The proposed changes will set clear expectations on how universities should approach freedom of speech issues.

Each university will then have to adopt a “freedom of speech statement” consistent with the central government’s expectations.

The changes will also prohibit tertiary institutions from adopting positions on issues that do not relate to their core functions.

Associate Education Minister David Seymour said fostering students’ ability to debate ideas is an essential part of universities’ educational mission.

“Despite being required by the Education Act and the Bill of Rights Act to uphold academic freedom and freedom of expression, there is a growing trend of universities deplatforming speakers and cancelling events where they might be perceived as controversial or offensive,” he said.

“That’s why the National/ACT coalition agreement committed to introduce protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech to ensure universities perform their role as the critic and conscience of society.”

Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills Penny Simmonds said freedom of speech was fundamental to the concept of academic freedom.

“Universities should promote diversity of opinion and encourage students to explore new ideas and perspectives. This includes enabling them to hear from invited speakers with a range of viewpoints.”

It is expected the changes will take effect by the end of next year, after which universities will have six months to develop a statement and get it approved.

Aside from the fact that the free speech legislation for universities is a waste of time (and seemingly ideologically inconsistent with the anti-regulation stance of the government), this line from the RNZ article is both hilarious and worrying pic.twitter.com/aOoPa0ZPc5

— Quintin Jane (@RealQuintinJane) December 19, 2024

Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington said the important issue of free speech had been a dominant topic throughout the year.

It believed a policy it had come up with would align with the intent of the criteria laid out by the government today.

However, the Greens are among critics, saying the government’s changes will add fuel to the political fires of disinformation, and put teachers and students in the firing line.

Labour says universities should be left to make decisions on free speech themselves.

‘A heavy-handed approach’
The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) said proposed rules could do more harm than good.

They have been been welcomed by the Free Speech Union, which said academic freedom was “under threat”, but the TEU said there was no problem to solve.

TEU president Sandra Grey said the move seemed to be aimed at ensuring people could spread disinformation on university campuses.

“I think one of the major concerns is that you might get universities opening up the space that is for academic and rigorous debate and saying it’s okay we can have climate deniers, we can have people who believe in creationism coming into our campuses and speaking about it as though it were scientific, as though it was rigorously defendable when in fact we know some of these questions . . .  have been settled,” she said.

Grey said academics who expressed views on campus could expect them to be debated, but that was part and parcel of working at a university and not an attack on their freedom of speech.

“There isn’t actually a problem. I do think universities, all the staff who work there, the students, understand that they’re covered by all of their requirements for freedom of speech that other citizens are.

“So it feels like we’ve got a heavy-handed approach from a government that apparently is anti-regulation but is now going to put in place the whole lot of requirements on a community that just doesn’t need it.”

Some topics ‘suppressed’

Free Speech Union chief executive Jonathan Ayling said freedom of speech was under threat in universities.

“We’ve supported academics . . .  where they feel that they have been unfairly disadvantaged simply for holding a different opinion to some of their peers. Of course, that is also an addition to the explicit calls for people to be cancelled, to be unemployed,” he said.

Ayling said some academics were afraid to express their views and there was also a problem with “compelled speech”.

“Forcing certain references on particularly ideological issues. There’s questions around race, gender, international conflicts, covid-19, these are all questions that we’ve found have been suppressed and also there’s the aspect of self-censorship,” he said.

“As we have and alongside partners looked into this more and more, it seems that many people in the academy exist in a culture of fear.”

University committed to differing viewpoints
Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington is committed to hearing a range of different viewpoints on its campuses, vice-chancellor Professor Nic Smith says.

Free speech had been an important issue during 2024, and the university had arrived at a policy that covered both freedom of speech and academic freedom.

By consulting widely, there was now a shared understanding of “foundational principles”, and its policy would be in place early in the new year.

“We believe this policy aligns with the intent of the criteria [from the government] as we understand them. It recognises the strength of our diverse university community and affirms that this diversity makes us stronger,” Professor Smith said.

“At the same time, it acknowledges that within any diverse community, individuals will inevitably encounter ideas they disagree with-sometimes strongly.

“Finding value in these disagreements is something universities are very good at: listening to different points of view in the spirit of advancing understanding and learning that can ultimately help us live and work better together.”

The university believed in hearing a range of views from staff, rather than adopting a single institutional position.

“The only exception to this principle is on matters that directly affect our core functions as a university.”

‘Stoking fear and division’

Green Party’s spokesperson for Tertiary Education, Francisco Hernadez, said the new policy had nothing to do with free speech.

“This is about polluting our public discourse for political gain.”

Universities played a critical role, providing a platform for informed and reasoned debate.

“Our universities should be able to decide who is given a platform on their campuses, not David Seymour. These changes risk turning our universities into hostile environments unsafe for marginalised communities.

“Misinformation, disinformation, and rhetoric that inflames hatred towards certain groups has no place in our society, let alone our universities. Freedom of speech is fundamental, but it is not a licence to harm.”

Hernandez said universities should be trusted to ensure the balance was struck between academic freedom and a duty of care.

“Today’s announcement has also come with a high dose of unintended irony.

“David Seymour is speaking out of both sides of his mouth by on the one hand claiming to support freedom of speech, but on the other looking to limit the ability universities have to take stances on issues, like the war in Gaza for example.

“This is an Orwellian attempt to limit discourse to the confines of the government’s agenda. This is about stoking fear and division for political gain.”

Labour’s Associate Education (Tertiary) spokesperson Deborah Russell responded: “One of the core legislated functions of universities in this country is to be a critic and conscience of society. That means continuing to speak truth to power, even if those in power don’t like it.”

“Nowhere should be a platform for hate speech. I am certain universities can make these decisions themselves.”

‘Expectations clarified’ – university
The University of Auckland said in a statement the announcement of planned legislation changes would help “to clarify government expectations in this area”.

“The university has a longstanding commitment to maintaining freedom of expression and academic freedom on our campuses, and in recent years has worked closely with [the university’s] senate and council to review, revise and consult on an updated Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom Policy.

“This is expected to return to senate and council for further discussion in early 2025 and will take into account the proposed new legislation.”

The university described the nature of the work as “complex”.

“While New Zealand universities have obligations under law to protect freedom of expression, academic freedom and their role as ‘critic and conscience of society’, as the proposed legislation appreciates, this is balanced against other important policies and codes.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The chart above shows New Zealand’s aggregate weekly deaths from 2015. The normal winter experience is obvious, with 2015 to 2019 influenza peaks mainly in July and August, though in late June in 2019.

New Zealand is different from most European countries in that it has significantly faster population growth. (Although Scandinavian population growth is above average for Europe.) Thus, I have plotted a ‘black line’ to show normality; what mortality would have been like in New Zealand in 2022 had there been no covid pandemic, and no other unusual events impacting on mortality. (Note the dark blue segment that shows the 2019 Christchurch Mosque murders.)

(Note that New Zealand has a rising mortality trend, regardless of covid, due to: a rising population, an aging population; and also possibly due to increases in other ‘lifestyle’ chronic health problems such as diabetes. In Eastern Europe, where Covid19 has had its biggest demographic impact, the first of these three factors did not apply; so its projected mortality, had Covid19 not happened, was essentially the same as its actual 2015-19 mortality. That probably means that covid’s impact there was overstated, given East Europe’s increasing paucity of young people due to emigration and low birth rates, and its increasing recent exposure to chronic ‘lifestyle’ conditions. Demographics were dynamic long before Covid19 struck.)

While its not clear yet whether 2022 peak mortality will be as much above normal as it was in the 2017 influenza season, the important information shown is the extent to which mortality in New Zealand has been above normal since February. There was no simple mortality wave during and immediately after the March Omicron-covid wave. Rather, what we are seeing is a process in which many people who might otherwise have died in 2020 or 2021 have instead died in 2022, nudged in many cases by a covid or similar infection.

This next chart compares New Zealand with Finland, in the period from March 2021. This is excess deaths, not aggregate deaths; that is, this chart only shows deaths above the relevant ‘black lines’.

The first thing to note is that, for these countries each with about five million people, there is a degree of random ‘noise’ in the variation of weekly deaths. Having noted that, the most prominent feature of the chart is Finland’s long period of excess deaths in 2021 and early 2022. (Finland’s apparent mortality lull in the peak winter months is misleading; these are seasonal peak mortality months, so the extent that the deaths last winter were above normal was ameliorated by the high normal for that time. To some extent, covid deaths replaced influenza deaths.)

Finland is a country that took substantial public health measures to combat Covid19, so the deaths in 2021 can be to a large extent understood as postponed covid deaths. Except that very few of these excess deaths, especially in the third quarter of 2021, were actually diagnosed as covid deaths. The lack of diagnosis of covid may have been due to a lack of testing, on the supposition that the pandemic was over. Or it could be due to high rates of death from covid but not of covid; ie deaths arising from the massive disruption to normal life due to the public health measures, or from lower levels of general immunity to respiratory infections on account of distancing, masking and reduced contact with travellers.

I think it would be fair to hypothesise that the persistently high rate of excess deaths in New Zealand in 2022 suggests that New Zealand is now experiencing something akin to what Finland was experiencing in its last autumn and winter.

The above chart shows Sweden and France. These are the two countries in North/West Europe which least show the Finland mortality pattern, and are almost certainly the countries which retained and then attained the highest levels of general immunity. In Sweden’s case it was due to a public health approach that emphasised private responsibility over public mandates. In France’s case, the stronger public mandates did not linger on beyond the emergency periods.

Both countries had significant Covid19 mortality in 2020; they were hit full-on by the first and second waves. But both seem to have suffered only minimal amounts of waning general immunity as the pandemic progressed; and both suffered much less covid mortality in late 2020 than many other countries (with the USA coming mostly to mind).

The final chart shows Germany and Denmark. Both of these had low levels of pandemic mortality in 2020, due to substantial mandated public health measures; much lower excess mortality than Sweden and France in 2020. But both also show the Finland pattern in late 2021, and in 2022 to date.

Another point of interest is to see how swiftly the arrival of the Omicron strain in Denmark curtailed winter deaths there. Omicron arrived just as the Delta-covid wave was peaking; whereas in Germany the delta-wave had peaked a month earlier. We may note that all five European countries shown here suffered substantial Delta-covid mortality around November-December, although Sweden much less than the others. This was almost certainly due to waning immunity from vaccinations, and the public health authorities being initially slow to understand the issue, and slow to make booster vaccinations available.

In Germany in particular, we see a substantial summer-wave of pandemic mortality in 2022. There is a clear pattern. Countries which tied down their populations the most in 2020 are experiencing these significant late bouts of pandemic mortality.

All this suggests that New Zealand still has a long way to go to return to some kind of demographic normality. This coming summer, excess pandemic (or post-pandemic) deaths, if they happen, will be exposed for all to see, because they will not be mixed in with deaths from ‘winter viruses’.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

New Zealand and the European Union have struck an historic free trade deal, “unlocking access to one of the world’s biggest and most lucrative markets” after four years of tough negotiating.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and President of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the details in Brussels, but it was touch and go as to whether a good enough deal could be agreed.

The negotiations went right to the limit, with Ardern and Trade Minister Damien O’Connor involved in the last phase of the talks, just hours before the official announcement was made.

The agreement — about 14 years in the making — means New Zealand views it as “commercially meaningful” and as worth putting pen to paper.

Ardern said it was a “strategically important and economically beneficial deal that comes at a crucial time in our export led covid-19 recovery”, covering 27 EU member states.

“It delivers tangible gains for exporters into a restrictive agricultural market. It cuts costs and red tape for exporters and opens up new high value market opportunities and increases our economic resilience through diversifying the markets that we can more freely export into,” she said.

By 2035, the value of New Zealand exports to the EU will increase by $1.8 billion a year, which Ardern said was more lucrative than the benefits gained from New Zealand’s recent deal with the United Kingdom.

Eventually duty free
Eventually, 97 percent of New Zealand’s current exports to the EU will be duty-free, and more than 91 percent of tariffs will be removed the day the FTA comes into effect.

There will be immediate tariff elimination for all kiwifruit, wine, onions, apples, mānuka honey and manufactured goods, as well as almost all fish and seafood, and other horticultural products. It will also become easier for a range of service providers to access the EU, including education.

Meat and dairy have always been a tough sell due to the protected European market; once fully implemented this deal will deliver new quota opportunities worth over $600 million in annual export earnings, with an eight-fold increase to the amount of beef able to be sold into Europe. Duty free access for sheep meat has been expanded by 38,000 tonnes each year.

Red meat and dairy will get up to $120 million worth of new annual export revenue on day one of the deal, with estimates of more than $600 million within seven years.

Quotas have been established for butter, cheese, milk powders and protein whey.

The vast bulk of dairy tariffs will be eliminated within seven years, however the current system is a bit trickier. New Zealand had World Trade Organisation quotas for butter and cheese, but exporters couldn’t make use of them as the “in-tariff rates” were so high it was not economic to make use of them.

For example, butter has a 46,000 tonne annual quota, but the tariff rate was 38 percent.

Cheese break through
Under the new deal, of that quota, 36,000 tonnes will have a 5 percent tariff over seven years — once fully in force that is a $258 million benefit each year.

There has been a stop on New Zealand cheese exports to the EU for the last five years, for the same reason.

But under the FTA there will be immediate access through a tariff-free, annual quota of 31,000 tonnes — worth about $187 million each year to the local industry.

Another particular element of the deal is “geographical indications”; names of products that come with a strong connection to a specific area and ones the EU wants protected from use by anyone outside of that region.

For the cheese makers and the cheese lovers — New Zealand will be able to keep using the names gouda, mozzarella, haloumi, brie and camembert.

Feta, beloved to Greece, will be off the table though and producers here will have to find another name in nine years’ time.

Cheese makers will be able to keep using the name “gruyere”, as long as they had been doing so five years before the deal comes into effect; the same with “parmesan”.

Medicines carve out
There has been a carve out for New Zealand medicines and Pharmac, as patent requirements sought by the EU would have made medicines here more expensive by hundreds of millions of dollars a year — New Zealand refused and that is not part of the deal, the only country in the OECD to have that exemption.

Ardern described the deal as “high quality, inclusive and ambitious”, containing “ground-breaking commitments on environment, labour rights and gender equality as foundational parts of a trade and sustainable development chapter”.

“I am pleased that this FTA also includes a dedicated chapter on Māori Trade and Economic Cooperation,” she said.

While Ardern was drumming up support with European leaders at the NATO Summit in Madrid, Trade Minister Damien O’Connor spent the past week in Brussels nailing down the final details.

He said the deal provided “access for products that were previously locked out in the historically difficult to access European market”.

“This agreement delivers on what has been a long-standing objective of successive New Zealand governments — an FTA with the European Union, which will help accelerate New Zealand’s economic recovery at a time of global disruption,” O’Connor said.

‘Solid’ trade agreement
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was a “modern and solid” trade agreement.

“With this agreement, we should be able to increase trade between the two of us by 30 percent — that’s a big step”, she said at the media briefing with Ardern.

“Our farmers on both sides will benefit and they will benefit way beyond tariff cuts because we will work together on sustainable food systems.”

The EU is New Zealand’s third largest trading partner.

On the EU side, she said it meant European investment could grow by about 80 percent, a large number of food products geographical indications have been protected, and nearly all tariffs on exports to New Zealand have been eliminated.

It is a different kind of agreement, covering modern digital rules, and “several firsts”, said von der Leyen, for example, “sanctionable commitments” to the Paris Climate Agreement.

“This is the very first time that we take such commitments in a trade deal… and it contains, again, for the first time provisions on fossil fuels,” she said.

“And we show the same ambition on core international labor standards and on gender equality, to advance women’s economic empowerment.

“So this agreement will bring major benefits to our economies, but also to our societies.”

New Zealand and the EU have also signed an agreement for closer co-operation between law enforcement agencies, allowing greater information sharing and collaboration to help disrupt and respond to transnational organised crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, child sexual exploitation, cybercrime, violent extremism, and terrorism.

‘Deeply disappointed’ – Meat Industry Association
Red meat exporters are “extremely disappointed and concerned” with what they describe as a “poor quality” deal struck with the European Union, representing a “missed opportunity” for farmers.

The Meat Industry Association said the deal agreed will see only a “small quota” for New Zealand beef into the EU — 10,000 tonnes into a market that consumes 6.5 million tonnes of beef annually — “far less than the red meat sector’s expectations”, and one that continues to put them at disadvantage in a large market.

“We are extremely disappointed that this agreement does not deliver commercially meaningful access for our exporters, in particular for beef,” said chief executive Sirma Karapeeva of the Industry Association.

“We have been clear from the outset that what we need from an EU-NZ Free Trade Agreement is market access that allows for future growth and opportunity.

“Unfortunately, this outcome maintains small quotas that will continue to constrain our companies’ ability to export to the EU,” she said. “This agreement is not consistent with our expectations and the promise for an ambitious, high quality trade deal.”

Diversification was even more important with the increasing volatility in global markets and a high quality deal was “critical” to helping exporters broaden their access to other markets, said Karapeeva.

“This is a missed opportunity for farmers, exporters and New Zealanders,” she said.

“It will mean our sector will not be able to capture the maximum value for our products, depriving the New Zealand economy of much-needed export revenue at a time when the country is relying on the primary sector to deliver when it matters most.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Including the small countries

As for most of the second half of 2021, the small principalities and territories (and former territories) of the European colonial powers show up highly in these charts of covid casualty countries. One of the great untold stories of Covid19 has been the impact of SARS-Cov2 (and the generally affluent travellers who carried it) upon these often fragile polities. Our political obsession with ourselves, the countries most like ourselves, and the very populous countries of the world, has made this tragedy – especially in the Caribbean Islands – all the more tragic due to our lack of acknowledgement of them. (We will next encounter a number of these depleted countries in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, this year.)

We note that some other little countries (and quite big countries too) don’t make these charts, due to underreporting. One really big country that has fallen under the radar is Pakistan, with an estimated 800,000 covid deaths (ourworldindata; Economist estimates), nearly thirty times its reported toll.

It is important to note that estimates – such as the one above for Pakistan – are ‘excess deaths’ arising from all aspects of the pandemic, including people who died as a result of the social, economic and epidemiological effects of the anti-covid restrictions.

These excess deaths can be labelled as deaths FROM covid. The government-reported covid mortality statistics measure people who died WITH covid. The data for people dying with covid is commonly used as a proxy for people dying OF covid. (Some people dying with covid – and increasingly so during the highly infectious but relatively mild Omicron variant – are people who would have died anyway.)

Only countries with more than 400,000 people

An important feature of the latest death statistics is the return of South America, a region in which much of the immunisation immunity of 2021 will have waned substantially.

Otherwise, Eastern Europe’s substantially unnoticed tragedy continues; including the covid tragedy in Russia (estimated 1.1 million deaths from Covid19) and Ukraine (estimated 200,000 deaths in a country of 40 million people).

Of particular interest to the New Zealand establishment and New Zealand media – in our western liberal democracy (albeit, like others, an increasingly frayed democracy) – is the covid experience of other liberal democracies our size or bigger. A number of these countries appear on this second pair of charts, including Australia and Canada. Indeed, most western liberal democracies appear on one or both of these charts. (Indeed, I think that New Zealand and Ireland are the only such countries not to feature.)

The last chart, which sequences countries by cases, includes most of West Europe’s social democracies. (Iceland is too small for this chart, but is on the very first chart, above.) By and large these data are a result of high rapid-antigen testing revealing that just about everyone has been exposed to covid; though few who were not already sick have become sick from Omicron. The two most prominent of these countries – Denmark and Israel – are both massively vaccinated, and, as a result, have hospitals that are underwhelmed by covid. (Facemasks have achieved nothing; vaccinations have been critical.) Denmark is abandoning all restrictions – including mask-wearing – while reported case numbers are at their peak.

My sense is that most of these countries are currently experiencing their final significant outbreak of Covid19.

The two countries which are on the ‘deaths chart’ but not on the ‘cases chart’ are United States and Canada. These two countries are particularly notable in that their high death numbers are clearly much more than a statistical artefact. The very cold winter may be a factor. So will lower vaccination rates in the United States. So will be the high continued numbers of Delta cases in the US – including my brother-in-law who got very sick from Delta in January. (New Zealand still has Delta cases, but most of those sufferers will be under the belief that they have the less-severe Omicron; Delta was ‘so last year’!)

Re Canada, I have this comment from my contact in Winnipeg, after having shovelled a metre of snow from her back yard: “Our new [Manitoba] Premier Stefanson has decided ‘the government can’t protect everyone’ so she has discontinued rapid testing for the majority of ill citizens and says that ‘if you’re sick you probably have covid, so stay home’. Therefore, there are no actual counts of active cases. Some news reports earlier this month estimated (based on modelling) the active cases at ‘over 40% of the population of the province’, but we have no way of knowing.”

What will happen in New Zealand is highly uncertain; we can say the same for Western Australia. One possibility is that New Zealand will get a ‘perfect storm’ of covid in the winter months – June to August – when our lack of immunity due to natural exposure (to covid and to previously endemic ‘cold’ coronaviruses) could become apparent. (We had an RSV ‘cold’ epidemic last winter, and have never been told the toll of that.) If we pay attention to last November’s deadly second Delta outbreak in Europe – and, seemingly, nobody does pay attention to that any more – we see that the driving force was waning immunity from both natural exposures and vaccinations. It was that late Delta outbreak that brought to our attention the need to boost our erstwhile high ‘full’ vaccination status.

Fortunately, if the perfect storm scenario does take place, it will most likely be the less severe Omicron variant. Nevertheless, we can expect Covid19 death rates comparable to those Canada is facing at present.

***

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Radio New Zealand (Checkpoint) ran stories last week about New Zealanders aged over 65 stranded in Australia who are at risk of having their pensions (‘New Zealand Superannuation’)stopped, and then having to repay the funds they received while in Australia.

There is a simple solution to the problem – to just keep paying stranded pensioners their pensions, and to withdraw any threats to require repayment when they eventually return to Aotearoa. The problem is compounded by the rigidity – and general unavailability – of Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister of Social Development who oversees the ‘benefit system’. While it is true that she appears to be perhaps the least competent of government ministers (few say it, but many think it), it also is apparent that she and certain other ministers – most notably Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi and Senior Citizens Minister Ayesha Verrall – are being closely micromanaged by their seniors. On Friday’s (17 Sep) Covid19 press conference, I waited for Minister of Finance – one of the senior ministerial minders of Sepuloni, Verrall, and Faafoi – to put the matter straight, and assure stranded pensioners that common sense would prevail. But he said nothing.

The key RNZ stories are these:

• 15 Sep: Pensioners stuck in Australia ask for ‘Jacinda’s kindness’
• 16 Sep: Assoc Health Minister on Covid-19 cases, pensioners in AUS (interview with Ayesha Verrall)
• 16 Sep: ‘Devastated’ woman who could not return from Australia faces pension cut

Before discussing the general issue, and how the government can easily stop this issue – and others – from festering, I should note the phenomenon of the Radio New Zealand trolls. Some RNZ programmes invite – or attract – more listener feedback than others. Checkpoint is one of the more prominent programmes in this regard. Some of the feedback, which is mentioned throughout the programme along with a brief slot just before the 6pm news, can only be called ‘trolling’; this term derives from the social media practice of posting or sending cruel messages. The RNZ trolls tends to argue along the lines of: ‘you knew the rules, you took the risk’, with maybe the addition of ‘I could have gone to Australia when you did, but chose to stay on my [trolling] couch instead’. Like younger social media trolls, these mainly older trolls are conspicuously unsympathetic to others (in a sadly self-centred way), they lack any real sense of empathy for the myriad sets of circumstances that other people face, and tend to take pleasure from the misfortune of others. Sadly, again, I believe that the present government sees such trolls as an important part of its voter base; the optics of this government – as shown through the media appearances of ministers such as Sepuloni, Faafoi, and Verrall – are that the government itself lacks sympathy and empathy.

(A big lacuna in economic theory is in its inability to address the reality that some people’s utility – pleasure – arises specifically from the disutility – pain – caused to others. Not only do we seen this generally in the phenomena of trolling and most pornography, we also see it in the way that too many people see ‘houses’ as financial levers that make themselves richer while necessarily making others poorer. Land hoarders should also be understood as trolls.)

The Rules in this Case

The specific New Zealand Superannuation problem arises in part because most superannuitants see their payments, broadly, as a ‘return on investment’, whereas the government sees New Zealand Superannuation as a social welfare benefit. Both perceptions are somewhat muddled.

Senior citizens only ‘worked for their pension’ in a collective sense; thus New Zealand Superannuation can be seen as a reward for forms of contribution other than through businesses and through paid employment. One important contribution is that of ‘failure’, in the important sense that the success of some – in businesses or otherwise – can only have meaning when contextualised against the non-success of others. A gold medallist at the Olympic Games can only succeed, as a gold medallist, because of the participation of the other competitors who ‘failed’ to win. Thus, New Zealand Superannuation works as a reward ‘without judgement’ of what a person’s contribution may or may not have been.

The government sees New Zealand Superannuation as a cash benefit that – as they also see other benefits – must be wrapped around with a set of rules. Generally, governments would like to see even more (or tighter) rules attached to New Zealand Superannuation, but are afraid to act in a way that ensures the optics of New Zealand Superannuation will make it look even more like a welfare benefit and even less like a return on investment. (This is why it is the ‘oldies’ are the group most impassioned to keep New Zealand Superannuation as it is, even though most proposed tightenings of the rules would only adversely affect ‘youngies’. The ‘oldies’ are a substantial block of voters, who, for the most part, cling tightly to the view that superannuation is quite distinctly different from other benefits.)

There are a number of completely unnecessary rules around New Zealand Superannuation that relate to overseas travel. These rules make sense from a government perspective – because governments like beneficiaries to be fettered by rules (in part because they believe that many of their electors are beneficiary-unsympathetic trolls), and because governments see superannuation as a benefit. But they make no sense from a ‘return on investment’ viewpoint.

Further, receipt of the universal pension (ie New Zealand Superannuation) enables seniors to continue with – even to extend – their contributions to New Zealand. Many do this by staying in paid work or self-employment or continuing to run businesses; they understand that they will not be penalised by having their pensions withdrawn or abated. Other seniors contribute through invaluable contributions to the voluntary sector. Many make their ongoing contributions as grandparents, which in many cases is a surrogate parent role. Further, with the globalised world that we became accustomed to in the 1990s and the 2000s (and to a lesser extent in the post-GFC 2010s), grandparents may be required just about anywhere in the world; it’s pretty much a matter of chance whether a given senior person residing ‘permanently’ in Hamilton has grandchildren in Invercargill, Rockhampton, or Saskatoon.

So, the rule that constrains pensioners from international travel is a rule that need not be there. Such a rule serves no useful purpose.

Nevertheless, given that the rule is there, what should the New Zealand government do for people caught out by the rule? The obvious answer is to suspend the rule for people caught out by pandemic restrictions, health emergencies, flight cancellations etc. There would be much political kudos arising from such application of common sense, and almost no political downside; the issue would simply drop-off the news cycle.

But no, the government knows better. Instead, they have promised to arrange a relief flight from Sydney; and they offer stranded pensioners the chance of a place in the MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) lottery. Not only is all this very uncertain and unnecessarily stressful – indeed it may not be easy to arrange interstate travel from, say, Launceston, and pre-flight covid testing requirements are not always easy to fulfil – it misses the point that the best solution for stranded grandparents may not be to bring them home at all. If they are helping their grandchildren and adult children in places like Oamaru or Bateman’s Bay or Niagara Falls, it may be better that they are supported to stay there and continue making those contributions. And if such seniors do a few scenic trips in Australia or elsewhere, it should neither be the concern of the government nor the trolls. After all, many New Zealanders made many sacrifices in their lives so that they could retire and then go on a ‘trip of a lifetime’. Many of our ‘baby boomers’ have now had that prospect snatched away from them. Yes, they may be able to do scenic trips within New Zealand in 2022; but it’s not for the government or the trolls to control where superannuitants go to on their retirement travels. It makes no sense to say they can stay in Caroline Bay, but not the Sunshine Coast.

Was the present hiatus foreseeable?

The present rule has an out-clause. Superannuation payments may be continued if affected persons apply on the grounds that their new situation was ‘unforeseeable’ (refer to the Ayesha Verrall interview above). Now the trolls and the government say that, despite opening up green flights across the Tasman Sea with the express purpose of facilitating tourism (the main discussion point then was the economic need to host Australian tourists here), it was fully foreseeable that trans-Tasman tourists might be stranded on the wrong side of the ditch for many months or even for years.

I would argue that this was not foreseeable, given both the promotion of ‘the bubble’ and the seeming resolution of the covid crisis. There had been no ‘Level 4 lockdowns’ since April 2020. My view that the present strandings were indeed unforeseeable is confirmed by Prime Minister Ardern’s repeated claims that “Delta changed everything”, and that the much stricter level of restrictions from August 2021 was only deemed necessary as a result of a ‘Delta strike’ that she herself (and her officials) had not foreseen. (Indeed I myself am booked to visit my daughter and grandchildren in Australia this December; in early June I could not have foreseen the present crisis on both sides of the Tasman Sea to the extent of choosing not to arrange this trip. I now know my chance of being able to travel is close to nil, and I know that – even if my flights are not cancelled – I could not contemplate going in December.)

The fact that Jacinda Ardern makes such stock of her government’s inability to foresee ‘Delta’ surely means that other less-briefed people could also not be expected to foresee the predicament now faced by stranded superannuitants. The government’s inability to foresee the present situation would surely constitute legal grounds for such stranded people to claim the continuance of their pensions on the basis that – within the present rules –the circumstances they now face were ‘unforeseeable’.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The first chart shows the three largest western countries: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. The solid line plots represent quarterly average rates of excess death. It is clear that the United Kingdom copped Covid19 very early and very hard. The mid-June peak represents the period from mid-March to mid-June. It is important, however, to acknowledge the rapid fall in British deaths, after that peak. The United States had a much lower peak, and, for that same period, Germany hardly registers. The main issue here was the different abilities to protect the population aged over 80 from the ravages of the pandemic.

For Europe’s second wave, which represented the United States’ third wave, Germany was nearly as badly affected as United Kingdom; and slightly earlier, reflecting the continental European event that was most likely caused by late-summer tourism from the United States. (The later second peak in the United Kingdom reflects the Christmas New Year holidays; likewise, the United States whose peak was slightly earlier due to thanksgiving.)

The impact of the Delta variant barely shows on this chart, though we should note that Delta became predominant in the United Kingdom by 1 June (75% of cases), and by 1 July (just over 50% of cases) for Germany and the United States. The United Kingdom has lower deaths than the others in the most recent mortality data, probably due to more vaccinations, and despite rather than because of Delta.

The filled dots represent overall excess deaths, commencing with 24 May 2020, based on an assumption that the pandemic (outside of China) started to register in the death statistics from around 24 February 2020. And the unfilled dots represent annual average excess deaths; the first unfilled blue dot represents average excess mortality in the United States from mid-January 2020 to mid-January 2021.

We see that annual pandemic excess mortality is easily highest in the United States, due to its prolonged period of high Covid19 infection and death.

While overall excess deaths remain higher in United Kingdom than Germany, we see that annual excess deaths are now lower in the United Kingdom than Germany. Indeed Germany’s 2021 Covid19 outbreak, which roughly coincides in time with India’s big outbreak, is considerably more fatal than Germany’s first wave a year earlier. Germany’s 2020 outbreak – as shown through available excess death data – is too soon to be indicative of Delta.

The second chart, of the same type, shows Sweden and New Zealand. It uses the same scale as the previous chart. The timing of Sweden’s first peak is the same as that for the United Kingdom, though deaths in Sweden were fewer, more confined to the oldest age group. Covid19 had no direct impact on excess deaths in New Zealand. Sweden’s second peak, while lower than Germany’s, was identically timed. It would appear to be derivative from the wave of covid cases that first appeared in Europe’s prime tourist destinations around August 2020.

While Sweden continues to have more excess deaths than New Zealand over the whole pandemic period, this has not been true for annual excess deaths for the year to the end of June 2021. Projecting these data forward, it is quite plausible that Sweden’s overall pandemic-period mortality impact may prove to be less than New Zealand’s by December 2022.

Some of New Zealand’s excess deaths may be indirectly related to Covid19. We might also note that New Zealand has some unusual demographics which may be showing an overstatement of excess deaths. Sweden, on the other hand, a neutral country in World War Two, almost certainly shows a more conventional population pyramid, at least for people aged over 60.

New Zealand and Sweden represent opposite ends of the policy spectrum, when it comes to addressing Covid19. The ideal policy is probably to take the best of both country’s approaches. There is no doubt that Sweden’s initial strongly non-interventionist approach was a failure; in particular in its initial refusal to test for Covid19 except for people already hospitalised, and in its unwillingness to at least have a ‘circuit-breaker lockdown’. However Sweden paid much more attention to the need to have a well-immunised population, with immunisation coming from a mix of natural and artificial (ie vaccination) means. Sweden, with much higher vaccination rates than New Zealand, falls considerably short of United Kingdom vaccination levels.

The final chart shows quarterly excess mortality for people aged 65-to-74 (my age group) for six countries, including New Zealand. In principle this age group catches a mix of those who are older and hence more vulnerable and those who mix and mingle in the community. This is the classic ‘boomer’ age group. For the countries given, New Zealand has the third highest boomer excess mortality, after Spain and Austria. We note that Austria was affected by the same early summer third wave of Covid19 that affected Germany. And we note that Spain, while never coming close to its original peak mortality, has been largely living with Covid19 ever since then.

Two of the other three countries – Sweden and Denmark – have had consistently negative excess mortality for the boomer age group in 2021. Further, for this age group, excess mortality has been higher in New Zealand than in Sweden for the last twelve months. While New Zealand may have a faster growing age 65-74 cohort than Sweden, Sweden has a considerably lower base mortality for this age cohort (ie Sweden has a higher life expectancy than New Zealand). So, the two sources of possible bias in the data somewhat cancel out. Denmark, which had a bigger per capita caseload than Sweden in their second covid waves, has consistently lower excess mortality for 65-74 year-olds than either New Zealand or Sweden. And Denmark was more adversely affected by World War Two than was Sweden. Denmark’s demographic idiosyncrasies for births in the years 1940 to 1955 are likely to be few; or at least something of an average between Sweden’s and New Zealand’s.

Finally, the United Kingdom, the only one of the six countries whose shown Covid19 death rates could have been influenced by Delta, had the lowest incidence of boomer deaths in the three months to mid-July 2021. This most likely reflects the prolonged (albeit easing) England lockdown, and will probably not be sustained. (I am guessing that we will see quarterly excess deaths in England hover at around plus five percent for the remainder of the year.)

______________

Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

contact: keith at rankin dot nz

With health systems at a breaking point, hospitals at capacity and desperate family members searching for oxygen for loved ones, the devastating second wave of COVID-19 that has swept across South Asia has felt surreal. Official figures have indicated record-breaking daily coronavirus cases and deaths, not only in South Asia, but across the entire Asia-Pacific region during the latest surge. As devastating as it has been, the truth is we may never know how many people have died during the pandemic.

Underreporting of deaths is common across the Asia-Pacific region, with an estimated 60 per cent of deaths occurring without a death certificate issued or cause of death recorded. One reason for this is the lack of a coordinated civil registration system to accurately record all vital events. This issue is exacerbated in times of crisis, as many of the poor die as they lived: overlooked or without being officially counted. 

Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems record deaths and other key life events such as births and marriages. A complete approach to civil registration, tracking vital statistics and identity management relies on multiple arms of government and institutions working together to collect, verify and share data and statistics so they are reliable, timely and put to right use. Without such official data and records during catastrophes such as a pandemic, we see how fast people get left out of extended social protection, vaccination drives and emergency cash transfers. Conversely, it significantly limits the ability of the most vulnerable groups to claim this access and their rights.

The need for accurate data and reporting mechanisms is critical at all times and even more crucial during humanitarian situations, whether a natural disaster or health emergency, when urgent decisions are required and hard choices have to be made. Governments, health authorities and development partners need timely and complete data to know the extent of the issue. This data can guide evidence-based decisions on where resources should be deployed and assess which interventions have been most effective. The more complete, accurate and trustworthy the data, the better the decisions. Or at least, the leadership is unable to use the excuse of ”we did not know.”

In 2014, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) convened the first Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, during which the Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade (2015-2024) was declared. Governments later set a time frame for realizing their shared vision – that all people in the region will benefit from universal and responsive CRVS systems.

These are complex and vast systems that need both technological and human capabilities to do it correctly, and the political commitment to sustain the effort. Development partners, including ESCAP, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), continue to actively work with governments and institutions to support the development of national civil registration systems, vital statistics systems and identity management systems such as national population registers and national ID card schemes.

A challenge facing governments has been transitioning from a standalone paper-based registration system to an integrated and interoperable digital one. UNICEF has worked with countries in the region on the registration of newborns, digitalization of old records and creation of integrated digital birth registration systems. UNICEF is also working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to improve integration of health services and civil registration, allowing governments to provide uninterrupted civil registration services and respond faster to health priorities, especially during crises.

UNDP and UNICEF play leading roles in implementing the UN Legal Identity Agenda, which aims to support countries in building holistic, country-owned, sustainable civil registration, vital statistics and identity management systems. Recognizing the importance of protecting privacy and personal data, UNDP advises countries on the appropriate legal and governance framework and has been engaged in supporting civil registration, national ID cards and legal identity in countries.

It is clear from the report by ESCAP, Get Every One in the Picture: A snapshot of progress midway through the Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade, that many countries in our region have seen improvements. However, we need to do more to ensure that all countries are able to produce reliable official statistics. And to use this to also learn and look forward.

The human toll of the COVID-19 crisis has been immense with far reaching consequences for the most vulnerable families. To respond effectively to disasters and build back better, it is time we get everyone in the picture.

——————

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Kanni Wignaraja is the Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, UNDP

Omar Abdi is the Deputy Executive Director of Programmes, UNICEF

The leader of Fiji’s opposition National Federation Party has condemned the government’s strategy for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic as having “failed” and warns it will lead to “catastrophic results”.

“The government plan is complacent and short-sighted,” said Professor Biman Prasad in a statement tonight in response to the “ominous total” of 1000 covid-19 cases, 700 of them currently active.

“The government thinks that the situation Fiji is facing now will stay the same. It is not planning for things to get worse.

“Yet every lesson, from every country in the world, should tell it otherwise.”

Dr Prasad’s statement followed a claim by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama yesterday that Fiji could not afford a lockdown, reports The Fiji Times.

The prime minister has shut out calls for a complete 28-day lockdown of Viti Levu, saying that would spell “economic disaster and miserable isolation”.

“And I cannot allow that to happen. I will not,” Bainimarama said.

‘Disaster without a lockdown’
Dr Prasad said: “The opposite is true. There will be health, economic and social disaster without a lockdown.”

The government believed in its containment strategy, he said.

“It could not keep the virus in the Suva-Nausori containment area when the numbers were low. The virus still escaped to the West. It is now multiplying there.

“If the containment strategy is working, how did the virus come to Naitasiri?

“Now, with more than 700 cases, the government’s strategy is to hope and pray that nothing else will go wrong. But even in well-run operations, things go wrong. And then what will the government do?

Dr Prasad said Fiji was now putting lives at risk.

“Most importantly the lives and health of our frontliners – doctors, nurses, health workers – is at risk,”he said.

‘Limited trained staff’
“We have only a limited number of trained health staff who can manage this crisis. What happens when they are taken out of action?

“Right now my greatest fear is for these people, who have been working long hours, at ever greater risk to themselves, to execute a politicians’ plan they do not believe in. Why isn’t the government thinking of them and listening to them?

Every day we delay a lockdown, we simply prolong the crisis. We know the coronavirus kills people. We now know that for many who survive, their long-term health is permanently damaged.”

If the government continued to be stubborn and blind, “we will end up in a crisis we can no longer handle by ourselves”.

“Australia and New Zealand will be forced to intervene to save Fiji from a health crisis that has become too big for it.

“And how many lives would have been lost by then, all because of the stubbornness and arrogance of this government?”

A plea for food protest in Nadi
The Fiji Times reports that residents currently on lockdown in a few settlements located beside Nawaka, Nadi, had taken to the streets yesterday to voice their frustration and their need for basic food items and groceries.

Police officers from Nadi stepped in to control the situation and reminded people their act was unlawful.

Food rations from the government arrived a few hours after the protest was staged by the concerned residents.

Meanwhile, in a virtual conference on covid-19, heads of political parties have called on the government to pull its resources together to ensure people in lockdown areas are being assisted.

UN help sought amid covid, climate crises
RNZ Pacific reports that Fiji has called on the United Nations to use its convening power to align affordable, accessible and efficient development finance to help the government address the covid-19 crisis and climate emergency in the country.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Government’s wage subsidy scheme may have incorrectly paid out billions of dollars to ineligible businesses, and this is not being audited. That’s the conclusion to be taken from the Auditor General’s report, released yesterday. It is highly critical about the lack of checks and balances on a scheme that has doled out $14bn to businesses.

Although some reports see it as simply an issue of bureaucratic management, it has huge financial consequences for the state, and for public trust in government. Auditor General John Ryan says the money being paid out in what critics warned was “corporate welfare” has not actually been audited, and the public cannot have confidence that the Government is on top of this.

The issue goes back to the launch of the wage subsidy scheme, when questions were raised about whether the scheme would be vulnerable to fraud and corruption, and cost much more than was required to keep the economy going. In response to these concerns, the Government promised audits would take place. Since then, whenever critics have again questioned the probity of the scheme, politicians have deflected this by claiming that the necessary audits were being carried out. It turns out that audits have not taken place, and various assurances about the integrity of the system amount to political spin.

The report by the Auditor General says that what the Government and Ministry of Social Development (MSD) have claimed are “audits” are, in fact, loose phone calls to the recipients of the billions of dollars, checking they still believe they qualify. The report can be found here: Management of the Wage Subsidy Scheme.

Reporting on the Auditor General’s investigation, the Herald’s Hamish Rutherford highlights this report’s conclusion that MSD has been being entirely lax in its approach to checking businesses were actually entitled to receive the wage subsidy. Rutherford says the Auditor General “did not believe MSD had determined the scale of the problem”, and he criticised the department for labelling their low-level checks as “audits” when they were clearly nothing of the sort – see: Auditor-General says ‘audits’ of wage subsidy applicants simply sought verbal response.

According to the report, the so-called audits “mainly consisted of a verbal confirmation of information by employers”. Instead of vague telephone calls, the Auditor General recommends MSD actually “seek written confirmation from applicants of their compliance with the eligibility criteria and the obligations of receiving the subsidy”. Independent and documentary evidence is also recommended.

Public confidence and trust in the scheme is vulnerable, according to the report. Therefore, it is recommended that MSD toughen up their approach, including prosecuting businesses who incorrectly claimed the wage subsidy, and recovering this money.

In a follow-up article, Rutherford reveals: “The Ministry of Social Development is yet to begin any prosecutions for abuse of the $14 billion wage subsidy scheme, as it comes under fire for its work to establish the extent of misuse” – see: MSD under pressure to announce prosecutions under wage subsidy scheme amid criticism of ‘audits’ (paywalled). Rutherford says “The Auditor-General also urged MSD to prioritise its enforcement work, including prosecutions, not only to recover money, but also hold businesses to account ‘for potentially unlawful behaviour’.”

BusinessDesk journalist Brent Melville highlights the Auditor General’s lack of confidence that MSD is identifying cases where prosecution is required and money should be returned – see: Auditor-general: Covid wage scheme admin was lax (paywalled).

MSD comes under further fire in RNZ’s coverage, with a focus on the government department diverting staff from beneficiary fraud investigations to this issue, rather than employing additional staff – see: MSD told to further investigate wage subsidy scheme payments.

According to RNZ: “How those resources will be deployed over the coming months remains a concern, as efforts to recoup wage subsidies continue. The report stated it was likely between 40 and 50 MSD staff who usually worked on benefit fraud would be working on subsidy investigations for another 12 to 18 months.”

The report warns this may encourage corner-cutting: “We understand that the public organisations involved in administering the Scheme want to get back to their core services as quickly as possible. However, we are concerned that this will disincentivise continued efforts on post-payment integrity work.”

RNZ has also reported the views of inequality researcher Max Rashbrooke who highlights that MSD are inconsistent in taking a “softly-softly” approach with businesses when they are much tougher on beneficiaries: “If MSD thinks you might be a benefit fraudster they pursue you to the ends of the earth, and with this scheme, MSD just rang people up and said, you know, ‘did you do everything correctly?’ and if people did then that was it.”

Wage subsidy critic and tax researcher Michael Gousmett is cited as saying the Government should have insisted businesses also have their applications audited at the start of the process, saying “There was no requirement to demonstrate your financial ability to sustain yourself for a period.”

See also Thomas Coughlan’s article on the report: Auditor-General gives seal of approval to Covid-19 wage subsidy, with some suggestions. He highlights the Auditor General’s criticisms of the design of the wage subsidy scheme in regard to the criteria for eligibility, which includes the very vague requirement that businesses have first taken “active steps to reduce Covid-19’s impact on their business”. This is criticised as “open to interpretation”, making verification of legitimate applications difficult.

Previous questions about wage subsidy auditing

The Government and MSD have been claiming for a long time that “auditing” was taking place into recipients of the wage subsidy. For example, back in October MSD asserted that the audits were happening on an apparently large scale – see Nita Blake-Persen’s Wage subsidy questions raised after more than 10,000 audits.

It turns out that even this figure of 10,000 was relatively low, with Victoria University of Wellington tax professor Lisa Marriott telling RNZ, “I think that does need to be much higher, particularly because there are around eight per cent of those cases that are being referred onwards for some level of investigation.” Marriott is reported as saying “there are grounds to look for more” abuses of the scheme hoping “the same rigour will be applied to the companies as is applied to benefit fraud.”

In January, Christchurch philanthropist Grant Nelson warned of the lack of auditing taking place, and called for much tougher measures to ensure the subsidy payments had only been given to businesses truly in need – see Nita Blake-Persen’s Estimated $5b in wage subsidies paid out unnecessarily – philanthropist.

Drawing attention to the small number of applications being checked, Nelson argued “any audits they do really are only reaching a very, very few of those who received the wage subsidy. And that is why I think everyone who receives the wage subsidy should be contacted. If they can prove that they are entitled to it well, they can retain it. Otherwise, they should be repaying it.”

Another critic of the scheme, Jilnaught Wong, an accounting professor at the University of Auckland, suggests that rigorous auditing of payments is required because large private companies make use of “opportunistic accounting gymnastics” like “delaying revenue recognition” so that they would qualify for Covid payments while generally making large profits overall in 2020 – see Kate MacNamara’s Was the $14b wage subsidy well-spent? (paywalled).

Finally, the Auditor Generally has recommended a bigger review of the successes and failures of the wage subsidy scheme, and for a must-read view on this topic, see Bernard Hickey’s article from March: Where did the wage subsidy money really go?. The gist of the piece is that the wage subsidy was successful in its purpose, but also a tragedy in the wealth inequality that it has caused, and he raises questions about whether alternatives to employee subsidies could be used.

Cook Island businesses holding out for much needed tourists have now got a reprieve with a travel bubble with New Zealand less than two weeks away.

It will start on May 17, with Air New Zealand offering flights from May 18.

During yesterday’s announcement, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said there had been enormous sacrifices made to keep covid-19 out and communities safe.

“Our economy has been devastated, today we start our journey of recovery. Today, we get back into business and today, we start to rebuild,” he said.

Cook Islands Tourism Industry Council president Liana Scott said the bubble announcement was a relief as the wait had been dire for many businesses and financial support from the government due to run out next month.

“Some of them have mentioned to me, if it takes longer than May, they don’t think they can hang in any longer,” she said.

“We have been lucky enough to have the government support through a wage subsidy and, without that, business would not have been able to continue.”

Businesses begin preparations
Scott said businesses had already begun to prepare for overseas guests.

“Some properties have been in hibernation, so they have been closed completely and I’ve already seen on Facebook they’ve been having staff doing some rotational shifts, getting into the rooms, servicing aircons and those sorts of things,” she said.

She said some hotels have even been making their own jam while they waited for shipments of individual breakfast spreads to come in for guests

But she said some business had lost workers to New Zealand as the wage subsidy was only enough to survive on let alone pay the mortgage and other bills.

When the one way bubble was announced in January, 304 Cook Island residents left either for a short term stay or permanently.

“A lot of that young working population has moved to New Zealand to do some seasonal and permanent roles and I think filling those roles will be quite difficult,” she said.

Three flights a week
Once the bubble is up and running Air New Zealand will fly to the Cook Islands two or three times a week.

The airline expects to step that up to daily from July in time for the school holidays.

However, National Party leader Judith Collins said the government had not been moving fast enough to reconnect with other Pacific countries.

“The fact is these countries have almost no other income other than remittances, it is simply deplorable that the government has not moved faster on this.

“It shouldn’t be hard when there’s no cases in these other countries,” she said.

In the past, Samoa’s Prime Minster has been reluctant to open up the borders following the measles outbreak and Tonga’s Prime Minister has said a vaccination programme needs to be done first.

Nuie’s Premier Dalton Tagelagi is waiting to see how successful the Cook Islands bubble is before lobbying for one of its own.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it makes the most sense for realm countries to be the next countries in line for a bubble, but the decision is “in the hands of those countries.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The world is emerging from the biggest social and economic shock in living memory, but it will be a long time before the deep scars of the COVID-19 pandemic on human well-being fully heal.

In the Asia-Pacific region, where 60 per cent of the world lives, the pandemic revealed chronic development fault lines through its excessively harmful impact on the most vulnerable. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) estimates that 89 million more people in the region have been pushed back into extreme poverty at the $1.90 per day threshold, erasing years of development gains. The economic and educational shutdowns are likely to have severely harmed human capital formation and productivity, exacerbating poverty and inequality.

The pandemic has taught us that countries in the Asia-Pacific region can no longer put off protecting development gains from adverse shocks. We need to rebuild better towards a more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable future.

We know that the post-pandemic outlook remains highly uncertain. The 2021 Economic and Social Survey for Asia and the Pacific released today by ESCAP shows that regional economic recovery will be vulnerable to the continuing COVID-19 threats and a likely uneven vaccine rollout. Worse, there is a risk that economic recovery will be skewed towards the better off – a “K-shaped” recovery that further marginalizes poorer countries and the disadvantaged.

Building a resilient and inclusive future

The good news is that countries in Asia and the Pacific have taken bold policy measures to minimize the pandemic’s social and economic damage, including unprecedented fiscal and monetary support. Last year, developing countries in the region announced some $1.8 trillion, or nearly 7 per cent of their combined GDP, in COVID-19 related budgetary support. But investments in long-term economic resilience, inclusiveness, and green transformation have so far been limited.

The region’s vulnerability to shocks like COVID-19 was heightened by its lagging performance towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which would have enhanced resilience by reducing entrenched social, economic, and environmental deficits.

The evidence shows that we need a better understanding of the Asia-Pacific region’s complex risk landscape, and a comprehensive approach to building resilience in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Building resilience into policy frameworks and institutions will require aligning fiscal and monetary policies and structural reforms with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

ESCAP research maps out a “riskscape” of economic and non-economic shocks – financial crises, terms-of-trade shocks, natural disasters, and epidemics – and shows that all adverse shocks have cause severe damage to the region’s social, economic, and environmental well-being. It takes several years for investment and labour markets to return to their pre-crisis levels. Adverse shocks also leave behind long-term scars by widening inequality and increasing pollution. But bold policy choices can reduce setbacks. Governments must implement aggressive policy responses to protect hard-won development gains.

Notably, policy packages should align post-pandemic recovery with the 2030 Agenda. ESCAP recommends a policy package focusing on three areas – ensuring universal access to health care and social protection, closing the digital divide and strengthening climate and energy actions. Estimates show that such an approach could reduce the number of poor people in the region by almost 180 million and cut carbon emissions by about 30 per cent in the long run.

Resilience is largely affordable

Building resilience does not add too much financial burden to the region if such investments are accompanied by bold policy actions, such as ending fuel subsidies and introducing a carbon tax. A range of policy options can meet immediate and medium-term financing needs with great potential for Asia-Pacific countries to leverage these options.

However, it is important to note that several countries will need to engage closely with international development partners and the private sector. Least developed countries with significant “resilience gaps” will also require international assistance. Developed countries that fulfil their Overseas Development Aid (ODA) and climate finance commitments will go a long way in scaling up long-term investments and addressing these countries’ vulnerability to shocks.

COVID-19 has been a trauma like no other. Yet, it offers a unique opportunity for governments and other stakeholders to chart a new path to rebuilding. Whilst being forced to adjust, the Asia-Pacific region has seen fundamental transformations in lives, workplaces and habits. It is high time that the region takes its lessons from this pandemic and commits to a foundation that ensures a solid ability to withstand future jolts to the system without its people, and the planet, having to again pay a high price.

——————

Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP)

New Zealand expects to open a two-way travel bubble with the Cook Islands in May and is planning a vaccination campaign there.

The leaders of both nations met in Auckland today, with New Zealand confirming $20 million in additional support for the country this financial year.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown is the first international leader to be officially welcomed into New Zealand since the pandemic began.

Speaking to media after the meeting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the two discussed the road map for quarantine-free travel.

She said the vaccination campaign – also planned to begin in May – will pave the way.

“There has been significant work with preparedness and we are currently working in earnest towards a May commencement. The Director-General of Health has also advised that beginning vaccination will add to the safe opening of quarantine-free travel.”

Brown has said the Cook Islands’ updated contact tracing app, which is compatible with the New Zealand Covid Tracer app, is also an essential step on the path to two-way quarantine-free travel.

$20m ‘sweetener’
In the meantime, New Zealand is offering the $20 million sweetener from a “recently reprioritised” Development Assistant budget.

A one-way travel bubble between Rarotonga and New Zealand has been in place since the end of January allowing quarantine-free travel from the Cook Islands to New Zealand.

At least 300 Cook Islanders have arrived in New Zealand to look for work since the one-way travel arrangement came into effect and residents are also travelling to New Zealand for medical treatments they can’t access at home.

There is pressure for officials to move faster on a two-way travel bubble, or risk losing a significant chunk of the Cook Islands workforce to New Zealand.

Brown told Ardern about the “significant issues” facing his covid-free, but also tourist-free, country.

“For a country that is totally reliant on tourism – up to 70 percent on GDP – this has had a significant impact on our economy, to the state it’s declined 20 percent in the time New Zealand’s economy has declined by 2.9 percent of its GDP,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The day after New Zealand’s first lockdown was announced, I expressed to a senior colleague my concern for those around the country whose livelihoods would suffer as a result.

She agreed, but was confident that the spirit of “we’re all in it together” accompanying these drastic public health interventions would allow the government to lead the country towards a kinder, more equitable society.

“I think we might see a universal basic income,” she said hopefully.

As it turns out, the government had little appetite for progressive welfare or tax reform.

Instead, working with the Reserve Bank, they have propped up the economy through a combination of measures that have drastically inflated the price of houses.

This has most likely protected some jobs, but it has also made work increasingly irrelevant as capital gains completely outstrip wages. The wealthy have been made even wealthier, while many can no longer afford a roof over their heads.

In the past year, the average New Zealander effectively lost $54.59 for every hour they turned up to work if they did not own a home.

According to Stats NZ, the median worker earned $26.44 per hour before tax in 2020. That comes to $21.49 per hour after tax if working a 40 hour week.

Median house prices
Meanwhile, in the year to end of February 2021, the median nationwide house price increased from $640,000 to $780,000: a difference of $140,000. If houses took weekends, public holidays and four weeks’ leave off each year – which of course they do not but it makes the calculation simpler – that makes an hourly rate equivalent to $76.08 per hour. Tax-free.

This is a direct result of the decision to support the economy through a combination of quantitative easing, a reduced Official Cash Rate and wage subsidies, instead of meaningfully increasing spending on things we need such as infrastructure and welfare.

The government handed out money to the banks, effectively at no cost, allowing them to lend more at increasingly attractive rates.

The government also bought bonds at the same time, devaluing deposits and making it pointless to keep money in the bank. This combination of easy credit and disincentivised saving caused a large amount of money to start sloshing around looking for somewhere to go.

The traditional concern with this approach to stimulus is that it will inflate the price of goods and services, increasing the cost of living.

In New Zealand, though, we like to buy houses. A tax system that drastically favours property ownership, combined with a cultural sensibility that houses are a safe bet, has seen much of this newly available money pumped straight into the housing market.

A feature
This is a feature, not a bug.

It represents a new, more interventionist version of trickle-down economics for the 2020s. Decried in 2011 by Labour MP Damien O’Connor as “the rich pissing on the poor”, politicians from the right have long argued that if the wealthy feel wealthier, their increased spending will benefit those less well off.

Generally used to advocate for reduced taxes on the rich, these ‘trickle down’ arguments refuse to die, no matter how comprehensively and repeatedly they are discredited.

This revival of trickle-down economics is a little different, as it is based on direct stimulus rather than a reduction in tax, but the effective mechanism is the same.

House price inflation is desirable, we are told, because homeowners feeling the resulting “wealth effect” will spend more on the goods and services provided by other New Zealanders. The win-win logic of this argument hides the fact that, fundamentally, someone is paying a heavy price.

Another way to think about it is that the government has effectively paid for covid-19 by levying a special tax on anyone who wants to live in New Zealand, but did not happen to own property during the summer of 2020/21, and handing that money to homeowners.

Paying the price
Many will pay this price throughout their lives. Some will be consigned to renting forever, handing over ever-increasing portions of their incomes to landlords seeking increased yield from their value-inflated properties.

Too many won’t even be able to do that, and sleeping on the street or in emergency accommodation. The relatively lucky few who do manage to buy a home will have mortgages hundreds of thousands of dollars larger than they otherwise would, spreading the cost of covid across their entire lifetimes.

Even as the beneficiaries of this covid levy, most homeowners are unable to simply stop working and enjoy this newfound wealth.

They may feel that they cannot realise their capital gain because it is tied up in their family home. What this windfall does provide, however, is choice: the option to release some of their newfound capital by downsizing into somewhere cheaper, or to stay put, taking advantage of the extra equity to fund lifestyle improvements like a new boat, a bach or a remodelled kitchen.

Unprecedented demand for watercraft this summer suggests that many are doing exactly this.

It can be tempting to view this growing inequity as just another “baby boomers vs millennials” issue. Certainly, it does represent a massive transfer of wealth from generally younger New Zealanders who do not currently own homes, to the largely older folk who were able to buy homes cheaply in the past.

This disparity is reflected in Westpac’s latest consumer confidence figures, which show that younger New Zealanders are far more likely to be worried about their financial situation compared with older cohorts.

Patronising advice about avoiding avocados and food delivery services to save for a home entirely misses this point. Nonetheless, it is important to note that many older New Zealanders also live in poverty while subject to similarly individualising narratives of self-control.

Social divide
Perhaps the more important question is how this rapidly accumulating wealth will be deployed to further entrench a growing social divide.

Parents with equity to spare are increasingly using it to help their children “get on the property ladder”. On an individual basis this is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

At a larger scale, though, the competitive advantage conferred by having generous, wealthy parents makes it even harder for those who do not have such privilege to obtain a home. Many are being left behind as a new landed gentry takes shape.

These political-economic arrangements favouring existing wealth over hard work have been a long time in the making, beginning well before most of the current crop of politicians arrived in parliament.

It is notable, though, that a government that promised to address the “housing crisis” has actively and knowingly pursued policies that have produced an unprecedented upward step-change in the market.

Perhaps most concerning is that the Prime Minister has expressed her intent that house price inflation should continue, just at a more “moderate” rate, because that’s what “people expect”.

It is exactly these expectations that are the problem: these issues will not be resolved while houses remain a speculative investment vehicle, rather than a home.

‘Tipping the balance’
Tuesday’s announcement of measures to “tip the balance” towards home buyers, rather than investors, might begin to signal a growing recognition that housing is more than an investment.

A substantial class of investors have certainly been made exceptionally wealthy by the covid-19 response, even as those who work for a living have seen their incomes stagnate.

But while this separation of ‘investors’ or ‘speculators’ from ‘homeowners’ might be politically convenient, it makes something of a false distinction.

Whether a house is owned as a home, or purely a source of income, any non-improvement appreciation in value comes at someone else’s expense.

Until New Zealand acknowledges this, little will change: whoever is in charge, and no matter how many new homes get built.

Covid-19 has shown that when politicians want to act, they certainly can. As many others have pointed out, this government promised “transformational change”. I’m not sure that taking money from those with the least, handing it to those with the most, is quite the kindness my colleague had in mind.

Dr Brendon Blue is a geographer in Te Kura Tātai Aro Whenua, the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. He mostly studies and teaches the politics of environmental science and restoration, but would have been better off owning a house instead. This article was first published on The Democracy Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

One year ago today, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared covid-19 a pandemic, the first caused by a coronavirus.

As we enter year two of the pandemic, let’s remind ourselves of some sobering statistics. So far, there have been more than 117.4 million confirmed cases of covid-19 around the world; more than 2.6 million people have died.

A total of 221 countries and territories have been affected. Some 12 of the 14 countries and territories reporting no cases are small Pacific or Atlantic islands.

Whether the race to end the pandemic will be a sprint or a marathon remains to be seen, as does the extent of the gap between rich and poor contestants. However, as vaccines roll out across the world, it seems we are collectively just out of the starting blocks.

Here are the challenges we face over the next 12 months if we are to ever begin to reduce covid-19 to a sporadic or endemic disease.

Vaccines are like walking on the Moon
Developing safe and effective vaccines in such a short time frame was a mission as ambitious, and with as many potential pitfalls, as walking on the Moon.

Miraculously, 12 months since a pandemic was declared, eight vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, have been approved by at least one country.

A ninth, Novavax, is very promising. So far, more than 312 million people have been vaccinated with at least one dose.

While most high-income countries will have vaccinated their populations by early 2022, 85 poor countries will have to wait until 2023.

This implies the world won’t be back to normal travel, trade and supply chains until 2024 unless rich countries take actions — such as waiving vaccine patents, diversifying production of vaccines and supporting vaccine delivery — to help poor countries catch up.

The vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in preventing symptomatic and severe covid-19. However, we need to continue to study the vaccines after being rolled out (conducting so-called post-implementation studies) in 2021 and beyond.

This is to determine how long protection lasts, whether we need booster doses, how well vaccines work in children and the impact of vaccines on viral transmission.

What should make us feel optimistic is that in countries that rolled out the vaccines early, such as the UK and Israel, there are signs the rate of new infections is in decline.

What are the potential barriers to overcome?
One of the most salutary lessons we have learnt in the pandemic’s first year is how dangerous it is to let covid-19 transmission go unchecked. The result is the emergence of more transmissible variants that escape our immune responses, high rates of excess mortality and a stalled economy.

Until we achieve high levels of population immunity via vaccination, in 2021 we must maintain individual and societal measures, such as masks, physical distancing, and hand hygiene; improve indoor ventilation; and strengthen outbreak responses — testing, contact tracing and isolation.

However, there are already signs of complacency and much misinformation to counter, especially for vaccine uptake. So we must continue to address both these barriers.

The outcomes of even momentary complacency are evident as global numbers of new cases once again increase after a steady two month decline. This recent uptick reflects surges in many European countries, such as Italy, and Latin American countries like Brazil and Cuba.

New infections in Papua New Guinea have also risen alarmingly in the past few weeks.

Some fundamental questions also remain unanswered. We don’t know how long either natural or vaccine-induced immunity will last. However, encouraging news from the US reveals 92-98 percent of covid-19 survivors had adequate immune protection six to eight months after infection.

In 2021, we will continue to learn more about how long natural and vaccine-induced immunity lasts.

New variants may be the greatest threat
The longer the coronavirus circulates widely, the higher the risk of more variants of concern emerging. We are aware of B.1.1.7 (the variant first detected in the UK), B.1.351 (South Africa), and P.1 (Brazil).

But other variants have been identified. These include B.1.427, which is now the dominant, more infectious, strain in California and one identified recently in New York, named B.1.526.

Variants may transmit more readily than the original Wuhan strain of the virus and may lead to more cases. Some variants may also be resistant to vaccines, as has already been demonstrated with the B.1.351 strain. We will continue to learn more about the impact of variants on disease and vaccines in 2021 and beyond.

A year from now
Given so many unknowns, how the world will be in March 2022 would be an educated guess. However, what is increasingly clear is there will be no “mission accomplished” moment. We are at a crossroads with two end games.

In the most likely scenario, rich countries will return to their new normal. Businesses and schools will reopen and internal travel will resume.

Travel corridors will be established between countries with low transmission and high vaccine coverage. This might be between Singapore and Taiwan, between Australia and Vietnam, and maybe between all four, and more countries.

In low- and middle-income countries, there may be a reduction in severe cases, freeing them to rehabilitate health services that have suffered in the past 12 months. These include maternal, newborn, and child health services, including reproductive health; tuberculosis, HIV and malaria programmes; and nutrition.

However, reviving these services will need rich countries to commit generous and sustained aid.

The second scenario, which sadly is unlikely to occur, is unprecedented global cooperation with a focus on science and solidarity to halt transmission everywhere.

This is a fragile moment in modern world history. But, in record time, we have developed effective tools to eventually control this pandemic. The path to a post-covid-19 future can perhaps now be characterised as a hurdle race but one that presents severe handicaps to the world’s poorest nations. As an international community, we have the capacity to make it a level playing field.

Dr Michael Toole is professor of international health of the Burnet Institute. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Dear all,

I had covid-19. I am now covid-free for 13 days now.

Not sure where I contracted it, but I gave all details for contact tracing to the papua New Guinea’s National Department of Health (NDOH) who are doing the best they can despite circumstances.

I was tested positive in Port Moresby and so cancelled all my programmes back home in Oro and isolated myself as advised by the NDOH.

It is no laughing matter. I don’t wish it upon anyone. I was fortunate that it was not as bad as for others. I am still not 100 percent well although I am medically cleared of covid now.

When I had it, it first felt like a mild flu but soon felt like malaria, typhoid and dengue all at once. I took only paracetamol for medication and vitamin supplements.

I drank gallons of moringa leaf boiled and took it upon myself to steam myself regularly. I ate lots of fruit and vegetables every morning despite not having an appetite and tried to do basic bodyweight exercises daily.

Sometimes it was too hard to do this even and I simply did stretches. A low grade fever was constant. Sometimes it broke at night other times I had to rely on paracetamol to bring it down. I was sick for about 3 full weeks.

Thanks to family and friends who kept in touch daily and sent their well wishes and especially their prayers. This helped me maintain a positive mindset.

#COVID19 confirmed cases and deaths reported by countries and areas in the @WHO Western Pacific Region over the past 24 hours.

For more info on #coronavirus cases in the Region, go to our dashboard: https://t.co/qQ2L14iMqi pic.twitter.com/7gKPTpvFAF

— World Health Organization Western Pacific (@WHOWPRO) March 4, 2021

Breathlessness and congestion
Towards the end of my experience with covid-19 I started to be breathless and experience congestion. That was worrying but thankfully it didn’t escalate. I found steaming helped immensely. I also drank lots of kulau daily.

For steaming simply boil water in a large pot and cover yourself with a blanket over the pot.

I also drank a lot of water with lemons and ginger throughout the day. I felt that helped but cannot say for certain as that’s just my personal assessment.

Now I have some difficulty breathing at times and am slowly getting back to my fitness level. I tire easily and sometimes have difficulty sleeping at night.

Covid affects each person in various ways. This is just how I was affected. Others have their own experiences.

Meanwhile, some people were hospitalised and in the ICU. I believe in this recent outbreak two have since died.

Yes, it is like a very bad flu, but it is exceptionally dangerous to the most vulnerable such as those with underlying conditions and those who have immune system disorders, our elders especially.

Be safe. Sanitise
Be safe. Practise safe distancing. Sanitise. Do not hug and touch everyone you meet. Protect our elders. Care for others. Wear a mask. Eat garden foods. Stay hydrated. Exercise regularly. Rest well.

If you feel you have the symptoms, get tested.

People, covid is real. I am especially convinced of this now after having had it and when hearing first hand accounts and observing that all nations treat it so seriously. I have friends overseas who have lost loved ones to covid in such short shocking moments. Their sad stories are real.

In today’s age of information, misinformation and disinformation, it is daunting to seek the truth I am sure we all agree. But I am guided by the fact that ALL nations, whatever ideologies they have, agree that covid is real. For once China, Russia, India and the Western nations led by the US are on the same page.

Because covid is so polarising to international trade and productivity, nations are doing everything to find solutions such as vaccines and possible cures.

I am one who questions everything and somewhat of a conspiracy theorist too.

But I doubt that even the most ardent evil powerful obscure world tyrant would be able to achieve this remarkable feat of convincing ALL governments to promote such a unipolar conspiracy.

Huge thanks to the St Johns ambulance team and NDOH team. We need to be mindful of our frontliners out there and support them.

Thank you, Papua New Guinea.

Gary Juffa is a Papua New Guinea politician and Member of the 10th Parliament of Papua New Guinea as Governor of Oro province. He founded the People’s Movement for Change party, of which he is the sole Member of Parliament. This commentary was first published on Gary Juffa’s Facebook page and is republished here with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz