Ownership of Kiwibank is paying off in a big way, both for the people of New Zealand and for the government as its shareholder, Wigram’s Progressive MP Jim Anderton says.
 
“Combining its profit and its tax paid, Kiwibank is generating almost enough income for the government in one year to equal the $80 million it cost to set up.”
 
Kiwibank today declared an after-tax profit of $25.8 million for the last six months of last year. It also paid tax of $12 million.
 
“Kiwibank’s deposits are soaring because New Zealanders can see it offers a better deal than they would have if we didn’t have our own bank. Kiwibank has an AA- credit rating.
 
“And Kiwibank’s lending is soaring too, because it can offer lower interest rates.
 
“It’s great that we have our own bank performing so well at a time of international financial crisis. We don’t have to be dependent on overseas financial markets. Those markets right now look like the dog that critics claimed that Kiwibank would be.
 
“Kiwibank is, after only six years of operating, worth more than NZ Post. Its profitability is steadily rising. Kiwibank is continuing to prove itself a winner.”

Tags: Banks, Kiwibank

John Key’s failure to give an assurance about the Superannuation Fund means he cannot honour his pre-election promise not to change superannuation, Wigram’s Progressive MP Jim Anderton says.

“Raiding the piggy bank today means there is less in the piggy bank when it is needed. 

“If the Super Fund is reduced in any way, then our future ability to pay for superannuation at existing levels is reduced. If it is cut then significantly higher taxes in future than we would otherwise have are inevitable, or alternatively reduced levels of superannuation in the future will be the certain result.

“There is no easy option. National makes pledges about super today, but that is meaningless because they are setting up super to be cut in the future. Future superannuation will not be paid for out of thin air. Whatever is taken out of the Fund today by way of ‘freezes’ or ‘reduced contributions’ is money not available to pay for super in the future.

“Cut the fund today, and the payout will be cut in future.

“National was repeatedly challenged to come clean on this before the election and it repeatedly gave an undertaking that superannuation would be unchanged.

"I specifically warned that National would use ‘changed circumstances’ as an excuse - but circumstances always change. Once again, just like it did last time in government, National is breaking its promise and finding a creative new way to break its promise not to cut super.”

Tags: Superannuation

Jim Anderton’s Speech to Parliament on the Sentencing and Parole Bill.

I have always believed that one of the most important things we can do in this House is to bear witness to the truth - to stand up and tell the truth about what we know to be true, despite the consequences.
 
What I know about this Bill, is that it is bound to play well as a popular measure, but that it is a fraud.
It will not deliver on the promises that have been made for it.
 
I believe the ministers responsible for this Bill know it will not deliver the results they have promised.
 
I believe they are pushing it through knowing it will not end violent crime, as they promised; knowing it will not make a significant difference as they promised.
 
The government has promised this Bill will ensure "there will be no more Williams Bells.”
 
That was the statement Rodney Hide made in his press release. Here is word for word what he said: “Under this Bill there will be no more William Bells.”
 
That statement is fraudulent. There will be more violent men who kill after this Bill has been passed. There will be lots more.
 
The promise the minister made in his press release will come back to haunt him and he will regret it.
 
The evidence this Bill won’t work is spelt out in the Explanatory Note to the Bill.
 
The Bill says any impact on prison numbers from this Bill “will not be felt for at least 10 years.” I didn’t read that in the Ministers’ press release.  I didn’t read in the minister’s statement that ten years after this Bill is passed, not one single extra person will be locked up.
 
I read that they were going to “get tough” with violent criminals. That’s what John Key promised.
 
He didn’t say that getting tough meant waiting ten years before one single person was locked up.
 
I did read John Key saying “New Zealanders are sick of waiting for promises on law and order to be delivered." 
 
Well they’ll be waiting a long time for this one to be delivered.
 
I read John Key saying the last government took nine years to deliver - so he’s going one better and waiting ten!
 
After 20 years, the Bill says, an extra 70 prison beds will be needed.
 
So let’s add that up - the government says this Bill will end violent crime.
 
And it says it will end violent crime by locking up a total of seventy people between ten and twenty years from now. That’s about seven people a year.
 
That’s what National thinks is the extent of the violent crime problem in this country - seven violent crimes a year. It’s a nonsense.
 
This government has vastly oversold its ability to make a difference.
 
I remember in 1990 National got elected by saying it was going to end violent crime back then, too.
 
I remember John Banks saying he was going to get tough and put an end to murder and violence and pillage.
 
And one month later this country witnessed the tragedy of Aramoana. That was the worst mass killing in our history.
 
It turned out then that violent crime is a lot more complex than the cheap headlines National wants to get.
 
It will turn out the same this time. I know that. National knows that.
 
This country has a serious problem with violent crime.
 
I saw research this week that showed only 43% of New Zealanders feel completely satisfied about their own security and safety in their own home.
 
And therefore we owe it to New Zealanders to do something real about about violence.
 
But this Bill does nothing to reduce violence. 
 
You don’t get locked up until the violent crime has already been committed.
 
This government is soft on crime because it won’t do anything to stop the crimes being committed in the first place.
 
The members opposite say they will reduce crime by locking up the most serious violent offenders.
 
But you don’t lock them up until they have already committed a serious violent offence.
 
It doesn’t lock them up before they commit it.
 
So what this Bill is really about is not reducing crime at all. It is about revenge. It is about denouncing criminals.
 
Now I actually agree there is a place for denuncuation in criminal sentencing.That’s why when my colleague Matt Robson was corrections minister he started building more prisons than any corrections minister in history.
 
So I support putting violent offenders away and my party helped to put the prisons in place to do it.
 
But you ought to be frank about what you are doing.
 
If the object of a Bill is to denounce crime, then say that - don’t come in here pretending that the Bill is going to reduce violent crime. This Bill isn’t, you know it isn’t, and that makes the very basis of this Bill a fraud, and it insults this House.
 
It insults the intelligence of members.
 
The object of this Bill is to pretend the government is getting tough.
 
If I’m generous I would say the object of this Bill might be to punish offenders more.
 
But I do not believe the object of this Bill is to reduce offending.
 
I actually put out a widely ignored and very detailed plan for reducing crime before the last election.
 
We went through every measure that expert research and expert policy shows makes a long term difference over time.
 
It starts with reducing at risk behaviour, it continues to getting tough with young hoons on their way to a life of crime. And it includes addressing the major risk factors in prisons, like alcohol and illiteracy.
 
Because when over 90 per cent of criminals have an alcohol or drug problem, then you aren’t going to rehabilitate them and turn them away from a life of crime unless you fix those.
 
And for all of those proven and efficient policies, the best estimate of the difference it would make was this - in the long run, it would reduce crime by about 17 per cent. That is about the most you can promise.
 
It is a long way short of what the government has promised for this Bill. They promised an end to violent crime - and now they are accountable.
 
We have heard a lot of songs about accountability from the government.
 
Now they are accountable for their promise to make a significant reduction in violent crime.
 
They are accountable for their promise their will be no more William Bells. God help them if there is one more after this.
 
So if it won’t make much difference to crime, what difference will this Bill make?
 
We happen to know the answer, because other countries have tried the three strikes and you are out approach.
 
It always results in huge anomalies. It always results in greater injustices. When you take away sentencing discretion, you get bad sentencing.
 
Let me give you one example: Imagine a woman who living with a violent thug with a record, and getting the bash.
 
What are the chances that she will now be even less likely to leave? What are the chances she will be much less likely to report a man when she knows it would mean that he would be locked up for life.
 
Those are decisions victims make all the time - and the truth is this Bill will ensure some women in exactly that position suffer grievously because of the horrifying dilemmas it will create. What is compassionate about that?
 
We owe it to New Zealanders to get tough on crime.  This bill does not.
 
This Bill pretends to get tough.
 
This Bill will lead to perverse results.
 
This Bill will not deliver National’s promise to significantly reduce crime.
 
And I cannot support its vile cynicism.

Tags: Crime, Law & Order

There could be help for Christchurch tenants fighting Council-imposed rent increases if National picks up a proposal for government assistance that was prepared for the previous Labour-Progressive Government, Wigram MP Jim Anderton says. 

Tenants have successfully opposed the rent increase in court, but the Christchurch city’s incumbent right-wing majority has now signalled it could again try to substantially increase rents or even abandon social housing altogether - leaving two and a half thousand vulnerable tenants with nowhere to live unless central government steps in.
 
Jim Anderton says the government should step in to help because it would have to pick up some of the costs of a rent increase anyway, including through increased Accommodation Supplement payments.
 
He today released a business case he sent to the previous finance minister Michael Cullen on behalf of Labour and Progressive Christchurch MPs after a thorough review of the Council’s plan to raise rents to help pay for refurbishment of the Council’s social housing.
 
The business case was sent by Jim Anderton and Labour MPs Ruth Dyson, Lianne Dalziel, Clayton Cosgrove and Tim Barnett. It sought a net government investment of $29 million over ten years. It would have reduced the rent increase from 24 per cent to ten per cent and allowed for the replacement of over three hundred homes and a continuous refurbishment programme.
 
He also released Treasury advice on the report that says it should be considered as part of Budget 2009. The Treasury response says there is no evidence that the Christchurch City Council ever approached the government itself to ask for the necessary funds.
 
Jim Anderton says the Council’s behaviour has created a huge problem, and it’s now up to the National government to help tenants out.
 
“Council never approached the government before it announced the rent increase. Its threats to abandon social housing are very worrying for some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.
 
“The net cost to the government of stepping in to help is not unreasonable if it is looked at in the context of a twenty year programme of investment to help very vulnerable people. Over that period, the net cost to the government of $29 million averages around $1.5 million per year.
 
“The National government has indicated it wants to shoulder some of the costs to local body ratepayers of providing social services, and it has also indicated a willingness to see housing expanded as a response to the global financial crisis. One obvious solution is to assist the council directly to make this investment.
 
“I hope Gerry Brownlee, as the senior Christchurch government MP, will take over the role of advocating within his government for vulnerable Christchurch city tenants, and I have sent the file on the work done so far to him,” Jim Anderton said.

Tags: Housing, Christchurch

One of the first effects has been to reduce the value of our dollar. Eventually that will increase New Zealand dollar incomes, but in the short term it pushes up the cost of fuel. Imports of capital equipment cost more. The lower dollar provides some relief – especially in some of our most squeezed industries – but over the long haul a lower currency is no basis to build genuine long term prosperity.

At the same time that the dollar has been falling, commodity prices have also fallen. Consumers everywhere are closing their wallets. Businesses are reducing inventory and holding back from introducing new product lines. So the prices we can achieve for some of our staple exports are falling. I’m confident about our primary exports in the long haul, but in the near future, times will still be tough.

Panicked politicians and activists in some areas are becoming more protectionist. Even the celebrity cook, Jamie Oliver, is calling on British consumers to boycott meat that isn’t “local”.

For producers like farmers and other agri-businesses, credit is tightening. Though interest rates are coming down, banks and other lenders are much more conservative. (Some of them needed to be.) I’ve read of businesses finding it hard to get letters of credit. Who is interested in letters of credit from banks that might be gone by the time products are landed on foreign wharves? So producers are faced with the grim risk of putting their goods on ships with no guarantee they will be paid.

We can’t change the world economy but we can support our own businesses to position themselves during this downturn and to emerge even stronger when world economic growth turns up again. For example, more government investment in research and development at this time would ensure we don’t lose ground when farmers themselves are under pressure over costs. The two billion dollar New Zealand Fast Forward fund to invest in the future of our primary industries would have helped strengthen the economy. But the National government has made a priority out of scrapping it.

When the National Government unveiled a business tax package recently, I looked closely to see what would be there for our farmers and to invest in the future. Unfortunately, against a backdrop of global cataclysm, there wasn’t much. For example, there was a small rule change to make Disputes Tribunal claims easier, but I wonder how many farms that is going to make a difference to.

The $120 million a year of new spending in the package gives back less than a third of the increased tax on innovation that the National Government introduced under urgency just before Christmas, when they cancelled the Labour-Progressive government’s tax rebate for spending on research and development.

Words like ‘farm’, agriculture’ or even ‘exports’ weren’t mentioned in the business tax package. Our primary industries make up two thirds of our export earnings, and they didn’t get anything in the business tax package. When John Key wrote the Speech from the Throne, agriculture didn’t get a mention then, either. I wonder if the money market dealers running the National Government even realise that farms are businesses.

If we are going to weather the global economic crisis we need to strengthen our agricultural sector.

Small policies that tinker round the edge won’t do it.

Tags: Agriculture

Jim Anderton's speech to Parliament on the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill
 

If I could sum up this Bill with one sentence, it would be that the government has wildly raised expectations about dealing to violent crime in New Zealand.
 
The Opposition will support this Bill, but it is not the silver bullet National promised. 
 
It will not significantly reduce violent crime in New Zealand as National has promised.
 
It will not make the huge dent in crime that National promised New Zealanders. The previous government was already promoting this legislation and we would have passed something similar - but we would not pretend as National does that this is all you need to do.
 
I have no trouble declaring that the major factors in crime should be on the wrong end of tough law.
 
Gangs are a cause of crime, so we should be tough with them.
 
And we should be tough on all the causes.
 
There is one factor linked to crime that this government won’t even talk about.
 
There is one factor linked to sixty per cent of all people arrested. 
 
What is that factor? Can the government members tell us? Can the government even say the word that is common to the majority of all crime in New Zealand?
 
It isn’t gangs and it isn’t P.
 
Both of those are serious threats and need to be dealt with. And if you are serious about them, you should logically be much more serious about a much more common cause of crime.
 
What is that common factor? It’s alcohol.
 
Sixty percent of everyone arrested is under the influence of alcohol at the time they commit the offence for which they are arrested.
 
Sixty percent. No other factor comes close.
 
So, because this government won’t even mention that alcohol is involved in most crime, it won’t do anything about sixty percent of all offending.
 
If you pass this Bill before you have dealt with the low hanging fruit, before you have dealt with the biggest factor in crime of all - then you are not serious about crime. You are joking and your raised expectations will ultimately disappoint and be held up to ridicule.
 
The National Government made a big issue out of crime in Opposition.
 
I am not going to quickly forget their pledges to seriously reduce the rate of violent crime.
 
They promised they would get elected and put an immediate end to the kind of violent crime that terrorised shop keepers in South Auckland.
 
Remember those shopkeepers? Remember the Indian community terrorised by attacks in those neighbourhoods?
 
How much neighbourhood crime is linked to the sudden proliferation of liquor outlets? How much is linked to the low drinking age that lets teenagers buy as much alcohol as they want on nearly every corner?
 
Will this Bill tackle that? No. Alcohol abuse is not even mentioned in it.
 
The government made the promises. The Government promised to significantly reduce violent crime.
 
Having raised expectations, this government is now accountable if it doesn’t deliver.
 
The government should not be culpable for violent crime. But the Government made it that way.
 
The government promised the New Zealand public it could make a difference.
 
Here is item number four on National’s Blueprint for change in August last year:
 
“National knows New Zealanders are sick of worrying about the surging levels of violent crime in this country. We are not going to put up with it.  So National will launch a full-frontal attack on gangs and the "P" trade they support.”
 
Ok, so they are passing the law they said they would. Good on them - but now the acid is on Simon Power. The acid is on John Key: This is National’s full frontal attack on gangs and the P trade, and if it doesn’t deal effectively to the surging levels of crime National knows New Zealanders are sick of - then National is accountable.
 
Mr Key said it over and over again. He said it on stages, and he said it in tv debates - he said the major problem is gangs, because gangs make P, and P is the major cause of crime. So he said, when this government took office, it would pass this Bill, and violent crime would be significantly reduced.
 
I hope he’s right.
 
I hope this Bill really does make a huge difference, and that is why I’m voting for it, and it’s why the Opposition is voting for it.
 
We absolutely want this Bill to be successful.
 
But actually, I am not naive enough to make the promise Mr Key made, and National candidates made up and down the country - that they would significantly reduce crime.
 
Here is what Mr Key said in his speech on 29 January last year:
 
“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high.  Robbery is up. Grievous assaults are up.  Aggravated robbery is up. Young criminals are graduating from petty crime to more serious crime; unexploded time-bombs on a fast-track to Paremoremo.”
 
So is this Bill going to make a major difference to that?
 
I hope so. But don’t hold your breath. Mr Key wildly overpromised and now National is under-delivering.
 
Can I ask the government members here in the chamber - will violent crime be significantly reduced as of the date of the passing of this Bill?
 
Will that be virtually the end of it in the headlines?
 
Are they confident now they have fixed crime? 
 
Or do they still want to tell New Zealanders they will significantly reduce violent crime as they promised. I wish they would. I wish this Bill had that effect. 
 
But every violent crime from now on shows the failure of the key promise of this government - that they could stamp out violent crime by targetting gangs -- raised expectations far beyond what they can deliver and thus failed the communities they have promised to protect.

Tags: Crime, Law & Order

Progressive MP Jim Anderton is supporting calls for an increase in the minimum wage when the national government discusses the issue next Monday.

He says protecting the vulnerable is the highest priority for managing the global economic recession.

“The government will need to be reassured that increasing the minimum wage won’t cost jobs. And experience of the last nine years shows just that. Unemployment fell to record lows while the minimum wage was steadily increased by over 70% in nine years.

“Increasing the buying power of the lowest income workers makes sense because they are more likely than anyone to spend their income, keeping the money in circulation and boosting the whole economy at a time when it is needed.

“The employer groups calling for a cut in the minimum wage need to look at the Great Depression. The accumulated effect of everyone cutting back was to drive the economy into a deeper hole.

“The government is likely to make some changes to business tax, and depending on the design that could well be helpful. But it would send the wrong message to cut the minimum wage in real terms at the same time,” Jim Anderton said.

Tags: Industrial Relations, Poverty, Industrial Relations

Business tax measures announced today are worth only a fraction of the increase in business tax the National Government introduced before Christmas, Progressive leader Jim Anderton says.

And the changes, worth just $10.50 a week to a small business, again ignore agriculture when New Zealand’s main source of overseas income faces testing times.

“The first thing National did in office was to introduce the largest increase in tax paid by business in New Zealand’s history. It introduced a new tax on innovation, at a cost to our most promising industries of over a billion dollars in just three years. The peanut-sized tax policies announced today are worth less than half that.

“Across 220,000 small businesses, $480 million over four years is worth only $10.50 a week. That’s a big bag of peanuts.

“It is a quarter of the two billion dollars that would have been invested in our primary industries through the New Zealand Fast Forward fund if National had not jeopardised our economic future by axing it.

“There is nothing for agriculture in this package. Agriculture earns two thirds of New Zealand’s income overseas, and if we are going to weather the global economic crisis we need to strengthen our agricultural sector. The National Government didn’t mention agriculture in the Speech From the Throne and didn’t get a mention from the Prime Minister today. This is a government made up of money market dealers, not people who understand productive businesses that power the real economy.

“If John Key hadn’t spent his first months in office on holiday, he would have had the strength to reverse his failed tax on innovation. The measures announced today are useful, but nowhere near enough to deliver the strength and innovation our economy needs.”