Keith Rankin – One of our least-discussed discriminatory ‘isms’ is what I call ‘lookism’. Discrimination on the basis of a person’s or a group’s appearance, noting in particular features of ancestry, age, and culture. Discrimination based on how individuals and peoples look to other people.

Discrimination on the basis of the presence or absence of ‘beauty’

This form of discrimination falls most particularly on females. Commonly we too easily see the death of a ‘beautiful’ woman as the greatest of all human tragedies, while regarding the death of an ‘ugly’ woman as the least of all such tragedies. The perfect victim is a beautiful woman.

Early yesterday (10 Sep 2025) I watched Al Jazeera Live, to get information about the Israeli attack on Qatar which had taken place about four hours earlier. (Refer Maps: Israel has attacked six countries in the past 72 hours, Al Jazeera, 10 Sep 2015.) At about 5:35am NZ time, the news network crossed to a White House press briefing, expecting to hear for the first time the official US take on the event.

Karoline Leavitt: “Today I would like to address the tragedy that had not received nearly enough media attention; the brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska. Here are the facts that many outlets have shamefully and intentionally failed to report until the President drew attention to it. On August 22nd Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death on the rail system in Charlotte North Carolina by a savage career criminal. This is a public transportation system that many in the area use every single day to go to school and work. Iryna was on the train that night, travelling home from her job at a pizzeria, still in uniform from her shift. This beautiful innocent 23-year-old young woman was a Ukrainian refugee who had recently fled her country for a chance at a safer life and a promising new beginning here in the United States of America. But tragically, the public transportation system in a major American city was more dangerous than the active war zone that she left. … “

Eventual break-back: Cyril Vanier [Al Jazeera anchor] “We are listening in intently because we are expecting that there may be comments from the White House on Israel’s attack on Doha just a few hours ago.” After more than 10 minutes Karoline Leavitt, a beautiful blond woman, made her short White House response to the Israeli attack.

After a couple of questions, she said; “As I told you, the President was notified by the United States’ military that Israel was attacking Hamas …”. The language indicated that the President was notified by the United States’ military rather than by the Israeli authorities; and that the attack on Qatar was already underway when the President first heard of it. (Maybe the United States is a proxy of Israel, and not the other way around?)

Note that Leavitt’s tale of Iryna Zarutska suggests, if taken at face value, that the “active war zone” in Ukraine is relatively safe?!

Back to my story

I had heard about the Iryna Zarutska case earlier this week (refer BBC: Suspect in fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee charged with federal crime), so this tragic story was not as underplayed as the White House intimated. Violent crime is ubiquitous throughout the western world; much of it is senseless, committed by underclass perpetrators, many with mental illness. For many African and Native American communities, terrifying violence, including femicide, is an all too frequent fact of their lives and deaths. Pretty blond immigrant victims are the exception, not the rule.

Terror is also perpetrated by the western world’s ruling classes, and much of it is aimed at immigrants with black or brown skin.

Especially on Al Jazeera, because Palestine is on their patch and because they do not downplay the violence perpetrated by the Israeli Einsatzgruppen, we see many victims – especially mothers wearing culturally-traditional black clothing and head coverings. To western viewers, these victims look quite unattractive; they are all-to-easily dismissed as mothers-of-terrorists, mothers of future terrorists, and future mothers of future terrorists. These women look less like westerners than the Palestinian men do, making it particularly hard for some of us to identify with them as humans like us.

Lookism regards as the most tragic of victims the young, the blond, the blue-eyed, the fair-skinned, the slim (but not emaciated). Lookism favours long or plaited hair; uncovered heads. Lookism is racism, ageism, culturism, and individualism.

Stereotypes of bad people (and non-people) are ugly, and dark. A problematic piece of twentieth-century literature which perpetuates these stereotypes is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. These books became very popular with the ‘hippie’ generation, as well as with other generations which were into deeply problematic books such as Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand galvanised coteries of young men (and some young women, such as Liz Truss); her fans vary in age from 99 (eg Alan Greenspan) to 57 (eg Peter Thiel) to 19. Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, became the launching-pad for the 0.001 percenters and for people who aspire to the success-cocktail of concentrated-wealth, power-sex, and techno-utopia.

(Note How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis, 2016, by Adam Weiner; Weiner observes that 500,000 copies sold in the crisis year of 2009. And note the tech-focussed New Zealand school curriculum changes, New push for AI as Education Minister Erica Stanford announces curriculum changes RNZ 11 September 2025.)

The techno-supremacist 0.001 percenters seem to like three types of literature. Ultra-individualist rationalisations of ‘rationalism’ such as Atlas Shrugged and books recommended by the Mises Society, certain types of science fiction (see Do billionaires even understand the sci-fi they’re inspired by? The Listening Post Al Jazeera 7 September 2025), and mythic fantasies, such as Lord of the Rings.

Back to Lord of the Rings (noting that this was mentioned in the Listening Post story, and that Peter Thiel has read it “over ten times” as an adult). On reflection, it is drawn-out racist fantasia in which Middle Earth is a thinly veiled map of Europe. Mordor is the former caliphate, the Ottoman Empire. And Mordor’s maritime allies were from the coasts of North Africa, the Barbary Coast. The ugly (thereby evil!) Orcs were seemingly without women (though Peter Jackson made a joke about this in the second movie) and children; certainly, if present in the story, we would have wished for the death of them as the ugly mothers and future-mothers of ugly terrorists. There was however a big and ugly female spider Shelob; an embodiment of all tropes of wicked ugly women.

The beautiful people – which very much include blond and other fair-skinned women – draw on Celtic, Scandinavian and possibly Ukrainian identities (noting The Counteroffensive: How Ukraine uses ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to frame its battle for survival Mariana Lastovyria Kyiv Independent 29 August 2014, and Ukraine and the Orcs: Leaders slip into ‘Tolkien mindset’ Gwynne Dyer Manawatu Standard6 May 2022). The Kievan Rus’ were a people of Varangian – ie Scandinavian – origin. Aryan, for sure. By this view, if you want to know if someone is good – or, on the other hand, ‘deserves to die’ – just find out what their race is!

Conclusion – Lookism

Mythology, especially ethnic and pseudo-ethnic mythology, is dangerous at the best of times. Ugly myths about individualism and the virtue of beauty – and their flipsides (collectivism, and the vice of ugliness) – create a recipe for conflict without any point of resolution. Ugly won’t concede because (by conflation) it’s evil; and ‘beauty’ won’t concede because either it’s evil too, or because its adversary is too evil.

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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.

Quarterly Labour market data in Aotearoa New Zealand was released today. Much of the data is functionally useless, because of definitions which disguise rather than reveal important trends and turning points.

I have focussed on employment data (although the definition of ’employment’ is too generous to be optimally useful) relative to estimated populations for age groups at the younger and older margins of the ‘working age’. (For me, ‘active in the market economy’ means meeting the official definition of employment. Unlike the International Labour Organisation, I am not classing unemployed people as ‘active in the market economy’.)

The first chart focuses on older women, a group particularly impacted by recent and ongoing economic changes. Many of these people neither qualify for benefits when they become redundant; nor do they even make the official unemployment data because, compared to people aged 25 to 55, they are more often regarded as withdrawing from the labour force when they lose their jobs.

We can see that the post-1980s’ trend for all depicted age groups is one of rising ‘participation’ in the labour market; much of this is for financial reasons (eg needing to pay mortgages or rent), rather than for lifestyle or feminist reasons. Some of the change of course is linked to the increase of the age of entitlement to New Zealand Superannuation, from 60 to 65.

We see that recent (ie post-2022) data shows a flattening of the trend, or a fall against the trend for 65-69-year-old women. Most of these are actual unemployed people who are counted as ‘discouraged workers’ or ‘retired’. In reality, the financial pressures on older women to stay working are stronger than ever. 2022 represented the year of peak-grandmother-labour.

The second chart shows the trend fall in older men and women NOT employed. We note that New Zealand Superannuation – a Universal Basic Income for Seniors – incentivises people to stay working after age 65. (Australia has a substantially lower proportion of people over 65 in employment.) The trend in falling non-employment has been arrested by the greater difficulty since 2022 in finding paid work.

For younger people, the trend is for more employment and less higher-education (although many people in higher education also meet the definition of being employed). It would appear that many New Zealanders in their twenties have returned to higher education in lieu of being employed, looking to live from student allowances or student loans.

The third chart compares the teenage workforce with workers of peak working age (45-49). For peak working age we see convergence of male and female participation, despite more women in their late forties with children aged under 10 in their care.

For teenage workers, the male data fluctuates more than the female data. In this decade, more teenage males are not employed than teenage females; a clear change from the 1980s. There was a dramatic ‘flight to employment’ for teenagers after covid; a return now reversed as the job market clams shut.

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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.

Tertiary education is in crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand. Vocational education, the domain of the Polytechnic ‘Institutes of Technology’; and Science and Humanities’ education, the traditional domain of the Universities.

2023 was an election year, yet tertiary education did not feature in the election campaign, despite these manifest crises. The Labour government was not interested in campaigning on its record, and for the mainstream media who frame election campaigns, the matter was not sexy enough. The media wanted a campaign largely restricted to fiscal holes, identity politics (especially bi-cultural divisions), and coalition-alignments (with a fascination for Winston Peters comparable with the fascination of the American media for Donald Trump).

(Occasionally health, education and climate change got into the election campaign discussion; but for health it was largely about constrained clinical services, in education it was about schools and possible curriculum impositions, and for climate change it was mainly about electric car subsidies. Nothing about the state of the population’s health, meeting New Zealand’s demographic challenges, the extent to which the consumers of education at all levels are disengaging with learning, addressing the lifestyle choices of the entitled minority, or fairly distributing the real cost burdens which we face.)

New Zealand’s underfunded universities are shedding staff in the public disciplines: humanities and public science. Once we were aspirational, or at least we wished to appear to be so, with Bright Future in 1999 and its predecessor, the Knowledge Society.

The Polytechnic Sector

The Te Pūkenga polytechnic saga is a scandal; a scandal attributable to former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins before he became Prime Minister. Yet his record in ministering to tertiary education was largely unremarked upon when he became Prime Minister, unopposed.

It was in the 1990s that the rot set in. Tertiary education became an export industry – not in itself a bad thing – which meant that this important public infrastructure increasingly came to be seen as a business (subject to private-market discipline) that just happened to do some intellectual public good as a side gig. The universities came to emulate polytechnics in that they increasingly emphasised professional vocational education over humanities; and they increasingly emphasised applied science over pure science.

Further, re the polytechnics, the governments either side of the millennium dropped the ball massively by not rebranding the leading polytechnics – as happened in Australia and United Kingdom – as Universities of Technology. For the polytechnics to be at the vanguard of a successful export-education model, they had to be branded as ‘universities’. So, for someone in Sri Lanka or Vietnam today – some young person who wants a good education which will gain them a good job in their home country – which was/is more attractive: University of Central Queensland at Rockhampton, or Manukau Institute of Technology?

New Zealand in 2023 has a tight labour market, though with unacceptably high levels of structural unemployment. The historical role of the New Zealand’s polytechnics has to address labour supply through reducing structural unemployment and structural underemployment; of upskilling the labour force. Yet this purpose of the polytechnic sector has been almost entirely absent from the minimal profile the sector has had in the mainstream media this decade so far; almost all I have heard is about financial losses, indicating the widespread perspective that the polytechnics are principally lame-duck businesses and only incidentally a critical part of the country’s educational infrastructure.

When such infrastructure is underfunded – the direct cause of the poor financial performance – two things happen. The polytechnic sector makes financial losses, the sector overinvests in a cost-management superstructure, and the sector gets restructured by the Ministry of Education. Service delivery – the sector’s raison d’être – becomes squeezed by the underfunding, management bloat, and top-down bureaucracy.

My impression has been that Treasury has been advocating a ‘free-rider’ policy; wishing to import skills from other countries, while seeking to suppressing investment in human capital on the grounds that employable educated Aotearoans can gain higher returns to themselves by emigrating. Such a free-rider policy is to be a net poacher of human capital; a poacher of people with employable skills.

In 2024 we, as a nation – as a mainstream liberal mediocracy – must start asking the right questions about the contributions that tertiary education can make to alleviating critical skills’ shortages. Labour supply is a critical component of a successful macroeconomy; and should not be addressed by austere monetary and fiscal policies which seek to suppress labour demand as a way of restoring balance to the labour market.

At least, in 2024, we have a Minister for Tertiary Education – Penny Simmonds – who understands the Polytechnic sector and its critical importance in addressing New Zealand’s labour supply problem.

The Polytechnic sector only made it through the media wall-of-silence this month because the cancelling of the Te Pūkenga project was just too big a story to ignore entirely. (Nevertheless, if I put ‘Te Pūkenga’ into the search facility of the New Zealand Herald android app, there are just two stories from 2023: one about a successful open day at UCOL’s Whanganui campus, 9 Aug 2023; and one from March about Microsoft facilitating the training of Māori and Pasifika for cybersecurity careers. Yet 2023 was an election year; a year in which the critical economic problem faced by this country was/is labour supply.)

The Universities

The previous government not only mangled the Polytechnic sector, it, also abandoned the University sector. (This abandonment took place despite, so much of the time since 2020, the government was saying “the science says …”.) While it had no functioning Minister of Tertiary Education – the Minister of Education in 2023 only really seemed to understand school education – the Government had a substantially underemployed Minister in Deborah Russell who could have been an excellent advocate for the universities, and their potential contribution to an evolving knowledge society. I trust that Penny Simmonds has a vision for universities – other than cost-cutting – while understanding that most of her ministerial bandwidth will be taken up with the polytechnic(s). The confirmation of Massey University’s retrenchment was discussed on RNZ today, 14 Dec, on Checkpoint: Massey University confirms it’s pressing ahead with its plans.

The new government needs to make an urgent and clear statement that it values the sciences and the humanities as public goods, and that the support of these civilisational cornerstone activities needs to be broader than cross-subsidies of university student fees.

Unitec

Unitec – formally Carrington Polytechnic, and which might have been better understood by non-Aucklanders had it been called West Auckland Institute of Technology – has suffered an appalling fate. Once New Zealand’s biggest Polytechnic – and the only tertiary educator of any note in West Auckland – Unitec became a land company around 2012. It became a campus with a Polytech as its main tenant. The first major problem was the Business School being turfed out of its purpose-built premises; premises which were then gutted by the new star tenant – multinational company IBM. Within about a year IBM abandoned its project, though the building continues to house a commercial tenant.

The polytechnic continued, doing great things despite underfunding and the machinations going on around the land which the government was coveting; and despite a burgeoning management superstructure, and its edict of ‘change management’. Eventually Unitec – a government owned land company cum polytechnic – was (unsurprisingly) practically bankrupt, and most of the land was sold to the government; and has subsequently been on-sold to a property development company.

The former campus is now a sorry site, and the property development scale and logistics will probably be unsurvivable for the tenant polytechnic; like a well-nourished rata tree strangling its host. This RNZ story this week Auckland urban development: complex manoeuvrings in Mt Albert gives a very pollyanna-ish take on the current state of this wonderful former green-space (and piece of Auckland’s history); now a ‘model’ “brownfield” development. (And we should note that, as well as suffocating Unitec – the tertiary educator, not the land bank – the development will surround the Mason Clinic, Aotearoa’s maximum-security psychiatric detention centre.)

My final plea is for the mainstream media to look at this ‘model’ property development with a critical eye, and see if it ‘cuts the mustard’ as a high density mixed-housing development. And to compare the potential of this ‘brownfields’ site with a nearby genuine brownfield site, the former Crown Lynn lands. Even if the former Unitec campus can be made to work as a modern tenement complex, will it have been worth the cost to the environment and to the educational infrastructure of West Auckland and Aotearoa New Zealand?

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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.

In New Zealand, both Labour and National want the teaching of ‘financial literacy’ to become compulsory in schools. (See Labour pledges compulsory financial literacy classes in schools and National also aiming to make financial literacy compulsory in schools from One News, 20 August 2023. On the 6pm news, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins explicitly mentioned “compound interest”.)

The politicians should be careful what they wish for. Financial literacy, as understood by its advocates, has many of the elements of a scam. In the fantasies if the finance industry, the favoured many or few accumulate money at exponential rates, at the expense of the payers of interest. The one depends on the other; interest is a zero-sum game.

Pseudo-Science

Mercantilism is to economics what astrology is to astronomy and alchemy is to chemistry. They are pseudo-sciences, albeit precursors to these modern sciences. The discipline of Finance remains deeply rooted in the pseudo-science of mercantilism. (We may note that George Soros’ most famous book is titled ‘The Alchemy of Finance’.)

Few economists know anything about mercantilism, just as few astronomers have knowledge of astrology, and few chemists know much about alchemy. The people who do know (or should know) about these harbingers of science are the historians of economics, astronomy, and chemistry. (Such historians are becoming increasingly scarce, as mentioned to me by an Australian friend who is a semi-retired senior academic, specialising in the history of economics. Disciplinary history courses have been culled, even in top universities such as the ANU, in part because of a lack of student demand, but also because higher education today is seen by the technocrats as little more than training for specific technocratic careers.)

‘Classical’ mercantilism conceives of nation-states as economic territories whose purpose is simply to ‘make money’; in particular it focuses on policies favouring trade surpluses, meaning exports exceeding imports. The underlying issue is the veneration, indeed the deification, of money; the perception that conflates ‘money’ with ‘wealth’, leading to the false conclusion that money serves more as a store of wealth than as a medium of exchange. (Properly trained economists understand that money is a ‘social technology’ which derives its utility from circulation rather than stasis.) From this mercantilist perspective, money should only be spent if such spending (‘investment’) yields even more money; money becomes an instrument for making money. Under mercantilism, we ‘live to make money’ rather than ‘make money to live’.

The Myth of Compound Interest

The ‘miracle’ of compound interest generally features early in any educational course on financial literacy; the myth of compound interest is a core proposition of ‘financial literacy’ dogma. (We note that a ‘myth’ is not the same as a ‘lie’. Rather a myth is a compelling ‘story’, or parable, which often contains some contextual truth.)

The ‘miracle’ is that of exponential growth, and is predicated on the idea that an above-zero risk-free rate of return on money-in-the-bank is an entitlement that amounts to a human right. The zealots who most promote this believe that there should be a right to a positive real rate of interest, risk-free; meaning that the entitled rate of interest should always be above the rate of inflation (ie not simply above zero).

The two most famous promoters of the myth, in history, were Benjamin Franklin (American founding father) and Albert Einstein (a scientific wizard, though not a financial wizard). Franklin apparently said “Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes money”. Einstein reputedly said that “those who understand it, earn it and those who don’t, will pay it”. At least Einstein recognised that interest is paid by somebody, and not the ‘free money’ which the quote from Franklin suggests. What Einstein did not appreciate was that, if the average interest rate on bank deposits is below the average rate of inflation, then in fact those who ‘understand it’ lose, and it is those who don’t understand it get something for nothing. Further, at least in the history of the twentieth century (and also Franklin’s eighteenth century; though not so much the nineteenth century) bank deposit interest rates have generally been below inflation rates.

Some examples.

If we look at the year 1936 (when there was a census of incomes), the equivalent to today’s minimum wage would have been $100 per year. If that sum was saved in the bank in 1936, today it would have compounded to $7,000 if the after-tax interest yield had been 5% every year. That would be a break-even on our usual measure of inflation. But the minimum wage for a person working 40-hours per week today is $47,000. $7,000 would be regarded today as a very poor return on the substantial sum (to a wage-worker) of $100 (£50) in 1936.

However, if the $100 could have been invested in 1936 at 10% risk-free after tax (more like 12% before tax) for 87 years, the compounded nest-egg today would be $400,000. That’s what the miracle of compound interest is about. The reality, though, is that a compounding risk-free yield of 10% per year for 87 years would have been a fantasy. Even an interest yield of 5% every year for 87 years would have been unrealistic.

For another example, the average salary in 1973 – fifty years ago – was about $4,000. Today it’s more like $70,000. Further, based on the Reserve Bank’s inflation calculator, $4,000 in 1973 is equivalent to $59,481 in 2023. Wages have increased more quickly than prices in the last 50 years; though both rates of increase are similar: wages have increased by about 5.9% a year, whereas prices have increased on average by 5.547% each year. So, for compound interest to increase the value of a term deposit faster than the rate of wage increases, then the average interest rate would have had to be over six percent after tax. To have got a miraculous return from compound interest, the bank deposit interest rate before tax would need to have been more than ten percent every year. Unrealistic.

Given the now known inflation rate, money saved in the bank for those 50 years at five percent every year before tax would have resulted in a 50% depreciation of what that money could buy. That’s a more realistic outcome of safe saving. The reality of the past 50 years is that savers have lost, and borrowers have gained. For the most part, compound interest has come at a high opportunity cost. In-control debt would have yielded more happiness.

The proper context of saving

Can financial literacy education be useful, especially the promotion of thrift, despite the falsity of the compound interest miracle? Yes, because some people can fund their needs and wants without spending their entire salaries. For those people, the ‘present utility’ (ie enjoyment) from spending not-needed money is quite low; so, by saving for a day when they will need extra money, then the saved money will come in handy, even if it has depreciated in value in the meantime.

The reality, however, is that a large portion of peoples’ savings ends up in their estates when they die. They never spend it. Indeed, for many, saving money is a form of insurance, and not a plan to consume less when they are young and more when they are old. If the ‘insurance’ is not required, the money is passed onto the next generation, or in other forms of bequest.

So, an important question to raise is: What should a youngish person do if they receive a lump-sum of money in a will, or a lottery. My analysis suggests that they are better off spending it than trying to save-and-compound it. Though, the ‘present utility’ of spending the windfall all at once would be low. A financially literate person would spend the money over a period of time. Specialist insurance products probably make more sense than using compound interest as a form of alternative insurance; although, like the quest for compound interest, many people get a low return on their insurance premiums. Much insurance costs too much.

The proper and improper context of investing

Investing is the process of risk-taking; of risk, and hoped-for reward. Some people who think that an above-inflation rate of return is a right (or a reward for abstinence) rather than a gambling reward will end up taking naive risks. This situation will be less likely in the event of well-structured financial literacy education. This is the proper context.

Unfortunately, people who already have much – often too much – have had the financial power to gain near-certain rewards through processes of speculation (often disguised as ‘investing’) and otherwise taking advantage of people who have too little. The most prominent of these situations is the use of market-power to make money from trading in real-estate; ie trading in land. This kind of ‘investment’ for high returns substantially undermines the housing market.

Any worthwhile financial literacy education would need to properly deal with the issues of land use and land speculation. Yet my sense is that the financial literacy curriculum in New Zealand will end up pushing people to use KiwiSaver as an opaque means to promote both compound interest and real estate speculation. Many people who rent or buy their homes for exorbitant market prices are also themselves property speculators, because such speculation drives up returns in their higher-yield-strategy KiwiSaver accounts. KiwiSaver yields derived from land speculation come at a high cost to people trying to make a home for themselves and their families.

Back to Mercantilism

The rhetoric of KiwiSaver – and other savings’ products – is that of using money to make money. The reality is that the over-purchase of ‘financial products’ makes high profits for the finance industry. This is the mercantilist mirage – even ‘scam’ – at the heart of industrial finance. It’s the modern version of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Mercantilism is the cult of money, not the science of money.

Real compound interest is economically unsustainable; and requires an exorbitant demand for debt, the flipside of bank deposit interest. It represents a monetary transfer from the vulnerable to the privileged, from the needy to the greedy. People like Roger Douglas in the 1980s tried to create a revolution in New Zealand underpinned by real compound interest. They have achieved both unsustainable inequality, and also much resourcefulness by ordinary people trying to live their best indebted lives.

It is a patrician fantasy to create a global economic system whereby the poor perpetually pay real compound interest to the rich. For capitalism to survive, interest rates need to be less than or equal to inflation rates. Under those conditions, debt doesn’t look so bad and unproductive saving doesn’t look so good. Indeed, if somehow ordinary people are able to shun debt, then interest rates must fall far too low to generate real compound interest. Ultimately, interest rates are set in the marketplace, not by the authorities.

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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.

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins faced a grilling by University of Otago students during his trip to Ōtepoti yesterday.

Students, staff and community members have been fighting against the university’s request for staff to consider redundancies in a bid to save $60 million.

But the students did not keep their questions to cuts alone.

Hipkins got a mixed welcome with protesters chanting and asking for selfies with the prime minister.

Associate professor of politics Brian Roper said staff were already finding out that their courses were being cut and they were losing their jobs.

“I bumped into one of them. She was in tears, she’s absolutely distraught. What this government is doing to our universities is scandalous,” he said.

“Five out of eight of them are currently experiencing severe financial difficulties because of a chronic underfunding from this government.”

Declining enrolments
Hipkins said declining enrolments meant universities across the motu were finding ways to rebalance their books.

“I know that’s a really uncertain and uncomfortable time for the staff. The universities make their own decisions about how they manage their finances so it’s not something we can intervene on as a government.”

The prime minister attended a student association forum yesterday afternoon, making a speech before opening the floor to questions from students.

“I was just in a lecture where we’re doing course evaluations and my lecturer was begging the class to give a positive evaluation to keep her job. We have a $60 million budget hole, why can’t you just fix it?”

Hipkins said there was a lot of demand on the government’s coffers, and they could not cover all of the requests they got.

He offered no policy promises, telling students they would hear them well before the election

“Our rent has increased, the university’s spiralling down. I’m just thinking why on Earth should I be voting for you?” one student asked.

‘Most political answer’
Hipkins said: “I’ll probably give you the most political answer I’ve given you so far. The biggest increase in tertiary funding that we’ve seen in 20 years in this year’s Budget versus a government that actually wants to do the opposite of that.”

But his responses in regards to the National Party did not go over well with multiple students telling him to stop the blame game or saying what the opposing party would not give them, and instead tell them his policies and what he would deliver.

A yellow-suited monkey has become a feature of recent university protests — they want the government to bail out the university to save jobs and courses.

“I have a banana addiction as a monkey, but my Bachelor of Arts is being cut and I think that’s appalling. Millions and millions of dollars are sitting there which could bail out our university for underfunding, but he’s just not spending it, which he needs to,” the monkey said.

Earlier in the day, Hipkins toured KiwiRail’s Hillside Workshops in South Dunedin as it works on a multi-million dollar redevelopment to build a new wagon assembly facility.

Then he swapped a hard hat for a console, visiting three gaming development studios, after announcing $160 million to set up a 20 percent rebate for game developers in the recent Budget.

Hopeful over rebate
Balancing Monkey Games co-founder Sam Barham is hopeful the rebate could help them hire more staff and continue to do what they love.

Currently, he said developers made most of their money straight after releasing a game and then lived off that until they released another one.

“It makes a huge difference in terms of our ability to survive. It’s not the least risky business out there so we’ve got to think about how do we keep going. Our main aim is to still be doing this. It’s a thing that we love doing.”

The details of the rebate will be consulted on, but up to $3 million in rebate funding is likely to be up for grabs per year for individual studios.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Exiled University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia says he is thrilled at the prospect of returning to Fiji.

Speaking to The Fiji Times from Los Angeles in the United States yesterday, he said Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka — when he was in opposition — made a commitment to pay Fiji’s outstanding debt of $90 million to USP and to allow him to return to Fiji.

“Mr Rabuka said it, National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad said it, and the Social Democratic Liberal Party leader also said it,” Professor Ahluwalia said.

“So it’s part of all three parties’ manifestos and part of their public statements, so we as a university are delighted that this amount that has been outstanding for so long will finally come to the university.

“It’s excellent news, not just for the Fijian students but for the entire region because the region has been carrying Fijian students for quite a while and there will now be a chance for us to do a lot of things that we have deferred and not been able to do, particularly issues around maintenance.

“It also means we can now aggressively look for quality academic staff.”

Rabuka issued a statement on Boxing Day saying the prohibition order against Professor Ahluwalia had been lifted and he was welcome to travel to Fiji at any time.

Professor Ahluwalia and his wife Sandra Price claimed that on Wednesday February 3, 2021, 15 people made up of immigration officials and police stormed into their USP home and forcefully removed them at about 11.30pm.

They claimed they were driven the same night to Nadi International Airport and deported on the morning of Thursday, February 4, to Australia.

The FijiFirst government on February 4, 2022 issued a statement that the Immigration Department had ordered Professor Aluwahlia and his partner Sandra Price to leave Fiji with immediate effect following alleged “continuous breaches” by both individuals of Section 13 of the Immigration Act.

Government said under Section 13 of the Immigration Act 2003, no foreigner was permitted to conduct themselves in a manner prejudicial to the peace, defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, security, or good government of Fiji.

Fiji now ‘free country’
RNZ Pacific reports that Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad said all three parties in the coalition had promised this in their election campaigns and manifestos.

The former FijiFirst government have withheld the payments since 2019 over a protracted battle with Professor Ahluwalia, now operating in exile out of Samoa.

“They didn’t like a man who was doing the right thing who exposed corruption within the university,” Professor Prasad said.

“And it has done you know, to some extent, terrible damage not only to the university, but also the unity in the whole region.”

In July, the two unions representing staff at the university said the Fiji government owes the institution F$78.4 million and the debt has increased since then.

“Well, I can’t tell you the timetable, but all I can say is…that the university will receive the appropriate funding, as well as the government will pay what is due as a result of the previous government withholding the grant to the university,” Professor Prasad said.

His revelation comes after the government statement by Prime Minister Rabuka inviting Professor Ahluwalia to return to Fiji.

Personal apology
Rabuka said he wanted to apologise to Professor Ahluwalia in person upon his arrival for the way he had been treated by Fiji.

The prime minister has also invited the widow of exiled Fijian academic, Professor Brij Lal, who passed away on Christmas Day last year to bring home his ashes for burial at Tabia near Labasa.

Professor Prasad said they look forward to welcoming home more Fijians and expatriates exiled during Voreqe Bainimarama’s 16-year-reign.

“Fiji is now a free country. We will welcome everyone who wants to come to Fiji. No one should fear about any kind of vindictiveness or harassment,” Professor Prasad said.

“That is what we promised during our campaign, and that is what this government will deliver.”

Felix Chaudhary is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with Fiji Times permission. This article is also republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

Professor thrilled over #USP return – #Fiji to pay $90m #university debt #AsiaPacificReport @fijitimes #rnzpacific @pal_vcp @ShailendraBSing @wansolwara @USPWansolwara @GeraldP87 #Fijipol #education #SitiveniRabuka @bimanprasad https://t.co/bC0ECuzF7d pic.twitter.com/laTlgEH3bf

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) December 26, 2022

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new initiative has been launched in 15 Pacific Island countries to improve educational standards.

The Pacific Regional Inclusive Education Review was launched last week with each country having their own national surveys with the assistance of community groups, NGOs and stakeholders.

It has has been signed by Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

The Pacific Disability Forum comprises one of the many networks used to complete the survey, and it has roots in 21 countries.

Its main objective is to ensure children, including those living with disabilities, access quality learning.

The Forum’s CEO, Setareki Macanawai, said the review allowed for an understanding of the current issues within education across the region.

“[The purpose is] to have a shared understanding, and I think this is what this review has done. It has provided a lens-key, a good starting point. A good starting point condition for us in the Pacific to then develop a shared understanding of what inclusive education should look like for us in the Pacific.”

Making education accessible
Macanawai also said it was hard to make education accessible in the region due to various pre-conditions.

“There is a lot of stigma, there is a lot of discrimination broadly and generally across the Pacific in the different cultures and societies which is a pre-condition that makes it hard to create an inclusive education for all, particularly those with impairments,” he said.

The review is conducted by UNICEF Pacific and the Pacific Regional Inclusive Education Taskforce.

UNICEF Pacific’s Chief of Education Programme Anna Smeby said the biggest challenge to inclusive education in the Pacific is limited access or children living in poor housing.

“We know that challenges can be in physical access, teaching approaches and availability of extra support, and it can be in the inclusiveness of the environment which means the infrastructure, but also social and emotionally whether it is a welcoming environment,” she said.

“Improving policy for inclusive education, building and strengthening to adapt and differentiate instruction, the resource in classroom so that they have the resources they need and improving school infrastructure, bringing inclusive education leaves us to learn from each other both the shared challenges and the promising practices.

Vulnerable groups
“Vulnerable groups include learners with a disability or some sort of impairment, commonly students in remote places who do not have access to full-cycle schooling and students who have missed earlier learning but also gifted and talented students that need additional support in different ways,” Smeby said.

The collaboration between the 15 countries, regional partners, and the Pacific Inclusive Education Taskforce, supports Sustainable Development Goal 4 to achieve quality education for all and to build a pathway for all children to a productive and healthy adulthood.

UNICEF Pacific’s Deputy Representative Roshni Basu said countries needed to include the review’s recommendations into its policies urgently.

“UNICEF is committed to ensure that all children of our Pacific shores are able to enjoy their right to inclusive, and of course quality, education.

I urge all countries to maximise effort and commitment to translate the review findings into concrete investments for inclusive education.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Papuan student advocacy group has called for the establishment of a future Aotearoa New Zealand scholarship for West Papuans to replace a controversial Indonesian-funded programme that left many students stranded this year with incomplete studies.

The call has been made by the Papuan Students Association Oceania (PSAO) as a cohort of students celebrated the graduation of two commercial pilots this month.

They also marked the success of fundraising and pastoral support for students who remained in New Zealand to complete their studies in spite of the hardships created by a sudden loss of Papuan provincial scholarships at the end of last year.

Community, faith-based, social justice and student groups have raised more than $70,000 in relief programmes aimed at assisting with accommodation, student fees and living costs.

Speaking on behalf of PSAO, student advocate Laurens ikinia, a postgraduate communications student at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), praised the help of many New Zealand groups which have in recent months filled the gap left by the “unjust cancellation” of Papuan provincial scholarships for about 40 students.

He said in a message to support groups and political parties which have assisted that the International Alliance of Papuan Student Associations Overseas (IAPSAO) and the parents and whanau of the affected students had expressed “thank you for your kind support and solidarity, generous donation, faithful prayers and moral support during our difficult times.”

Ikinia said that out of the 41 affected students, 12 had been forced to return to West Papua for several reasons.

Generous support
“The remaining 28 students who are currently studying at different tertiary institutions and one student at a high school have benefited from [New Zealanders’] generous support. All of them have gratefully expressed their gratitude and aroha,” he said.

“We sincerely thank you for being part of our life’s journey through the unprecedented struggle that we have faced. We will remember and cherish them for our lifetime.”

The message was conveyed to New Zealand while students were marking the success of Papuans Stevi Yikwa and Logi Karuri gaining their commercial pilot’s certificates at the Ardmore Flying School near Auckland.

Eight students who have completed their carpentry course at Palmerston North polytech UCOL have also been granted work visas through Pro-Construction in Manawatū.

Other students are at AUT, Canterbury University, IPU New Zealand, Massey University, Otago University, Unitec, Victoria University of Wellington and Waikato University.

As well as support from Labour and Green MPs, the students have been helped with fundraising efforts by the All Saints Anglican Food Bank, Auckland Central Parish of the Methodist Church, Church Unlimited, Dominican Sisters, Fielding Activate Church, Grace City Church (Palmerston North), Indonesian Catholic Community (Auckland), Indonesian Christian Community (Pamerston North), Onehunga Food Bank, Pax Christi Aotearoa, PNG community in Palmerston North, Rotuman Community Centre and Whānau Hub, Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, West Papua Action, West Papua Movement Aotearoa and many others.

The Papuans have also been boosted by support from AUT Melanesian Wantoks,  New Zealand International Students Association (NZISA), New Zealand Union of Students Association (NZUSA) and Taura Pasifika

Scholarships next step
However, Ikinia said the next challenge was to try to establish future scholarships for indigenous Papuans in New Zealand similar to those offered for Timorese-Leste and Pacific Islands students.

The Papua provincial government’s Foreign Scholarship programme introduced by Governor Lukas Enembe in recent years will wind up by the end of 2022.

Ikinia said one of the key factors in the ending of the scholarship was the loss of the governor’s independent authority over education funds under Indonesia’s controversial Special Autonomy Law (OTSUS) volume ll in the Melanesian provinces.

Also Governor Enembe’s second term is due to end by the end of 2023.

Commentators are warning that there will be “political and bureaucratic instability” in Papua due to the unpopular establishment of three new provinces that is being widely resisted by Papuan civil society.

Papuan students who are studying in New Zealand who are not on the scholarship termination list will still face uncertainty for the future.

The students are appealing to MPs and political party leaders, NGOs, churches, community groups, iwi, unions and other stakeholders to join their appeal for annual indigenous Papuan student scholarships.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Screams erupted as the sound of gunshots ricocheted around the open-air market. People ran.

It was bloody.

“I saw from my own eyes the gun violence,” says Laurens Ikinia.

“It was just crazy.”

Ikinia was still a child when he witnessed Indonesian security forces open fire at a market in Wamena, the largest highland town in West Papua’s Baliem Valley.

He says it was a massacre. It was later recognised as the 2003 Wamena Incident (or Peristiwa Wamena 2003 in Bahasa Indonesian).

What began as a raid on an armoury led to a two-month operation by the Indonesian Army and National Police. Thousands of villagers were displaced, civilians killed.

It was a response to increasing cries for West Papuan independence.

Some healing in NZ
The trauma of that day lasts, says Ikinia, but in the recent years, studying in New Zealand he has experienced some healing.

Ikinia is one of 125 West Papuan students in Aotearoa, arriving in 2015 and 2016 on a scholarship to study abroad.

He aspires to write Pasifika stories, about the people and places largely ignored by the international media.

He is close to completing a Master of Communications at Auckland University of Technology.

However, the domino effect of legislative changes in Jakarta means the 27-year-old stands to lose it all.

A couple of years before the violence in Wamena, Papua Provincial Governor Lukas Enembe established a scholarship programme for Papuans to study abroad.

The investment in indigenous human resources drew on Special Autonomy funds granted by Jakarta, but employed at the governor’s discretion.

‘Inspired thinking’
“It was inspired thinking on his part,” says Professor David Robie, retired director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Asia Pacific Report (APR).

“Get them educated outside West Papua, outside Indonesia, and come back with fresh ideas.”

But in 2021, the money dried up.

In a 20-year legislative review, the central Indonesian government passed a bill ratifying sweeping amendments to the Special Autonomy Law, effectively diverting money and authority away from the provinces.

Despite widespread opposition by West Papuans and calls for an independence referendum instead, the funds propping up several provincial programmes, including the scholarships were allocated elsewhere.

The fallout for the students abroad arrived in December.

A letter to the Indonesian embassy with a list of names — 39 students in New Zealand, and dozens of others overseas, were to be sent home.

‘Underperforming’ students
A translation of the letter says underperforming students and those who had not completed their study in the allocated timeframe would be repatriated by December 31, 2021.

Ikinia’s name is on the list.

“It doesn’t make sense at all,” he says.

“Based on my track record, I was one of the ones that completed the programme the fastest.”

He says all postgraduate students were given a three-month thesis extension due to covid interruptions.

“I am just about to finish.”

He says the decision to recall students is based on incorrect data held by the Provincial Government’s Human Resources Department Bureau (HRDB).

Many phone calls
“We have had a number of phone calls. It seems like people in the department don’t hold the data according to the latest results.

“It’s totally wrong. I did not start my masters in 2016.”

It’s politics, says Yan Wenda, president of the Papuan Student Association in Oceania, and a postgraduate student at the University of Otago.

“The central government in Jakarta changed the law without any input from the provincial government.

“They did the review, and in some areas changed how they managed the money between the provinces and the districts.

“It affects the students studying abroad.”

He says calls to the bureau confirmed this.

‘The money is not here’
“[They said] ‘the money is not here. It’s just not happening for you guys, you’ll have to come back home.’”

He says not only have successful students been recalled, but also the allowance for others has stopped.

“As students we are desperate to pay our rent. We haven’t had any allowance in two months.

“This is why we need to speak up about this.

“We have been victims of this change.”

A public statement issued by the newly formed International Alliance of Papuan Student Associations Overseas (IAPSAO) on January 27 urged the Indonesian government to consider the rights of Papuans to obtain a quality education.

Wenda and student presidents from the United States and Canada — where 81 students were recalled, Russia, Germany, and Japan signed it.

Sustainability of the governor’s policy
They requested the 10 per cent fund allocation for the education sector return to the Papua Provincial Government “for the continuity and sustainability of the governor’s policy to develop Papuan human resources”.

“Don’t kill Papuan human resources anymore with political policy.”

The students have since demanded that the Indonesian Embassy facilitate a dialogue with Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

“It is a really sad development,” says Professor Robie.

“It’s all political by Jakarta. It’s all about self-determination, all about denying the rights of Melanesians in the two provinces of Papua to define their own future.”

He says the Jakarta government is uncomfortable with the student scholarships, and says the premise for repatriation was baseless.

“They are trying to curb the rights of Papuan students to get an education overseas.

‘Fundamentally changed’
“What has fundamentally changed is that (provincial) autonomy, that right to send those students to where they want to go.

“Those decisions are no longer in their hands.”

After APR reported on the issue, Dr Robie received a letter from the Indonesian Embassy, stating it was “appalled at the unfounded claims” made in the regional website.

The letter said the Indonesian government was committed to ensuring the right to education for all Indonesian citizens.

In response to questions from the Times-Age the embassy refuted claims that repatriation of students was politically motivated and said the HRDB did not recall students based on academic performance alone.

Length of study and the students’ disciplinary records were also taken into account.

A spokesperson said they could not speak to the accuracy of the information used recall students. However, they said the decision was the result of a thorough assessment by the bureau.

Conceded adjustments made
They denied budget cuts to the Papuan Special Autonomy Fund were responsible, but conceded adjustments were made to the “budgetary system”.

In response to the demands for dialogue with the president:

“[We] have duly engaged and in coordination with concerned students, Students’ Coordinator, student organisations, and the Provincial Government of Papua to further discuss the issue at hand.”

Wenda and Ikinia say scholarship students around the world are united in their stance, they will not return home.

“We are demanding our rights to education. We have no political agenda at all,”  Ikinia says.

“The government claims that we have a hidden political agenda, this is totally incorrect and unacceptable. We have been always participating in the events that the Indonesian Embassy has been hosting.”

When Indonesia staged a Pacific Exposition in Auckland in 2019, Papuan students actively participated in the event. Most of the Papuan students participated as local ambassadors to accompany the diplomats and delegations who came from the Pacific.

“I myself have also been the president of the Indonesian Students Association in Palmerston North and at the same time vice-president of Indonesian Students in New Zealand in 2018-19.”

‘Trauma healing’
Ikinia says West Papuans have become a minority in their own land, and suffering is not an anomaly.

“In New Zealand I realised how other people could treat us, like family,” he says.

“This is the treatment we should receive from the Indonesian government.”

He believes coming to New Zealand goes beyond academic achievement.

“It is part of the journey to find the potential in my life. And it’s part of the trauma healing.”

He says the New Zealand government is in a position to help the students, by acknowledging their Pasifika status.

“We are not Asians, we are Melanesians.

“We know NZ is a generous country that helps minority groups. We hope in this difficult time the New Zealand government will open its arms and have us as part of their Pacific family.”

Mary Argue is a Wairarapa Times-Age reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A major development out of the besieged University of the South Pacific has meant that two main characters in a saga that threatens the financial viability of the regional institution are now out of the University Council.

Controversial chair of the USP Council audit sub-committee Mahmood Khan of Fiji was voted out of the position at the council meeting that was held virtually yesterday.

However, he remains as one of Fiji’s 5 representatives in the council.

Equally controversial council chair and pro-chancellor of the university, Winston Thompson, will be replaced in the position by Hilda Heine, former President of the Marshall Islands, one of the 12 Pacific Island nations that co-own USP, together with Fiji.

She takes over the pro-chancellor and chair of the council position when Thompson completes his term on December 31.

Thompson together with the ardent support of Khan and Fiji’s Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum have been at the forefront leading moves to get USP Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Pal Ahluwalia removed.

This began with the leak to Islands Business magazine in 2019 of a confidential report authored by Ahluwalia alleging numerous cases of administrative and financial mismanagement and abuse by the previous university administration.

It saw the purported suspension of the VC by Thompson and Khan and culminating in his deportation together with his wife from Fiji in late January of this year.

Ahluwalia is leading the university from the USP campus in Nauru where he awaits the opening of flights into Samoa, where the office of the vice-chancellor will be now based.

Samisoni Pareti is publisher and managing director of Islands Business magazine. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Staff of the regional University of the South Pacific have condemned the Fiji government’s “dictatorial” action in freezing a $28 million grant, accusing it of holding the governing University Council to ransom and jeopardising the future of students.

“Fiji is reneging on its commitment to its people and the region,” say the staff in a letter to Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

The letter, signed yesterday by the university’s academic Association of USP Staff (AUSPS) and the USP Staff Union (USPSU) leadership, was sent in support of the 29,000 students following the grant suspension statement by the Attorney-General that has “sent shock waves across this regional institution to which 80 percent of graduates from Fiji are indebted”.

Attorney-General Aiyaz Saiyed-Khaiyum was reported as saying the Fiji government – as the largest grant contributor to the USP – was concerned at the “continuous question marks about the lack of adherence to the principles of good governance in the day to day administration of USP”.

This came after months of conflict at the regional institution between the University Council and the Fiji-based university management.

It also followed recent exoneration by the University Council of popular Canadian vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia who had been targeted by two senior Fiji officials over his reforms.

Yesterday’s staff letter said: “It is poor governance when a single member state of the USP Council attempts to dictate its course of action.

Critical financial position
“The staff of the USP strongly object to the AG and Minister for Economy’s decision to cease Fiji’s grant contribution to the USP,” the letter said.

“This places the university in a critical financial position, jeopardising the education of Fiji students (80 percent) and Fiji staff (80 percent).

“This decision is viewed as an assault on the Fiji students and staff who, to date, in this covid and pre-covid environment of 2019 have been able to continue their education and work with minimum impact under the current vice-chancellor’s prudent leadership and council oversight.

“The government is seen to be using Fiji students and staff to dictate to and to hold the USP Council to ransom whilst holding a ‘gun’ to the head of the vice-chancellor and president.

“The action is tantamount to ‘cutting off USP students and staff legs at their knees’ and therefore their lifelines to coping with living in the current and post-covid environment.

“Not only will hundreds of families suffer, the quality of support and education for USP students in Fiji and the region will be seriously affected due to the domino effect of this decision.

“The question being asked is, why would the government use such strong arm tactics and punitive action to jeopardise the education of its youth who are their voters and the next generation of leaders when the USP’s supreme governing body of 12 regional states and development partners have spoken,” the letter said.

‘Mere pawns on political game’
“Rather than being treated as valuable citizenry, it appears that all are mere pawns
in a political game.

“The vice-chancellor and president is doing what every government, university, corporation and family business in the world needs to do to survive – reflect, redesign and reorganise.

To date, said the letter, no staff member had lost a job, no student had been refused admission – except for “mandated academic reasons” – and there had been an increase in student enrolments.

“The gravity of this decision and its implications require serious reflection on the basis of the decision and in-depth reconsideration by the Fiji government for the greater good of the students of Fiji and our Pacific `vuvale’ [canoe sail].”

Fiji Labour Party Leader Mahendra Chaudhry has branded the Economy Minister’s suspension of Fiji’s grant to USP as “simply childish”, reports Fiji Village radio.

Chaudhry said it looked like Fiji wass on its own, “like a lone wolf crying foul”.

The FLP leader said he was concerned that students’ university education would be affected and it would also affect the reputation of USP.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Fiji Labour Party believes suspended University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia is being harassed for his attempt to clean up governance at USP.

In a statement, party leader Mahendra Chaudhry claimed the suspended vice-chancellor had been denied justice.

“We commend his stand to fight for the principles of good governance and for what is right,” he said.

READ MORE: Secret report reveals widespread salary and allowance rorts at USP

“USP has faced longstanding issues regarding excessive pay and allowances.

“It needs cleaning up and those responsible should be brought to task.”

Chaudhry said the party condemned the current controversy that had jolted the regional university, disrupting studies and bringing disrepute to it.

The suspension of the vice-chancellor had led to protests at the university campuses in the region.

“We understand Nauru is now calling for an urgent special meeting of the USP Council to discuss the crisis and we hope that justice will prevail.

“It seems that proper procedures were not followed, leading to calls by the USP Students Association for the USP Council chairman, Winston Thompson, to step down.

“The matter has been simmering for a year now, sparked off by allegations contained in a paper by the vice-chancellor.

“The paper highlights 26 allegations of mismanagement by the former vice-chancellor and senior management staff as either beneficiaries or decision-makers.”

Chaudhry said accountancy consultant BDO New Zealand was commissioned by the USP Council to investigate the allegations made in the paper, but that the BDO report had never been made public.

Luke Nacei is a Fiji Times reporter.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A “fight for justice and good governance” at the University of the South Pacific has continued as staff and students have echoed strong calls for members of the USP Council to allow the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, to carry out his work without interference.

Hundreds of protesting staff and students rallied outside the New Administration Conference Room at Laucala campus in Suva, Fiji, yesterday with placards showing solidarity and support for Professor Ahluwalia as the special executive committee of the council convened a meeting to discuss allegations of “material misconduct” levelled against the vice-chancellor.

The meeting agenda allegedly included discussion about a letter from the deputy pro-chancellor about the claims of material misconduct, a report from the vice-chancellor in response to the allegations and a letter from the pro-chancellor in response to the VC’s report.

READ MORE: USP students, staff call on council to stop ‘harassment’ of Ahluwalia

Media reports said he had been told to “step aside” after this meeting. Professor Derrick Armstrong was reportedly appointed acting vice-chancellor and president to manage the affairs of the university.

Concerned USP staff member Elizabeth Fong said the show of solidarity for the vice-chancellor was also a call for good governance to prevail at the regional institution owned by 12 countries – not just Fiji.

“We don’t agree with what they are doing to [Professor] Pal. They are not letting him as VC do his work. Actual justice allows him to work by his contract, and if they had issues, there is a process and a way of managing it,” she said.

“The entire council of the university, which is regionally owned, needs to be part of any decision to remove a VC or suspend him so we are here to show that we want good governance to be put in place and to be practised by those who lead and govern us.”

Fong said it may be necessary for the USP Chancellor to step in to resolve the issue.

USP Students Association (USPSA) federal council spokesman Aneet Kumar said the students also wanted a quick resolution to the issue and made clear the student body supported the work done by the vice-chancellor done so far.

Kumar was joined by USPSA Laucala vice-president Shalvin Chand and USPSA deputy chair and vice-president Viliame Naulivou.

“There was a lot of outrage last year when the breaches of past management came to light,” Kumar said.

“Even the academics were pointing out that since we have a compulsory governance course, where is this going, what are we trying to teach and preach?

“There needs to be some common ground to reach. This is very disheartening for students. The student body sent a letter to the USP Council to express our disappointment at the way the matter is being handled.”

Students at Laucala campus also turned up with their placards of support, with student body vice-president Naulivou saying the believed the vice-chancellor had practised good governance.

“There are a lot of needs and wants out there but he [Professor Ahluwalia] came down to ground level and listened to us,” Naulivou said.

“That’s the only thing that pushed us to know the VC, his mission and vision. He visited the Lautoka campus and spoke to students, he begged students to say what they want. And what we want is good governance and transparency.”

Meanwhile, Professor Ahluwalia addressed staff and students yesterday saying he would continue to “fight for justice, transparency and accountability” within the legal framework.

The whirlwind of events started in March last year when the allegations of policy breaches of past financial decisions, such as speedy recruitment, appointments, promotions and questionable allowances for extra responsibility as well as breaches of the staff review procedures surfaced in a leaked confidential 11-page document drafted by Professor Ahluwalia and directed to the USP Council’s executive committee.

The University of the South Pacific journalism newspaper Wansolwara and website collaborate with the Pacific Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Labour held a very successful annual party conference in the weekend, projecting a strong degree of unity, progress, and positivity. And perhaps most importantly, it showed it was willing to deliver a major dose of spending where it will yield results, reiterating that this is a government focused on traditional Labour concerns.

This was all best conveyed by veteran political commentator Richard Harman, whose conference wrap-up title said it all: Labour finds its happy space. He begins like this: “For over 30 years the Labour Party could have only dreamed of the conference it has just held. Labour has finally found its happy space; devoid of factional rivalries; bitter personality feuds or fundamental challenges from the party activists to the Parliamentary wing. Delegates who were there for the fights of the 80s or even more recently the Cunliffe challenge in 2012, were left reminiscing about the bad old days.”

Yet, Harman also concludes his insightful column by pointing out that there’s not much about Labour’s latest big announcement for National to disagree with: “That maybe defines this weekend’s conference as much as anything else. This was not a conference that strayed very far from the political centre.”

Generally, the media coverage of the conference was very positive. For the best example of this, see Laura Walters’ article, which reports: “An invigorating, young energy was inescapable at the Labour Party annual conference” – see: Labour aims to balance the old and the new.

Walters draws attention to some of the changes of personnel in the party, which perhaps “signalled the party’s transition to a younger, more vibrant organisation”. She says “there was an unmistakable emphasis on the young” throughout the conference.

Although there was attention on new blood in the party – especially the election of the party president, Claire Szabó – some pointed to the party potentially still keeping too much power with the “old guard” and the Labour leader. Reporting from the weekend, Henry Cooke argued that Labour can still “can feel dominated by people who have done their time with the party”, and he pointed to some candidates for next year’s election who seem stale – see: Labour needs to be more than just Jacinda Ardern.

Cooke’s larger argument was that the party is now entirely reliant on the pulling power of their leader. He pointed to the conference programme to illustrate this: “The booklet for this weekend’s Labour Party conference features 13 separate photos of its leader, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and none of any other MP. Grant Robertson gets in to one picture on the side, but only alongside his leader.  Leaders are always important to political parties, but the degree to which Ardern defines Labour is extreme. This is a party supposedly built on the backs of cooperation between workers and not a single person, no matter how strong their brand is.”

From “Let’s Do This” to “We’re Doing This”

The major focus of conference organisers was to attempt to dispel a sense the Labour-led Government was failing on its self-declared “Year of Delivery” slogan. The problem they were seeking to neutralise was described on Saturday by Jason Walls in his column: Spirits high ahead of Labour’s conference – but has the party been transformational enough?. In this, commentators discuss some of the “embarrassing” failures and lack of progress that might concern supporters of the party.

Such is the level of concern, “it is understood Labour are facing increasing pressure from it’s base to revamp its [Budget Responsibility Rules] altogether and scrap the debt and spending limits.”

Similarly, Herald political editor Audrey Young wrote in advance of the conference about growing disgruntlement within the party – see: Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party is less forgiving and patient (paywalled). But she wasn’t forecasting any major dissent at the weekend: “In the tightly choreographed conference programme there simply isn’t any opportunity for any public grumbling. But in the backrooms and side meetings, Ardern will be getting the strong message that the year of delivery has yet to be felt by some important elements of her party.”

Such dissatisfaction was also discussed by Thomas Coughlan in his pre-conference report, in which he suggests that “Labour’s ‘year of delivery’ is starting to look pretty ropey”. He compares John Key and Jacinda Ardern because they have both been inclined to “hoard political capital” instead of spending it on things they believe in – see: Jacinda Ardern heads to party conference ready to assert herself.

However, he felt the party’s popularity would mean discontent wasn’t likely to bubble up to the surface at the conference: “Ardern is winning wider political arguments and laying the groundwork for a long period in government. The sacrifices the party made in moving to the centre appear to have worked.”

Nonetheless, it was important for the party leadership to emphasise to supporters that the Government is making some serious progress on its agenda. Hence, the conference unveiled its new slogan: “We’re Doing This” – an update on the highly successful “Let’s Do This” from the election campaign.

Sexual assault allegations lead to a new party president

The other major negative that the party wanted to neutralise at the conference was the ongoing sexual assault allegations, which led to the resignation of the party president. Unsurprisingly, there was an enthusiasm for having a woman elected to the role of President, and Claire Szabó staved off a challenge from Labour’s Māori vice president and unionist Tane Phillips. Laura Walters reported: “Szabó ticked all the right boxes: her experience running a large organisation, her experience in Labour, and the fact she’s a woman” – see: Claire Szabó named new Labour Party president.

Szabó played down those identity issues in explaining her new position: “I think young women have played roles in the Labour Party traditionally, I don’t think that’s particularly new. The fact two young-ish women are playing leadership roles in the party is actually unremarkable… I think there’s plenty of precedent for two people of the same gender to play leadership roles in a party.”

For a backgrounder on the new president, see Audrey Young’s Claire Szabo elected new Labour Party president.

Szabó’s qualifications for navigating the party through the ongoing sexual assault allegation problems are emphasised by Henry Cooke and Collette Devlin in their opinion piece, Labour has a lot to clear up at its annual conference this weekend.

They report that the situation is the “elephant in the room” for the party, overshadowing everything else, as the official investigation into the matter continues. Cooke and Devlin argue: “Obviously having a woman – and a woman with serious experience outside of the party – would make sense as the party deals with the results of those reviews.”

The “nation-building” school spend-up

The big policy announcement of the weekend was designed to reassure supporters that this Government is still making progress on its “transformative” agenda. For months, critics have been scathing about Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s refusal to loosen the fiscal purse strings in order to deal with some of the problems in society such as infrastructure. See an earlier political roundup about the building pressure on the Government: Shouldn’t the Government be spending more?.

Robertson and Labour have shown they’re listening, committing to announcing both increased spending on infrastructure and on schools in particular. For the details of this, see Jason Walls’ Revealed: 2000 schools to get $400m bonus – what yours will get.

Not only is the Government making “the largest spend on school infrastructure in 25 years”, but it is also extending “the living wage to all non-teaching staff in schools, including cleaners, caretakers and grounds people.”

According to Audrey Young, such a policy will help the public forget about the rifts in the Labour Party, while being unlikely to get any real criticism from National: “If you were on the right of politics, you would complain that it is not targeted spending, that it is determined only by the number of pupils, not the condition the school is it. But is not one that you’d complain too hard about without sounding like Scrooge. She might not be delivering what everyone wants, but she is ending the year delivering the dosh” – see: PM Jacinda Ardern no longer feeling her way like some experimental PM (paywalled).

To get a sense of how favourably the policy will be received by struggling schools, see Tom Hunt’s article, Government funding boost for school like 40 fairs rolled into one. According to the principal of one Wellington school, the new funding would be “roughly 40 times what it made in a school fair. The money that would likely be spent re-cladding parts of the school before leaks started.”

RNZ’s political editor, Jane Patterson, says the school spend-up will be highly successful: “it’s a policy that will affect every community and families will be able to see tangible results, and in government terms relatively quickly, clearly a bonus as the party readies for next year” – see: Labour gears up for the 2020 election.

Furthermore, she says “it won’t do Labour’s relationship with the teaching sector any harm either”, and will allow the Government to argue it is part of their programme to “rebuild the nation” after National’s “nine years of neglect”.

There might still be some big questions about whether the Government has got the allocation model right for the schools. Although the total spend for the scheme might be calculated as about $700 per student, the funding is not actually being allocated on the basis of student numbers. Hence, it’s being pointed out that smaller schools are effectively getting much higher per-student funding than bigger schools.

For example, Henry Cooke and Collette Devlin point out that “Papanui Junction School near Turakina, which has a roll of 7, will receive the minimum of $50,000 – or $7,100 per student” – see: Government pumping $400m into school property, almost $700 per student.

Another Auckland principle says the funding model is mysterious, arguing there could be iniquitous allocations, for example: “The rollout’s just a little perplexing. You take a school like Avondale with 2700… they’ll be lucky to paint two or three blocks compared to a school of 580 which gets the same amount” – see RNZ’s Schools welcome maintenance funding boost, criticise allocation.

In terms of the bigger infrastructure spend – to be announced on 11 December – there is going to be plenty of disagreement about the best targets for funding. For an example of this, see Dan Satherley’s ‘Damn good idea’ to borrow, but money should go on roads – economist.

And there will be lots of other innovative ideas for where the money is best spent – see Alex Braae’s Credit cards out: Where all that infrastructure money should be spent.

Finally, the most colourful moment of the Labour Party’s conference in the weekend was the traditional story told by the party’s deputy leader about how “the coalition ending nine years of blue darkness”, and “preparing for the return of an election year taniwha”. You can read it in full here – see Kevin Davies’ The speech that delighted Labour.

By RNZ Pacific

A new council at the university of Papua New Guinea could soon be appointed, says an academic who led last week’s staff boycott at the country’s main national university.

Dr Linus Digim’Rina, head of the Division of Anthropology, Sociology and Archaeology, is a key member of the National Academic Staff Association (NASA).

Dr Digim’Rina said almost all university staff boycotted their duties for three days last week, following the suspension of the council in January.

READ MORE: UPNG shutdown crisis – the facts behind the turmoil

Higher education minister Pila Niningi cited allegations of corruption and sexual misconduct against the council in his decision to install an interim body.

But the interim council’s composition angered staff which led to the boycott, Dr Digim’Rina said.

-Partners-

“We avoided describing it as a strike action because there was no resolution from NASA … So it was a voluntary call on individual members of staff, everybody who are concerned about governance issues.”

On Wednesday last week, the minister accompanied by the government’s chief secretary, Isaac Lupari, met with university staff and undertook to take three actions, Dr Digim’Rina said.

‘New team altogether’
“One, complete the process of the appointment of the vice chancellor. Two, conduct an independent investigation into the allegations… And three, appoint a new council with a new composition, a new team altogether,” he said.

“That’s why we committed ourselves to return to classes last Thursday.”

The staff presented a list of names for appointment to the council which is subject to approval by the National Executive Council (NEC), Dr Digim’Rina said.

“That will be presented to NEC on Thursday, deliberated and a decision reached,” he said.

But some of the interim councillors could remain.

“The minister indicated during the presentation that he would like to keep not all but a few of his own appointees including the chancellor and that didn’t go down well with university staff,” Dr Digim’Rina said.

The chancellor, Jeffrey Kennedy, criticised NASA last week for taking industrial action on issues not related to employment.

Room for more
Kennedy said he expected his interim council to be in place until the end of the year but noted there was room for two more members to be appointed.

But the composition of the interim council does not adequately represent the university, Dr Digim’Rina said.

“A one-sided majority of the members have come from management, corporate administration and real estate backgrounds,” he said.

“There were also allegations rolling around… whereby the minister seemed to be bringing in friends and business partners into the council membership.

“Although it’s only an interim council it’s all to do with business. It’s not representative enough of the academic programmes within the university or civic organisations within society.”

Nevertheless, the need for new leadership “was recognised by university staff”, Dr Digim’Rina said.

“The previous council wasn’t necessarily performing at its best. We generally felt after so many years the council could have done a bit better,” he said.

Slow responses
But its performance may have been hindered by previous administrators, including the vice-chancellor and registrar, failing to implement council decisions in a timely fashion, Dr Digim’Rina said.

“I can say the previous council together with the previous administration, they were quite slow. The need for change was recognised by university staff,” he said.

“And in a strange way the minister’s intervention was quite necessary.”

As for completing the appointment of the vice chancellor, Frank Griffin had come through a robust selection process under the previous council that staff were “proud of”, Dr Digim’Rina said.

The minister, has appointed Kenneth Sumbuk as interim vice chancellor, who Dr Digim’Rina said was one of the candidates rejected during Professor’s Griffin’s selection.

But even though the minister had lost confidence in the previous council, he could not now claim to be sceptical of Professor Griffin, Dr Digim’Rina said.

“If that were the case the minister would have stepped in before the process was completed. Not after.”

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz