Remarks at the summit on the future of New Zealand’s overseas development aid

Loaves and Fishes cafe, Wellington.
10.25AM Friday, 27 March 2009.
 
 
Progressives have a special interest in this issue.
 
My colleague Matt Robson, the Progressives deputy leader, was the aid minister responsible for setting up NZ Aid.
 
I want to talk to you about why poverty should be the focus of our aid and development efforts.
 
And I particularly want to address the suggestion that we should switch our focus from poverty to economic development.
 
I used to be minister of economic development. So I have some insight into what is involved in an economic development programme.
 
Economic development is not something you can impose from the top.
 
You don’t go into a region, or into an entire country, and say: ‘this is how you are going to develop your economy.’
 
It doesn’t work. It never works. 
 
I’ve listened to comments saying we should make our aid efforts benefit New Zealand companies.
 
This is profoundly wrong.
 
We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens.
 
New Zealanders have always been good international citizens, prepared to shoulder our burden in the world. More New Zealanders have died in overseas wars as a proportion of our population than nearly any other country because we are always prepared to do more than our bit.
 
Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy.
 
We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
 
We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world.
 
But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.
 
The last government allowed tariff free access to products from least developed countries as far back as 2002.
 
I was bitterly attacked from the left for that. The Greens and a number of trade union leaders were strongly against it.
 
But the truth is - the proportion of imports from least developed countries hasn’t changed since then.
 
We haven’t been swamped by imports as critics claimed we would.
It also hasn’t been the pathway to prosperity for the poor countries, as some advocates claimed it would be.
 
You have to do much more.
 
We have to focus on much more than economic development or even aid itself.
 
If you focus only on economic development then in a country like the Solomons you would try to aid more value from the trees being extracted there. But there is much more to do than that.
 
We are talking about countries where a total billion people live in conditions we associate with the fourteenth century deprivation.
 
Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption.
 
More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks.
 
If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets.
 
A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does,
 
A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery.
 
Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military, where communities are at constant risk of attack and where the spoils of victory are distributed to one side or the other.
 
Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.
 
In the last year, trillions of dollars of wealth has been destroyed all over the world as financial markets collapse.
 
Governments everywhere acknowledge this economic crisis and they are scrambling to make an urgent and drastic response.
 
Why aren’t the billion people living in poverty an urgent global crisis too?
 
We could have fixed their problem forever for a fraction of the amount lost in the global financial crisis.
 
The entire annual aid budget of the world is less than the amount lost by some of those failed merchant banks and gigantic corporations alone.
 
We have the means to end global poverty.
 
What we lack is not the means, but the will.
 
NZAid embodies our will to reduce global poverty.
 
Smashing NZAid, setting the clock back to the past, is a hugely backward step and it interferes with our ability to fight poverty.
 
It is a mistake, the National government should not go down that road and we should not allow them to do so.

Tags: Aid, International Relations, Poverty

A focus on economic development rather than poverty elimination will mean we don’t focus on some critical problems affecting the world’s poorest countries, Progressive leader Jim Anderton told a summit on the future of New Zealand aid today.
 
Jim Anderton is a former economic development minister, and Progressive party deputy leader Matt Robson set up NZAid when he was overseas development minister.
 
“The poorest billion people in the world live in conditions we associate with fourteenth century deprivation. Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption,” Jim Anderton says.
 
“More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks. If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets. A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does.
 
“A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery. Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military. Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.”
 
Jim Anderton says it is profoundly wrong to make assistance to New Zealand companies the focus of our aid effort.
 
“We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens. Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy. We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
 
“We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world. But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.”

Tags: Aid, Poverty, International Relations

Cutting holidays doesn’t stack up with 9-day fortnight
 
It doesn’t make sense for National to remove four weeks minimum annual leave at the same time that it is trying to encourage a nine day fortnight, Progressive leader Jim Anderton says.
 
Four weeks minimum annual leave was a Progressive Party initiative. It was introduced as a result of a member’s bill introduced by Progressive MP Matt Robson.
 
“Cutting four weeks’ leave is hypocritical for a government that took 27 days of holidays in its first 100 days in office. What’s good for National MPs ought to be good for working New Zealanders,” Jim Anderton said.
 
“Calling the axing of holidays a ‘buy-back’ doesn’t change the fact that it cuts the minimum holiday entitlement.
 
“Thousands of workers who are paid just over the minimum wage will be presented with employment contracts that say they request cash instead of annual leave – and their employers will tell them ‘we will have to cut your pay if you don’t sign.’
 
“The same employer could then put their hand out for a government subsidy to reduce that worker’s hours by a day a fortnight.
 
“National is returning to its nasty, anti-worker roots.”

Tags: Industrial Relations, Four weeks leave

Taxing rural communities more to pay for Auckland’s roads shows that National doesn’t understand the importance of agriculture for New Zealand’s economy, Opposition agriculture spokesperson Jim Anderton says.
 
“The whole country can benefit from roads that boost Auckland’s economy; But Auckland can benefit from the economic activity of the rest of the country too. How many farms are in Queen Street? When rural communities have to pay for roads they don’t use, it is a drag on them.
 
“The decision to make farmers pay more for Auckland roads is a decision by Auckland money market dealers who don’t understand our primary industry.
 
“It’s fairer to pay for extra projects locally, because local communities can best decide their top priorities and also decide whether the extra cost is worth it.
 
“The National Government has no new ideas so it’s going back to its old form in government – asking farmers and rural communities to pay more and more, while providing less and less services.”

Tags: Agriculture, Transport, Economy

ACC costs are as significant for farmers as they are for any self-employed businessperson. Farming has its share of risk, so the premiums can be higher than in many industries.

I think ACC is far better for farmers than a personal liability scheme such as many overseas countries have. Imagine if farmers could be sued for personal injury to anyone who came on their land.

Currently the National government is getting ACC ready to be taken back to the failed system of the nineties, when businesspeople had to wade through bureaucracy to choose an ACC provider best suited to their needs.

Farmers should beware of a competitive ACC system. Costs are likely to rise far more for farmers than for others. It’s estimated that ACC levies for farmers would rise 250%. That’s three and a half times.

In 2004 the then-government of Australia got an independent report prepared on accident compensation costs over there. It found that levies in Australia’s competitive market were twice as expensive as those in New Zealand for the primary sector.

Not only that, but deadweight admin costs in New Zealand are about a third of the level in Australia.

There’s one thing even worse than higher levies – and that is not getting real coverage for your money.

When ACC is replaced by businesses competing with each other, one way they try to offer lower premiums is by reducing the amount they set aside to pay for claims that take a long time to show up.

This happened in Australia: when those claims finally started to come in, they didn’t have enough set aside. They couldn’t raise premiums to make up the shortfall because their customers would buy elsewhere. As a result, the business went under – and who was around to pick up the bill for the injured farmers who had paid their levies? Nobody. They had to pay all over again.

In the meantime, do you wonder what happened to the executives that ran the company into the ground? They probably got knighthoods. No wonder National wants to bring those back too.

A government that is fiddling around with taking ACC back to the failed policies of the nineties is a government that has its priorities wrong.

There is a global economic crisis underway. There is unprecedented risk and opportunity to our agricultural sector from the way our trading partners see climate change. Market opportunities and development of the rural economy at home are much more important than trying to find ways for insurance companies and money market dealers to make a dollar at the expense of farmers.

Tags: Agriculture, ACC

Strong profit increases in the state-owned power companies should be returned to consumers to help with winter power bills, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
 
He says low income households could be given $200 toward winter heating costs and power companies would still contribute as much to the government than they did last year.
 
“$200 would mean some households had a month of relief from winter heating costs. For superannuitants, beneficiaries and people who have lost their jobs in the downturn, it would make a huge difference.”
 
Mighty River Power recorded a profit of $234 million in the last six months of last year.
 
“That on its own is enough for every household in New Zealand to get a cheque of nearly $200.
 
“Genesis’ profit for the half year is up by 38 per cent, Transpower’s is up by over a quarter and Meridian is the most profitable of the lot.
 
“At the same time that the people’s own power companies are booming, the people who own them are heading for a winter when many will struggle to pay the bills. The government should help low income households out by returning some of the huge dividends,” Jim Anderton said.
 
According to Statistics New Zealand, there are about 1.4 million households. If half were eligible for a $200 winter power rebate, that would cost $140 million. $200 is the estimated winter power bill for a month for the lowest income half of households.

Tags: Winter Power Rebate, Energy, Poverty

Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton is appalled at National’s use of taxpayer money to change electorate office funding so that government MPs get an increase four times greater than Opposition MPs.
 
“They have noticed that government MPs have bigger electorates by land area than Opposition MPs, because the Opposition tends to hold inner city seats. So they have put a fix in and handed out more money to big electorates. This is a gerrymander.
 
Not only that but the rules they are putting in place are different for Maori seats. Maori seats qualify for extra funding if they are over 10,000 square kilometres. General seats qualify if they are over 20,000. I can think of no reason why a differentiation should be made.
 
“National is so brazen it has even left out the biggest electorate in the country – Rongotai.
 
“The busiest electorate offices in the country are inner city electorates. Imagine the outcry from National if Labour had given busier offices more.
 
“Most National MPs don’t need extra support staff; they just need to work harder.
 
“This is the same National Party that claimed to be the very soul of injured innocence when the Electoral Finance Act was changed - yet, whatever your opinion of the EFA, at least everyone was treated the same.
 
“The National Party has spent all this week reverting to form - backward-looking, mean and getting its priorities all wrong.
 
 “Now National is taking money from higher priority uses to buy the votes of its own supporters. This is exactly the same National party that used to gave Alamein Kopu a nice Beehive office to secure its majority. Turns out that John Key is made of the same stuff.”

Tags: Good government

Launch of Wool to Weta
Transforming New Zealand’s Culture & Economy
 
6.00PM Tuesday, 10 March 2009
 
 
I would like to start out by congratulating Professor Callaghan on this book and on promoting the topic of economic development.

This week I saw a comment from Paul. He was responding to a reporter who asked him whether he would want to be called Sir Paul. The question raises some issues similar to those in this book:

The way we honour success and the way we create it are on the move.

We used to be a country that styled itself as a colony of Britain. We sold almost all of our commodity products to one country. Most of our exports came from a single product: Wool.

We are changing.

We are becoming a modern vibrant country proud of our own creativity and talent.

Today, wool exports no longer comprise half our export eanrings.

Today, wool’s proportion of everything we earn overseas has fallen to just two per cent.

And though there are some in New Zealand who are clinging to the vestiges of our ancient british past, we are becoming a different a culture too.

We are more integrated with the rest of the world.

We are creating value more by ideas than by bulk.

But this is a process of transformational change.

Change seems always to come with a couple of steps forward and one or two back.

So I want to suggest to you, that just as the decision about whether to be Professor Callaghan or Sir Paul is a choice we have to make...we also have economic choices to make.

One such choice is whether we want to make more progress toward a more science-based economy, more use of ideas and a more modern way of celebrating success.

I congratulate Professor Callaghan for putting these issues on the table.

This book makes a contribution to our awareness and understanding of what’s at stake.

It is no small coincidence that Paul is the Alan MacDiarmid professor of Physical Sciences at Victoria.

I knew Alan MacDiarmid. His brother, Rod, was a political colleague of mine for many years, and he introduced us when Alan came back to New Zealand for a visit.

Alan MacDiarmid was a passionate and persuasive advocate for the ideas behind this book.

He believed in the power of science to transform our economy.

He believed in the power of ideas, knowledge and research to improve the lives and wellbeing of New Zealanders.

And he understood that it takes a policy commitment to bring science and business together.

It doesn’t ‘just happen’ on its own.

If it did, it would have happened by now.

But it has happened yet - at least, it hasn’t happened enough.

If you open this book and turn to the introduction, there are charts that put in stark perspective the performance of the New Zealand economy relative to other countries in our modern history:

They show we began a decline in the seventies.

We entered a precipitous decline through the late seventies, and all of the eighties, and much of the nineties.

We have never really closed the gap, even though for the last decade we stopped falling behind.

And this is not because we are lazy. It’s not because we don’t work hard.

We work as many hours as any country.

I find one thing very striking about these graphs: They are the same ones I have been using in speeches and presentations for a decade.

And the central point is the same - that we don’t have enough businesses in New Zealand that are making very large returns per employee.

In most developed countries, companies that can make net revenue of a million dollars per employee are common. In New Zealand those figures are virtually unknown.

We don’t have enough high value, high skill, high return companies because we don’t have enough science and innovation lifting the productivity of our economy.

Not enough of our economy is based on ideas and on research.

It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that this means there is a problem with our existing industries.

I don’t share that view.

Our agriculture, for example, is probably the most scientifically advanced of all our industries.

Many New Zealanders wrongly believe our competitive advantage in agriculture is our climate. But there are many countries with a temperate climate like ours.

Our agricultural excellence lies in our decades upon decades of investment in science.

Over the years we have spent billions - probably tens of billions of dollars - on agricultural science.

This has led to products that are of immensely high value.
I have been to a business where they extract a medical supplement from milk and sell small vials of the extract for thousands of dollars each.

The value is in the science. In the Knowledge. In the Understanding.

Compare the value of that vial to the value of the same weight of dairy produce from New Zealand a few decades ago.

One of the lessons from this example is that our economy can change far more rapidly than we sometimes realise. Another lesson is that science is behind many of the changes.

The decline in the dominance of wool among our export industries is one example.

At the turn of the century, economists pointed out that the United States exported the same weight of goods in 2000 as it had exported in 1900.

The value, however, had increased thousands of times.

The difference in value was created by science and ideas.

I’ve asked Paul Callaghan why he thinks we aren’t better at using science in our economy. I’ve put the same question to dozens of business people whom I have met around New Zealand.

No one says it’s because we aren’t smart enough - Kiwis are enormously creative and talented.

I often tell the story of visiting Singapore and meeting the economic development minister there. He said to me, ‘you are lucky in New Zealand because you have so much creative talent. When we want that creativity, we have to import it for you.’

We are remote and isolated in New Zealand and that has meant we have the freedom to try things out. Necessity has driven a lot of innovation.

Lord Rutherford said, ‘in New Zealand, we don’t have much money so we have to think.’

So its not lack of talent.

If we want more innovation and science in our industry then we need the leadership and co-ordination that will create it.

Everywhere you go around New Zealand and put the ideas in this book to businesspeople, and to scientists, they will agree with you.

They will say, ‘yes we need more of this.’

But we don’t see more of it.

The vision of more innovation and a vision for the leadership to create more innovative companies is not universally shared.

It is a choice.

Uncomfortable as it is for many people - especially in business - Support for science has become a fault line between differing political philosophies.

There was a very public example of this divide between pro- and anti-science politics only this morning in the United States.

President Obama this morning signed a law allowing stem cell research to proceed in the US. At his press conference he repudiated the previous President’s opposition to stem cell research in the US, saying the distinction between science and morality in this case was false.

Politicians should never get into the position of being anti-science.

We have to harness science, harness research and harness ideas if we are going to improve our living standards and those of our children and future generations.

Supporting more innovation in our businesses is a matter of making some hard choices.

In the last three months in this country, those choices have been made and they have been made against science.

A two billion public-private partnership in scientific research called New Zealand Fast Forward has been cancelled.

That wiped out the largest single investment in science ever made in this country.

A tax credit for research and development worth a billion dollars over three years was canceled.

That was the largest business tax increase in our history.

All this took place without much of a squeak - specifically from the business community itself.

So, as I said at the outset, the forward progress of the New Zealand economy inevitably involves taking steps backwards as well as forwards.

People are entitled to make choices.

And it is up to those of us with a passion and commitment to the power of ideas, to advocate for our vision of a more dynamic and vibrant economy.

I will give you one example that inspires me, and that is relevant to the concerns we all share about the drain from New Zealand of our best and brightest.

It was at the launch of New Zealand Fast Forward here in Wellington about a year ago, when we invited some graduate students from Massey University.

One of the science postgrads who spoke that day was off to the UK to take up a scholarship, and he made an announcement that no one present knew he was going to make: he said the launch of that fund and its potential to finance brilliant, game-changing science in New Zealand had made him change his mind.

He said that when he finished his course in the UK he no longer believed his only chance for a science career would be overseas; He would come back to New Zealand to give it a go. The long term investment we made gave him confidence about a future here, he said.

There will always be brilliant young New Zealanders who go overseas to develop their skills. Alan MacDiarmid was one; Lord Rutherford was another.

Our problem is that we haven’t been able to offer enough of a choice back here. We haven’t been able to use enough of our connections to the world, and of the trails blazed by our best.

And we haven’t brought enough of their innovation into the boardroom, and into the soul of innovative, large scale companies based here.

This book we are launching today has many examples of the brilliance we have available to us.

It has many insights into how we can do better.

It is crucial for us to have this conversation, and I congratulate Paul and the people he spoke to on playing their part in this conversation.

I wish you all the very best in continuing this conversation and in making a real difference to the transformation of New Zealand’s industry.

Tags: Agriculture, Economy

Speech: Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill
 
I support this Bill.

But I am under no illusions that it needs to go much further if we are to reduce seriously the harm caused by alcohol.
 
Alcohol causes between one and a half and two and a half billion dollars worth of economic and social harm every year.
 
It is by far the most damaging drug in this country.
 
It is the most damaging not because it is the most intrinsically dangerous drug - far from it.
 
It is the most damaging because it is the most available drug.
 
And in the recent years when alcohol was made much more available, predictably the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.
 
In recent years we have lowered the drinking age - and more young people are being harmed much more often.
 
We have allowed more widespread alcohol advertising.
 
We have allowed the sale of liquor in more places for longer hours.
 
The resulting harm is there to be seen by anyone who cares to look - in the carnage on streets and in an alcohol-fuelled crime wave.
 
Nothing makes it more obvious that this government has its priorities wrong  than its casual attitude to alcohol.
 
If the government truly wanted to reduce crime, it would make alcohol less available.
 
If the government truly wanted to reduce the health bill and make New Zealand more productive, it would reduce the availability of alcohol.
 
The government is so cynical that it comes in here and pronounces grimly about the toll alcohol causes.
 
But government members are the first to sneer about nanny state when someone tries to fix the problems.
 
They claim to be anti-crime, but they also sneer and call anyone who tries to reduce crime the ‘fun police.’
 
So let’s look at what they mean by fun.
 
In 1999, 500 people were killed on our roads.
 
By 2007, total road deaths declined to 410.
 
But the number of road deaths among 15-29 year olds did not fall anywhere near as much.
 
Last year, if the toll among 15-29 year olds had fallen by the same amount as the general population, there would have been twenty fewer deaths of young New Zealanders.
 
Twenty.
 
Twenty people. Twenty young lives.
 
So why would the toll not have fallen among young people the way it fell among the rest of the population?
 
It’s because the drinking age was lowered.
 
In the years prior to 1999 the number of dead drivers who had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit had been tracking down.
 
Since 1999, when the purchase age was lowered, the number of dead drivers has stopped tracking down.
 
Because we reduced the age, more young people are being killed and injured.
 
In 2000 there were 4,079 fifteen to 29 year old car and van drivers involved in injury crashes.
 
In 2007, there were 6,538 - an increase of sixty percent.
 
The number of injuries among young people is far greater than the number among the general population.
 
The research in New Zealand and around the world is clear: There is a direct link between the availability of alcohol and the level of harm caused by alcohol.
 
Alcohol is an enormous factor in crime.
 
Between half and three quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse.
 
Two out of three people the police deal with as offenders have been using alcohol prior to the offence being committed.
 
So I support the measuresin this Bill to reduce access to alcohol.
 
And I condemn the people who call it nanny state, or who call anyone voting for this the ‘fun police.’
 
I condemn anyone who says that a vote for mild restrictions on this dangerous drug is for prohibition.
 
Sensible control is not prohibition, and pretending they are the same is irresponsible and distorted.
 
Restricting availability makes a huge difference.
 
Five or six years ago some members who are now in government bitterly attacked me because I took steps to increase the excise rate charged on alcoholic drinks in the range 14-23% alcohol by volume.
 
These were drinks euphemistically known as ‘light spirits.’
 
They were strong drinks that kids were buying and getting smashed on. It was a huge factor in binge drinking.
 
What did the National Party say then?
 
Oh boy. I was the fun police. I was the nanny state. It wouldn’t work, they said.
 
But what happened?
 
One of the principal manufacturers immediately reduced the alcoholic content of his product from 23% to 13.9%.
 
There was a decline in the quantities of ‘light alcohol’ drinks released for sale of around 80 percent.
 
Overall alcohol consumption went down by half a million litres after the excise duty was increased.
 
What that shows is that we can make a difference.
 
I support the objectives of this Bill.
 
I support reducing the availability of alcohol for young people and I support more restrictions on alcohol advertising and availability in the community.
 
If the government wants to keep the wild promises it has made to seriously reduce crime in New Zealand it had better come back into this House with more measures.
 
I am not confident it will.
 
But I support the start being made here.

Tags: Drug and alcohol abuse

The government’s casual attitude to alcohol availability shows it has its priorities wrong, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton told parliament on the introduction of the Sale and Supply of Liquor bill.
 
“Alcohol is an enormous factor in crime. Between half and three quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse. Two out of three people the police deal with as offenders have been using alcohol prior to the offence being committed.
 
“But government members are the first to sneer about nanny state when someone tries to fix the problems. They claim to be anti-crime, but they also sneer and call anyone who tries to reduce crime the ‘fun police.’
 
“Alcohol causes between one and a half and two and a half billion dollars worth of economic and social harm every year. It is by far the most damaging drug in this country. It is the most damaging not because it is the most intrinsically dangerous drug - far from it. It is the most damaging because it is the most available drug. And in the recent years when alcohol was made much more available, predictably the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.”
 
Last year, if the road toll among 15-29 year olds had fallen by the same amount as the general population, there would have been twenty fewer deaths of young New Zealanders.
 
In the years prior to 1999 the number of dead drivers who had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit had been tracking down. Since 1999, when the purchase age was lowered, the number of dead drivers has stopped tracking down.
 
In 2000 there were 4,079 fifteen to 29 year old car and van drivers involved in injury crashes. In 2007, there were 6,538 - an increase of sixty percent. The number of injuries among young people is far greater than the number among the general population.
 
“Sensible control is not prohibition, and pretending they are the same is irresponsible and distorted. I support reducing the availability of alcohol for young people and I support more restrictions on alcohol advertising and availability in the community,” Jim Anderton said.

Tags: Drug and alcohol abuse, Crime

The big mouth behaviour of the Corrections Minister has been exposed by the State Services Commissioner’s report on Barry Matthews, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
 
“The report confirms mainly that Judith Collins is not equipped for a tough job.

“And it exposes the campaign to vilify a government department was really a cynical campaign to privatise prison management.
 
“Ms Collins swaggered around leaving no one under any doubt that she would force the Corrections department CEO to step down. For example, the Herald - citing Ms Collins’ ‘ruthless combination of raw power and tactical guile’ - declared:

She has made Matthews’ position utterly untenable. And she left the State Services Commission - as Matthews’ employer - no option but to remove him, assuming he does not resign beforehand. 
 
Jim Anderton says the pressure on Mr Matthews to go was always an overreaction to the Auditor’s report.
 
“Among the specific, highlighted examples the Auditor cited were failures to fill out reports and inconsistency in classification of the illness of paroled offenders. These procedural issues needed to be fixed, but it was unjustified and disproportionate to say they amounted to a case for immediate dismissal. That was always going to be a wrong judgement - exactly what the State Services inquiry has found.
 
“Ms Collins should have known that there was no case to support the dismissal of the CEO of her department. Either she didn’t know and isn’t up to the job, or she did know and was cynical in the way she used the issue.”

Tags: Law & Order, Good government

National’s cuts to ACC and privatisation will mean vicious price hikes and service cuts for the elderly, beneficiaries and farmers, Wigram’s progressive MP Jim Anderton says.
 
He says new charges for some ACC services will mean low income people can’t afford treatment. Competing ACC providers will mean higher premiums for farmers. And many working people will be left without cover when private providers fail.
 
“If National charges for some ACC treatment, some low income people won’t be able to afford to pay. That means working people on lower wages, and especially beneficiaries and superannuitants, won’t be able to get treatment if they are hurt in an accident.
 
“National’s plans mean no rehabilitation for your elderly mum if she falls over in a shop unless someone can cough up for the costs of treatment.
 
“It is disgusting for the government to save ACC costs by blocking physio and rehabilitation services for elderly New Zealanders. How would a pensioner afford a $50 a week physio fee? Most of them paid their premiums for much of their working lives and national is contemplating increasing their costs at the same time it is cutting tax for the most affluent New Zealanders.
 
“National’s plans to bring in competition and privatise ACC will put up prices. A report from the previous National-Liberal Government in Australia, comparing accident compensation in Australia and New Zealand in 2004, showed levies in Australia’s competitive market were twice as expensive as those in New Zealand for the primary sector.
 
“A competitive scheme could result in a levy hike of as much as 250 per cent for rural people like farmers.
 
“Our ACC administration cost is about a third of Australian schemes.
 
“In Victoria – where two companies competed so seriously they ran each other out of business – they competed by underfunding the tail. In other words, in a competitive system, companies can go broke and leave liabilities for long term claims unpaid.  What happens to people needing long term care for their accidents when the provider goes broke?”

Tags: ACC

Response to Nelson-Marlborough Farming magazine

New Zealand exports around twenty billion dollars a year worth of food products. We import food products worth less than three billion dollars – a fraction of our exports.

That’s why I was disappointed to read a call in the February Nelson-Marlborough Farming for measures that would be seen in other countries as a form of protectionism against food imports. [“Kiwis are gobbling foreign food,” Page 6.]

We can argue to and fro all we like about whether mandatory country of origin labelling really is protectionism. But what is indisputable is that other countries perceive mandatory labelling as a protectionist measure.

It’s true some major markets require mandatory labelling - but we oppose them doing so. They do it to keep our products out. If we then impose mandatory country of origin labelling on them, we will have to drop our opposition to those countries doing it.
That will hurt our exports. It will hurt New Zealand farmers.

Our horticulture industry earns about $2.2 billion a year from exports - around half of its total turnover. That is a lot to put at risk from mandatory labelling.

Nor is horticulture being increasingly hurt as we import more from overseas - our horticulture exports have grown ten fold - ten-fold! - in the last twenty years.

I agree with people who say we can achieve a premium price by labelling our products New Zealand made. And there is absolutely nothing to stop that happening now.  But we might risk that potential premium if we introduced a meaningless label like the one across the Tasman: “Made from Australian and imported products.” That is the labelling we would get if we brought in mandatory country of origin labelling for food.

I don’t share the aims of people who say we should be self-sufficient in our own food. We are good at growing dairy, meat and a huge range of horticultural products. We are not so good at growing rice and bananas. I cannot see the sense in shifting some of our farms from dairy to rice paddies. It makes much more sense to sell as much dairy as we can to the world and buy the rice we need with the proceeds - along with cars, fuel, computers and many other products that our food exports help us to buy.

Nor do I agree with those who say this policy amounts to the policy of the ‘hard capitalistic right,’ as I was accused of.

Agricultural protectionism punishes poor countries more than it punishes rich ones. If there is one thing I am against, it is poverty, and I support policies that reduce poverty. Opening up global agriculture will hugely benefit some of the world’s poorest people.

It so happens that promoting more trade in agriculture not only reduces poverty, it helps create a lot more jobs, higher incomes and more successful businesses here in New Zealand, too. I’m in favour of that as well.

A recent report showed trade barriers cost the average food grower in New Zealand $25,000 a year in income. Non-tariff trade barriers might cost even more. Once we start advocating for them here, we would be advocating for even greater penalties on our industry.

Market access is hard gained and easily lost. Our focus should be on growing ways to get our products into more countries - not on ways to keep other country’s products out.

Tags: Agriculture

Deputy leader of the Progressive Party Matt Robson and the Minister in 2002 who with Phil Goff set up NZAID slammed Foreign Minister McCully’ s proposal for aid to be part of "NZInc" and for NZAID to be "folded back into MFAT".

"He should just set up a Department of Bribes and be done with it said Matt Robson.

"Being part of MFAT was exactly the problem with NZ development aid before we separated it out into a specialist division."

"It was staffed by junior diplomats on their way up or older diplomats on their way out. There was no specialist department. The programmes were in a muddle. We gave aid to two super military powers- China and India. Why? To peddle influence in their capitals not to help the poorest people. It is to that obscene policy that McCully is obviously attracted.

"Phil Goff as Foreign Minister and I as the Minister responsible for Aid deliberately separated out development aid from Foreign Affairs as it was largely being used as a fund used for New Zealand’s foreign policy aims not to help the development, in a systematic way, of the world’s poorest policy.

"Under National aid money was used by Foreign Affairs to win the support and votes of tyrants like Suharto of Indonesia and the King of Tonga. It was used to give retirement jobs like the head of the Commonwealth to ex National MPs like Don McKinnon.

"NZ Aid was a progressive step for NZ ," concluded Matt Robson.

Tags: Aid, Poverty, International Relations