The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions.

Opposition MPs have slammed the decision, which they say will undermine the delivery of services to Pasifika communities in New Zealand.

Labour MP and former deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni said it also reduced a Pasifika voice in the public sector.

“Our overriding concern is not only the impact on direct support from the delivery of services to communities, but also the equality of advice that would be offered across government agencies in areas such as health, housing or education,” Sepuloni said.

“We would have a thought that Pacific people should be a priority given the fact that many of the challenges in New Zealand at the moment disproportionately affect Pacific people.”

The slash is the latest proposal by government to cut staff across the public sector. Within the last week alone, the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry of Health proposed cuts amounting to more than 400 positions.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the cuts were needed to “right size” the public service.

Staff cuts had long been promoted by Luxon in order to fund a tax cut package.

“What’s happened here is that we’ve actually hired 14,000 more public servants and then on top of that, we’ve had a blowout of the consultants and contractor budget from $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion, and it’s gone up every year over the last five to six years,” Luxon said.

“And really what it speaks to is look, at the end we’re not getting good outcomes,” he added.

But critics say the cuts will only cause mass unemployment and undermine services needed across New Zealand. Public Sector Association national secretary Duane Leo said the cuts would have far-reaching consequences for the health and well-being of Pasifika families in Aotearoa.

“We know that Pasifika families are more likely to be in overcrowded unhealthy housing situations and challenging environments, and they’re also suffering from the current cost of living,” Leo said.

“The ministry plays an active role in supporting housing development, the creation of employment opportunities, supporting Pasifika languages cultures and identities, developing social enterprises — this all going to suffer.

“The government is after these savings to finance $3 billion worth of tax cuts to support landlords … why are they prioritising that when they could be funding services that New Zealanders rely on.”

The extent of staff cuts will be revealed next month when the New Zealand government is expected to announce its Budget on May 30.

Sepuloni said the massive cut indicated a move to get rid of the ministry, something that has long been promoted by Coalition partner — the ACT Party.

“We have to wonder if these are the first steps towards abolishing the Ministry,” Sepuloni said.

“It’s undermining the funding to an extent that it looks like they’re trying to make the ministry as ineffective as possible, and potentially justify what ACT has wanted from the beginning . . . which is to disestablish the ministry.”

In response to criticism about cuts to the Ministry of Pacific Peoples, Finance Minister Nicola Willis said all government agencies should be engaging with the Pacific community — not just the Ministry of Pacific Peoples.

Willis said the agency had grown significantly in recent years and a rethink was appropriate.

“It’s our expectation as a government that every agency engaged effectively with the Pacific community not just that ministry,” Willis said.

“We think the growth that has gone on in that ministry was excessive.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Academic Andrew Anton Mako says the Papua New Guinea’s systemic dysfunction was plain to see in the rioting and looting throughout the country’s main cities two weeks ago.

That rioting was sparked by a protest by police after unannounced deductions from their wages.

It led to a riot causing the deaths of more than 20 people, widespread looting and hundreds of millions of dollars damage to businesses.

The government, which declared a two-week long state of emergency, put the wage deductions down to a glitch in the system.

Mako, who is a visiting lecturer and project coordinator for the ANU-UPNG Partnership with the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre, said that the rioting would not have happened if the system was working properly.

“That information could have been transmitted through the system so that not only the police officers, but other public servants would have been assured that there was a glitch in the system, and then they would return the money in the next pay,” he said.

Symptom of major problems
“I think that information could have been made available to the officers quickly and the protests should not have happened.”

He said it was not an isolated event but a symptom of major problems facing the country.

“The government and the policymakers really need to take a comprehensive approach in addressing that,” Mako said.

He said that in the administration there were entire areas where little development or reform had happened in a generation.

The last attempt to look at the government machinery was more than 20 years, under Sir Mekere Morauta, but since then “there hasn’t been any sort of reforms to improve governance, improve public safety, efficiency, and all that.”

Mako believes if the work of Sir Mekere had been continued the country would not be facing the problems it is at the moment.

What reforms are needed
Mako said the government needs to know it faces major issues that cannot be resolved quickly — they will need to think in terms of years before reforms can be bedded in.

“It’s not going to be easy, they have to really work on it for a number of years. They will have to come up with a reform agenda work on it for the next four or five years.”

Up to now, Mako said, politicians have just dealt with the symptoms, rather than addressing the underlying issues, such as unemployment.

He sees the high crime rate as being closely linked to the lack of work opportunities, along with high inflation and the failure of wages to keep pace.

“The focus has to be on the sectors that create jobs. So over the last few years, over the last decade or so, a lot of focus has really been on the resources sector, the mineral, petroleum and gas sector.

“Those sectors are really called enclave sectors and they have really limited linkage with the broader sectors of the economy,” Mako said.

“So the mineral sectors do not create a lot of jobs. A lot of the jobs [there] are done by either machines or highly skilled workers. So it is the sectors like agriculture, like fisheries, like tourism, forestry, those are the sectors really, really create jobs.”

Mako added the government should be focussing on investing in, and developing policies, in these traditional sectors, enabling many of the unemployed, especially the young, to find work.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Parliament has ended for another term, shutting down ahead of the Aotearoa New Zealand election campaign with a debate where many focused on attacking their political opponents.

Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins warned New Zealanders: “We can continue to move forward under Labour, or we can face a coalition of cuts, chaos, and fear: A National/ACT/New Zealand First government that would be one of the most inexperienced and untested in our history.”

Parliament typically rises at the end of a term with an adjournment debate, and Thursday’s seemed to confirm the coming election on October 14 would be full of negative campaigning.

Here is a brief summary of the political leaders’ speeches:

Chris Hipkins (Labour):

Labour’s leader and incumbent Prime Minister Chris Hipkins launched into the closing adjournment debate reflecting on the eventful past six years. He said his own tenure in the role had not broken that mould, with the Auckland floods sweeping in just two days after he was sworn in, followed by Cyclone Gabrielle.

“Ours is a government that has been forged through fire. Every challenge that has been thrown our way, we have risen to that,” he said.

He said Labour had achieved a lot, but there was more to do — and much at stake in the coming election.

“We can continue to move forward under Labour, or we can face a coalition of cuts, chaos, and fear: A National/ACT/New Zealand First government that would be one of the most inexperienced and untested in our history, a government who want to wind the clock back on all of the progress that we are making.”

He praised Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s handling of the economy, highlighting a 6 percent larger economy than before the covid-19 pandemic, record low unemployment, and wages “growing faster under our government than inflation”.

He soon returned to attacking political opponents, however.

“Now is not the time to turn back. Now is not the time to stoke the inflationary fires with unfunded tax cuts as the members opposite promised, and it is not a time to turn our backs on talent by introducing a talent tax,” he said, referring to National’s plan to increase levies on visas.

“National wants to turn the clock backwards; we want to keep moving forward.”

He finished by saying Labour had a positive vision for New Zealand, before his final parting words: “and I wave goodbye to Michael Woodhouse, too, because he’s guaranteed not to be here after the election”.

Christopher Luxon (National):

The National leader said Hipkins’ speech should be one of apology, “to the parents and the kids who actually have been let down by an education system …to all the people who have waited for endless times and hours in hospital emergency departments … to all the victims of ram raids in dairies and superettes … to all the people that are lying awake at night worried about how they’re going to make their payments and keep their house.”

He continued with the requisite thanks such speeches so often sprinkle on officials, staff, supporters and workers before thanking the man he had been criticising.

“I do want to thank, in particular, the Prime Minister Chris Hipkins for his services to the National Party, because he rode in very triumphantly in February, and he announced that he was sweeping away everything that Jacinda Ardern stood for-especially kindness. But I have to say it turned out it was all words and no action, because, as we expected, he just carried on doing more of the same: Excessive, addicted government spending.

He turned to the slew of Labour personnel problems of the past year and more, likening the government to a car with the wheels falling off; the Greens were “in this rally too, they’re on their e-bikes, and they’re pedalling along the Wellington cycle lanes,” while Te Pāti Māori were “in their waka, but, sadly, they’re not the party of collaboration that they once were”.

“Then there are the ACT folk. They’re off in their pink van, and it’s been wonderful. They’re travelling the countryside, and David’s reading Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, which is a good read, as you well know, Mr Speaker.”

He lavished praise on his own team, singling out deputy Nicola Willis, then closed by promising National was “ready to govern, we are sorted, we are united, we have the talent, we have the energy, we have the ideas, we have the diversity to take this country forward”.

David Seymour (ACT):

ACT’s leader also honed in on his political opponents, targeting Labour’s polling.

“It’s been a long three years in this Chamber and it has been characterised by one fact that lays bare what has happened, and that is the fact that the Labour Party, in Roy Morgan, polled 26 percent. That means that half the people who voted for Labour at the last election have abandoned voting for Labour in three years. The question that they must be asking themselves is why that is.”

“I think the reason that we have so much change and support-Labour have lost half of their supporters in the last three years because, frankly, never has so much been promised to so many and yet so little actually delivered … New Zealanders overwhelmingly say this country is going in the wrong direction, and they also will tell you that their number one concern is the cost of living. That is Grant Robertson’s epitaph.”

He targeted housing, debt, inflation, victimisation, and child poverty before targeting the government for taking “a divisive approach to almost every single issue”.

“If you take the example of vaccination. Now, I’m a person who says that vaccination was safe and effective, yet by using ostracism as a tool to try and increase vaccination levels this government has eroded social cohesion and divided New Zealanders when they didn’t need to,” he said.

“New Zealand have had enough of that style of politics. They’ve had enough of Chris Hipkins going negative. They’ve had enough of the misinformation.”

He finished by saying the choice for New Zealanders now was not between swapping “Chris for Chris and red for blue”, but “we’ll actually deliver what we promise, we’ll cut waste, we’ll end racial division, and we’ll get the politics out of the classroom. Those aren’t just policies, those are values that we all share.”

James Shaw (Greens):

The Green co-leader took his own opening shot at Seymour, as “the leader of ‘New New Zealand First’”.

“Mr Seymour must be feeling quite grumpy right now, because last term he worked so hard to get rid of Winston Peters so that this term he could become Winston Peters, and now Winston Peters is calling and he wants his Horcrux back because that blackened shard of a soul can only animate the body of one populist authoritarian at once.”

He turned the hose on both major parties in one statement, saying it was odd National was proposing more new taxes than Labour while the Greens were promising bigger tax cuts than National. He criticised National over its plan to spend the funds from the Emissions Trading Scheme, before turning to climate change overall as — unusually — a source of positivity.

“Our greenhouse gas emissions in Aotearoa are falling, and that is because — and it is only because — with the Green Party in government with Labour, we have prioritised that work every single day.”

But positivity did not last long.

“Under the last National government, one in 100 new cars sold in this country was an electric vehicle. Last June, it was one in two … and National want to cancel all of that so that they can have an election year bribe.”

Rawiri Waititi (Te Pāti Māori):

The Pāti Māori leader Rawiri Waititi began with a fairy tale.

“It seems like this side of the House can find a grain of salt in a sugar factory. I just wanted to say, as I heard the story about Goldilocks — Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Baby Bear — I tell you, it’s been very difficult to sit next to a polar bear and a gummy bear, and it’s been quite hard to contain the grizzly bear in me.”

He spoke in te reo Māori before giving a speech which — unlike the other leaders — focused exclusively on his own party’s promises.

“We are the only movement that will fight for our people,” he said.

“What does an Aotearoa hou look like? It looks like how we would treat you on the marae. We will welcome you. We will feed you. We will house you. We will protect you. We will educate you. We will care you. We will love you.”

“Te Pāti Māori is a movement that leaves no one behind, whether you are tangata whenua or a tangata Tiriti, tangata hauā, takatāpui, wāhine, tāne, rangatahi, mokopuna — you are whānau.”

He spoke of the need to reduce poverty and homelessness, before making the second of two references to his suspension from Parliament this week, then said it was time to “believe in ourselves to be proud, to be magic, and to believe in your mana”.

“I am proud of you all, I am proud of our movement, and I’m proud to head into this campaign, doing what we said we would do.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Samoa’s Ombudsman Luamanuvao Katalaina Sapolu says the human rights effects from the covid-19 pandemic have been catastrophic.

She has just submitted Samoa’s eighth State of Human Rights Report to Parliament.

Luamanuvao said that over the past two years families had lost loved ones, businesses suffered, unemployment rates increased, and freedom of movement was restricted.

She said there had also been a grave impact on children’s right to education, and the right to health continues to be challenged with resources stretched to the maximum.

But she said human rights principles continued to play an important role in addressing discrimination and inequality and providing inclusion of everyone in the prevention of, and recovery from covid-19.

The report provided an analysis of the impact of the pandemic and government measures on the rights and freedoms of Samoans, especially on the most vulnerable groups.

The report also included recommendations for the government to ensure its covid-19 measures were consistent with the constitution, domestic laws, and policies safeguarding human rights, as well as Samoa’s international human rights obligations.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

More than two million New Zealanders will get a one-off $350 sweetener as part of the Budget’s centrepiece $1 billion cost-of-living relief package.

The temporary short-term support is counterbalanced by a record $11.1 billion for the health system as the government scraps district health boards (DHBs) and replaces them with a central agency.

“Our economy has come through the covid-19 shock better than almost anywhere else in the world,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement. She is in covid isolation.

“But as the pandemic subsides, other challenges both long-term and more immediate, have come to the fore. This Budget responds to those challenges.”

Ongoing uncertainty over inflation, covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine continue to cast a pall over the economy until at least the end of the year.

A large $19 billion deficit is expected this year, returning to surplus in 2025.

Treasury is forecasting house prices to ease and unemployment to drop as low as 3 percent.

Cost-of-living sweetener
New Zealanders aged 18 and over will be eligible for the $350 payment unless they earn more than $70,000 a year or already receive the Winter Energy Payment.

The sum will be paid in three instalments over August, September and October, working out at roughly $27 a week.

The temporary payment is estimated to cost $814 million — funded out of the remaining money in the covid-19 war-chest which is now being wound up.

NZ Finance Minister Grant Robertson delivers Budget 2022. Video: RNZ News

The support comes with a two-month extension to the fuel tax reduction and half-price public transport given the current high fuel prices.

New Zealanders who have a community services card will continue to get half-price public transport permanently from mid-September.

“While we know the current storm will pass, it’s important we do what we can to take the hard edges off it now,” Ardern said.

The government will also rush through legislation under urgency over the next few days to crack down on supermarkets in an effort to reduce grocery bills.

The legislation will ban supermarkets from using restrictive covenants to prevent competitors from accessing land to open new stores.

Ministers flagged further announcements in response to the Commerce Commission’s recent report in the sector “in the coming days”.

Health service
The Budget contains “the largest investment ever in [the] health system” — $11.1 billion — as the government presses ahead with its plan to replace DHBs with a centralised health service.

An initial $1.8b annual investment this year will help clear DHBs’ debt, giving the replacement Health New Zealand service and Māori Health Authority a “clean start”.

Health Minister Andrew Little said the 20 DHBs had collectively run annual deficits in 12 of the 13 years since 2008.

“As Health NZ takes over the books from the 20 DHBs on 1 July, a funding boost is being provided so the national system can start with a clean slate.”

The Māori Health Authority will get $168m over four years to directly commission hauora Māori services.

New Zealand’s drug-buyer Pharmac will also get an extra $191m over the next two years – in what Little says is the medicine budget’s “biggest-ever increase”.

It brings total funding to $1.2 billion which is 43 percent higher than when Labour was elected in 2017.

“Pharmac has assured me it will use this funding to secure as many medicines on its list as it can, with a focus on better cancer treatments, to ensure as many New Zealanders as possible benefit from this biggest-ever increase to its medicines funding,” Little said.

More than $166 million has been put aside over four years for ambulance services, adding more than 60 vehicles to the road fleet and about 250 more paramedics and frontline staff. Another $90.7 million will go towards air ambulance services to replace ageing aircraft with modern helicopters.

The Budget increases dental grants for low-income families from $300 to $1000 in line with Labour’s 2020 campaign promise.

A new Ministry for Disabled People is also being established at a cost of $100 million.

Housing support
While the housing market is showing signs of slowing, the Budget includes more support for first home buyers with funding available for about 7000 more grants.

House price caps across regions have been increased to line up with lower quartile market values for new and existing properties.

It means some significant shifts — both Wellington’s cap and Queenstown’s jump from $650,000 to $925,000, and Tauranga’s jumps from $600,000 to $875,000.

The income caps remain the same but will be reviewed every six months along with the new house price caps.

A new $350 million housing fund has also been set up where not-for-profit developers can apply for grants to build affordable rental accommodation.

Education equity
Replacing school deciles is the single biggest area of new spending for education.

The Budget provides more than $80 million a year for the equity index which replaces deciles as the measure of disadvantage in schools.

Most of the money, $75 million a year, will go directly to schools, adding to the $150 million they currently receive through the decile-based system.

The budget increases school operations grants and tertiary and early childhood education subsidies by 2.75 percent.

There is also $266 million over four years to give early education teachers pay parity with school teachers.

In tertiary education, the Budget provides $56 million a year to pay for an expected increase in enrolments next year and in 2024.

There is also $40 million for modernising polytechnic facilities.

Māori health, wellbeing
More than half a billion dollars is being pumped into the Māori Health sector with $579.9 million going towards Māori health and wellbeing.

The Māori Health Authority, Te Mana Hauora, is set to be launched July 1 and will receive $188.1 million over four years for direct commissioning of services.

Some $20.1 million will go to support iwi-Māori partnership boards, and $30 million will be invested into Maori providers and health workers to provide support and sustain capital infrastructure.

Lack of workforce capability has been identified as a key factor in being able to bolster Te Mana Hauora — and $39 million will be used for Māori workforce training and development to support them within the new health system.

The $579.9 million invested in Māori health and wellbeing is on top of the $11.1 billion health allocation.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The government’s latest scheme is a form of government unemployment insurance. Interestingly, both the anti-poverty groups and the neoliberal New Zealand Initiative think tank see this scheme as problematic, very much as a ‘solution looking for a problem’. In other words, its ideology. In this case it’s not capitalist ideology; it’s labourist ideology. Indeed the scheme has been cooked up with the collaboration of the CTU (Council of Trade Unions) and is fully supported by the E tū union.

Some history.

New Zealand and Australia both played key roles in the formation of ‘the twentieth century welfare state’. But different roles. In Australia, with a longer and more entrenched unionised labour movement, and with Labour Governments a generation before New Zealand, the dominant cry was for a workers’ welfare state. In New Zealand, on the other hand, where the debate was more informed by the realities of the Great Depression (1930-35), the call from the electorate in 1935 – and answered by Michael Joseph Savage – was for a citizens’ welfare state (universal ‘social security’). Hence the key phrase associated with Savage: ‘from the cradle to the grave‘. The citizens’ welfare state explicitly included women, all older people, the self-employed (many of whom were unemployed in all but name, in the Depression), and all others who for whatever reason were neither capitalists nor principally attached to the labour market.

Essentially, in the first half of last century, Australia got its workers’ welfare state, and New Zealand got its (universal) citizens’ welfare state. But the Labour Party in Aotearoa New Zealand always struggled with the concept of a universal welfare state, Savage notwithstanding.

In the years in which Robert Muldoon was Minister of Finance, 1967 to 1972, two major – but divergent – welfare reports were published: the Woodhouse Commission on workers’ compensation and the McCarthy Report on social security. The McCarthy Report was in tune with the times, in fully recognising the full citizenship of women; ie independent of their then secondary status in the workforce. In 1972, equal pay laws were passed. And, as a result of the McCarthy Report, the Domestic Purposes Benefit gave dignity to single parents.

The Labour Government (Dec 1972 to Nov 1975) was most interested in the earlier Woodhouse Report; the result was ACC (Accident Compensation) that explicitly provided benefits to workers, with higher-earning workers getting the lions’ share of those benefits. ACC conformed with a worldview full of masculinist assumptions about labour market roles. The major champion of such workers’ welfare was the then junior minister, Roger Douglas. Following in the same vein, Douglas introduced a contributions-based New Zealand Superannuation scheme (became effective, 1975) which fully followed this already outdated masculinist labourist world view, as a government supported workers’ retirement scheme.

Fortunately for the upholders of the citizens’ welfare state – of whom Robert Muldoon was prominent – this legacy project of the Third Labour Government was immediately abandoned in 1976, and replaced by the citizen-welfare-based National Superannuation (now called New Zealand Superannuation). Contributions to the Douglas workers’ scheme were refunded.

The Helen Clark led Labour government of the 2000s continued the labourist line that workers (and capitalists) were superior kinds of citizens to everyone else. This was fulfilled – for workers – in extended the Working for Families targeted income support, which built upon an earlier 1980s’ Labour Government policy (means-tested ‘Family Care’) to replace the universal (ie citizens’) ‘family benefit’. The universally-minded Child Poverty Action Group has always railed against Working for Families as a form of family income support that largely excludes beneficiaries.

The proposed Unemployment Insurance is simply this Labour Government’s tilt at this labourist ideological windmill; the workers’ welfare state.

The Workforce as it Actually Is

For a brief period from the 1950s to the 1980s, the predominant model of work (in New Zealand and in the world) was that of fulltime employment. The feminist solution to this initially masculine reality had been for women to join what they couldn’t beat, and this century a typical salaried worker may indeed be a white collar working woman, a demographic that the CTU and the Labour Party now strongly represents. The workers’ state only became inclusive to women once they took the Hobson’s choice to embrace it.

In Guy Standing’s seminal work on the twentyfirst century labour force, the key distinction is between ‘the salariat’ and ‘the precariat’. The present Labour government makes policy for the salariat, just as the second (late 1950s) and third (early 1970s) Labour governments made policy for a male unionised labour force.

In history – and not according to Marx – labour has always been dominated by either a precariat (not a proletariat), or (as in pre-modern times) a forced-labour workforce (slaves). We still don’t understand the Great Depression of the 1930s, because we still want to know what the ‘unemployment rate’ was; this concept cannot be applied, meaningfully, to the precariat. (In an important sense, and following today’s definition, the unemployment rate in the depression was zero. Many people – especially ‘married women’ – were deemed unavailable for work; other demographics were precariously self-employed in huge numbers.) The middle-middle-class salariat is largely a product of the twentieth century post-war world.

Since the New Zealand Employment Contracts’ Act of 1991 – and similar directional shifts in other countries – the salariat has been progressively dismantled in favour of fixed-term labour contracts, variable-hour contracts, and the ‘gig economy’. Ask any young person.

The reality of the labour force is that it is a spectrum from permanent fulltime salaried (or waged) positions through to ‘free-lance’ self-employment. Various parttime options come within the spectrum – options sometimes favoured by workers, but more generally suited to the flexibility requirements of employers. Generally, those people we use to call workers we now call contractors.

It’s further muddied by the new reality that much of the new salariat – eg managers in larger corporatised organisations, and the smaller ‘nimble’ professional organisations that provide services to these large organisations – are in fact the beneficiaries (in the original sense of the word ‘beneficiary’) of the new capitalism. Labour has become capital.

(Just watch the brilliant Australian satire ‘Utopia’ on Netflix to get a sense of the productivity of the new entitled workforce.)

Nowadays, old-fashioned workers have become the cost-accounted precariat. And the remaining salariat are their bosses and managers.

Unemployment insurance is a new benefit that will mainly be paid to the salariat; that is, the new beneficiary salariat.

It will be largely funded by the precariat. In this respect the new social insurance levy will be like the unemployment tax that all working women and girls paid during the Great Depression, even though they did not quality for the benefits. Another analogy is the taxes paid by New Zealand working denizens in Australia; taxes that fund benefits only payable to Australian citizens. For the new scheme, many precarious levy-paying employees will not qualify for payouts; their work will not be structured in a way that allows them to qualify for benefits. And those low-paid workers who do quality will receive only a small share of the total paid-out benefits.

New Zealanders have to focus – and focus hard – on how to redirect welfare policy to a citizens’ path (with citizenship broadly defined), and away from its present workers’ path (with workership narrowly defined). The new salariat can and should find their own market-based income insurance.

————-

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.

Unemployment Insurance Will Mean More Tax – NZ Initiative Report, 11 November 2021

The Labour Government’s Proposed Social Insurance Scheme Will Entrench a 2-tier Welfare System, Auckland Action Against Poverty, 2 Feb 2022

Next Steps for Social Unemployment Insurance, E tū Union, 2 Feb 2022

Social Insurance Proposal Would Likely Bake-in Existing Inequities And Drive Inequality, Says Anti-poverty Organisation, Child Poverty Action Group, 2 Feb 2022

The Wage Earners’ Welfare State Revisited, by Francis Castles (1994)

A Decade of Confusion: the differing directions of social security and accident compensation 1969 – 1979, by Margaret McClure (2003) [Victoria University of Wellington Law Review]

The notion that the covid-19 pandemic was “the great equalizer’ should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our societies.

That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a repeat of the same shameful scenario.

For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her mansion while submerged in a “milky bath sprinkled with rose petals,” telling us that the pandemic has proved to be the “great equalizer”.

“Like I used to say at the end of ‘Human Nature’ every night, we are all in the same boat,” she said. “And if the ship goes down, we’re all going down together,” CNN reported at the time.

Such statements, like that of Madonna, and Ellen DeGeneres as well, have generated much media attention not just because they are both famous people with a massive social media following but also because of the obvious hypocrisy in their empty rhetoric.

In truth, however, they were only repeating the standard procedure followed by governments, celebrities and wealthy “influencers” worldwide.

But are we, really, “all in this together”? With unemployment rates skyrocketing across the globe, hundreds of millions scraping by to feed their children, multitudes of nameless and hapless families chugging along without access to proper healthcare, subsisting on hope and a prayer so that they may survive the scourges of poverty – let alone the pandemic – one cannot, with a clear conscience, make such outrageous claims.

Not only are we not “on the same boat” but, certainly, we have never been. According to World Bank data, nearly half of the world lives on less than US$5.5 a day. This dismal statistic is part of a remarkable trajectory of inequality that has afflicted humanity for a long time.

The plight of many of the world’s poor is compounded in the case of war refugees, the double victims of state terrorism and violence and the unwillingness of those with the resources to step forward and pay back some of their largely undeserved wealth.

The boat metaphor is particularly interesting in the case of refugees; millions of them have desperately tried to escape the infernos of war and poverty in rickety boats and dinghies, hoping to get across from their stricken regions to safer places.

Sadly familiar sight
This sight has sadly grown familiar in recent years not only throughout the Mediterranean Sea but also in other bodies of water around the world, especially in Burma, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have tried to escape their ongoing genocide. Thousands of them have drowned in the Bay of Bengal.

The covid-19 pandemic has accentuated and, in fact, accelerated the sharp inequalities that exist in every society individually, and the world at large. According to a June 2020 study conducted in the United States by the Brookings Institute, the number of deaths as a result of the disease reflects a clear racial logic.

Many indicators included in the study leave no doubt that racism is a central factor in the life cycle of covid.

For example, among those aged between 45 and 54 years, “Black and Hispanic/Latino death rates are at least six times higher than for whites”. Although whites make up 62 percent of the US population of that specific age group, only 22 percent of the total deaths were white.

Black and Latino communities were the most devastated.

According to this and other studies, the main assumption behind the discrepancy of infection and death rates resulting from covid among various racial groups in the US is poverty which is, itself, an expression of racial inequality. The poor have no, or limited, access to proper healthcare. For the rich, this factor is of little relevance.

Moreover, poor communities tend to work in low-paying jobs in the service sector, where social distancing is nearly impossible. With little government support to help them survive the lockdowns, they do everything within their power to provide for their children, only to be infected by the virus or, worse, die.

Iniquity expected to continue
This iniquity is expected to continue even in the way that the vaccines are made available. While several Western nations have either launched or scheduled their vaccination campaigns, the poorest nations on earth are expected to wait for a long time before life-saving vaccines are made available.

In 67 poor or developing countries located mostly in Africa and the Southern hemisphere, only one out of ten individuals will likely receive the vaccine by the end of 2020, the Fortune Magazine website reported.

The disturbing report cited a study conducted by a humanitarian and rights coalition, the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA), which includes Oxfam and Amnesty International.

If there is such a thing as a strategy at this point, it is the deplorable “hoarding” of the vaccine by rich nations.

Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni of the PVA put this realisation into perspective when she said that “rich countries have enough doses to vaccinate everyone nearly three times over, while poor countries don’t even have enough to reach health workers and people at risk”.

So much for the numerous conferences touting the need for a “global response” to the disease.

But it does not have to be this way.

While it is likely that class, race and gender inequalities will continue to ravage human societies after the pandemic, as they did before, it is also possible for governments to use this collective tragedy as an opportunity to bridge the inequality gap, even if just a little, as a starting point to imagine a more equitable future for all of us.

Poor, dark-skinned people should not be made to die when their lives can be saved by a simple vaccine, which is available in abundance.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). This article is republished with permission. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

I live in Auckland. Last night while driving home around 8pm I passed a small roadside car park with about 10 vehicles in it with people sleeping in them. I doubt they were holiday makers.

A story on today’s RNZ news feed says there are now 29 registered food banks serving the city.

On the news I caught an item about students leaving school early to try and bring some income into the house or look after younger siblings so their parents can work.

I’m sure these issues are not just Auckland problems but are being faced by many communities throughout our country.

Times are going to get tougher before they get better, so what can we do about it?

One solution on offer is the UBI – the universal basic income. I understand the arguments but I am not yet convinced about it. My concern is less about cost than about creating incentive and dignity.

Most people, given the chance, I believe, would rather earn the money to put food on the table than be given handouts.

Great Depression strategy
If we look back to the Great Depression, the strategy that delivered an economic recovery was government-created jobs, particularly through big infrastructure projects such as building schools and houses, improving the railways and tree planting.

It’s what I would call universal job creation (UJC) which would require the government to become far more active in the marketplace.

How would it be initially funded? By doing that thing NZ governments to date have been frightened of doing – run the budget deficit until the economic ship comes right.

Why would you do that?

Because one person’s spending is another person’s income and you can’t spend if you have no income.

By the government creating jobs it stimulates the economy in a way that is more positive for our society than handouts because long term things get made.

I’d also take this crisis moment to redefine what we mean by a “job”.

Neoliberal model failure
For far too long we have accepted the neoliberal model which insists that, for example, mothers put their children in care while they get a job to earn money.

It could well be part of a universal job creation scheme that bringing up children or caring for a disabled or perhaps elderly relatives is considered a “job” for which people are paid a living wage.

There could be work making community food gardens, paying people to develop free computer software or to be musicians and artists for example.

Before I sign off for today I should just mention that the National Party posters I see around my neighbourhood do feature the word “jobs” but the what they propose to do is neoliberal.

Give tax breaks to the well off and it will trickle down to creating lowly paid jobs for the not-so-well-off.

The post-covid economy is going to be very different. The marketplace will not fix our increasing poverty issue. Deficit funding of jobs, the Great Depression taught us, certainly would.

An Australian economist who has written quite a bit about government job creation is Bill Mitchell and you can find a useful article about him and his job guarantee idea here.

Bryan Bruce is an independent filmmaker and journalist. The Pacific Media Centre is publishing a series of occasional commentaries by him during the NZ election campaign.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Looking at Chart 1, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the economy is shown as the combination of yellow and orange. (We note that these charts represent another aspect of pie economics; earlier pie charts showed the GDP by looking at its distribution rather than its composition.)

GDP is a measure of market production, not a measure of living standards. Nevertheless, we can picture living standards as the combination of yellow and purple; consumption and leisure. (Orange represents the production of capital goods – such as commercial buildings and machinery – which do not directly contribute to living standards, but which are necessary to maintain or increase economic productivity.)

Unemployment (coloured olive) represents labour made available at current market conditions, but not hired by employers or clients. Strictly, involuntary unemployment is measured by counting unutilised work-hours rather than unutilised people. Nevertheless, we generally measure unemployment as ‘people’, and we accept that normal ‘fully employed’ economies may have four percent of people unemployed. Such economies with ‘full employment’ also tend to have a number of unfilled jobs, but not jobs in the same places – or with the same skill specifications – as the unemployed people.

The absolute maximum capacity of the economy is represented by all four colours combined. But, in normal circumstances, living standards are maximised with a work-leisure balance; and not by replacing all leisure with work.

Some unemployment is practically unavoidable (eg four percent of the labour force), and means that unemployed people should have access to non-labour income. Further, the actual boundary between work and relaxation – essentially the yellow-purple boundary – is not necessarily the optimal boundary. For example, some people may prefer to reduce hours worked and take a proportional pay cut; the only reason that they do not do this is the rigidity of their employment contracts. (Some other people already working fulltime may wish to increase their hours for more pay, and reduce their leisure time; these people would like to give up some leisure so they can have more consumer goods.)

Looking at Chart 2, a pandemic has struck, causing emergency restrictions to be imposed, meaning that parts of the economy have to be suspended; that is, to go into ‘hibernation’. The result is reduced GDP and increased unemployment, labelled ‘hibernation’.

As the period of hibernation progresses, people reassess their choices – in particular, their work-leisure balance. The principal outcome of this personal reflection appears to have been that many people would prefer to work less for pay, and to simplify their lives; they are wanting to work less and are willing to earn less.

Looking at Chart 3, we see that about half of the new involuntary unemployment (‘hibernation’) has morphed into a preference for more relaxation time, combined with a willingness to adopt a less consumerist lifestyle.

Looking at Chart 4, the pandemic is over, and the economy is free to become normal again. However, as a result of the pandemic the optimal work-leisure balance has changed, compared to Chart 1. (The optimal balance is the one that maximises happiness.)

The remaining hibernation unemployment in Chart 3 becomes employment in Chart 4, leaving only the regular four percent unemployment. Structurally, Chart 4 is just like Chart 1. The really important change is that, post-pandemic, the purple relaxation zone is much larger than it was before the pandemic.

The pandemic has given us a mechanism – a catalyst – that enables us to find our new normal balance. However, to properly achieve that new normal, fiscal and monetary policies will need to be responsive to these changing preferences. Businesses responding to changes in household preferences may be the easy part of the adjustment; getting policymakers to respond to these changes in household preferences may be harder. (That will be the subject of my next contribution to this important discussion.)

By Sharlyne Eri in Lae

A Papua New Guinean man who once resorted to crime to make a living is now running a bicycle repair business.

Collin Kunan is a long-time resident of West Taraka, one of Lae’s urban settlements where petty crime is rife because of high unemployment.

Kunan said he gave up criminal activities because he saw no future.

READ MORE: Damning report into PNG poverty and human rights abuses

Unemployment, poor sanitation, and overcrowding are common issues in urban settlements and West Taraka is no exception.

The population that really feel the pinch of these realities is the youth.

Most are school dropouts while others could not continue because of school fee issues.

Left with no job opportunities, most resort to petty crime to survive.

Switched lifestyles
Such was the case before for Kunan, now 45, who gave up that lifestyle to start a small bicycle repair business.

“If I do nothing I will pick up a gun and start stealing again. Since 2000, I made up my mind to work hard, make gardens to survive.”

Kunan started his business with repairing bicycles and now also sells bicycle parts – most of which he collects from rubbish dumps or from old bicycles donated to him.

As someone who is just starting this small business, Collin Kunan said he was not aware of SME grants from the government, saying there should be more awareness.

For now, Kunan says there are no big plans for his business as yet but he says he is glad he chose this life over resorting to crime.

Sharlyne Eri is a reporter for EM TV News, Lae. Asia Pacific Report republishes articles in partnership with the Pacific Media Centre.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Jessica Marshall in Auckland

The Solomon Islands faces a “time bomb” with a youth unemployment rate of 82 percent and New Zealand needs to do more to help the Pacific country, says former Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Youth unemployment is “one of the huge challenges of our time”, she says.

“They’ve all got ideas, they want to do things, and . . . I really urge our aid programme to focus back on some of these basics again,” she told the annual conference of the National Council of Women (NCW) in Auckland yesterday.

READ MORE: Violence against women is a national crisis: Clark

Clark, former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is the new patron of NCW and is the author of a new book launched this weekend, Women, Equality, Power.

She said the New Zealand government needed to rethink how its aid programme was structured.

-Partners-

“A country like the Solomon Islands could have a future but it needs investment in its agriculture.”

She said New Zealand used to invest its aid programme – in places like Thailand, for example – in the country’s agriculture.

“How much focus have we got on agriculture now?” she asked.

‘No brainer’
“It’s just a no brainer to try to support people back into the value chain.”

She made the call during a discussion on the UN Sustainable Development Goals which Clark was instrumental in developing during her time with UNDP.

Dr Gill Greer, chief executive of NCW, said that the inclusive manner in which Clark went about developing the goals was “not typical of the UN at many times”.

“It was a vision, it is a vision,” said Dr Greer, adding that the goals did not go far enough on the issue of gender.

“The living framework has one indicator, and that is all, and in this room [of 200 people] just think of how many we could suggest immediately?”

Clark replied: “Gender is in every goal”.

Clark also discussed the issue of migrants in Nauru, proclaiming it to be a crisis.

“There is something fundamentally wrong, this is not a sustainable situation and it’s no way to treat people.”

Earlier yesterday, the BBC reported that children had been attempting suicide and self-harm on the island.

The Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit opens in Nauru tomorrow.

Jessica Marshall is a student journalist on AUT’s Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies (Journalism) course.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz