executive Director of Greenpeace Aoteaora/NZ and former Co-Leader of the Greens, completes Ika’s “Cooler Together” lunch & lecture series next Wednesday 8 June, with a policy and action focused challenge to avoid catastrophic climate change. Following Dr Mary Sewell’s ocean going talk last week, this is where science will meet politics. Enjoy a lovely meal, a drink, the talk and good company (places are $30 – book online and pay on the day).
It’s been an event-filled autumn at Ika – and now the cold weather is kicking in we’d love to host your mid-winter do. Just call Laila on 021839661 or drop us an email.
And speaking of winter, Auckland’s homeless have been very much in the news this month. Ika is sending Laila off to sleep rough for Lifewise’s annual fundraising night on the pavement. if you’d like to chip in to assist Lifewise – a leading service and advocate for homeless Aucklanders, you can find Laila’s page here. All support is much appreciated!
