Chris Trotter is returning to form. After the death of his strangely beloved ‘social democratic’ Labour Government, he’s been in a much more reflective and insightful mood (rather than his previous phase of agit-prop defence of ‘lesser evilism’). In this week’s Independent Financial Review column he reflects on the political degeneration of what currently passes for social democracy. He shows how the Labour Party – and the much of the wider left in NZ politics – has a deeply problematic relationship with the New Zealand working class. Essentially Labour now sees workers as victims to manage rather than as a positive political force with the tremendous potential to change society. [Read more below]
When the 4th National Government came to power in 1990, the makeup of its Cabinet indicated that the National Party was still tied to its rural roots. Thirteen former farmers were appointed to the twenty-MP cabinet, together with a further three MPs from rural or provincial areas, while there was only one MP included from a metropolitan Auckland seat. The makeup of the new 5th National Government suggests that the party has qualitatively changed. In stark contrast to the old 1990s rural-based Bolger Cabinet, lawyers now outnumber farmers 8 to 2 in the Key Cabinet. [Read more below]
It might seem a bit odd to have a blog post about issues in NZ politics in 2007. But every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a yearbook looking at what’s happened in the previous year in politics of 20+ western democracies. For the past decade or so, this has been written by Jack Vowles, but this year I’ve given it a go because Prof Vowles is no longer in the country. And the latest Political Data Yearbook (Volume 47, Issue 7-8, 2008) has just been published. You can read this in university libraries, and some universities will have online access to it here. But for those that can’t, below is the text that I submitted to the yearbook. Although it pertains to last year, hopefully what I’ve written is actually a useful context for understanding the current election campaign. The extensive analysis includes discussion of all the major issues from an action-packed policy year involving the ‘anti-smacking’ law, the Electoral Finance Act, extensions and enhancements to KiwiSaver and Working for Families, the terrorism raids, scandals about Air NZ in the middle east, employment and politicisation in the public service, and the charging of Labour MP Phillip Field with corruption and bribery. There was also the rise of John Key and the attempted revitalization of Labour. I argue that although it appears contradictory, political consensus and conflict increased in tandem during 2007. [Read more below]
The campaigns of New Zealand’s political parties are increasing run by PR and consultancy companies, and this reflects their increasingly similarities and electoral-professional nature. Related to this, David Fisher asks in the latest Listener: ‘Which New Zealand political party has undeclared links to a foreign-based political strategy firm that has been accused of underhand tactics?’ The answer isn’t National and Crosby Textor, but Labour and the ‘Washington-based strategy and technology experts Blue State Digital’. [Read more below]
The historic and weakened relationship between trade unions and the New Zealand Labour Party is the subject of the cover article of this weeks’ Listener magazine. Written by David Fisher, the article interviews a number of key unionists and Labour Party sources. He asks whether the unions still slavishly follow Labour? And ‘How does a revitalized union movement best represent its members?’ Fisher details how the union-party linkage used to be vital, but it’s been weakened, and now the linkage only really exists at an elite, non-organic level. He says, that ‘Born out of working men’s desire for political change 92 years ago, the Labour Party has all but severed those ties, turning its attention to middle class issues’. [read more below]
The business community has lost confidence in the Labour Government, yet isn’t convinced that the National Party will carry out the necessary changes that they support. That’s the message from the Independent Financial Review’s triennial pre-election business survey. In many ways it mirrors the Independent’s pre-election business survey that preceded Clark’s Labour Party coming to power in 1999. That survey of employers reported that they believed the National government should be voted out and that the Labour Party was then the preferred choice of business. [Read more below]
One of the main observations and complaints made about the Opposition National Party in recent months has been that it is not releasing policy and is incredibly vague about what it will do if it comes into government this year. These are fair questions and challenges to National, but... [Read more below]
The New Zealand Labour Party has gone from apparently having one of the largest per capita memberships of any Labour Party in the Western world, to now possibly one of the smallest whilst in government. The story of the party’s membership is that of incredible decline. [Read more below]
The establishment of the Labour Party in 1916 heralded the arrival of a new form of party organisation, the class mass party, which would eventually characterise all parties in New Zealand. [Read more below]
According to the latest Metro magazine (May 2008), Matt McCarten is one of “Auckland’s Toughest Bastards”. In fact he's rated 8 out of 10 for his bastardry. And as if to reinforce this, McCarten’s most recent Herald on Sunday column is a prime example of just how ruthless he can be to those that that cross him and the cause of workers in NZ. [Read more below].
For nearly half a century the Labour Party was solidly a party of the working class. Established in 1916 as the political wing of the trade union movement, it aimed to increase ‘the visible, physical presence in Parliament of representatives of the working class’ (Gustafson, 1989: p.211). It now functions to give a presense in Parliament for politicians from the middle classes and to formulate and market policies that are attractive to voters from all classes and income groups. [Read more below]
Throughout the twentieth century it was commonplace for New Zealand’s political parties to be backed by various organised sections of New Zealand society (now often termed ‘third parties’). Parties parties were heavily anchored in societal organisations such as interest groups, community organisations and businesses. Towards the end of the century there was a blurring of this support, and these days societal organisations that might be expected to be on friendly terms with National can be found on good terms with Labour, and vice versa. But more than anything, such institutional-party relations have withered. [Read more below]
The Electoral Finance Act and the recent debate about political finance in New Zealand has brought attention to the links that political parties are said to have to a number of ‘third parties’. This post looks in extensive detail at the Labour Party’s various societal third party linkages over its history. It shows that the Labour Party's organic links to civil society have eroded, and its legendary relationship with trade unions barely exists anymore in any meaningful sense [Read more below]
The Labour Party has successfully appropriated the revolutionary tradition of Blackball on the West Coast of New Zealand, and sadly they continue to subvert it for their anti-worker agenda. This political theft was dealt with by Chris Trotter in his column on Friday. Trotter correctly points out that all the ‘Cabinet Ministers and high-ranking trade union officials’ who turned up in Blackball for the recent centenary celebrations of the historic 1908 strike were there ‘to celebrate the myth of Blackball, not the reality’. And the reality is that the miners’ illegal strike had little in common with the reformist Labour Party that emerged a few years later – in fact, according to Trotter, the new moderate party represented the repudiation of the insurgency and militancy of Blackball [Read more below]
In 2005, Labour Party President and chief-fundraiser Mike Williams was gloating in the media about Labour's new billionaire financial friend Owen Glenn. Three years later he was handing in his resignation due to his public deception about a political loan from Glenn. Not only has the ‘Glenngate’ scandal raised some fascinating issues about Labour and political finance but also about Mike Williams’ role in helping keep Labour operating as a ‘corporate party’. [Read more below]
A glimpse into the shameful state of the government's provision of housing is provided by the investigative reporting of David Fisher in the latest Listener magazine. Fisher's article, 'Lodges of last resort' reports on the 'shameful secret' of 'squalid, crowded lodges' for beneficiaries in a South Auckland cul de sac. Apparently, 'almost a 1000 people live in a cluster of buildings that was once the Mangere hospital for the insane and intellectually handicapped, closed in 1994' but now operating as 'privately owned boarding houses' that the Housing New Zealand Corporation refers people to. After viewing the accompanying article photos, it's easy to see that 'Entire families - some with up to four children - live in rooms little more than three metres by four metres that were originally designed for single patients'. Fisher says that due to a lack of state houses, 'Housing NZ in Counties Manukau has a staff member to find homes in the private sector for those wanting state houses. The state-housing provider has simply run out of homes'. Housing Minister Maryan Street 'says it is not her problem - or Housing NZ's fault. The responsibility instead lies with the National Party for selling off state houses, and with local councils, which are legally responsible for boarding houses'. Massey University senior lecturer in social policy, Mike O'Brien, perceptively comments that, 'The language shift, used by first National and then the current Labour-led government, has taken social policy from a safety net for all to a focus on individuals and individual responsibility'.
Rising Labour Party Cabinet Minister, David Cunliffe, is New Zealand's 'first health minister to favour private health insurance', according to the profile on him in the latest Listener by David Fisher. This fact is indicative of how neoliberal the modern Labour Party is. What's more, key players like Cunliffe are pushing the party even further to the right - according to the Listener, 'Behind the scenes, he is a prime driver in Labour's economic policy.' Unsurprisingly, Cunliffe 'has long advocated private-public partnerships for infrastructure works', and he appears to be getting his way, with the Labour Government making more and more noises about contracting the private sector to carry out public work. Cunliffe says,'only in partnership with the business and community sectors can Government truly be effective'. As well as talking about his 'centrist tendencies', the article deals thoroughly with the issue of whether Cunliffe is actually arrogant - as both his colleagues and opponents allege - or merely highly-confident. The profile provides a fairly full picture of the politician. Cunliffe graduating with an honours degree in Politics from Otago, after which he worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Wellington, Canberra and Washington DC, then studied at Harvard University, before becoming a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in New Zealand. His partner, Karen Price (also ex-MFAT) is a environmental lawyer and partner in the law firm Minter Ellison. They now live in a $2 million house in Ponsonby, despite the fact that Cunliffe is a Labour MP for a West Auckland electorate. The Listener profile sums him up very nicely with this one sentence: 'Cunliffe is the new wave of "Third Way" Labour politicians: well-educated, wealthy and perhaps more comfortable among big business than in a working men's club'.
Political parties can be judged by who their known financial backers are. The Labour Party’s biggest financial contributor is the low-profile billionaire Owen Glenn. So just who is Owen Glenn? And what does his rightwing political beliefs say about his choice to back the Labour Party? [Read more below]
The dust has now settled on the Owen Glenn political finance scandal, which means it’s probably an appropriate time to make some observations and conclusions about Glenn and his involvement with political parties in New Zealand. Future posts will show how this political finance scandal illustrates that the Labour Party is every bit as much of a corporate-sponsored party as National is, and that Labour is hypocritical and self-serving when it comes to the issue of political finance and regulation. This post is the first of five about ‘Glenngate’. This first post attempts to provide a summary of what actually occurred. [Read more below]
A Labour Party-affiliated trade union, the EPMU, Is attempting to register as a ‘third party’ under the Electoral Finance Act (EFA), even though it isn’t required to and isn’t necessarily eligible to. This raises some interesting questions about the relationship between unions and the Labour Party, and about further problems with the EFA. [Read more below]
There’s no doubt that National’s latest announcement that it’s adopting Labour’s interest-free student loans is a policy U-turn. In fact it’s just one more chapter in a whole series of U-turns. National’s been ‘swallowing dead rats’ for the last few years on: KiwiSaver, Working for Families, industrial relations, Treaty claims, retention of the Maori Seats (in the short-term), anti-nuclear policy, non-market rents, the Cullen Superannuation Fund, four weeks annual leave, among others. Meanwhile, Labour and its partisan bloggers don’t know how to deal with National’s shift to the centre. [Read more below]
Justice Minister Annette King has provided the most accurate and concise analysis of John Key’s newly announced law and order policy for National by labeling it as ‘Labour’s policies with a blue ribbon’. The opening election campaign speeches by Key and Helen Clark have indeed shown just how bland and similar the two main parties are. Furthermore, they’ve reiterated what was argued on this blog in August last year – Law & order: the new political battleground - that law and order issues are shaping up to be one of the main areas of political debate in New Zealand due to the decline of economic differences in the parliamentary parties. [Read more below]
Labour's KiwiSaver will increase inequality and benefit the wealthy, according to the research and analysis of Professor John Gibson of the Management School at Waikato University. According to a report in the Herald, Gibson says that whereas NZ Super helped to ‘equalise lifetime incomes’ KiwiSaver will do the opposite. Apparently 45% of the working-age population earn below $30,000, but that group will only get 15% of KiwiSaver tax incentives. In contrast, the 11% of the the working-age population earning $70,000+ will receive 18% of the tax incentives. Interestingly, although the pro-National Kiwiblog supports KiwiSaver, it also agrees with this analysis and points out that essentially ‘Cullen has given CEOs who earn $1 million a year a $17,640 tax reduction’. See also John Minto’s earlier Press column entitled KiwiSaver opens way to privatisation of national super, which makes a similar argument. Minto says that because ‘Higher levels of savings attract higher government subsidies and higher returns for retirement… the benefits through KiwiSaver will be accrued to higher-income earners’. See also, this Press report on the maddening bureaucracy and poor customer service related to KiwiSaver: Woman's KiwiSaver experience 'a complete nightmare'
Should religion be deemed a charitable cause? And should the state subsidise religious proselytisation? These are questions asked by an article in the Listener this week. The argument put forward is that there are very wealthy and powerful religious charities in New Zealand that profit from their tax-exempt status. And the Government is about to make it even easier for such not-for-profit groups to collect greater funds. This is the first blog post of many in a series examining the contemporary Establishment in this country. [Read more below]
This week’s Listener editorial brands Labour’s Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill as the ‘One law for MPs Bill’, and strongly criticizes the proposed legislation for being ‘blatantly unfair’. The editorial says that despite the bill’s tedious title, and combined with the ‘anti-democratic’ Electoral Finance Bill, it will have a profound impact on elections by allowing incumbent political parties and MPs to have a huge advantage over any challengers. Essentially the ruling parties will face different spending rules to any challengers and will effectively have a ‘legalised advantage’. The Government is criticized for trying to rush through the legislation, and concludes that ‘the public deserve better’.
Chris Knox must be having a laugh. He’s just been commissioned and paid to write and perform a lightweight party political jingle for the Labour Party entitled “It’s a Better Way with Labour”. Knowing that Chris has some sort of decent political background, I’m hoping that he’s pulled the wool over the Government's eyes, and is about to publicly release the real version: “It’s a Bitter Way with Labour”. [Read more below]
The misuse of parliamentary funds by political parties is the biggest political finance problem in New Zealand. Yet the Government has just increased this funding by $1.7m and has decided to relax the rules on how the parties can misuse the money. It’s a shame therefore that most of the current debate on political finance focuses simply on the (draconian) Electoral Finance Bill, while this more serious issue of 'backdoor state funding of parties' is totally marginalized from the debate. [Read more below]
The Labour Government has just unveiled its market-driven Emissions Trading Scheme, which has the support of other political parties such as National and the Greens. Increasingly it seems that all the parliamentary parties are ‘blue-green’ parties – combining concern for the environment with trivial market-based ‘non-solutions’ to the problems of climate change. [Read more below]
The conservative Dominion Post newspaper commissioned the rightwing National Party activist David Farrar (of Kiwiblog) to review Chris Trotter's leftwing No Left Turn history, and the result is an almost ecstatic endorsement of the book, with Farrar proclaiming that it's a book that 'any student of politics or history should read', and that it's 'one of those books which you find hard to put down'. [Read more below]
Leftwing journalist Nicky Hager has reviewed fellow leftwing journalist Chris Trotter's No Left Turn and concludes that it's 'an excellent, readable, thought-provoking book'. This review published in the Listener - see Power & the people - concentrates on how No Left Turn is a history book with great relevance for understanding modern New Zealand politics. [Read more below]
Chris Trotter's No Right Turn is approvingly described in the latest University of Otago's Critic magazine as 'a fervent, thorough, and idiosyncratic account' of NZ history. Not so much a review, as a springboard for dealing with the state of the NZ left and the union movement, Writing left-handed by Matthew Littlewood interviews leftists Trotter, Brian Roper and Matt McCarten about past and present politics. [Read more below]
A critical review of Chris Trotter's book No Left Turn, by guest blogger John Moore.
A class-centred historical analysis is a rare thing in New Zealand today. The clash of classes that dominated much of this young nation’s 20th Century political landscape seems to have been discarded by most contemporary political commentators and academics to the dustbin of history. Chris Trotter is therefore to be commended for trying to do justice to the history of the working class movement in this country with his tome, No Left Turn. But he is also to be challenged for his defence of the new ‘distorters of history’. [Read more below]
Law and order issues are shaping up to be one of the main areas of political debate in New Zealand. Despite little differences between the parliamentary parties, increasingly they all stress how socially conservative they are on such issues. Labour in particular, is ditching any policies that smack of liberalism and has now begun to assert its socially conservative side in order to fend off National’s law and order campaigns. So today we see the Labour’s announcement of Tougher rules to smash gangs and Increased coercive powers for police. The reason for this resurgence of political conflict on these ‘social issues’ can be explained by the decline of economic differences in the parliamentary parties. [Read more below]
Amongst all the outrage of the moment about child abuse, there's at least two voices putting some sort of decent leftwing explanation forward: John Minto and Chris Trotter. Both columnists argue that child abuse in this country is an affect of 20+ years or Labour and National's neoliberalism. Minto's column in today's Christchurch Press calmly and rationally explains how prior to Labour's economic reforms 'Child-abuse deaths for Maori were on a par with the rest of New Zealand... [But] A few years later it spiralled out of control. For the period 1991 to 2000 the figures were 0.67 [per 100,000] for non-Maori but 2.40 for Maori' when Maori unemployment peaked at 26%. Unsurprisingly, the dysfunctional families that resulted produced dysfunctional behaviour such as child abuse. Trotter also discusses the anomie and alienation that resulted from a New Zealand that now lacks social solidarity. He says 'Locate on a map of New Zealand those communities where "Rogernomics" and "Ruthanasia" bit hardest, and you will discover an alarming correspondence with the communities experiencing domestic violence, child abuse, gang affiliations and crime at their worst.' Both Trotter and Minto advocate a change in economic priorities. Minto goes further, and suggests 'The statistics relating to child abuse should be carved into slabs of granite along with the names of those who drove these families into poverty' - namely Labour, National and all their fellow travellers.
Ideas about the current government being ‘left-wing’ are sorely mistaken. Below is an article I wrote in 2002 for revolution magazine. Although it’s now five years old, it’s far from out-of-date, as very little has changed. The article runs through the defining features of the Fifth Labour Government to show that this is a status quo administration. [Read more below]
The Labour Party is now decidedly middle-class, and even its electoral hold upon working class voters happily appears to be diminishing. This is a point that is seldom acknowledged by academics or political journalists – and it’s an area I hope to do further research, blogging, and publishing on. To start off this process I’m posting the below article entitled ‘Labouring for capital’, which I wrote in 2001 for ‘revolution’ magazine about how Labour has lost its class alignment, and working class politics in New Zealand is dead. I intend to update in the future. [Read more below]
Chris Trotter has played an incredibly valuable job New Zealand politics, keeping alive some sort of critical left analysis within the mainstream media for the last 20 years. He’s a free-thinking guy with a fascinating mind and I always look forward to reading his opinion pieces. More so than most, however, Trotter’s work is incredibly uneven, and some of his columns have exasperated me. Others on the left see him even more unkindly than myself (especially in the old Alliance party), but often that’s because of the mistaken notion that ‘the left shouldn't criticise the left’. And as Trotter would correctly reply, ‘where would we be if we didn’t learn from our mistakes - nothing should be beyond critique’. But as I've said before (here and here), I think that Trotter’s output has suffered during the last year or so from a strange softness for the Labour Party. Wellington insiders say that Prime Minister’s office had a deliberate strategy of trying to neutralise Trotter by coopting him into their discussions and social activities. But as Trotter points out in his most recent, dire column, Check the Left's score, Matt, he now has the solidarity (or competition?) of three other astute media commentators: Matt McCarten, John Minto, and Laila Harre. Yet in the same column he strongly criticises McCarten’s excellent critique of the new KiwiSaver. Trotter’s illogical allegiance towards KiwiSaver is a bit of a mystery. My best bet is that like many on the left, Trotter pines for the good old days when Labour (or any party) had some ‘big ideas’, and this is him clutching at straws and believing that some such thing has finally arrived – and to hell with pesky arguments that the new ‘big idea’ is actually going to be bad for the poor.
Labour is very much a tired party that has failed to renew itself – that’s what most commentators are correctly saying (see for example, Only a purge will work and New blood, renewal Labour's urgent task). And amongst the Labour caucus there is very little depth, which means little chance for leadership regeneration. Therefore Labour is casting around for new entrants, but not finding much quality out there in the wider empty party. And those potential candidates that are viewed as credible – such as union leader Andrew Little and lobbyist Phil Lewin - have clearly seen which way the wind is blowing and recently announced they don’t want to join the sinking ship. Nonetheless, Audrey Young has looked into her crystal ball to see a future rather uninspiring Labour lineup in her article It's Government, but not as we know it. She envisages an incoming Labour Government of 2011 involving Prime Minister Shane Jones, deputy PM Maryan Street, Conservation Minister Phil Twyford, Foreign Minister Grant Robertson, Commerce Minister Stuart Nash, Labour Minister James Caygill (if they can trust him, unlike his father David), Health Minister Darren Hughes, and David Cunliffe or even Clayton Cosgrove as Finance Minister! It’s a bit of a nightmare scenario. Meanwhile, in the dodgy but related world of the union bureaucracy, Helen Kelly has apparently done a backroom deal to become the next CTU president, with Carol Beaumont continuing as secretary, and the PSA’s Richard Wagstaff becoming Vice Pres. Kelly is a lot sharper than Beaumont, but aside from that there’s not much difference between them. Both are Labour-sycophants; both have no strategy for building a fighting union movement – but I guess that’s not what either of them want.
Apart from a lot of discussion about the nuts and bolts of the new KiwiSaver, there has been little analysis of what the new scheme really means for society, and who will really benefit. Labour’s new grand plan actually represents a tax on workers, backdoor privatization of social security, lower wages, and much greater economic inequality in the future. [Read the full post below for details]
Responses to the Labour Government’s 2007 Budget mostly fall into a left-right continuum – with critics voicing leftwing or pro-poor concerns, while its supporters use rightwing or pro-business arguments in its favour. Essentially, the left critics are Laila Harre, Matt McCarten, Susan St John, and Chris Trotter. The Budget supporters aren’t necessary all rightwing, but Jim Anderton, the CTU, EPMU,Jordan Carter, the NZ Institute, and Colin James have used rightwing, pro-business or economically-orthodox arguments in its support . [Read more detail below]
No one has any interest in admitting it, but Michael Cullen’s 2007 Budget has been very much a pro-business one. Here are its main features:
A drop in business tax from 33% to 30% (symbolically, this is the first corporate tax cut since Roger Douglas was finance minister) at the cost of $2.1b
Tax credits for business research and development of $630m
A new tax exemption for NZ-controlled foreign companies to globalise at a lower tax and compliance cost (costing taxpayers $112.5m)
An additional subsidy to business of $87.8m for the Market Development Assistance Scheme to encourage firms to take new products to new markets
$53m to boost participation in industry training
A reduction in the tax rate from 33% to 30% for savings portfolio investment entities, (costing taxpayers $180m)
A tax-free gifting to charity policy to promote private philanthropy (which is a wholesale steal of National Party policy)
Legislation to allow local authorities to make consumers pay higher petrol prices to fund new transport projects (which is a very regressive taxation policy that will hit the poor hardest)
A cancellation of the previous announcement to move the tax thresholds for inflation (which particularly hits low income earners - as Susan St John points out: ‘Inflation has been cruel in producing rising average tax rates for low-income workers. The first tax bracket has not been adjusted for inflation since it was set in the late 1980s’)
As I argued in the post on Labour’s left-sounding policies, KiwiSaver is not nearly as progressive as the Labour Party makes out. Low-income earners will not be able to afford to take part in the scheme, and the government’s subsidies will therefore go towards more wealthy New Zealanders. Also, KiwiSaver will operate as a subsidy to employers. Michael Cullen and Treasury have also confirmed this - Cullen says that the scheme will mean that employers can argue that their contribution to it is in effect a pay rise and thus KiwiSaver will reduce wage rise demand. He says that KiwiSaver will therefore inevitably place downward pressure on pay. It is also worth pointing out that:
Employers will receive a government subsidy to offset the cost – up up to $20 per week per employee
Employer contributions are tax free (up to 4 per cent), which means for every $1 they contribute to employees only costs them 67c.
The change would be phased in at only 1% a year over four years
The benefits to employees will fall mostly to the wealthy (the Government point out that someone on a salary of $100,000 will be better off by about $100 a week)
Cullen estimated the change would impose about a 1% rise in the cost of employers' payrolls by 2011-2012, which he points out is significantly less than the 9% that employers pay in Australia for the scheme
Employers will benefit most through the fact that the scheme will futureproof the economy against an increasingly untenable current account deficit.
Many commentators focus on the increased spending by this Labour-led Government, suggesting that it’s a big spending administration – because the budget includes expenditure of about $54b. On this basis, Labour's supporters therefore suggest that it’s a generous and progressive Government, and similarly its critics suggest it’s a profligate and old-fashioned one. But the reality is that it’s neither. The all important indicator of government spending levels is the ratio-of-spending-to-GDP – and in this Government’s case, it’s still a very low ratio, and possibly still lower than the ratio that under the financial governance of Ruth Richardson. So in reality Labour is still running a very fiscally conservative/rightwing government.
Are the KiwiSaver and Working for Families policies as progressive as the Labour Party makes out? The Government heralds such schemes as benefiting the poor, but on closer investigation these policies actually put more resources into the middle-class or even employers, and the desperately poor are once again trodden on by the Labour Party. [Read more below]
Has the public health system really improved under Labour? Obviously
the Health Minister Pete Hodgson thinks so, declaring that 'despite
recent bad publicity, most people remain confident in the health system
because of their own positive personal experiences'. See - Health system working despite errors - Hodgson. However, building on previous blog postings about the
inadequacy of the health system, the post below covers some recent news
stories, which add up to indicate that Labour has failed to deliver. It seems that
the political topic of health is no longer an electoral area of advantage for the
Government, and perhaps it'll be one of the reasons for Labour being
turfed out at the 2008 election. Maybe someone will make a 'comedy' documentary about this to rival Michael Moore's new SiCKO. [Read more below]
The Red Cross regards the poverty situation in New Zealand so seriously that it is about to 'start serving up breakfast to the country's growing underclass' according to news reports. The charity says that it is 'interesting' - which is perhaps an euphemism for 'shameful' - that an 'agency, which was well known for its work in grief and poverty-stricken regions such as Darfur, had identified a need within our own country'. It says a programme is urgently needed in the 270 decile 1 schools because 10% of children are arriving to school hungry. Meanwhile the Labour Government has announced that 'it is prepared to work with South Island high country leaseholders who find new rents too high', because these (rather wealthy?) farmers are suddenly finding that their leases are being subjected to market rates after 11 years without adjustment. Labour has indicated their willingness to step in provide subsidies in the form of lower rents. Yet Labour's traditional and (taken for granted?) constituency of low-income earners are struggling to keep up with quickly rising prices - according to the article Families stretched as bills keep coming, which says 'Massive price jumps in household essentials, with some basics up 34 per cent, are forcing middle-income Kiwi families on to the breadline - and have swallowed up the extra funds from the Government's Working for Families scheme.' As a consequence, one agency says they have seen a 210% increase in struggling families needing help.
Labour has launched a '10-year, $8 billion plan to re-equip and man' the Defence Forces. This and other facts about the NZ military have just come to light, with the release of an independent report on the health of the defence forces. Most significantly, these facts shed some light on what the Labour Government's expenditure priorities have been since coming to power, as well as its orientation towards militarism and the armed forces. It seems that after significant cuts to defence spending by the National Government, Labour has been keen to modernise the military by way of massive spending increases on equipment. [See more below]
The arts and culture industry has become rather sycophantic towards Helen Clark and the Labour Party, and it's an unhealthy relationship based on very little. So it's good to see musician Neil Finn showing some dissent. He's been reported as speaking out in a 'blistering attack' on the PM who is also the Arts and Culture Minister. He says 'It sort of sickens me to see Helen Clark getting up at the music awards and taking bows', and that a false idea exists that 'It's like New Zealand music is taking over the world and it's all because of Helen'. No doubt Finn's anger towards her is based partly on Clark's effective sinking of the project that Finn was pushing to create a non-commercial youth radio network. Private radio feared the competition, so Clark dumped it. Finn should be happy to receiving the Chorus of disapproval from the conservative music industry 'spokespeople' like Howard Morrison ('I'm so bloody mad') and Ray Columbus ('God help Kiwi music when she retires... in my book she can take as much credit as she likes'). I'll write a future post on the topic - but essentially Clark has been attempting to leave a legacy or an association with cultural and national identity, in lieu of doing much else for the country.
The Labour Party claims to have 'saved' the Accident Compensation Compensation scheme after the previous National Government had slowly eroded its value to employees, and opened parts of its operations to competition. But in practice Labour has actually done little to improve ACC. The original idea of the scheme was a social contract between workers, employers and the government, whereby workers gave up the right to sue for injuries on the premise that the state would give adequate compensation on a no-faults basis. But cost of worker-paid premiums have risen and the payouts have become meagre. For instance, it was reported today that a 29-year-old has just received an ACC payout of only $6000 for the loss of her right leg following a botched routine knee operation. Chris Townrow had to wait five years for the botched surgery. She says in today's media report, 'It has stuffed my whole life up. If this [$6000] amount is what I am worth, it's not much, is it?' I doubt she'll be voting Labour at the next election. Nor National.
More evidence has just come out of the housing crisis under Labour. Two reports - both partially funded by The Centre for Housing Research - quantify the size and scale of the housing and rental issues facing Auckland. And if you think that my continued use of the term ‘crisis’ is an exaggeration, then note that the Herard now describe it as ‘a housing crisis of massive proportions’. The Centre for Housing Research reports says that housing unafforability ‘was likely to increase the gap between socioeconomic groups, and had implications for community stability and wealth accumulation’. In general, they say that ‘Home ownership is assuming a more polarised social character’ under Labour. [Read more below]
