Thousands have marched through major city streets and rallied in small towns across Aotearoa New Zealand as part of today’s “mega strike” of public workers.

More than 100,000 workers from several sectors walked off the job in increasingly bitter disputes over pay and conditions.

It was billed as possibly the country’s biggest labour action in four decades.

Strike action in Auckland’s Aotea Square.    Video: RNZ

Among those on strike were doctors, dentists, nurses, social workers and primary and secondary school teachers.

Several rallies were cancelled by severe weather in the South Island and lower North Island.

Many carried signs and chanted, cheered and danced as they made their way down.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was embarrassing that the government was labelling the action politically motivated.

“Of course this is political. Politics is about power and it’s about resources and it’s about who gets to make decisions that saturate and shape our daily lives,” she said.

There was a smaller, earlier rally in the morning in Henderson.

Tupe Tai from Western Springs College, who has been teaching for several decades, said the situation had become untenable.

“We’ve got really underpaid and overworked teachers, they need that support.”

She also said teachers needed an environment where they could work on the curriculum, have time to do it, but also have a life.

Kimberly Jackson and her daughter were at the rally on behalf of her husband, a senior doctor who had to be at the hospital working as part of lifesaving measures.

“For us it is personal, but it’s also about this country that I love, that I’ve grown up in, and I can see terrible things happening in this country and I feel really passionate about public health care,” she said.

Jackson said she had seen the system deteriorate over her lifetime.

Chloe Wilshaw-Sparkes, regional chair of the Waikato PPTA said teachers were on strike because the offers from the government were not good enough.

“They’ve been saying ‘get round the table, have a conversation,’ but a conversation goes two ways and I think they need to be reminded of that,” she said.

Principal of Hamilton East School, Pippa Wright, was at the rally with some of the school’s teachers.

She said she believed in the NZEI’s principles, and she wanted changes which would ensure schools had really good teachers in front of students.

Wright also said pay rates needed to rise.

“So they’re not treated like graduates, and we need better conditions for teachers, and nurses, and all the public sector,” she said.

About 1200 people marched through several city blocks, after leaving Laurie Hall Park.

As well as teachers, nurses and other union members there were students and patients showing support.

Sydney Heremaia of Whangārei had heart surgery a few weeks ago but said he was marching to show his concern about staffing levels and creeping privatisation.

Deserei Davis, a teacher at Whangārei Primary School, feared there would be no new teachers soon if pay and conditions were not improved.

“We’ve voted to strike because we feel that the government hasn’t been addressing our issues, and especially at bargaining,” she told RNZ.

“The government scrapped pay equity claims. And that was a shocking blow to women in general, but an absolute shock and a blow for us women in education. And it’s completely scrapped it.

“More importantly, we are standing up for our tamariki, who are really poorly resourced in schools, in terms of support and the requirements coming down on teachers on a daily basis, on a monthly basis.

“It’s burning out our teachers. We’re fighting for our support staff, our teacher aides, the most vulnerable of all our staff who don’t have job security.”

She said the ministry’s offer was “absolutely atrocious”.

“$1 extra an hour over a period of three years. Like let that sink in. 60 cents one year, maybe 25 cents the following and 15 cents the following year. How does that keep up with the rate of inflation?”

Northland emergency doctor Gary Payinda told RNZ it was “pretty important to support our essential public services”.

“We don’t like what’s been going on. Then the understaffing, the refusal to acknowledge the severity of the understaffing and then, of course, pay offers that are below the cost of living, which means . . .  pay cut. None of those things seem fair to the group of public workers that are working harder than ever under huge demand.”

Striking staff called in after power outage
A union organiser said striking staff returned to Nelson Hospital to care for patients after its backup generator failed in a power outage.

The top of the South Island lost power on Thursday as wild weather hit the country. It began to be restored from 9.30am.

PSA organiser Toby Beesley said the generators at the hospital started, but it’s understood they blew out an electrical board, which led to a 45-minute total power outage.

“The senior leadership at Nelson Hospital reached out to us under our pre-agreed crisis management protocol that we’ve been working on with them for the last three weeks for an event of this nature, and they asked for additional PSA member support, which we immediately agreed to to protect the community.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It is being billed as quite possibly New Zealand’s biggest labour action in more than 40 years.

It is the latest in a growing series of strikes and walkoffs this year, but the sheer size of it today means much of New Zealand will come to a halt.

Several public sector unions say the strike is going ahead in spite of wild weather across the country — though plans for some rallies may change due to conditions.

• READ MORE: RNZ’s live news blog

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The New Zealand Herald copped criticism for publishing a front-page attack ad targeting the National Party leader this week — but it was far from the first time ads like it have appeared in print.

Meanwhile, questions were asked about other coverage that looked like it might be taking sides as the official Aotearoa New Zealand election campaign period begins.

“You’ve got to survive in the media. You got to take the ads,” Newstalk ZB morning host Kerre Woodham told listeners last Monday, explaining the the controversial Council of Trade Union ad labelling the National Party leader Christopher Luxon “out of touch and too risky”.

“You’ve got to survive in the media. You got to take the ads,” Newstalk ZB morning host Kerre Woodham told listeners last Monday, explaining the the controversial Council of Trade Union ad labelling the National Party leader “out of touch and too risky”.

It was clearly an election advocacy ad — and it was identified as such in the Herald. But as soon as the ad came through the NZME ad department, the senior editors there must have known devoting the front page to it would become a news story.

The afternoon host at the Herald’s NZME stablemate NewstalkZB, Andrew Dickens, certainly thought so.

“I think this is news. This is why I’m talking about it on the radio. I’m not involved with this decision.  . . but I think they need to write about it and say how they actually determine who gets the ‘wraparound’,” he told his listeners.

Blue sticker ads
The Herald top brass wasn’t keen on that, but election ads on the front page aren’t entirely unprecedented.

A former Herald editor, Tim Murphy, pointed out the Weekend Herald has allowed the National Party to add detachable blue stickers late in previous campaigns.

And once papers opened the door to wraparound front-and-back page ads for retailers (who paid a pretty penny for them during the covid-19 crisis), it was only a matter of time before someone selling political messages rather than fridges took up the space as well.

The CTU ad was within the rules for political promotion by third parties. As long as they registered, they can spend the thick end of $400,000 on ads doing down political opponents if they want to.

Gordon Campbell on scoop.co.nz said that apart from the front-page spot, there was nothing really novel about an ad criticising a party leader who was actively campaigning as the embodiment of his party’s policies.

And while the CTU’s campaign also appeared on billboards and social media platforms the same day, it was its appearance on the front page of a paper obliged to cover the campaign fairly which raised eyebrows.

“This will probably backfire on the Herald,” Andrew Dicken told his listeners, at the same moment one texted in to say he had cancelled his subscription to the Herald because of it.

‘False’ ads not acceptable
Andrew Dickens told his listeners NZME radio stations had rules too — and could not accept ads that are “false, wrong, or lies or defamatory.”

Newstalk ZB found that out back in 2019, when it ran a political ad in which Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere said no suburb would escape Auckland Transport’s “crazy plan” to cut the speed limits on Auckland roads.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that claim was false and the campaign ad, which had run for two weeks, should be dropped.

NZME told the Authority it had presumed the client’s script and figures provided were correct.

“Our team has been reminded to be vigilant when accepting advocacy advertisements to avoid this from reoccurring,” NZME said.

In other words, they promised to do fact checks before cashing cheques from people peddling political propaganda at election time.

But at that time, the Weekend Herald had just published another controversial political ad all about Christopher Luxon.

The half page ad showed former Prime Minister John Key morphing into Christopher Luxon in the style of Dick Frizzell’s famous “From Mickey to tiki” illustration.

Luxon was not even a member of the National Party at that point, let alone a candidate, but the client for that ad turned out to be property tycoon Steven Brooks, who really wanted Luxon to be the next party leader.

His involvement should have been declared on the ad, which had the appearance of unauthorised party political advertising.

Ads they didn’t want

While that’s all history now, Newstalk ZB listeners on Monday were also phoning concerns about ads that the Herald wouldn’t print in the recent past.

They were part of a campaign from the lobby group Family First, which our three biggest newspaper publishers all declined to run.

Family First leader Bob McCoskrie has accused them of colluding to cancel the ad, which had the slogan: “What is a woman?” and the website address for a campaign declaring it was “time to push back” against gender self-identification.

MoCoskrie said the ad departments of each publisher initially accepted the ad but editors subsequently decided they weren’t fit to print.

But while the paper publishers exercised their right not to print the ads, they did go up on billboards in public.

Last month the Advertising Standards Authority complaints board upheld a complaint about them, ruling the ad was “misleading and not socially responsible,” but only because the identity of the advertiser — Family First — wasn’t sufficiently clear for an advocacy ad.

From today, September 10, until the day before the election we are in the official election period overseen by the Electoral Commission.

During this time special rules and a separate dedicated code of broadcasting practice apply to what are known as “election programmes”, defined as radio or TV advertisements by or for a party or candidate which encouraged voters to vote in particular ways or for particular parties or people.

Broadcasters and publishers will be paying extra attention to balance and fairness now, with the watchdogs running a fast-track process for complaints about seriously misleading claims and serious allegations.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

National says a series of attack ads targeting its leader Christopher Luxon funded by the Council of Trade Unions in the Aotearoa Election 2023 campaign is “disgraceful”.

The NZCTU launched its campaign targeting Luxon today, with billboards going up around the country and social media.

A full front-page wrap-around ad on The New Zealand Herald newspaper declared “Christopher Luxon: Out of touch. Too much risk” under the paper’s masthead, with the word “advertisement” in smaller font at the top of the ad.

The NZCTU’s logo and a link to a CTU-run website outoftouch.nz was at the bottom.

A second full-page ad ran overleaf on page 2, saying Luxon was “out of touch and focused on the wealthiest few”, and highlighting policies like tax cuts, scrapping fair pay agreements and fully funded prescriptions, and concluded with a bullet point saying Luxon “isn’t the right leader in a cost-of-living crisis”.

The National Party’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said the CTU, which has 27 unions affiliated, should be ashamed.

“The union movement is able to spend vast sums of money attacking the National Party and Christopher Luxon,” he said.

‘American-style hatchet job’
“They’re running audio-visual slots, televisual slots, they’ve got billboards in many major cities around New Zealand, this is a highly orchestrated, highly political, highly choreographed American-style hatchet job on Christopher Luxon.

“It’s disgraceful, they should be ashamed of themselves and it’s not what New Zealanders want in this election campaign.”

“Sadly with six weeks to go it’s become very clear that thanks to the Labour Party this is going to become the most negative election campaign in New Zealand history. Jacinda Ardern’s ‘be kind’ has become ‘be nasty’ under Chris Hipkins.”

Bishop would not commit to not attacking Labour, but said it would target differences of policy approach and targeting Labour’s record.

“Of course we are going to attack the Labour Party’s record, we’re going to make no bones about that . . . but the point of pointing those things out is to draw a contrast with National’s different approach and our positive plan for the future.

“We are going to run a strong and vigorous campaign but we are not going to engage in the kind of nasty, personal, petty, vindictive politics that the union movement and the Labour Party are going to engage in.”

‘Play the ball’
Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods made a similar commitment last week, saying the party would “play the ball, not the person — but we should be holding National and ACT to account for the ideas that they’re putting out there”.

Asked how Luxon was holding up under what Bishop described as “very personal” attacks, he laughed and said Luxon was “completely fine”.

“Look, he’s big enough and ugly enough to handle it, I just think it’s pretty pathetic and I think the New Zealand public deserve better than that.”

He said the CTU was “intimately” connected to the Labour Party.

“It’s in the name, it’s the Labour Party because they’re part of the Labour movement . . .  Craig Renney was Grant Robertson’s adviser and he’s now at the CTU, so they know exactly what they’re doing.”

‘Not nasty at all’ – CTU
Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff told RNZ the campaign was focused on National’s policies.

“He’s [Luxon] promising to take down fair pay agreements, put people on [90-day] trials, make savage cuts to public services, and all in all we see it as a very serious choice ahead of New Zealanders at this election — perhaps the most serious choice in over a generation,” Wagstaff said.

He denied that focusing on Luxon was unfair.

“It’s not nasty at all, it’s simply saying that Christopher Luxon is out of touch and he can’t be trusted.

“National is focused heavily on Christopher Luxon, launching him as the leader, the buck stops with him and he’s leading these policies so we need to draw attention to Christopher and what he’s saying.

“His instinct in the cost of living crisis is to take over $2 billion out of the climate fund and give an over $2 billion gift to landlords. That, to us, is an out-of-touch policy.”

He said Labour had not been involved in the ad campaign at all, and it was a completely independent intiative.

“This is the National Party’s paranoia, Labour are not even mentioned in the ads, they’re not part of this campaign … we’re not asking people to vote for Labour we’re simply saying that Christopher Luxon and his policies would present a major danger to working New Zealanders.”

He said National was just trying to divert attention “away from the fact that their leader intends to smash industry bargaining, put people on trial periods and generally undermine the interests of working people”.

“We’re just putting that out there . . . it’s important that people look behind the rhetoric and really look at their policies.”

He said the $400,000 National had suggested for total ad campaign cost was an incorrect figure.

“It’s wrong, as far as I know it’s incorrect — I actually don’t know the figure but we don’t have that kind of money to spend on campaigns.”

Union members were happy to have their funds spent on the campaign, he said.

“Absolutely, union members expect the CTU to advance their interests as working people. This is an incredibly important election for the interests of working people.

“We’re not going to sit on our hands while National takes an axe to basic entitlements of the New Zealand working people.”

In an earlier statement, Wagstaff said the ad campaign would be “evidence-based”.

“Christopher Luxon and National will take New Zealand backwards and working people will be the first to feel the pain,” the statement said.

‘Democracy in action’ – Hipkins
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the CTU had run campaign ads in every election he had been involved in, and he had been aware they would be doing so but had not seen the ads until they were published.

He said for National to be offended was “incredibly thin-skinned” given the Taxpayers Union lobbying group, which has typically advocated for right-leaning policies.

“I think the CTU are raising some legitimate concerns around the effects of the National Party’s policies,” Hipkins said.

He said National was “desperately trying to distract attention away from the fact that they’be been caught out with their numbers and their policies just not stacking up. They’re trying to create a diversion here.

“The National Party and their surrogates, including the Taxpayer’s Union, Groundswell, Hobson’s Pledge and so on, have been running attack ads against me and the Labour government since the day I took on the job.

“I haven’t called a press conference or issued a media statement every time they have done that.”

Hipkins presented some “random examples” of the attack ads to reporters.

‘Russian horses’
“This one here, I was particularly touched by this one, actually. This is myself and David Parker on what would appear to be some Russian horses. I actually think I look quite good on a horse, to be frank.

“We have a pretty nasty, despicable personal attack on Nanaia Mahuta, that was, I believe, The Taxpayer’s Union did that one.”

Another ad — published by the National Party — had a photoshopped image of Hipkins’ face on the side of a sticking plaster box.

Hipkins said he did not believe Labour’s own campaign was negative.

“I don’t believe that we are running a negative campaign. We are out there campaigning positively on the things that we’re putting before the electorate, but we are also checking the promises the National Party are making because they simply don’t stack up.

“If they want to be the government, they’re going to be subject to this sort of scrutiny day in and day out — we have been for the last six years.”

“I don’t think critiquing the potential effects of the National Party’s policy is something they should shy away from. That is democracy in action.”

Chris Bishop said National would condemn any third-party ads attacking Chris Hipkins.

‘Completely separate from editorial’ – NZ Herald
In a statement, a spokesperson from The New Zealand Herald said “expression of opinion through advocacy advertising is an essential and desirable part of a democratic society”.

“All advocacy ads must comply with the ASA Codes and Advocacy Principles, as well as our own Advertising Acceptability Policy. Publishing an advertisement does not indicate NZME’s endorsement of that product or message.

“It’s also important to note that advertising stands completely separately from editorial.”

Bishop said he did not have a problem with the Herald running the ad.

“I mean, newspapers have got to sell advertising, I’ve got no issue with the Herald running that ad and I’ve got no issue with other outlets taking advertising money.

“I’ve got an issue with the CTU running it and I think they should be reflecting on it. I think it will backfire, ultimately, on them, and I think New Zealanders will see through it.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz