Launch of NZ By Design book
22/07/11 10:52 Filed in: Speeches
Launch of NZ By Design book - speech by Jim Anderton
Thursday, 21 July
Legend has it that our great Nobel-prize winning scientist Lord Rutherford was once asked what made New Zealanders such industrious and curious innovators. He replied: We don’t have much money, so we have to think!
Michael Smythe has produced a book that tells us about the process of thinking in New Zealand.
Like Lord Rutherford, Michael Smythe is right that the driving force of New Zealand innovation is our distance and isolation. We don’t have large amounts of money to throw at problems.
I was once introduced to a Japanese entrepreneur who had made a large investment in IT in Christchurch - he bought a business with over two hundred research staff. It didn’t produce a single product for sale. Its entire production was research for his company’s needs in California and Japan.
So I asked him why he came to Christchurch for that investment, and he told me he had a particular research problem that had been troubling his company for years. They had thrown the best IT equipment and brains not to mention money they could find at the problem, and it was taking them years to solve.
Then he brought the problem to Christchurch and found someone who solved it by hooking up a few old PCs and got the research finished in weeks. When he asked why, how his New Zealand researchers had done what no-one else had been able to do, he was told: “We’re not used to having the money to hire huge numbers of people, so we took a fresh look at identifying the problem and how it could be solved with the resources at his disposal”.
New Zealand’s isolation gives us the drive to innovate, to solve problems using our wits. That’s how the Hamilton Jet was developed, and countless other kiwi problems solved. It is not the ‘Number 8 wire’ approach. It’s the application of intellectual grunt. But our isolation also gives us something else - it gives us a precious advantage: the freedom to try things out.
New Zealanders expect to have a go at things, and risk failure. And risking failure is a critical element of innovation. We can have a go, and we can even fail and get back up because we are small and we can, where in many countries, failure is career ending, and so decision-makers are risk averse.
This was how our much-loved myth of Kiwi ingenuity was born. But unfortunately, the so-called Number 8 wire economy has its limits, too.
When I set up a Ministry of Economic Development a bit over ten years ago, one of our priorities in getting our economy growing, and creating jobs, was to sell to the world many more products that rely on our unique skill and creativity. Because uniqueness and creativity command a premium. They are the key to lifting our incomes.
For most of our economic history, our economy relied on the sun shining, the rain falling and the grass growing. But other countries can grow grass too.
The advantage we have that they can never match is our unique creativity. Design is one of the most important expressions of that. Not just styling, but the conception of how a product will be used, a view about what it is for and a unique way to bring that concept into being: That’s how you make products that earn us more tomorrow than we earned yesterday.
Back about five years ago I used to give speeches pointing out that five years before then, at the opening of the twentieth century, no one had ever heard of an iPod. And of course, just five years before today, no one had ever heard of an iPhone.
This week Apple announced they sold twenty million of them … in the last three months. Two years ago, none of us had heard of an iPad.
In the last twelve weeks Apple sold nine million at an average of nearly a thousand dollars each - $9000 million worth!
Each of those products is an example of brilliant innovation from a design-led company that demonstrates, in a spectacular way, that design and creativity have awesome potential.
There are many engineering innovations, but what is special about these products - and others - is that they weren’t waiting around to be discovered. Other people had already come up with mobile phones, and MP3 players. What they might never have come up with was the unique implementation. It was design that made the products different and successful.
This is important when we think about design in New Zealand.
It means there is not some form of ‘New Zealand design’ sitting around to be discovered. Instead, there is a way of looking at things that can only come from New Zealand. And if we want New Zealand to be successful, we have to harness that New Zealand uniqueness. We have to encourage more businesses to embrace a unique way of looking at things.
A few years ago I set up a New Zealand Design Group to work out how to better use design to improve New Zealand’s exporting. It discovered there is far more New Zealand potential in our industry than most people imagined. But the hard question to ask was why more of it wasn’t developed to create New Zealand products.
They found we don’t use our natural advantages very well - advantages they identified included international respect for our education system. Another is our cultural diversity - especially the unique quality Maori and Pacific Island influence.
Experts said that because we have mainly small firms, many see design services as ‘too costly’ or an add-on to their core business. Even among the bigger firms, there is a general lack of understanding of the value of design in the way leading export firms like Fisher and Paykel or Formway have understood.
Fisher & Paykel had a huge commercial hit with their dish drawer, which was created because the design team regarded nothing as given in the design process. They came up with a drawer that washed dishes, and developed a product that was sold all over the world.
That’s a pretty good example of what we need more of. But we have legitimate questions to ask about what is the best way to unleash this potential.
I strongly believe the best - in fact the only way - to get industry to take the necessary risks in a small country like New Zealand is for government to partner with industry.
That’s the only way we will align the elements of our education system, export agencies, industry training and everything else we need to get right.
It’s why the then-government created a research and development tax credit and set up NZ Trade & Enterprise to work with industry in promoting design.
The current government has a different perspective on this issue - its view is that the government should stand back and the market will create the necessary innovation all on its own, which is why one of the first things they did in government was to axe the R&D tax credit.
I don’t want to involve you in a political debate about the merits of these different approaches. But I do want to ask you to engage closely with it.
I get frustrated by hearing people say ‘politicians don’t get it’ when it comes to the need to lift the value of our exports and create more design-led products. The truth is that there is a divide in politics between those of us who see a hands-on role for the government in unlocking our development potential on one side; and those who believe in hands off on the other side.
I urge you to contribute to that discussion - and to have a strong view about what the government can do to help, and make your view known.
My own priorities are in several areas.
I think we need to incentivise R&D. We just don’t do enough in the private sector. Our government research and development is about average by world standards, and we commercialise more of our R&D than most countries.
What we don’t do is spend enough time on R&D in our private businesses. That is both a result and a cause of not putting enough emphasis on design in business processes. As one wag said, too much of our industry is structured around one set of Aucklanders selling haircuts to the people who they pay to mow their lawns.
So we need to promote awareness of the difference design can make.
When people see how success is achieved, they are inspired to emulate that success. If we think of our fashion industry, the success of labels like World and Karen Walker have helped inspire another generation of small businesses built on design and creativity.
A book like Michael Smythe’s will help inspire people and make them aware, too, so I welcome it. It can help us to see how design made a difference to creating the New Zealand we have today.
We tend to think that the way things are today is an inevitable result of history. Those decisions in our past are like water trickling downhill to reach an inevitable stream. But most of history is not inevitable - it is the result of decisions, and because you and I are all decision-makers, we can all influence tomorrow’s history.
We should not accept limitations on what New Zealand can achieve. We need to be fiercely determined to be better than any other country. We need to be prepared to accept failure on the way, and not punish those who try but fail. That is the environment where design can thrive and make a difference to our businesses.
It is an environment that is achievable in New Zealand, but it is not always what we do. Unleashing and exporting more of our creativity is immensely important to New Zealand. It is the only way we will transform our industrial base.
Smart investment in design can produce an enormous return in jobs, and higher incomes.
So I welcome this book’s contribution to that future, and I welcome the change it will help to promote in our attitudes to design and the difference it makes.
I wish this book, and its author, the success they deserve.
Thursday, 21 July
Legend has it that our great Nobel-prize winning scientist Lord Rutherford was once asked what made New Zealanders such industrious and curious innovators. He replied: We don’t have much money, so we have to think!
Michael Smythe has produced a book that tells us about the process of thinking in New Zealand.
Like Lord Rutherford, Michael Smythe is right that the driving force of New Zealand innovation is our distance and isolation. We don’t have large amounts of money to throw at problems.
I was once introduced to a Japanese entrepreneur who had made a large investment in IT in Christchurch - he bought a business with over two hundred research staff. It didn’t produce a single product for sale. Its entire production was research for his company’s needs in California and Japan.
So I asked him why he came to Christchurch for that investment, and he told me he had a particular research problem that had been troubling his company for years. They had thrown the best IT equipment and brains not to mention money they could find at the problem, and it was taking them years to solve.
Then he brought the problem to Christchurch and found someone who solved it by hooking up a few old PCs and got the research finished in weeks. When he asked why, how his New Zealand researchers had done what no-one else had been able to do, he was told: “We’re not used to having the money to hire huge numbers of people, so we took a fresh look at identifying the problem and how it could be solved with the resources at his disposal”.
New Zealand’s isolation gives us the drive to innovate, to solve problems using our wits. That’s how the Hamilton Jet was developed, and countless other kiwi problems solved. It is not the ‘Number 8 wire’ approach. It’s the application of intellectual grunt. But our isolation also gives us something else - it gives us a precious advantage: the freedom to try things out.
New Zealanders expect to have a go at things, and risk failure. And risking failure is a critical element of innovation. We can have a go, and we can even fail and get back up because we are small and we can, where in many countries, failure is career ending, and so decision-makers are risk averse.
This was how our much-loved myth of Kiwi ingenuity was born. But unfortunately, the so-called Number 8 wire economy has its limits, too.
When I set up a Ministry of Economic Development a bit over ten years ago, one of our priorities in getting our economy growing, and creating jobs, was to sell to the world many more products that rely on our unique skill and creativity. Because uniqueness and creativity command a premium. They are the key to lifting our incomes.
For most of our economic history, our economy relied on the sun shining, the rain falling and the grass growing. But other countries can grow grass too.
The advantage we have that they can never match is our unique creativity. Design is one of the most important expressions of that. Not just styling, but the conception of how a product will be used, a view about what it is for and a unique way to bring that concept into being: That’s how you make products that earn us more tomorrow than we earned yesterday.
Back about five years ago I used to give speeches pointing out that five years before then, at the opening of the twentieth century, no one had ever heard of an iPod. And of course, just five years before today, no one had ever heard of an iPhone.
This week Apple announced they sold twenty million of them … in the last three months. Two years ago, none of us had heard of an iPad.
In the last twelve weeks Apple sold nine million at an average of nearly a thousand dollars each - $9000 million worth!
Each of those products is an example of brilliant innovation from a design-led company that demonstrates, in a spectacular way, that design and creativity have awesome potential.
There are many engineering innovations, but what is special about these products - and others - is that they weren’t waiting around to be discovered. Other people had already come up with mobile phones, and MP3 players. What they might never have come up with was the unique implementation. It was design that made the products different and successful.
This is important when we think about design in New Zealand.
It means there is not some form of ‘New Zealand design’ sitting around to be discovered. Instead, there is a way of looking at things that can only come from New Zealand. And if we want New Zealand to be successful, we have to harness that New Zealand uniqueness. We have to encourage more businesses to embrace a unique way of looking at things.
A few years ago I set up a New Zealand Design Group to work out how to better use design to improve New Zealand’s exporting. It discovered there is far more New Zealand potential in our industry than most people imagined. But the hard question to ask was why more of it wasn’t developed to create New Zealand products.
They found we don’t use our natural advantages very well - advantages they identified included international respect for our education system. Another is our cultural diversity - especially the unique quality Maori and Pacific Island influence.
Experts said that because we have mainly small firms, many see design services as ‘too costly’ or an add-on to their core business. Even among the bigger firms, there is a general lack of understanding of the value of design in the way leading export firms like Fisher and Paykel or Formway have understood.
Fisher & Paykel had a huge commercial hit with their dish drawer, which was created because the design team regarded nothing as given in the design process. They came up with a drawer that washed dishes, and developed a product that was sold all over the world.
That’s a pretty good example of what we need more of. But we have legitimate questions to ask about what is the best way to unleash this potential.
I strongly believe the best - in fact the only way - to get industry to take the necessary risks in a small country like New Zealand is for government to partner with industry.
That’s the only way we will align the elements of our education system, export agencies, industry training and everything else we need to get right.
It’s why the then-government created a research and development tax credit and set up NZ Trade & Enterprise to work with industry in promoting design.
The current government has a different perspective on this issue - its view is that the government should stand back and the market will create the necessary innovation all on its own, which is why one of the first things they did in government was to axe the R&D tax credit.
I don’t want to involve you in a political debate about the merits of these different approaches. But I do want to ask you to engage closely with it.
I get frustrated by hearing people say ‘politicians don’t get it’ when it comes to the need to lift the value of our exports and create more design-led products. The truth is that there is a divide in politics between those of us who see a hands-on role for the government in unlocking our development potential on one side; and those who believe in hands off on the other side.
I urge you to contribute to that discussion - and to have a strong view about what the government can do to help, and make your view known.
My own priorities are in several areas.
I think we need to incentivise R&D. We just don’t do enough in the private sector. Our government research and development is about average by world standards, and we commercialise more of our R&D than most countries.
What we don’t do is spend enough time on R&D in our private businesses. That is both a result and a cause of not putting enough emphasis on design in business processes. As one wag said, too much of our industry is structured around one set of Aucklanders selling haircuts to the people who they pay to mow their lawns.
So we need to promote awareness of the difference design can make.
When people see how success is achieved, they are inspired to emulate that success. If we think of our fashion industry, the success of labels like World and Karen Walker have helped inspire another generation of small businesses built on design and creativity.
A book like Michael Smythe’s will help inspire people and make them aware, too, so I welcome it. It can help us to see how design made a difference to creating the New Zealand we have today.
We tend to think that the way things are today is an inevitable result of history. Those decisions in our past are like water trickling downhill to reach an inevitable stream. But most of history is not inevitable - it is the result of decisions, and because you and I are all decision-makers, we can all influence tomorrow’s history.
We should not accept limitations on what New Zealand can achieve. We need to be fiercely determined to be better than any other country. We need to be prepared to accept failure on the way, and not punish those who try but fail. That is the environment where design can thrive and make a difference to our businesses.
It is an environment that is achievable in New Zealand, but it is not always what we do. Unleashing and exporting more of our creativity is immensely important to New Zealand. It is the only way we will transform our industrial base.
Smart investment in design can produce an enormous return in jobs, and higher incomes.
So I welcome this book’s contribution to that future, and I welcome the change it will help to promote in our attitudes to design and the difference it makes.
I wish this book, and its author, the success they deserve.
Jim's E-News, May 2011
20/05/11 16:01 Filed in: Newsletters
National government presides over dying economy
Rarely have I heard a speech of such breath-taking cynicism as Prime Minister John Key’s yesterday in support of the 2011 Budget. As his Government set us on a course to take New Zealand back to the very worst of National’s failed policies of the past, he had the gall to tell Parliament that the previous Labour-Progressive Government, of which I was a cabinet minister for 9 years, was responsible for the poor position this country is in.
Let’s look at the facts. In 2008, the Government had a fiscal surplus of $2.7 billion and its accounts were forecast to stay in surplus, unemployment was the lowest in the OECD and only 17% of children in New Zealand lived with someone reliant on a benefit. The Crown was contributing to the Superannuation Fund and had no net debt at all.
Yesterday the Government announced a deficit of $17 billion. In less than three years, unemployment is back at levels last seen in the nineties and 32 thousand more children live with someone reliant on a benefit. It is no accident.
Let’s look at where the current deficit comes from. The income tax cuts from 1 October last year cost $17.8 billion over four years. The top ten per cent of income earners alone got income tax cuts worth $44 million a week, which means that the government is borrowing two and a half billion dollars a year just for tax cuts for that top ten per cent of income earners.
Let’s now look at what this Budget has done? It has cut ‘Working for Families’, it has cut Kiwisaver and it has cut students loans and it has promised to sell off state-owned assets. But it has also allowed for the rich to keep their tax cuts of $44 million a week.
What we have is a government that is too weak to make the changes New Zealand needs, and there is a predictable outcome to this failure; ordinary people will suffer. When families don’t have adequate income, children end up living in poor housing conditions, they lack nourishment and they are not warm enough. Their health suffers and their opportunities suffer even more.
This National-led government should be ashamed of itself. It has not one single programme to fix the problem it has outlined and if it is voted back in office at this year’s General Election, it will come back and ask again for more because its policies have failed.
This Budget is a return to the failed policies of the nineties. It fails to create jobs, it fails to lift incomes and it fails to create a stronger future for New Zealand. In fact it is unarguably the worst I have seen in all of my years in Parliament.
My Budget Day speech can be found here.
Half of New Zealanders don’t have access to affordable dental care
Nearly half of all New Zealanders did not receive any dental care in the last year, partly, at least, because of the cost. The current economic conditions are making dental care even less affordable for New Zealanders.
Dental health is the ‘poor relation’ of our health system. It goes under the radar screen but the human and health costs are mounting.
I am launching an in-depth policy document to stimulate discussion about ways to fill the dental care hole in the health system, with the release at parliament next month of research about the extent of the problem and options for solving it.
The Government spokesperson said recently in the House that he was satisfied that New Zealanders have adequate access to affordable dental health care. He also said he was satisfied with the affordability of dental care, and only acknowledges ‘some’ can’t afford it. In fact 44% of all New Zealanders aren’t getting dental health care. That is more than ‘some.’
The Government also believes that hospital care is an adequate backstop. But people are queuing at dawn for that care, and they even then can only access emergency services such as pain relief and teeth extractions. The National-led government is minimising a serious problem and accepting Third World solutions.
If there is a single policy initiative that could make a difference to health outcomes for all New Zealanders, it would be access to affordable dental health care. Current economic conditions are putting affordable health care even further beyond the reach of average New Zealanders. We need action.
I’ve been studying the problem, and have developed some practical options for making dental care affordable, starting with sensible, practical steps we can take straight away. I’ll be releasing that document in late June.
With up to half of New Zealanders missing out on the dental health care they need, this is not a problem that can be ignored.
Inside the Red Zone
Almost three months after the 22 February Christchurch earthquake, I and the other Christchurch MPs toured the Red Zone earlier this week. The Red Zone is the inner city central business district which has remained strictly off limits to the general public. It was a stark and solemn reminder of the damage that was done on February 22 and of the tragic loss of life that occurred. The miracle was that not more lives were lost.
The destruction is almost inconceivable and to see from close quarters landmarks such as the Hotel Grand Chancellor leaning so perilously close to its neighbouring buildings was quite sobering. The other thing that struck me was boarded up buildings in deserted streets along with winter leaves piling up on the ground in the shadows of an autumn afternoon. It was reminiscent of the images we have seen of the aftermath of a nuclear winter.
The CTV site is now barren and the only reminder of what occurred there are wreaths of flowers placed on the ground, a poignant tribute to those who died. Elsewhere in the city, there are still piles of rubble waiting to be cleared and buildings with their insides exposed. In one, the whole side of a building had fallen off, leaving an upstairs bedroom open to an almost voyeuristic view of a small set of shelves holding folded clothes, completely undisturbed.
What was clear from our visit is that the process of making the central city safe is going to be a long one, and so too the enormity of the work ahead. With that in mind, I was delighted at the appointment of Roger Sutton to lead the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). The talents Roger has demonstrated in leading the power company Orion have not been replicated in any corporate infrastructure company I am aware of anywhere else in New Zealand. He brings a mix of skills that should successfully manage that difficult terrain between political and public pressures, the requirement to exercise good judgement and the need to show strong and inclusive leadership. I am looking forward to working with Roger to rebuild our city.
Those wishing to have a look at the inner city can do so by visiting Terralink’s earthquake street camera.
New electorate office
As a result of earthquake damage, my staff and I have had to relocate my Wigram electorate office, and we are now sharing the premises of the Tulloch Group, 2 Baigent Way. This is on the corner of Lunns Road, just off the southern expressway.
My office contact details remain the same, phone 365 5459 or 365 6172, or email anderton.wigram@parliament.govt.nz.
It is very generous of the Tulloch Group to accommodate us, as following the earthquake my staff worked out of my home and we held constituent clinics at the Rowley Community Centre. It was far from ideal. But we are now all back together and fully engaged.
Because we are sharing premises, constituents wishing to see me or my staff are requested to phone and make an appointment.
Petrol margins remain too high
While the current high price for petrol is being blamed solely on the high cost of oil, many people will be surprised and dismayed to learn that the margin of 29 cents a litre that petrol companies currently apply to fuel sales is nearly double their average margin of last year. Those record margins are indefensible and show the greed of petrol companies at a time when restraint is needed.
The price of petrol is too high because the Government has taken its eye off the ball and petrol companies know they won’t face any pressure for taking advantage of New Zealand consumers. Although the price of petrol has dropped from a record high of 221.9 cents a litre in early May to around 212.9 cents now, it could drop lower still if petrol companies were prepared to take a lower profit margin.
In early May the petrol companies’ margin on fuel was 29 cents per litre compared with an average of around 19 cents in the previous ten days. The lowest margin in the last year had been just 4 cents per litre.
As we all know, petrol prices are always fast to increase and slow to fall. These excessive prices are not just bad for consumers, but bad for business because transport costs are always passed on the consumer.
Given that the New Zealand dollar is now generally at a much higher rate than it has been against other currencies for the last twenty years, it is long past time that petrol companies showed a bit of control and acted in the interests of the country as a whole.
Rarely have I heard a speech of such breath-taking cynicism as Prime Minister John Key’s yesterday in support of the 2011 Budget. As his Government set us on a course to take New Zealand back to the very worst of National’s failed policies of the past, he had the gall to tell Parliament that the previous Labour-Progressive Government, of which I was a cabinet minister for 9 years, was responsible for the poor position this country is in.
Let’s look at the facts. In 2008, the Government had a fiscal surplus of $2.7 billion and its accounts were forecast to stay in surplus, unemployment was the lowest in the OECD and only 17% of children in New Zealand lived with someone reliant on a benefit. The Crown was contributing to the Superannuation Fund and had no net debt at all.
Yesterday the Government announced a deficit of $17 billion. In less than three years, unemployment is back at levels last seen in the nineties and 32 thousand more children live with someone reliant on a benefit. It is no accident.
Let’s look at where the current deficit comes from. The income tax cuts from 1 October last year cost $17.8 billion over four years. The top ten per cent of income earners alone got income tax cuts worth $44 million a week, which means that the government is borrowing two and a half billion dollars a year just for tax cuts for that top ten per cent of income earners.
Let’s now look at what this Budget has done? It has cut ‘Working for Families’, it has cut Kiwisaver and it has cut students loans and it has promised to sell off state-owned assets. But it has also allowed for the rich to keep their tax cuts of $44 million a week.
What we have is a government that is too weak to make the changes New Zealand needs, and there is a predictable outcome to this failure; ordinary people will suffer. When families don’t have adequate income, children end up living in poor housing conditions, they lack nourishment and they are not warm enough. Their health suffers and their opportunities suffer even more.
This National-led government should be ashamed of itself. It has not one single programme to fix the problem it has outlined and if it is voted back in office at this year’s General Election, it will come back and ask again for more because its policies have failed.
This Budget is a return to the failed policies of the nineties. It fails to create jobs, it fails to lift incomes and it fails to create a stronger future for New Zealand. In fact it is unarguably the worst I have seen in all of my years in Parliament.
My Budget Day speech can be found here.
Half of New Zealanders don’t have access to affordable dental care
Nearly half of all New Zealanders did not receive any dental care in the last year, partly, at least, because of the cost. The current economic conditions are making dental care even less affordable for New Zealanders.
Dental health is the ‘poor relation’ of our health system. It goes under the radar screen but the human and health costs are mounting.
I am launching an in-depth policy document to stimulate discussion about ways to fill the dental care hole in the health system, with the release at parliament next month of research about the extent of the problem and options for solving it.
The Government spokesperson said recently in the House that he was satisfied that New Zealanders have adequate access to affordable dental health care. He also said he was satisfied with the affordability of dental care, and only acknowledges ‘some’ can’t afford it. In fact 44% of all New Zealanders aren’t getting dental health care. That is more than ‘some.’
The Government also believes that hospital care is an adequate backstop. But people are queuing at dawn for that care, and they even then can only access emergency services such as pain relief and teeth extractions. The National-led government is minimising a serious problem and accepting Third World solutions.
If there is a single policy initiative that could make a difference to health outcomes for all New Zealanders, it would be access to affordable dental health care. Current economic conditions are putting affordable health care even further beyond the reach of average New Zealanders. We need action.
I’ve been studying the problem, and have developed some practical options for making dental care affordable, starting with sensible, practical steps we can take straight away. I’ll be releasing that document in late June.
With up to half of New Zealanders missing out on the dental health care they need, this is not a problem that can be ignored.
Inside the Red Zone
Almost three months after the 22 February Christchurch earthquake, I and the other Christchurch MPs toured the Red Zone earlier this week. The Red Zone is the inner city central business district which has remained strictly off limits to the general public. It was a stark and solemn reminder of the damage that was done on February 22 and of the tragic loss of life that occurred. The miracle was that not more lives were lost.
The destruction is almost inconceivable and to see from close quarters landmarks such as the Hotel Grand Chancellor leaning so perilously close to its neighbouring buildings was quite sobering. The other thing that struck me was boarded up buildings in deserted streets along with winter leaves piling up on the ground in the shadows of an autumn afternoon. It was reminiscent of the images we have seen of the aftermath of a nuclear winter.
The CTV site is now barren and the only reminder of what occurred there are wreaths of flowers placed on the ground, a poignant tribute to those who died. Elsewhere in the city, there are still piles of rubble waiting to be cleared and buildings with their insides exposed. In one, the whole side of a building had fallen off, leaving an upstairs bedroom open to an almost voyeuristic view of a small set of shelves holding folded clothes, completely undisturbed.
What was clear from our visit is that the process of making the central city safe is going to be a long one, and so too the enormity of the work ahead. With that in mind, I was delighted at the appointment of Roger Sutton to lead the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). The talents Roger has demonstrated in leading the power company Orion have not been replicated in any corporate infrastructure company I am aware of anywhere else in New Zealand. He brings a mix of skills that should successfully manage that difficult terrain between political and public pressures, the requirement to exercise good judgement and the need to show strong and inclusive leadership. I am looking forward to working with Roger to rebuild our city.
Those wishing to have a look at the inner city can do so by visiting Terralink’s earthquake street camera.
New electorate office
As a result of earthquake damage, my staff and I have had to relocate my Wigram electorate office, and we are now sharing the premises of the Tulloch Group, 2 Baigent Way. This is on the corner of Lunns Road, just off the southern expressway.
My office contact details remain the same, phone 365 5459 or 365 6172, or email anderton.wigram@parliament.govt.nz.
It is very generous of the Tulloch Group to accommodate us, as following the earthquake my staff worked out of my home and we held constituent clinics at the Rowley Community Centre. It was far from ideal. But we are now all back together and fully engaged.
Because we are sharing premises, constituents wishing to see me or my staff are requested to phone and make an appointment.
Petrol margins remain too high
While the current high price for petrol is being blamed solely on the high cost of oil, many people will be surprised and dismayed to learn that the margin of 29 cents a litre that petrol companies currently apply to fuel sales is nearly double their average margin of last year. Those record margins are indefensible and show the greed of petrol companies at a time when restraint is needed.
The price of petrol is too high because the Government has taken its eye off the ball and petrol companies know they won’t face any pressure for taking advantage of New Zealand consumers. Although the price of petrol has dropped from a record high of 221.9 cents a litre in early May to around 212.9 cents now, it could drop lower still if petrol companies were prepared to take a lower profit margin.
In early May the petrol companies’ margin on fuel was 29 cents per litre compared with an average of around 19 cents in the previous ten days. The lowest margin in the last year had been just 4 cents per litre.
As we all know, petrol prices are always fast to increase and slow to fall. These excessive prices are not just bad for consumers, but bad for business because transport costs are always passed on the consumer.
Given that the New Zealand dollar is now generally at a much higher rate than it has been against other currencies for the last twenty years, it is long past time that petrol companies showed a bit of control and acted in the interests of the country as a whole.
A dying economy: Budget 2011
19/05/11 16:09 Filed in: Speeches | News Releases
Jim Anderton’s speech to Parliament on Budget 2011.
This budget signals that the National Government has decided to preside over a dying economy.
Why? Because the most important social and economic investment in the future of any country is its investment in education.
This budget says that in the four financial years 2011/12 to 2014/15 government investment in education will increase by $197 million – that’s less than the $50 million /year - out of a budget of over $12,000 million /year – an increase of only 0.004% per year.
And provision for welfare benefits (unemployment, sickness and invalids) in the same period increases by $3153 million. Twice as much as money benefits that for Health and Education combined.
These facts would be ludicrous if they were not so tragic.
Look at the economy this government inherited.
In 2008, unemployment was the lowest in the OECD. It was 3.5 per cent of the labour force. And because there were jobs, people moved off benefits in record numbers.
In April 2008 – just three years ago - 17 per cent of children in New Zealand lived with someone who was reliant on a benefit.
Today, after three years of a National Government, unemployment is back up again at the levels last seen the last time they were in office, in the nineties.
Benefit numbers are up again because the real jobs aren’t there.
More than 32-thousand more children are reliant on benefits today than in April 2008. And because New Zealanders are not in work and earning, the books have turned to a sea of red.
In 2008, the government had a fiscal surplus of 2.7 billion dollars. In the fiscal update just before the 2008 election, the government accounts were forecast to remain in surplus for the forecast period. The Crown was contributing to the Superannuation Fund and had no net debt at all.
Today, the government announces a fiscal deficit of $17 billion dollars. But look where that deficit has come from: The income tax cuts on 1 October last year cost 17.8 billion over four years.
The top ten per cent of income earners alone got income tax cuts worth $44 million a week. The government is borrowing two and a half billion dollars a year just for tax cuts for the top ten per cent of income earners alone.
This Government likes to blame its books on the previous government. I’m sick of hearing it because it is not true. Their problem is they can’t take personal responsibility. They have to find someone or something to blame because they can’t fix the problems.
So they blame the global crisis.
They blame the earthquakes.
Those events made things worse – that’s true.
But bad management made the economy worse still.
They were going to catch Australia.
Bill English and John Key were going to close the wage gap with Australia – Yeah Right!.
Australia went through the global financial crisis too. Australia has been hit by devastating natural disasters too - like floods and the unprecedented hurricane in Queensland.
But here’s what the Australian Treasurer had to say about his budget, delivered last week: “Our economy has been hit in the short term by the recent natural disasters which have devastated families and communities.
…But growth is strengthening … Unemployment is low and is set to fall even further.
We've seen over 700,000 jobs created since we came to Government and we expect to see a further half a million jobs added by mid-2013.
Our public finances are in relatively good nick. We'll be back in the black in 2012/13.
So much for New Zealand catching Australia!
And all this Government has to say about why they’ve weathered the storm and we haven’t is that Australia has mining.
That ignores the fact that we have been enjoying the best commodity prices ever. We’ve had the most favourable terms of trade in history.
No, the problem is that National had no ideas to fix the economy – and still hasn’t got any!
John Key came into office promising tax cuts that everyone would share in, and promising that those tax cuts would help us catch Australia.
His government has failed on every one of its own targets. Most New Zealanders didn’t get a net tax cut - they got a small cut that was cancelled out by the rise in GST, and the subsequent price rises that soared ahead of their incomes.
Imagine if the National Party had produced an election manifesto that said:
“We will increase GST.
“We will cut Working for Families.
“We will cut your KiwiSaver, not once but twice.
“We will cut student loans.
“And we will give tax cuts costing $44 million a week to the top ten per cent of earners.”
They would not have dared set out that plan before voters. But that is how they have governed.
They got elected on promises they couldn’t keep.
Governments in the 80s and 90s did that and got thrown out but John Key wasn’t in NZ then, he was overseas working in the money speculation business.
National didn’t trust New Zealanders enough before the election to tell the truth - that tax cuts meant spending cuts and deficits. And today they don’t trust New Zealanders enough to tell the truth about the cause of their deficits today.
The sort of government that is too weak to front up to the truth is a government that is too weak to make the changes New Zealand needs.
There is a predictable outcome to this failure: People suffer. And the more vulnerable they are, the less resilient they are, and the more they suffer.
Children are being admitted to hospital for diseases that are clearly linked to poverty - there were an extra six hospital admissions for infectious diseases and respiratory diseases every day in 2009, compared with two years before, and the figures are worse now.
When families don’t have adequate incomes, and jobs, their children live in poor housing conditions, they lack nourishment, they are not warm enough.
Their health suffers.
Their opportunities suffer even more.
How much harder is it for children in the thousands more poor homes this government has created, than for a child in one of the affluent and privileged homes they have heavily favoured?
This government should be ashamed of itself.
In 2008, the main breadwinner was unemployed in about 7 per cent of Maori and Pacific families.
Today, that figure has doubled - fourteen per cent of Maori and Pacific families don’t have someone going to work and bringing home a wage or salary.
That is the Maori Party’s legacy for supporting National.
What does that means in practice?
Half of kids whose families are living in severe hardship have not got suitable wet weather gear because of the cost. A third of them don’t have a pair of shoes in good condition. They miss out on the experience of growing up, like owning a bike or a personal computer.
Two thirds miss out on school outings, or involvement in sports, half miss out on school books or a visit to the doctor because of the cost.
All of these are things that virtually every kid whose parents have a decent income takes for granted.
The National Government has one single programme to fix the issue: Selling our power companies.
That won’t lift one child out of poverty.
It won’t create one job.
Not one of those families in poverty will be queuing up at the stock brokers to buy shares in the companies.
And when those companies are snapped up by overseas buyers, the prices we pay will rise. The profits will disappear overseas. The tax on profits will be dodged.
And if the National Party is back in office, it will come back to the table and ask again for more because its policies have failed.
There’s nothing new here.
This is a return to the failed policies of the nineties.
The policies that fail people.
Fail to create jobs, fail to lift incomes.
Fail to create a stronger future for New Zealand.
This budget signals that the National Government has decided to preside over a dying economy.
Why? Because the most important social and economic investment in the future of any country is its investment in education.
This budget says that in the four financial years 2011/12 to 2014/15 government investment in education will increase by $197 million – that’s less than the $50 million /year - out of a budget of over $12,000 million /year – an increase of only 0.004% per year.
And provision for welfare benefits (unemployment, sickness and invalids) in the same period increases by $3153 million. Twice as much as money benefits that for Health and Education combined.
These facts would be ludicrous if they were not so tragic.
Look at the economy this government inherited.
In 2008, unemployment was the lowest in the OECD. It was 3.5 per cent of the labour force. And because there were jobs, people moved off benefits in record numbers.
In April 2008 – just three years ago - 17 per cent of children in New Zealand lived with someone who was reliant on a benefit.
Today, after three years of a National Government, unemployment is back up again at the levels last seen the last time they were in office, in the nineties.
Benefit numbers are up again because the real jobs aren’t there.
More than 32-thousand more children are reliant on benefits today than in April 2008. And because New Zealanders are not in work and earning, the books have turned to a sea of red.
In 2008, the government had a fiscal surplus of 2.7 billion dollars. In the fiscal update just before the 2008 election, the government accounts were forecast to remain in surplus for the forecast period. The Crown was contributing to the Superannuation Fund and had no net debt at all.
Today, the government announces a fiscal deficit of $17 billion dollars. But look where that deficit has come from: The income tax cuts on 1 October last year cost 17.8 billion over four years.
The top ten per cent of income earners alone got income tax cuts worth $44 million a week. The government is borrowing two and a half billion dollars a year just for tax cuts for the top ten per cent of income earners alone.
This Government likes to blame its books on the previous government. I’m sick of hearing it because it is not true. Their problem is they can’t take personal responsibility. They have to find someone or something to blame because they can’t fix the problems.
So they blame the global crisis.
They blame the earthquakes.
Those events made things worse – that’s true.
But bad management made the economy worse still.
They were going to catch Australia.
Bill English and John Key were going to close the wage gap with Australia – Yeah Right!.
Australia went through the global financial crisis too. Australia has been hit by devastating natural disasters too - like floods and the unprecedented hurricane in Queensland.
But here’s what the Australian Treasurer had to say about his budget, delivered last week: “Our economy has been hit in the short term by the recent natural disasters which have devastated families and communities.
…But growth is strengthening … Unemployment is low and is set to fall even further.
We've seen over 700,000 jobs created since we came to Government and we expect to see a further half a million jobs added by mid-2013.
Our public finances are in relatively good nick. We'll be back in the black in 2012/13.
So much for New Zealand catching Australia!
And all this Government has to say about why they’ve weathered the storm and we haven’t is that Australia has mining.
That ignores the fact that we have been enjoying the best commodity prices ever. We’ve had the most favourable terms of trade in history.
No, the problem is that National had no ideas to fix the economy – and still hasn’t got any!
John Key came into office promising tax cuts that everyone would share in, and promising that those tax cuts would help us catch Australia.
His government has failed on every one of its own targets. Most New Zealanders didn’t get a net tax cut - they got a small cut that was cancelled out by the rise in GST, and the subsequent price rises that soared ahead of their incomes.
Imagine if the National Party had produced an election manifesto that said:
“We will increase GST.
“We will cut Working for Families.
“We will cut your KiwiSaver, not once but twice.
“We will cut student loans.
“And we will give tax cuts costing $44 million a week to the top ten per cent of earners.”
They would not have dared set out that plan before voters. But that is how they have governed.
They got elected on promises they couldn’t keep.
Governments in the 80s and 90s did that and got thrown out but John Key wasn’t in NZ then, he was overseas working in the money speculation business.
National didn’t trust New Zealanders enough before the election to tell the truth - that tax cuts meant spending cuts and deficits. And today they don’t trust New Zealanders enough to tell the truth about the cause of their deficits today.
The sort of government that is too weak to front up to the truth is a government that is too weak to make the changes New Zealand needs.
There is a predictable outcome to this failure: People suffer. And the more vulnerable they are, the less resilient they are, and the more they suffer.
Children are being admitted to hospital for diseases that are clearly linked to poverty - there were an extra six hospital admissions for infectious diseases and respiratory diseases every day in 2009, compared with two years before, and the figures are worse now.
When families don’t have adequate incomes, and jobs, their children live in poor housing conditions, they lack nourishment, they are not warm enough.
Their health suffers.
Their opportunities suffer even more.
How much harder is it for children in the thousands more poor homes this government has created, than for a child in one of the affluent and privileged homes they have heavily favoured?
This government should be ashamed of itself.
In 2008, the main breadwinner was unemployed in about 7 per cent of Maori and Pacific families.
Today, that figure has doubled - fourteen per cent of Maori and Pacific families don’t have someone going to work and bringing home a wage or salary.
That is the Maori Party’s legacy for supporting National.
What does that means in practice?
Half of kids whose families are living in severe hardship have not got suitable wet weather gear because of the cost. A third of them don’t have a pair of shoes in good condition. They miss out on the experience of growing up, like owning a bike or a personal computer.
Two thirds miss out on school outings, or involvement in sports, half miss out on school books or a visit to the doctor because of the cost.
All of these are things that virtually every kid whose parents have a decent income takes for granted.
The National Government has one single programme to fix the issue: Selling our power companies.
That won’t lift one child out of poverty.
It won’t create one job.
Not one of those families in poverty will be queuing up at the stock brokers to buy shares in the companies.
And when those companies are snapped up by overseas buyers, the prices we pay will rise. The profits will disappear overseas. The tax on profits will be dodged.
And if the National Party is back in office, it will come back to the table and ask again for more because its policies have failed.
There’s nothing new here.
This is a return to the failed policies of the nineties.
The policies that fail people.
Fail to create jobs, fail to lift incomes.
Fail to create a stronger future for New Zealand.
Petrol price margins at record high
16/05/11 14:41 Filed in: News Releases
Petrol companies are making record margins on fuel prices, a government survey of petrol price margins shows, and Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says the fuel companies are too slow to reduce prices.
“Petrol prices are always fast to increase and slow to fall. At the moment, the price is high because the government has taken its eye off the ball and the petrol companies know they won’t face any pressure for soaking the New Zealand consumer,” Jim Anderton said.
“I call on petrol companies to drop retail prices now. The 3 cents a litre some companies dropped this morning is a fraction of the increased margin they are making.”
The Ministry of Economic Development’s oil price margin monitoring shows petrol companies were making a margin of 29 cents a litre last week – nearly double the average margin last year.
“Excessive fuel prices are not just bad for consumers, they’re bad for business too. The cause of high petrol prices right now is greed,” Jim Anderton said
.
Source: MED [pdf]
“Petrol prices are always fast to increase and slow to fall. At the moment, the price is high because the government has taken its eye off the ball and the petrol companies know they won’t face any pressure for soaking the New Zealand consumer,” Jim Anderton said.
“I call on petrol companies to drop retail prices now. The 3 cents a litre some companies dropped this morning is a fraction of the increased margin they are making.”
The Ministry of Economic Development’s oil price margin monitoring shows petrol companies were making a margin of 29 cents a litre last week – nearly double the average margin last year.
“Excessive fuel prices are not just bad for consumers, they’re bad for business too. The cause of high petrol prices right now is greed,” Jim Anderton said
.
Source: MED [pdf]
Foreign owners have no commitment to NZ
07/04/11 15:23 Filed in: News Releases
The closure of NZPA is the result of a corporate bean counter’s decision made in Australia, and serves as a warning about what happens when our assets are owned overseas, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
“If John Key sells our other assets, the same calamity will result. Foreign owners have no commitment to New Zealand.”
Jim Anderton says the loss of NZPA will hit regional New Zealand hardest because regional newspapers rely on the service for their national news service.
“Fairfax appointed an Australian chief executive to run the operation in New Zealand in March last year over the top of New Zealand executives who were expected to run the company. The cynical Australians who run half of New Zealand’s papers are putting in place a strategy that is bad for New Zealand, and only good for an Australian company.
“NZPA provided a unique service. It is one of the only gallery offices at parliament that routinely covers select committees and debates in the Chamber.
“It is a service that New Zealand’s news services outside the main centres rely on. Even the Christchurch’s press gallery office has been closed. This will remove services from remaining regional centres of New Zealand. NZPA also has a reputation forged over decades for writing straight news reports - leaving opinion and beat up scandals to others.
“This is what happens when our services end up overseas owned. Just as the Australians closed bank branches when they bought up our banking industry, and overseas owned oil companies spent years closing petrol stations in regional New Zealand, the newspaper company has a similar lack of commitment
“Exactly the same outcome is predictable if John Key goes ahead with his plan to sell down our power companies. Foreign owners will buy them up over time, and services will begin to disappear. I would love to hear the advocates of foreign ownership tell us why closing NZPA is a great advertisement for overseas ownership.”
“If John Key sells our other assets, the same calamity will result. Foreign owners have no commitment to New Zealand.”
Jim Anderton says the loss of NZPA will hit regional New Zealand hardest because regional newspapers rely on the service for their national news service.
“Fairfax appointed an Australian chief executive to run the operation in New Zealand in March last year over the top of New Zealand executives who were expected to run the company. The cynical Australians who run half of New Zealand’s papers are putting in place a strategy that is bad for New Zealand, and only good for an Australian company.
“NZPA provided a unique service. It is one of the only gallery offices at parliament that routinely covers select committees and debates in the Chamber.
“It is a service that New Zealand’s news services outside the main centres rely on. Even the Christchurch’s press gallery office has been closed. This will remove services from remaining regional centres of New Zealand. NZPA also has a reputation forged over decades for writing straight news reports - leaving opinion and beat up scandals to others.
“This is what happens when our services end up overseas owned. Just as the Australians closed bank branches when they bought up our banking industry, and overseas owned oil companies spent years closing petrol stations in regional New Zealand, the newspaper company has a similar lack of commitment
“Exactly the same outcome is predictable if John Key goes ahead with his plan to sell down our power companies. Foreign owners will buy them up over time, and services will begin to disappear. I would love to hear the advocates of foreign ownership tell us why closing NZPA is a great advertisement for overseas ownership.”
AMI bail-out
07/04/11 15:21 Filed in: News Releases
AMI bail-out: Government should sometimes get involved in profitable businesses too
The necessity for a government bail-out of AMI is a slap in the face for people who say government should have no role in the economy, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
“Just as with South Canterbury Finance, Air NZ, Kiwirail and Kiwibank - sometimes the government has no responsible choice but to get involved in the economy.
“The difference between me and the National party is that National only gets involved in catastrophes, while I think that if we are going to be there in the bad times, taxpayers should share in some of the good times too.” Jim Anderton said.
The necessity for a government bail-out of AMI is a slap in the face for people who say government should have no role in the economy, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
“Just as with South Canterbury Finance, Air NZ, Kiwirail and Kiwibank - sometimes the government has no responsible choice but to get involved in the economy.
“The difference between me and the National party is that National only gets involved in catastrophes, while I think that if we are going to be there in the bad times, taxpayers should share in some of the good times too.” Jim Anderton said.
Help pay for Chch with $462m from top 5%
07/04/11 11:57 Filed in: News Releases
The country will be $462 million deeper in the red this year because of the cut in the top personal tax rate for those on incomes of over $100,000 a year, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
He says the cut in the tax rate for the top 5% is worth at least $4.6 billion over ten years, which could be used to help meet the cost of rebuilding Christchurch and give young jobless Cantabrians trade skills to rebuild the city.
“The Government says the deficit is very big this year. It could reduce that deficit by reversing some of the tax cut they gave on 1 October, at least temporarily. Earners on incomes of over $100,000 would still get the benefit of tax cuts on income below $100,000 - the same tax cuts everyone else gets. The highest income earners in New Zealand would still get at least $500 million in tax cuts.
“But the country desperately needs the money now. The large deficit means the unaffordable 1 October 2010 top tax rate cut needs to be reversed. Surely NZ’s highest income earners would not object to that course of action”.
A calculation table is available on Treasury’s website here.
It shows income of around $9.3 billion is earned by those with incomes over $100,000. Using Treasury’s methodology, the difference in government revenue is calculated by multiplying that figure by 0.06 (i.e., 6 cents in the dollar, from 33 cent tax rate to 39 cent), and then applying a deflator of 17.3% (because, for example, some of the income won’t be spent and attract GST).
This gives a total cost - and therefore an increase in the fiscal deficit - of $462 million this year.
He says the cut in the tax rate for the top 5% is worth at least $4.6 billion over ten years, which could be used to help meet the cost of rebuilding Christchurch and give young jobless Cantabrians trade skills to rebuild the city.
“The Government says the deficit is very big this year. It could reduce that deficit by reversing some of the tax cut they gave on 1 October, at least temporarily. Earners on incomes of over $100,000 would still get the benefit of tax cuts on income below $100,000 - the same tax cuts everyone else gets. The highest income earners in New Zealand would still get at least $500 million in tax cuts.
“But the country desperately needs the money now. The large deficit means the unaffordable 1 October 2010 top tax rate cut needs to be reversed. Surely NZ’s highest income earners would not object to that course of action”.
A calculation table is available on Treasury’s website here.
It shows income of around $9.3 billion is earned by those with incomes over $100,000. Using Treasury’s methodology, the difference in government revenue is calculated by multiplying that figure by 0.06 (i.e., 6 cents in the dollar, from 33 cent tax rate to 39 cent), and then applying a deflator of 17.3% (because, for example, some of the income won’t be spent and attract GST).
This gives a total cost - and therefore an increase in the fiscal deficit - of $462 million this year.
Jim's E-News, April 2011
05/04/11 09:57 Filed in: Newsletters
Twenty seconds of terror
It took little more than twenty seconds, but the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February brought terror to a city that was almost unimaginable. Someone asked me whether the images on television and newspapers exaggerated the event, but they did not. In that short time, buildings toppled and roads buckled and cracked in a way that I never imagined possible, and far outweighed the damage caused by the earlier quakes in September last year.
Although I was in Wellington when the 22 February quake struck, my wife Carole was driving home through the Christchurch city centre and so powerful was the force she thought the car had been hit by a truck.
It is good to be able to report that our families and my Christchurch staff are all safe and well, although all have suffered some damage to homes and sections. The roof in our home was badly damaged and we have had to revert to that old practice of getting out the buckets to catch the drips when it rains.
While, fortunately, none of my staff or family was physically injured, most have been left quite unsettled by the event, something which probably reflects the experience of most people in Christchurch. My office in Selwyn Street has been cordoned off and we have just been told that it will have to be demolished, a sad way to end around 20 years in that particular office.
We are currently looking for a new office, but in the meantime my staff and I are working out of my house and from their homes, and we are holding constituent clinics in the Rowley Resource Centre. Our phone numbers and email addresses are all the same, and so constituents needing to contact us should continue to do so by phone or email.
Now the work starts
The work rebuilding Christchurch is one that presents as many opportunities as challenges and I have been working as much as is possible with my parliamentary colleagues to ensure that we do the best for our city.
We are working at two levels. The first is in a quite practical way to assist constituents who have suffered loss or damage, whether they be residents or local business owners. Aside from such things as loss of power, sewerage and water, there are also homes and buildings which have been damaged, in many cases irretrievably. This has spawned a number of problems, with people needing to find new homes and, in many cases, finding that insurance policies didn’t live up to expectations. The other MPs, city councillors and I are also being briefed twice a week by Civil Defence and Council authorities.
The other level we are working at is at a national one, and most people will now be aware that the Government has set up a new ministry, The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), to take charge of the recovery and rebuild from here. The National Government and Earthquake Minister Brownlee did not consult with local Labour MPs or me in the development of CERA, however it is evident that the tasks which lie ahead are too great for the Christchurch City Council alone, and so the establishment of a new ministry was inevitable.
Within its structure, CERA has a “Cross Party Forum” which will allow MPs to advise Minister Brownlee, and there is an opportunity for widespread community consultation, so we will be working hard to ensure that it is an effective body. There are, however, some real dangers with CERA, in particular with its power to relax, suspend or extend laws and regulations, and it can, for example, acquire, hold, deal with and dispose of property, and to call-in the powers and functions of a local authority or council organisation.
The work of CERA and progress towards the rebuilding of Christchurch will be reported in future newsletters.
Wood critical element in rebuild
While the Earthquake Minister may be trumpeting his view that old “dunger” stone and brick buildings in Christchurch should be knocked over and replaced, he fails to take into account that the most notable earthquake casualties, in terms of building collapse leading to loss of life, were modern buildings, their construction primarily of concrete and steel.
For some years now, I have been advocating the use of wood for commercial buildings, and the Christchurch rebuild is a perfect opportunity to showcase the merits of wooden buildings. My view is supported by mounting social, scientific and engineering evidence which shows that wood has the characteristics needed for a safe, modern city. As well as being safe, wood is a renewable resource with a plentiful supply, it is ecologically sound, less expensive than many alternatives and is an attractive, iconic New Zealand product. Strange as it may seem, laminated wood members have excellent fire resistance because the slow rate of surface charring protects the wood inside the beams and columns.
Researchers at the University of Canterbury, comparing the potential of commercial buildings constructed of wood against concrete and steel, concluded that timber construction is ideally suited to multi-storey building because of its high strength-to-weight ratio. The lightweight nature of predominantly timber buildings requires a lower earthquake loading than for a reinforced concrete one, wood being one quarter the weight of concrete for the same sized components.
Another benefit is that the new construction engineering methods, particularly using laminated wood, have changed plain old radiata pine from an export commodity into a high quality engineering material. There seems little sense in exporting raw logs when they could be successfully turned into high quality construction products right here and save on the need to import other construction materials. In other words we can create jobs rather than export them.
There is, therefore, no reason that Christchurch cannot become a world-leader in innovative, medium-rise wooden commercial buildings. We have sufficient wood resources and we now have among us the designers, architects, construction engineers and builders with the expertise to get on with the job, and many are waiting to do just that.
More:
Stuff
World Architecture News
NZ Wood
Select Committee on the Alcohol Reform Bill I recently appeared before the Select Committee on the Alcohol Reform Bill to speak to my submission which called for a number of crucial measures to address this country’s heavy drinking culture.
In particular, I urged the Committee to recommend a return of the minimum drinking age to 20 years, with no exceptions, to seek advice from officials on how a minimum price regime could be introduced to ensure a reduction in alcohol consumption, to stop the advertising of alcohol (other than that which communicates product information) and to develop a blueprint for addiction service delivery for the next five years.
In its report, the Law Commission recommended that blood alcohol limits be reduced from 80mgs of alcohol per 100mls of blood to 50mgs for all drivers, with zero tolerance for drivers under 20 years of age. Despite that, the Government said it needs more evidence before making any changes, and has decided not to lower the limit at this stage. I asked the Committee to review that position as I believe there is sufficient evidence already available, including the Ministry of Transport saying that the single most effective measure the Government could enact to decrease drunk driving deaths, injury and social/economic and human costs would be to decrease the drink driving limit from 80mgs to 50mgs per 100mls of blood.
Similarly, when blood alcohol levels were reduced from 50mgs to 20mgs in Sweden there was a 10% reduction in road/driving fatalities. It is that simple.
Although most measures in the Alcohol Reform Bill are positive, its failure to include the steps I have set out reflects a serious deficiency in what is our best opportunity for years to deal comprehensively with alcohol reform in general and its outrageous toll on our communities in particular.
There is no doubt that, as long as alcohol continues to be sold as a normal commodity at neighbourhood stores and supermarkets, there will continue to be billions of dollars of harm in New Zealand each year, including 20 deaths per week and 70,000 alcohol-related physical and sexual assaults each year. That is 1350 per week. One third of all police arrests involve alcohol, and it just doesn’t seem too difficult to do something about it.
Government, not quake, caused greatest deficit in history
I am confident that the New Zealand public will see John Key and his National Government’s claim that the “biggest budget deficit in history” is just a result of the Canterbury earthquake as the nonsense it is.
John Key recently told TVNZ that the May 19 Budget will include the biggest deficit in history mainly because of the cost of the rebuild and recovery in Christchurch. That claim is simply untrue and designed to conceal the devastating effects of last year’s bad economic decisions made by him and his government
The Government is conveniently using the earthquakes to mask something we all know; that the National Government has no economic plan and that the recession is a result of its inept management. Even Treasury said in its recent update that two thirds of the deficit was happening before the 22 February earthquake hit.
While we cannot argue that the earthquakes have not had an impact, the economy was already deeply in the red. That’s because the Government’s so-called “tax switch” last year was not revenue neutral as it claimed. In fact it has given billions of dollars more to top earners than we could afford.
To now blame Christchurch is an insult to the hardworking people who are trying to put the city back together.
The other thing that John Key fails to take into account is that the cost of the earthquakes does not have to be met in a single year, and no-one expects the rebuild to be completed in a year.
Care needed with biosecurity charges
The new Biosecurity Law Reform Bill currently being debated in parliament will make it possible for farmers to be charged for the cost of cleaning up biosecurity incursions as well as the cost of keeping pests out.
While I accept that industry should make some contribution towards biosecurity costs, in its current form the proposed law is impractical and doesn’t take account of the possible consequences for the entire agricultural and horticultural sectors if they are charged the full amount for biosecurity protections. An across the board charge is impractical and any imposition of costs has to be carefully considered.
But in what is currently proposed there isn’t an even match between costs of biosecurity protection and sectors that reap the benefits.
The last Labour-Progressive government recognised the principle of getting businesses with a stake in the outcome to shoulder some of the responsibility of keeping pests out, but it doesn’t make sense and it is unfair to put all the costs on the sector that is being affected by a potential incursion. The benefits from one sector spill over to others.
For example, if beekeepers had been forced to cover the entire cost of keeping the varroa bee mite out, or its eradication after it arrived, that could have crippled and ended the beekeeping industry. But it is not just the beekeeping industry which benefits from controlling the varroa mite; our entire horticultural sector and much of our agricultural production depends on bees for such things as crop pollination. So even if it is not economic for beekeepers to fight varroa, it is critically important for the rest of our horticultural and agricultural sectors to have a thriving bee industry and that it why it is a much wider issue than just for beekeepers. The costs of keeping pests out would be enough to wipe out a key sector that benefits a much larger part of the economy.
The Government needs to redraft its biosecurity statute to better work with agricultural industry sectors.
There are some producers who benefit from pest control but want someone else to pay for it. But there are also industry sectors which would benefit from having a stake in making sure pests are kept out. It is essential to ensure costs don’t fall in a way that wipes out some critically important parts of our agricultural economic base.
It took little more than twenty seconds, but the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February brought terror to a city that was almost unimaginable. Someone asked me whether the images on television and newspapers exaggerated the event, but they did not. In that short time, buildings toppled and roads buckled and cracked in a way that I never imagined possible, and far outweighed the damage caused by the earlier quakes in September last year.
Although I was in Wellington when the 22 February quake struck, my wife Carole was driving home through the Christchurch city centre and so powerful was the force she thought the car had been hit by a truck.
It is good to be able to report that our families and my Christchurch staff are all safe and well, although all have suffered some damage to homes and sections. The roof in our home was badly damaged and we have had to revert to that old practice of getting out the buckets to catch the drips when it rains.
While, fortunately, none of my staff or family was physically injured, most have been left quite unsettled by the event, something which probably reflects the experience of most people in Christchurch. My office in Selwyn Street has been cordoned off and we have just been told that it will have to be demolished, a sad way to end around 20 years in that particular office.
We are currently looking for a new office, but in the meantime my staff and I are working out of my house and from their homes, and we are holding constituent clinics in the Rowley Resource Centre. Our phone numbers and email addresses are all the same, and so constituents needing to contact us should continue to do so by phone or email.
Now the work starts
The work rebuilding Christchurch is one that presents as many opportunities as challenges and I have been working as much as is possible with my parliamentary colleagues to ensure that we do the best for our city.
We are working at two levels. The first is in a quite practical way to assist constituents who have suffered loss or damage, whether they be residents or local business owners. Aside from such things as loss of power, sewerage and water, there are also homes and buildings which have been damaged, in many cases irretrievably. This has spawned a number of problems, with people needing to find new homes and, in many cases, finding that insurance policies didn’t live up to expectations. The other MPs, city councillors and I are also being briefed twice a week by Civil Defence and Council authorities.
The other level we are working at is at a national one, and most people will now be aware that the Government has set up a new ministry, The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), to take charge of the recovery and rebuild from here. The National Government and Earthquake Minister Brownlee did not consult with local Labour MPs or me in the development of CERA, however it is evident that the tasks which lie ahead are too great for the Christchurch City Council alone, and so the establishment of a new ministry was inevitable.
Within its structure, CERA has a “Cross Party Forum” which will allow MPs to advise Minister Brownlee, and there is an opportunity for widespread community consultation, so we will be working hard to ensure that it is an effective body. There are, however, some real dangers with CERA, in particular with its power to relax, suspend or extend laws and regulations, and it can, for example, acquire, hold, deal with and dispose of property, and to call-in the powers and functions of a local authority or council organisation.
The work of CERA and progress towards the rebuilding of Christchurch will be reported in future newsletters.
Wood critical element in rebuild
While the Earthquake Minister may be trumpeting his view that old “dunger” stone and brick buildings in Christchurch should be knocked over and replaced, he fails to take into account that the most notable earthquake casualties, in terms of building collapse leading to loss of life, were modern buildings, their construction primarily of concrete and steel.
For some years now, I have been advocating the use of wood for commercial buildings, and the Christchurch rebuild is a perfect opportunity to showcase the merits of wooden buildings. My view is supported by mounting social, scientific and engineering evidence which shows that wood has the characteristics needed for a safe, modern city. As well as being safe, wood is a renewable resource with a plentiful supply, it is ecologically sound, less expensive than many alternatives and is an attractive, iconic New Zealand product. Strange as it may seem, laminated wood members have excellent fire resistance because the slow rate of surface charring protects the wood inside the beams and columns.
Researchers at the University of Canterbury, comparing the potential of commercial buildings constructed of wood against concrete and steel, concluded that timber construction is ideally suited to multi-storey building because of its high strength-to-weight ratio. The lightweight nature of predominantly timber buildings requires a lower earthquake loading than for a reinforced concrete one, wood being one quarter the weight of concrete for the same sized components.
Another benefit is that the new construction engineering methods, particularly using laminated wood, have changed plain old radiata pine from an export commodity into a high quality engineering material. There seems little sense in exporting raw logs when they could be successfully turned into high quality construction products right here and save on the need to import other construction materials. In other words we can create jobs rather than export them.
There is, therefore, no reason that Christchurch cannot become a world-leader in innovative, medium-rise wooden commercial buildings. We have sufficient wood resources and we now have among us the designers, architects, construction engineers and builders with the expertise to get on with the job, and many are waiting to do just that.
More:
Stuff
World Architecture News
NZ Wood
Select Committee on the Alcohol Reform Bill I recently appeared before the Select Committee on the Alcohol Reform Bill to speak to my submission which called for a number of crucial measures to address this country’s heavy drinking culture.
In particular, I urged the Committee to recommend a return of the minimum drinking age to 20 years, with no exceptions, to seek advice from officials on how a minimum price regime could be introduced to ensure a reduction in alcohol consumption, to stop the advertising of alcohol (other than that which communicates product information) and to develop a blueprint for addiction service delivery for the next five years.
In its report, the Law Commission recommended that blood alcohol limits be reduced from 80mgs of alcohol per 100mls of blood to 50mgs for all drivers, with zero tolerance for drivers under 20 years of age. Despite that, the Government said it needs more evidence before making any changes, and has decided not to lower the limit at this stage. I asked the Committee to review that position as I believe there is sufficient evidence already available, including the Ministry of Transport saying that the single most effective measure the Government could enact to decrease drunk driving deaths, injury and social/economic and human costs would be to decrease the drink driving limit from 80mgs to 50mgs per 100mls of blood.
Similarly, when blood alcohol levels were reduced from 50mgs to 20mgs in Sweden there was a 10% reduction in road/driving fatalities. It is that simple.
Although most measures in the Alcohol Reform Bill are positive, its failure to include the steps I have set out reflects a serious deficiency in what is our best opportunity for years to deal comprehensively with alcohol reform in general and its outrageous toll on our communities in particular.
There is no doubt that, as long as alcohol continues to be sold as a normal commodity at neighbourhood stores and supermarkets, there will continue to be billions of dollars of harm in New Zealand each year, including 20 deaths per week and 70,000 alcohol-related physical and sexual assaults each year. That is 1350 per week. One third of all police arrests involve alcohol, and it just doesn’t seem too difficult to do something about it.
Government, not quake, caused greatest deficit in history
I am confident that the New Zealand public will see John Key and his National Government’s claim that the “biggest budget deficit in history” is just a result of the Canterbury earthquake as the nonsense it is.
John Key recently told TVNZ that the May 19 Budget will include the biggest deficit in history mainly because of the cost of the rebuild and recovery in Christchurch. That claim is simply untrue and designed to conceal the devastating effects of last year’s bad economic decisions made by him and his government
The Government is conveniently using the earthquakes to mask something we all know; that the National Government has no economic plan and that the recession is a result of its inept management. Even Treasury said in its recent update that two thirds of the deficit was happening before the 22 February earthquake hit.
While we cannot argue that the earthquakes have not had an impact, the economy was already deeply in the red. That’s because the Government’s so-called “tax switch” last year was not revenue neutral as it claimed. In fact it has given billions of dollars more to top earners than we could afford.
To now blame Christchurch is an insult to the hardworking people who are trying to put the city back together.
The other thing that John Key fails to take into account is that the cost of the earthquakes does not have to be met in a single year, and no-one expects the rebuild to be completed in a year.
Care needed with biosecurity charges
The new Biosecurity Law Reform Bill currently being debated in parliament will make it possible for farmers to be charged for the cost of cleaning up biosecurity incursions as well as the cost of keeping pests out.
While I accept that industry should make some contribution towards biosecurity costs, in its current form the proposed law is impractical and doesn’t take account of the possible consequences for the entire agricultural and horticultural sectors if they are charged the full amount for biosecurity protections. An across the board charge is impractical and any imposition of costs has to be carefully considered.
But in what is currently proposed there isn’t an even match between costs of biosecurity protection and sectors that reap the benefits.
The last Labour-Progressive government recognised the principle of getting businesses with a stake in the outcome to shoulder some of the responsibility of keeping pests out, but it doesn’t make sense and it is unfair to put all the costs on the sector that is being affected by a potential incursion. The benefits from one sector spill over to others.
For example, if beekeepers had been forced to cover the entire cost of keeping the varroa bee mite out, or its eradication after it arrived, that could have crippled and ended the beekeeping industry. But it is not just the beekeeping industry which benefits from controlling the varroa mite; our entire horticultural sector and much of our agricultural production depends on bees for such things as crop pollination. So even if it is not economic for beekeepers to fight varroa, it is critically important for the rest of our horticultural and agricultural sectors to have a thriving bee industry and that it why it is a much wider issue than just for beekeepers. The costs of keeping pests out would be enough to wipe out a key sector that benefits a much larger part of the economy.
The Government needs to redraft its biosecurity statute to better work with agricultural industry sectors.
There are some producers who benefit from pest control but want someone else to pay for it. But there are also industry sectors which would benefit from having a stake in making sure pests are kept out. It is essential to ensure costs don’t fall in a way that wipes out some critically important parts of our agricultural economic base.
Government, not quake, caused greatest deficit in history
28/03/11 13:45 Filed in: News Releases
Claims that the ‘biggest budget deficit in history’ are all a result of the Canterbury earthquake are untrue and designed to conceal the devastating effects of last year’s bad economic decisions, says Christchurch MP Jim Anderton.
John Key told TVNZ today that the May 19 budget will include the biggest deficit in history, mainly because of the cost of the rebuild and recovery in Christchurch. “We need to pay for the earthquake, it’ll get booked to the account straight away," he claimed.
But Jim Anderton says the Prime Minister's claims are untrue.
“The National Government is myth-making. Even Treasury said in its update that two thirds of the deficit was happening before the second earthquake hit. The recession was caused by the National Government, not by the earthquake.
“The earthquake is expensive, but the economy was already deeply in the red when the earthquake hit.
“That’s because the Government’s so-called ‘tax switch’ last year was not revenue neutral as it claimed. In fact it has given billions of dollars more to top earners than we could afford.
“To now blame Christchurch is an insult to the hardworking people who are trying to put the city back together.
"Nor is there a reason to take much of the entire cost of the earthquake in a single year. No one expects the rebuild to be completed in a year. The Government hasn’t even got temporary accommodation underway from the first earthquake, when Japan is already building hundreds of temporary homes within weeks of its quake. For John Key to then claim that this inaction is causing great expense is simply untrue,” Jim Anderton said.
John Key told TVNZ today that the May 19 budget will include the biggest deficit in history, mainly because of the cost of the rebuild and recovery in Christchurch. “We need to pay for the earthquake, it’ll get booked to the account straight away," he claimed.
But Jim Anderton says the Prime Minister's claims are untrue.
“The National Government is myth-making. Even Treasury said in its update that two thirds of the deficit was happening before the second earthquake hit. The recession was caused by the National Government, not by the earthquake.
“The earthquake is expensive, but the economy was already deeply in the red when the earthquake hit.
“That’s because the Government’s so-called ‘tax switch’ last year was not revenue neutral as it claimed. In fact it has given billions of dollars more to top earners than we could afford.
“To now blame Christchurch is an insult to the hardworking people who are trying to put the city back together.
"Nor is there a reason to take much of the entire cost of the earthquake in a single year. No one expects the rebuild to be completed in a year. The Government hasn’t even got temporary accommodation underway from the first earthquake, when Japan is already building hundreds of temporary homes within weeks of its quake. For John Key to then claim that this inaction is causing great expense is simply untrue,” Jim Anderton said.
Jim's E-News, February 2011
18/02/11 15:29 Filed in: Newsletters
Key short on answers to economy
Parliament resumed earlier this month and in my first speech for the year, I questioned whether John Key’s words about ‘aspirational’ government and his pledges for progress and prosperity for the nation were nothing more than the rhetoric we heard after the Canterbury earthquakes. Lots of hype, but little action!
Here are the problems that Mr Key faces: After more than two years of his government, economic growth has stopped. Any so-called recovery has stalled. Unemployment is going up, not down, with youth unemployment going through the roof. Jobs are being lost, not created. The cost of living is increasing, but incomes aren’t keeping pace, particularly for low to middle income New Zealanders.
You might ask what the Prime Minister’s strategy is to tackle those problems. The answer is that he doesn’t have one. His economic policy consists of asset sales. That is not an economic policy: It is a surrender of the sovereignty of New Zealand. Not one new job will be created by selling-off the people’s power companies, but every one of us will be paying higher power bills to the new overseas owners. We know this because we’ve seen it all before.
The National Party says selling assets will pay off debt. That is exactly what was said in the eighties by Roger Douglas. It’s what was said in the nineties by the National Government, and we all know what happened. We became worse off.
Mr Key says the assets will be kept in New Zealand hands. That is what they said about Contact Energy, the Bank of New Zealand, Postbank, Air New Zealand, NZ Rail and practically every other strategic asset which was privatised. And it was nonsense.
Who owns those assets now? Not the Kiwi mums and dads Mr Key talks about. The majority interests (apart from those the last Labour-led government bought back) are mainly held in Australia.
It doesn’t take too much analysis to work out that, if there is a debt crisis and the country is borrowing too much, the $43 million a week given by the National Government in tax cuts to the top ten per cent of income earners last year would have gone a considerable way to fixing the problem.
My speech to Parliament can be found here.
Victory over DB Export ad
The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled in favour of my complaint against the DB Export beer advertising campaign, agreeing with me that the presentation of film footage from the 1951 waterfront lockout riots as portraying civil unrest in response to Finance Minister Arnold Nordmeyer’s 1958 Budget was wrong and misleading. As a result, the Authority has requested that the ads in their present form be withdrawn.
The ads, set in the time of the so-called ‘Black Budget’, portray Nordmeyer as a tight-fisted old bore who taxed beer to the extent that working men could no longer afford to drink. In what was then a distortion of epic proportion, the ad went on to show archive footage of men rioting, ostensibly over the price of beer, when in fact the footage was from the 1951 waterfront lockout.
The Complaints Board agreed that footage used in the advertisements was ‘demonstrably false’ and it considered ‘the execution of ‘documentary type’ style, contrasting black and white screen-shots and accompanying authoritative narration coupled with actual footage of riots (from a different historical event) gave the impression that the advertisements were portraying a credible and realistic depiction of history’.
The Board also decided that the advertisements ‘went too far and the likely consumer conclusion was that the account portrayed in the advertisements was an accurate depiction of history, when it was no such thing’.
This ad went further than just distorting history; it was deliberately making barbed threats to politicians that any increase in the tax on beer would be met by brewing companies spending tens of millions dollars to attack them. It was no accident these ads were made at the very time the Law Commission was looking at reforming liquor legislation, including by having tighter controls over its advertising.
This shows just how far the liquor industry will go and how dishonestly they will act to protect and promote their products.
My press release can be found here.
There is more coverage on 3 News and in the Herald.
End link between alcohol and sport
Earlier this month, I spoke to the ‘Sport and Alcohol: Finding the Balance’ conference at Massey University, calling for an end to the sponsorship of sport by alcohol companies. My message was that normalising the association between beer and sport sends all the wrong messages, just as it did with the links between tobacco companies and sporting bodies in the past.The three day conference, which was sponsored by ALAC in association with Massey University, looked at a wide variety of issues, including the alcohol industry and hazardous drinking among sports people, the effects of alcohol on sport and the changing face of sports and alcohol-related culture. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, representatives of the liquor industry were nowhere to be seen.
By citing examples of the methods used by the alcohol industry to link sport and alcohol, from sponsorship at junior club level to corporate hospitality and sponsorship of sporting stars, I was able to show that even the youngest players are in no doubt that beer is an integral part of sport in New Zealand.
You have to look no further than the All Blacks to see this, with beer branding liberally plastered over their playing outfits, promotional material and almost every piece of memorabilia. The marketers know that youngsters like to emulate their All Black heroes and exploit this as much as they can. What they are doing by targeting the young is creating customers for life.
I told the conference that, as long as brewers continue to have an association with sport, there is no way of changing New Zealand’s heavy drinking culture. And by associating with sporting brilliance the alcohol industry sells more beer, and the brewers laugh all the way to the bank.
Many sporting bodies will tell us they would not survive without sponsorship from liquor companies, but that it not true. They said the same when tobacco sponsorship became prohibited; cricket was traditionally sponsored by tobacco companies but what then happened was that others, including the National Bank, stepped in. The same can happen now with liquor sponsorship. What it may require is some assistance from Government to enable that to happen. That would be a good investment.
My speech to the Massey conference can be found here.
There’s more at TVNZ and here.
Quake recovery exposes lack of strategy
A week ago I held a meeting for business owners in my local suburbs of Sydenham and Beckenham with representatives from the Christchurch City Council. Five months after the first earthquake, many of those business owners are frustrated over the lack of progress and the absence of a strategy from Council and Government giving any direction for the recovery.Worse than that, in the five months since the earthquake, the local members of parliament and even city councillors have never been briefed by the Mayor or Chief Executive, and getting accurate and timely information from council officers has proved almost impossible. That is despite the Labour MPs and me working tirelessly with residents and business owners throughout. Ironically, my office was phoned recently on a Friday afternoon to tell us that such a meeting was being held this month - just hours before
The Press published a report quoting the Mayor as saying he had scheduled such a meeting.
It is difficult for those outside Christchurch to comprehend the problems the city still faces. Despite the Mayor intimating that life has returned to normal and it is ‘business as usual’, Colombo Street in Sydenham still has cordons out onto the roadway restricting access and rubble remains lying on the street in many places. Across the road from my electorate office, an entire block of shops remain cordoned off and no-one appears to have any idea about when decisions will be made to repair or demolish the buildings, and no one seems to take responsibility or show leadership.
I told the Council officials that, at no time in my public life, have I seen such a lack of leadership and failure to take responsibility. Without leadership, those shops may still be there in five years’ time with still no one the wiser about their fate.
If there has been a positive in the last few weeks, it has been first-term city councillor Tim Carter calling on the Council to establish an earthquake committee. Similarly, The Press now appears to be running a campaign to get some sort of leadership, and these things, along with our pushing, appears to have prompted some action.
Tribute to Tom Newnham
Just before Christmas I had the privilege of speaking at the funeral of Tom Newnham. Tom is perhaps best known for his opposition to racism and for promoting racial and economic justice on the national and international stage, he was a leader of CARE, the Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality, and one of New Zealand’s leading anti-Springbok tour activists.Tom was a one-off human being. He attacked institutional racism in New Zealand and around the world with an intellectual ferocity without equal. He spoke fluent Cantonese and Mandarin. As a prominent educationalist, he wasn’t easy on himself and even took some personal blame as a curriculum advisor for the remarkable lack of knowledge which most New Zealanders have of the history of their own country.
Tom was also an integral part of the story of Centre-Left politics, being involved in the Labour Party in Mt Eden, the NewLabour Party and the Alliance following the Rogernomics revolution. I was never more proud then when Tom wrote to tell me he was joining the fight back against Rogernomics.
For Tom, social justice was a way of life, a movement continually to be sought and perfected, but he was never locked in to a narrow ideology. Not for him the name calling and character assassination so common to many of his opponents, he always recognised the potential for change in an adversary and the possibility of winning over an opponent.
Tom was a great new Zealanders and a unique human being.
NZ Superannuation, a manufactured crisis?
If ever an opportunity was lost, it was the failure of the Government’s Savings Working Group (SWG) to look at the issue of superannuation, particularly given Retirement Commissioner, Dianne Crossan’s recent report that the New ZealandSuperannuation (NZS) is unaffordable in the long term. She advocates lifting the age of entitlement from 2020, introducing a transitional means-tested benefit for 65 year-olds and effectively reducing the level of NZS against the average wage.
One of Crossan’s presumptions is that it is solely young taxpayers who fund NZS and that, as the population gets older, there will be fewer working young people paying tax to maintain an increasing number of superannuitants. That argument overlooks that many superannuitants still work and pay income tax, and neglects to take into account that superannuation itself is taxable or that every time superannuitants spend money, 15 per cent is taken as GST.
Another flaw in the argument that NZS is unsustainable is the assumption that it is paid only from taxpayer income, whereas in fact it is funded from the consolidated fund or general pool of government revenue. Similarly, it assumes that the economy will not grow at anything other than current levels, thus we will have to slice the economic cake more thinly to be able to afford to pay for NZS. There is no consideration of the potential for economic growth.
Against Crossan’s assertions, it could be argued that tax reform could ensure a decent standard of living for superannuitants?
What if National’s recent cut tax rates were reversed, allowing the $4 billion a year to be invested in the NZS fund? Surely that would go a considerable way to ensuring its sustainability.
Making it more difficult to qualify for NZS either by reducing the entitlement or raising the age of eligibility lacks both imagination and creativity, and I will be raising these issues this year to ensure that the real value of NZS is not diminished by a manufactured crisis.
Asset Sales: Debate on the PM's Statement
08/02/11 18:48 Filed in: Speeches
Mr Speaker,
The headline on the front page of the Christchurch Press on Saturday reads: “Does this look like the road to recovery?”
The obvious answer – 5 months after the earthquake is a resounding NO. In my electorate office area of Selwyn Village, Spreydon – every single business on the opposite side of the road has left their premises – nothing has changed or been done since Sept. 4 and the only answer we get to our urgent enquiries is that the Council is talking to the owner! Every single business in our village is now at risk – almost no parking, cordons everywhere and no action.
FAST FORWARD to NEW ZEALAND’S Economic Recovery and how do John Key’s words about an ‘aspirational government’ and heroic television appearances pledging progress and prosperity match up with the same kind of rhetoric we saw night after night on television at the time of the earthquake.
Again – the obvious answer is “about the same”.
Lots of hype – not enough action.
Here are the problems that the Prime Minister should have talked about this afternoon:
After more than two years of his government, economic growth has stopped.
Any so-called recovery has stalled.
Unemployment is going UP, not DOWN.
Jobs are being lost, not created.
The cost of living is increasing, but incomes aren’t. Keeping pace – particularly for low-middle income New Zealanders.
What is the prime minister’s strategy to tackle those problems?
He doesn’t have one.
He has had all summer, and he comes down to this House with a plan to muddle through - a shopping list that won’t create jobs, won’t lift incomes, and won’t help.
His economic policy consists of assets sales.
That is not an economic policy: It is a surrender of the sovereignty of New Zealand.
Not one new job will be created by selling off the people’s power companies.
But every one of us will be paying higher power bills to the new overseas owners.
We know this because we’ve seen it all before.
John Key wasn’t in New Zealand for most of the eighties and nineties.
But I was here, and I heard all the arguments for asset sales last time around.
The arguments for assets sales were fatally flawed then, and they are fatally flawed now.
I walked out of the then government caucus because assets sales were a bad idea, and the idea hasn’t got any better.
And that’s why we had to buy assets back.
We had to buy back the rail system because National privatised and allowed it to be wrecked.
We had to buy back Air NZ because the private owners bankrupted it.
We had to start a new bank because the foreign owners of our entire banking industry sucked New Zealand dry: They closed 1300 branches, they increased fees and their own profits, shipped from overseas at the rate of $1306 million a year and we had to do something about it.
Why would selling our power companies be any different?
Why would the new foreign owners suddenly discover the virtue of charity over shareholder profit?
Why would the assets not fall into foreign ownership, just like the last lot that were going to be kept for ‘kiwi mums and dads?’
I am here to bear witness that the same mistakes are being proposed as were made last time a government paid for tax cuts by selling off public assets.
The same tired old lines from the past are being trotted out, and the same promises that it will be different this time.
The only thing that has restrained the rapaciousness of the power companies in the last ten years has been the threat of the government changing the composition of their boards.
When the power companies are sold and the boards are free to do what they want, even, worse, what they have to do by law - look after the interests of their minority shareholders, what will protect householders who have to keep paying higher costs for essential electricity.
The National Party says selling assets will pay down debt.
That is exactly what was said in the eighties by Roger Douglas.
It’s what was said in the nineties by the National Government.
And what happened?
After selling nineteen billion dollars’ worth of assets - we had more debt as a country than when we started. Selling the family silver.
Selling assets increases debt, it doesn’t reduce debt.
There is something outrageous about giving tax cuts that cost $43 million a week for just the top ten per cent of earners - and then claiming we have a debt problem because we are borrowing too much.
What we will end up with is more profits going overseas.
And that will mean our overseas debt will get worse.
Every time we turn on a light, the overseas owners will harvest a profit.
Every time a business starts a machine, the overseas owners will get a cheque from us.
A river in New Zealand, dammed by New Zealand for generations, supplies power along a transmission network built and maintained by New Zealanders, to a household in New Zealand. And somehow, someone in another country will clip the ticket on that transaction.
That is what privatisation means.
Mr Key says the assets will be kept in New Zealand hands.
But that is what they said about Contact Energy, the Bank of NZ, Postbank, Air NZ, NZ Rail and practically every other strategic asset which was privatised.
Who owns them now? Not the Kiwi Mums and Dads. The majority interests (apart from those the last Labour-led government bought back) are mainly held in Australia.
Who owns the New Zealand forests that National sold in the nineties, claiming it would pay off all the debt?
If we had kept those forests, the government could today be planting them, providing thousands of jobs, earning exports and growing New Zealand.
But who did they sell them to?
The Chinese Government!
The National Party has never explained why the New Zealand government can’t run a forest, but the Communist Chinese government can – of course, in the end they couldn’t and didn’t.
They said then that transaction would pay off the debt - and now they say we have to sell more to pay off the debt.
This is National’s entire economic programme.
What else have they got in mind to grow and create jobs? Nothing.
After last year’s budget, I made a few predictions in this House about what would happen.
Let’s look at record:
I said the average New Zealander would not be better off, because if people are not on a high income, this government is not going to help.
What happened? People on average or below incomes (the majority of New Zealanders), are worse off now than they were a year ago.
I said that unemployment would be higher - what happened?
Unemployment today is higher than when National took office.
It is higher than it was last December.
And the government has stopped even pretending it has any idea where new jobs will come from – what has happened to Mr Key’s bike trail and the thousands of jobs that were supposed to come from it.
And nothing the prime minister said today will increase exports.
Nothing he said today will boost investment in research and development and help us increase productivity.
Last year I said the gap between rich and poor would increase.
That’s not rocket science - when you give a thousand dollars a week tax cut to the prime minister, but someone on the average wage ends up worse off after price rises - then the gap between the very top and everyone else widens.
I said more kids would grow up in poverty.
What’s happened in McGechan Close, where John Key went in 2008 to pretend he is compassionate about children in poverty?
What has happened is that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
The people of McGechan Close are worse off. Much worse off.
The young girl he took to Waitangi is now in CYFs care.
What was announced today that would make her better off? Nothing.
Here’s what a respected Professor of Epidemiology in New Zealand said last year:
“In New Zealand, social injustice is killing and maiming our children on a grand scale.”
We top the scales for OECD rates of whooping cough, rheumatic fever, pneumonia and other diseases in children.
28% of our children still live in poverty.
How many have more hope this afternoon than they had this morning?
None.
What do they have instead of more hope?
They have more unemployment.
More GST.
More price rises.
Higher rents.
And a government that doesn’t care about anyone except itself and the top 10% of income earners in New Zealand.
The headline on the front page of the Christchurch Press on Saturday reads: “Does this look like the road to recovery?”
The obvious answer – 5 months after the earthquake is a resounding NO. In my electorate office area of Selwyn Village, Spreydon – every single business on the opposite side of the road has left their premises – nothing has changed or been done since Sept. 4 and the only answer we get to our urgent enquiries is that the Council is talking to the owner! Every single business in our village is now at risk – almost no parking, cordons everywhere and no action.
FAST FORWARD to NEW ZEALAND’S Economic Recovery and how do John Key’s words about an ‘aspirational government’ and heroic television appearances pledging progress and prosperity match up with the same kind of rhetoric we saw night after night on television at the time of the earthquake.
Again – the obvious answer is “about the same”.
Lots of hype – not enough action.
Here are the problems that the Prime Minister should have talked about this afternoon:
After more than two years of his government, economic growth has stopped.
Any so-called recovery has stalled.
Unemployment is going UP, not DOWN.
Jobs are being lost, not created.
The cost of living is increasing, but incomes aren’t. Keeping pace – particularly for low-middle income New Zealanders.
What is the prime minister’s strategy to tackle those problems?
He doesn’t have one.
He has had all summer, and he comes down to this House with a plan to muddle through - a shopping list that won’t create jobs, won’t lift incomes, and won’t help.
His economic policy consists of assets sales.
That is not an economic policy: It is a surrender of the sovereignty of New Zealand.
Not one new job will be created by selling off the people’s power companies.
But every one of us will be paying higher power bills to the new overseas owners.
We know this because we’ve seen it all before.
John Key wasn’t in New Zealand for most of the eighties and nineties.
But I was here, and I heard all the arguments for asset sales last time around.
The arguments for assets sales were fatally flawed then, and they are fatally flawed now.
I walked out of the then government caucus because assets sales were a bad idea, and the idea hasn’t got any better.
And that’s why we had to buy assets back.
We had to buy back the rail system because National privatised and allowed it to be wrecked.
We had to buy back Air NZ because the private owners bankrupted it.
We had to start a new bank because the foreign owners of our entire banking industry sucked New Zealand dry: They closed 1300 branches, they increased fees and their own profits, shipped from overseas at the rate of $1306 million a year and we had to do something about it.
Why would selling our power companies be any different?
Why would the new foreign owners suddenly discover the virtue of charity over shareholder profit?
Why would the assets not fall into foreign ownership, just like the last lot that were going to be kept for ‘kiwi mums and dads?’
I am here to bear witness that the same mistakes are being proposed as were made last time a government paid for tax cuts by selling off public assets.
The same tired old lines from the past are being trotted out, and the same promises that it will be different this time.
The only thing that has restrained the rapaciousness of the power companies in the last ten years has been the threat of the government changing the composition of their boards.
When the power companies are sold and the boards are free to do what they want, even, worse, what they have to do by law - look after the interests of their minority shareholders, what will protect householders who have to keep paying higher costs for essential electricity.
The National Party says selling assets will pay down debt.
That is exactly what was said in the eighties by Roger Douglas.
It’s what was said in the nineties by the National Government.
And what happened?
After selling nineteen billion dollars’ worth of assets - we had more debt as a country than when we started. Selling the family silver.
Selling assets increases debt, it doesn’t reduce debt.
There is something outrageous about giving tax cuts that cost $43 million a week for just the top ten per cent of earners - and then claiming we have a debt problem because we are borrowing too much.
What we will end up with is more profits going overseas.
And that will mean our overseas debt will get worse.
Every time we turn on a light, the overseas owners will harvest a profit.
Every time a business starts a machine, the overseas owners will get a cheque from us.
A river in New Zealand, dammed by New Zealand for generations, supplies power along a transmission network built and maintained by New Zealanders, to a household in New Zealand. And somehow, someone in another country will clip the ticket on that transaction.
That is what privatisation means.
Mr Key says the assets will be kept in New Zealand hands.
But that is what they said about Contact Energy, the Bank of NZ, Postbank, Air NZ, NZ Rail and practically every other strategic asset which was privatised.
Who owns them now? Not the Kiwi Mums and Dads. The majority interests (apart from those the last Labour-led government bought back) are mainly held in Australia.
Who owns the New Zealand forests that National sold in the nineties, claiming it would pay off all the debt?
If we had kept those forests, the government could today be planting them, providing thousands of jobs, earning exports and growing New Zealand.
But who did they sell them to?
The Chinese Government!
The National Party has never explained why the New Zealand government can’t run a forest, but the Communist Chinese government can – of course, in the end they couldn’t and didn’t.
They said then that transaction would pay off the debt - and now they say we have to sell more to pay off the debt.
This is National’s entire economic programme.
What else have they got in mind to grow and create jobs? Nothing.
After last year’s budget, I made a few predictions in this House about what would happen.
Let’s look at record:
I said the average New Zealander would not be better off, because if people are not on a high income, this government is not going to help.
What happened? People on average or below incomes (the majority of New Zealanders), are worse off now than they were a year ago.
I said that unemployment would be higher - what happened?
Unemployment today is higher than when National took office.
It is higher than it was last December.
And the government has stopped even pretending it has any idea where new jobs will come from – what has happened to Mr Key’s bike trail and the thousands of jobs that were supposed to come from it.
And nothing the prime minister said today will increase exports.
Nothing he said today will boost investment in research and development and help us increase productivity.
Last year I said the gap between rich and poor would increase.
That’s not rocket science - when you give a thousand dollars a week tax cut to the prime minister, but someone on the average wage ends up worse off after price rises - then the gap between the very top and everyone else widens.
I said more kids would grow up in poverty.
What’s happened in McGechan Close, where John Key went in 2008 to pretend he is compassionate about children in poverty?
What has happened is that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
The people of McGechan Close are worse off. Much worse off.
The young girl he took to Waitangi is now in CYFs care.
What was announced today that would make her better off? Nothing.
Here’s what a respected Professor of Epidemiology in New Zealand said last year:
“In New Zealand, social injustice is killing and maiming our children on a grand scale.”
We top the scales for OECD rates of whooping cough, rheumatic fever, pneumonia and other diseases in children.
28% of our children still live in poverty.
How many have more hope this afternoon than they had this morning?
None.
What do they have instead of more hope?
They have more unemployment.
More GST.
More price rises.
Higher rents.
And a government that doesn’t care about anyone except itself and the top 10% of income earners in New Zealand.
Lots of hype, not enough action
08/02/11 18:47 Filed in: News Releases
The lack of action on recovery for Christchurch from last September’s earthquake matches the National Government’s lack of action on economic growth, jobs and the cost of living, Wigram MP Jim Anderton told parliament today in debate over the Prime Minister’s Statement.
He warned that the National Party’s planned asset sales would not create any jobs, but would send more profits overseas.
“Does this look like the road to recovery? Five months after the earthquake every business on the opposite side of the road from my electorate office has left their premises. Nothing has changed or been done since September 4,” Jim Anderton said.
“Fast Forward to New Zealand’s economic recovery: After more than two years of his government, economic growth has stopped. Unemployment is going up, not down. Jobs are being lost not created, the cost of living is increasing but incomes aren’t.
“What is the prime minister’s strategy to tackle those problems? He doesn’t have one.”
Jim Anderton said asset sales are not an economic policy.
“It is a surrender of the sovereignty of New Zealand. Not one job will be created by selling off the people’s power companies. But every one of us will be paying higher power bills to overseas owners. And that will mean our overseas debt will get worse.
“Every time we turn on a light, the overseas owners will harvest a profit. Every time a business starts a machine, the overseas owners will get a cheque from us. A river in New Zealand, dammed by New Zealand for generations, supplies power along a transmission network built and maintained by New Zealanders, to a household in New Zealand. And somehow, someone in another country will clip the ticket on that transaction. That is what privatisation means.
“Mr Key says the assets will be kept in New Zealand hands. But that is what they said about Contact Energy. The Bank of New Zealand, Postbank, Air New Zealand, NZ Rail and practically every strategic asset which was privatised - who owns them now? Apart from those the last Labour-led Government bought back, they are mainly held in Australia,” Jim Anderton said.
He warned that the National Party’s planned asset sales would not create any jobs, but would send more profits overseas.
“Does this look like the road to recovery? Five months after the earthquake every business on the opposite side of the road from my electorate office has left their premises. Nothing has changed or been done since September 4,” Jim Anderton said.
“Fast Forward to New Zealand’s economic recovery: After more than two years of his government, economic growth has stopped. Unemployment is going up, not down. Jobs are being lost not created, the cost of living is increasing but incomes aren’t.
“What is the prime minister’s strategy to tackle those problems? He doesn’t have one.”
Jim Anderton said asset sales are not an economic policy.
“It is a surrender of the sovereignty of New Zealand. Not one job will be created by selling off the people’s power companies. But every one of us will be paying higher power bills to overseas owners. And that will mean our overseas debt will get worse.
“Every time we turn on a light, the overseas owners will harvest a profit. Every time a business starts a machine, the overseas owners will get a cheque from us. A river in New Zealand, dammed by New Zealand for generations, supplies power along a transmission network built and maintained by New Zealanders, to a household in New Zealand. And somehow, someone in another country will clip the ticket on that transaction. That is what privatisation means.
“Mr Key says the assets will be kept in New Zealand hands. But that is what they said about Contact Energy. The Bank of New Zealand, Postbank, Air New Zealand, NZ Rail and practically every strategic asset which was privatised - who owns them now? Apart from those the last Labour-led Government bought back, they are mainly held in Australia,” Jim Anderton said.
Jim's E-News, December 2010
20/12/10 13:11 Filed in: News Releases
Season’s Greetings
With just a couple of weeks until Christmas, it is time to wish you all the very best for the holiday and festive season. It has been a hectic year and in many respects a tumultuous one given the Christchurch earthquakes and the Christchurch Mayoral election. In recent weeks the Pike River Mine tragedy has occupied the thoughts of a nation.
Next year will be election year and I am predicting that the Government will go to the polls early. We need to be prepared early as populist leader John Key will not want to risk leaving an election until after the Rugby World Cup on the off-chance (unlikely I hope) that the All Blacks will again falter.
While the Government’s popularity seems high at the moment, it will take just a small swing to see a change in government. Roy Morgan polls over the last year show National and its support parties tracking downwards, with the latest one showing its support at 55.5%, down from a high of 61.5% in February. Meanwhile, Labour and its support parties have slowly but steadily tracked upwards, with their support now at 44.5%, compared to 41.61% at the time of the 2008 General Election.
All that is required is a swing of slightly more than 5% from National and its support parties to Labour, and so I am urging you to make your New Year’s resolution one that you will get out and campaign for a Labour victory.
As for me, it will be the first time in more than 27 years that I will not be a candidate, and so I will be throwing my support firmly behind Labour’s Megan Woods in my current seat of Wigram.
Once again, I wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and New Year and hope that 2011 is a good and prosperous one for you and your family.
The Pike River mining tragedy
Like all New Zealanders, I watched in horror as events unfolded at the Pike River Mine in November and was deeply saddened at the loss of 29 lives. That it has been a traumatic time for New Zealand and the West Coast in particular is something of an understatement, and my sympathies go to the families and communities affected by this tragic event.
As the various inquiries get underway into the cause of this disaster, we must now take responsibility for ensuring that such a tragedy does not happen again. We must refuse to accept that the deaths are a necessary cost of mining. All of us, from mine operators to government and parliament, must take steps to ensure that the safety of all miners is paramount.
Pike River is a modern state-of-the-art mine with presumably all the latest safety technology, but that didn’t save the lives of the 29 men. The new mine is on the same coal seam as the one in Brunner, where 65 men were killed by choking gas in 1896, and this event echoed the Strongman mine explosion which killed 19 miners in 1967.
How many more deaths must we experience in this industry before we ask some very serious questions about the viability of this type of mine?
It will be the best possible tribute to those who died to carefully examine the most comprehensive safety means possible before we put any more miners in harm’s way. Quite simply, we must make mining conditions safer.
For that reason I support the call for former ACC Chair Ross Wilson to be appointed to the Royal Commission investigating the Pike River tragedy. As a previous NZCTU President, Ross is well-respected, capable and has championed workplace safety over many years.
His presence would assure workers and their families about the integrity of the investigation.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge Superintendent Gary Knowles, who led the Police effort, and Pike River Chief Executive Peter Whittall. Both men showed calm, intelligent leadership and great strength at such a difficult time. And similarly, no praise is high enough for all of those who were and still are part of the plans to recover the bodies of their mining colleagues.
The speech can be found here.
Reserve Bank statement shows unaffordability of cut in top tax rate
It’s National’s fault.
The cuts in the top tax rate from 39 cents down to 33 cents since the 2008 election are helping to put New Zealand’s recovery on hold.
The Reserve Bank has identified “elimination of New Zealand’s fiscal deficit” as a factor that’s adding pressure to interest rates and keeping the dollar high.
The fiscal deficit is caused because the government reduced the top tax rate. 42% of the tax cuts since the 2008 election went to the top ten per cent of income earners. If the government had only pushed out the threshold at which the highest tax rate applies, and not cut the top tax rate from 39 cents to 33 cents, most of the fiscal deficit would not exist.
Because of the irresponsible cut in the top rate, interest rates are higher and the dollar is higher - putting pressure on our exporters and making it cheaper for foreigners to come in and buy up New Zealand.
This is National’s idea of economic management: The recovery has stalled. Business investment is ‘below average.’ Households are not spending. Homes aren’t selling. House prices are falling. Unemployment is higher than it was when National took office and wages have stalled.
The Reserve Bank today made clear that this is all National’s fault. But will the Prime Minister accept that the buck stops with him? Don’t count on it!
Canterbury businesses face tough times
I recently addressed a meeting of small business owners in Christchurch whose businesses are still significantly affected by the Canterbury earthquakes. Now that the quakes do not fill our television screens every night and many people get back to life as normal, many businesses remain on the brink of failure and no-one seems to care.
Small business depends on cash flow and there seems little appreciation from those in authority of the effect when a business is open, but where access is blocked by rubble and cordons, and where the damaged surroundings are such an eyesore that customers head to the sanctuary of shopping malls. Many of these businesses have suffered a loss of cash flow of up to 60% and more.
The Council seems to have abdicated any leadership on the issue. Not once has the Mayor briefed me or the local Labour members of parliament about earthquake recovery plans and arrangements, and I understand that he has not even formally briefed his own councillors.
I have been working with a number of local business owners and recently arranged to have 100 tonnes of rubble cleared from the streets of Sydenham and Beckenham, for a number of cordons to be removed or reduced, and for Colombo Street to be opened again to two-way traffic.
The Government announced last week that it is making available approximately $600,000 to assist small businesses for such things as courses in managing cash-flow. As one owner at the meeting said, I have been in business for 28 years and I know all I need about cash flow. What I need is some cash to flow.
Sour grapes: Yeah Right
Political sour grapes is how Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker has described my call for heads to roll over the Council’s decision to buy at a cost of $17 million, a number of properties from the failed and now bankrupted property developer David Henderson. But it is hardly a case of sour grapes as Mr Parker well knows.
In a deal which was controversial and which I criticised at the time, the Council paid top prices for the properties from a clearly cash-strapped Henderson. The deal was one whereby Henderson had an option to buy the properties back, and so it looked like a bailout rather than a smart business arrangement.
Since the purchase in 2008, the Council (meaning ratepayers) has paid almost $600,000 annually in interest on the loans, while watching the value of the properties slump. It was utterly predictable that Henderson would not be able to buy back the properties, and that is precisely what has happened.
As a result, the Council is stuck with overpriced and, in cases, derelict properties, with ratepayers picking up the interest costs. It was barmy then, it remains barmy and the most ridiculous expenditure of public money I have ever heard of - and among the heads I believe should roll is that of the Council CEO, Tony Marryatt, who must have been responsible for the advice to purchase under such unacceptable conditions.
Ironically, Mr Henderson was reported last week on National radio as saying that no-one in their right mind would buy inner city properties in Christchurch at the moment - which raises the obvious question of just how he managed to convince the Christchurch City Council to do just that.
Liquor industry ad an ‘Orwellian’ history lesson
Anyone who wants evidence of just how far the liquor industry will go to promote its product need look no further that the new DB Export advertising campaign as it attempts to rewrite New Zealand history in a way that would even astound ‘1984’ author, George Orwell.
The ad is set in 1958 around the time of the so-called ‘Black Budget’ of Labour’s Finance Minister, Arnold Nordmeyer. It paints Nordmeyer as a tight-fisted old bore who taxed beer to the extent that working men could no longer afford to drink. By contrast, brewer Moreton Coutts, the creator of DB export, is portrayed as giving back these working class drinkers not only their sacred turf of public bars, but also export quality beer at affordable prices.
In what is a distortion of epic proportion, the ad goes on to show archive footage of men rioting, ostensibly over the price of beer, when in fact the footage is from the 1951 waterfront lockout.
The truth is, that in the 1958 Budget, Nordmeyer raised excise on beer, spirits, cigarettes and petroleum as a part of a package to meet a balance of payments crisis that had been caused by the previous National government. Nordmeyer was putting the interests of New Zealand before short term political gain and was not trying to stop the working man’s drink after work. Nordmeyer was also, of course, the architect of New Zealand’s Public Health Scheme, the envy of most countries at the time of its introduction.
Pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into patently dishonest advertising campaigns like this shows once again the level of cynicism shown by the liquor industry towards New Zealanders and the social problems their industry produces. In my view, the creators of this ad would have a place in George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth where lies are truth and truth is lies
My full press release can be found here.
The nine-point plan to social harm
In Parliament last month, I set out a nine-point plan on how a major social problem could be created in New Zealand with the active support of this government.
· It starts with legalising a drug known to be of high risk to public health, commercialising that drug, and then selling it in supermarkets and other easily accessible places.
· From there you make it legal to deal in the drug, particularly by glamorising its use through marketing, and then go on to bestow its manufacturers and dealers with honours and make them socially acceptable.
· The icing on the cake could be to link the drug to major sporting teams and events, and for government to fund and Prime Minister to champion venues for taking this particular drug.
· The Automobile Association could then support driving under that drug’s influence.
This might sound extreme, but the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s proposals on alcohol allows all of those things. The Commission describes alcohol as a legalised drug and proposes a new policy framework that it says amounts to a major shift in the regulation of alcohol. The Commission’s recommendations include increasing excise tax on alcohol, banning off-licence sales after 10.00pm, refusing entry to bars and night clubs after 2.00am and increasing the drinking age.
But what has been the Government’s response?
The Commission anticipated some opposition to its recommendations and this is exactly what has happened, to a degree that even I had not anticipated. In response to the report, the Government has done nothing whatsoever to address the problems created by alcohol or to fundamentally change the drinking culture in New Zealand.
The mood of the country towards alcohol abuse is changing, but that change is being led by the public and the media, not the Government. For example, there is 70% support to lower the drink-driving, blood-alcohol limit, yet the Government needs ‘more research’ before it will act. Why?
This Government, normally a slave to the polls, is out of step with the majority of New Zealanders and, until it changes, New Zealand’s record of deaths and injuries on our roads will remain among the worst in the world.
My speech on ‘the plan’ can be found here.
Will National decline liquor money?
I will be scrutinising closely donations from the liquor industry after National MPs objected to claims that their party takes industry money. In Parliament recently I asked National Party members to tell us, how much money is being put into the National Party’s ‘Victory Fund’ by the liquor industry?
For some reason they objected and wanted the question ruled out of order, claiming that it suggested they were influenced by liquor industry donations.
Attempting to have the question ruled out of order means that if it turns out that the Nats have accepted liquor industry donations and then pass pro-liquor laws, there is a potential breach of privilege issue.
If the Nats don’t want to be criticised for taking liquor industry money then they should simply publicly refuse to accept donations from that industry. Even anonymous donations have a habit of becoming public, so I look forward to National refusing any money from vested liquor interests – but I am not holding my breath.
Carole’s birthday
To end this newsletter on a celebratory note, I am delighted to report that we held a very successful 70th birthday brunch for my wife Carole during November. Held at the Clearwater Resort near Christchurch, around 80 friends, family and colleagues gathered to enjoy the occasion.
To me, a real highlight was being able to have so many of Carole’s family come from around New Zealand, a surprise to her as most had pretended they weren’t able to be there. And what a delight it was to hear so many nice speeches and comments about Carole from family members in particular.
A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
With just a couple of weeks until Christmas, it is time to wish you all the very best for the holiday and festive season. It has been a hectic year and in many respects a tumultuous one given the Christchurch earthquakes and the Christchurch Mayoral election. In recent weeks the Pike River Mine tragedy has occupied the thoughts of a nation.
Next year will be election year and I am predicting that the Government will go to the polls early. We need to be prepared early as populist leader John Key will not want to risk leaving an election until after the Rugby World Cup on the off-chance (unlikely I hope) that the All Blacks will again falter.
While the Government’s popularity seems high at the moment, it will take just a small swing to see a change in government. Roy Morgan polls over the last year show National and its support parties tracking downwards, with the latest one showing its support at 55.5%, down from a high of 61.5% in February. Meanwhile, Labour and its support parties have slowly but steadily tracked upwards, with their support now at 44.5%, compared to 41.61% at the time of the 2008 General Election.
All that is required is a swing of slightly more than 5% from National and its support parties to Labour, and so I am urging you to make your New Year’s resolution one that you will get out and campaign for a Labour victory.
As for me, it will be the first time in more than 27 years that I will not be a candidate, and so I will be throwing my support firmly behind Labour’s Megan Woods in my current seat of Wigram.
Once again, I wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and New Year and hope that 2011 is a good and prosperous one for you and your family.
The Pike River mining tragedy
Like all New Zealanders, I watched in horror as events unfolded at the Pike River Mine in November and was deeply saddened at the loss of 29 lives. That it has been a traumatic time for New Zealand and the West Coast in particular is something of an understatement, and my sympathies go to the families and communities affected by this tragic event.
As the various inquiries get underway into the cause of this disaster, we must now take responsibility for ensuring that such a tragedy does not happen again. We must refuse to accept that the deaths are a necessary cost of mining. All of us, from mine operators to government and parliament, must take steps to ensure that the safety of all miners is paramount.
Pike River is a modern state-of-the-art mine with presumably all the latest safety technology, but that didn’t save the lives of the 29 men. The new mine is on the same coal seam as the one in Brunner, where 65 men were killed by choking gas in 1896, and this event echoed the Strongman mine explosion which killed 19 miners in 1967.
How many more deaths must we experience in this industry before we ask some very serious questions about the viability of this type of mine?
It will be the best possible tribute to those who died to carefully examine the most comprehensive safety means possible before we put any more miners in harm’s way. Quite simply, we must make mining conditions safer.
For that reason I support the call for former ACC Chair Ross Wilson to be appointed to the Royal Commission investigating the Pike River tragedy. As a previous NZCTU President, Ross is well-respected, capable and has championed workplace safety over many years.
His presence would assure workers and their families about the integrity of the investigation.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge Superintendent Gary Knowles, who led the Police effort, and Pike River Chief Executive Peter Whittall. Both men showed calm, intelligent leadership and great strength at such a difficult time. And similarly, no praise is high enough for all of those who were and still are part of the plans to recover the bodies of their mining colleagues.
The speech can be found here.
Reserve Bank statement shows unaffordability of cut in top tax rate
It’s National’s fault.
The cuts in the top tax rate from 39 cents down to 33 cents since the 2008 election are helping to put New Zealand’s recovery on hold.
The Reserve Bank has identified “elimination of New Zealand’s fiscal deficit” as a factor that’s adding pressure to interest rates and keeping the dollar high.
The fiscal deficit is caused because the government reduced the top tax rate. 42% of the tax cuts since the 2008 election went to the top ten per cent of income earners. If the government had only pushed out the threshold at which the highest tax rate applies, and not cut the top tax rate from 39 cents to 33 cents, most of the fiscal deficit would not exist.
Because of the irresponsible cut in the top rate, interest rates are higher and the dollar is higher - putting pressure on our exporters and making it cheaper for foreigners to come in and buy up New Zealand.
This is National’s idea of economic management: The recovery has stalled. Business investment is ‘below average.’ Households are not spending. Homes aren’t selling. House prices are falling. Unemployment is higher than it was when National took office and wages have stalled.
The Reserve Bank today made clear that this is all National’s fault. But will the Prime Minister accept that the buck stops with him? Don’t count on it!
Canterbury businesses face tough times
I recently addressed a meeting of small business owners in Christchurch whose businesses are still significantly affected by the Canterbury earthquakes. Now that the quakes do not fill our television screens every night and many people get back to life as normal, many businesses remain on the brink of failure and no-one seems to care.
Small business depends on cash flow and there seems little appreciation from those in authority of the effect when a business is open, but where access is blocked by rubble and cordons, and where the damaged surroundings are such an eyesore that customers head to the sanctuary of shopping malls. Many of these businesses have suffered a loss of cash flow of up to 60% and more.
The Council seems to have abdicated any leadership on the issue. Not once has the Mayor briefed me or the local Labour members of parliament about earthquake recovery plans and arrangements, and I understand that he has not even formally briefed his own councillors.
I have been working with a number of local business owners and recently arranged to have 100 tonnes of rubble cleared from the streets of Sydenham and Beckenham, for a number of cordons to be removed or reduced, and for Colombo Street to be opened again to two-way traffic.
The Government announced last week that it is making available approximately $600,000 to assist small businesses for such things as courses in managing cash-flow. As one owner at the meeting said, I have been in business for 28 years and I know all I need about cash flow. What I need is some cash to flow.
Sour grapes: Yeah Right
Political sour grapes is how Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker has described my call for heads to roll over the Council’s decision to buy at a cost of $17 million, a number of properties from the failed and now bankrupted property developer David Henderson. But it is hardly a case of sour grapes as Mr Parker well knows.
In a deal which was controversial and which I criticised at the time, the Council paid top prices for the properties from a clearly cash-strapped Henderson. The deal was one whereby Henderson had an option to buy the properties back, and so it looked like a bailout rather than a smart business arrangement.
Since the purchase in 2008, the Council (meaning ratepayers) has paid almost $600,000 annually in interest on the loans, while watching the value of the properties slump. It was utterly predictable that Henderson would not be able to buy back the properties, and that is precisely what has happened.
As a result, the Council is stuck with overpriced and, in cases, derelict properties, with ratepayers picking up the interest costs. It was barmy then, it remains barmy and the most ridiculous expenditure of public money I have ever heard of - and among the heads I believe should roll is that of the Council CEO, Tony Marryatt, who must have been responsible for the advice to purchase under such unacceptable conditions.
Ironically, Mr Henderson was reported last week on National radio as saying that no-one in their right mind would buy inner city properties in Christchurch at the moment - which raises the obvious question of just how he managed to convince the Christchurch City Council to do just that.
Liquor industry ad an ‘Orwellian’ history lesson
Anyone who wants evidence of just how far the liquor industry will go to promote its product need look no further that the new DB Export advertising campaign as it attempts to rewrite New Zealand history in a way that would even astound ‘1984’ author, George Orwell.
The ad is set in 1958 around the time of the so-called ‘Black Budget’ of Labour’s Finance Minister, Arnold Nordmeyer. It paints Nordmeyer as a tight-fisted old bore who taxed beer to the extent that working men could no longer afford to drink. By contrast, brewer Moreton Coutts, the creator of DB export, is portrayed as giving back these working class drinkers not only their sacred turf of public bars, but also export quality beer at affordable prices.
In what is a distortion of epic proportion, the ad goes on to show archive footage of men rioting, ostensibly over the price of beer, when in fact the footage is from the 1951 waterfront lockout.
The truth is, that in the 1958 Budget, Nordmeyer raised excise on beer, spirits, cigarettes and petroleum as a part of a package to meet a balance of payments crisis that had been caused by the previous National government. Nordmeyer was putting the interests of New Zealand before short term political gain and was not trying to stop the working man’s drink after work. Nordmeyer was also, of course, the architect of New Zealand’s Public Health Scheme, the envy of most countries at the time of its introduction.
Pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into patently dishonest advertising campaigns like this shows once again the level of cynicism shown by the liquor industry towards New Zealanders and the social problems their industry produces. In my view, the creators of this ad would have a place in George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth where lies are truth and truth is lies
My full press release can be found here.
The nine-point plan to social harm
In Parliament last month, I set out a nine-point plan on how a major social problem could be created in New Zealand with the active support of this government.
· It starts with legalising a drug known to be of high risk to public health, commercialising that drug, and then selling it in supermarkets and other easily accessible places.
· From there you make it legal to deal in the drug, particularly by glamorising its use through marketing, and then go on to bestow its manufacturers and dealers with honours and make them socially acceptable.
· The icing on the cake could be to link the drug to major sporting teams and events, and for government to fund and Prime Minister to champion venues for taking this particular drug.
· The Automobile Association could then support driving under that drug’s influence.
This might sound extreme, but the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s proposals on alcohol allows all of those things. The Commission describes alcohol as a legalised drug and proposes a new policy framework that it says amounts to a major shift in the regulation of alcohol. The Commission’s recommendations include increasing excise tax on alcohol, banning off-licence sales after 10.00pm, refusing entry to bars and night clubs after 2.00am and increasing the drinking age.
But what has been the Government’s response?
The Commission anticipated some opposition to its recommendations and this is exactly what has happened, to a degree that even I had not anticipated. In response to the report, the Government has done nothing whatsoever to address the problems created by alcohol or to fundamentally change the drinking culture in New Zealand.
The mood of the country towards alcohol abuse is changing, but that change is being led by the public and the media, not the Government. For example, there is 70% support to lower the drink-driving, blood-alcohol limit, yet the Government needs ‘more research’ before it will act. Why?
This Government, normally a slave to the polls, is out of step with the majority of New Zealanders and, until it changes, New Zealand’s record of deaths and injuries on our roads will remain among the worst in the world.
My speech on ‘the plan’ can be found here.
Will National decline liquor money?
I will be scrutinising closely donations from the liquor industry after National MPs objected to claims that their party takes industry money. In Parliament recently I asked National Party members to tell us, how much money is being put into the National Party’s ‘Victory Fund’ by the liquor industry?
For some reason they objected and wanted the question ruled out of order, claiming that it suggested they were influenced by liquor industry donations.
Attempting to have the question ruled out of order means that if it turns out that the Nats have accepted liquor industry donations and then pass pro-liquor laws, there is a potential breach of privilege issue.
If the Nats don’t want to be criticised for taking liquor industry money then they should simply publicly refuse to accept donations from that industry. Even anonymous donations have a habit of becoming public, so I look forward to National refusing any money from vested liquor interests – but I am not holding my breath.
Carole’s birthday
To end this newsletter on a celebratory note, I am delighted to report that we held a very successful 70th birthday brunch for my wife Carole during November. Held at the Clearwater Resort near Christchurch, around 80 friends, family and colleagues gathered to enjoy the occasion.
To me, a real highlight was being able to have so many of Carole’s family come from around New Zealand, a surprise to her as most had pretended they weren’t able to be there. And what a delight it was to hear so many nice speeches and comments about Carole from family members in particular.
A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
Reserve Bank statement shows unaffordability of cut in top tax rate
09/12/10 12:18 Filed in: News Releases
It’s National’s fault.
The cuts in the top tax rate from 39 cents down to 33 cents since the 2008 election are helping to put New Zealand’s recovery on hold, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
The Reserve Bank today identified “elimination of New Zealand’s fiscal deficit” as a factor that’s adding pressure to interest rates and keeping the dollar high.
“The fiscal deficit is caused because the government reduced the top tax rate. 42% of the tax cuts since the 2008 election went to the top ten per cent of income earners.
“If the government had only pushed out the threshold at which the highest tax rate applies, and not cut the top tax rate from 39 cents to 33 cents, most of the fiscal deficit would not exist.
“Because of the irresponsible cut in the top rate, interest rates are higher and the dollar is higher - putting pressure on our exporters and making it cheaper for foreigners to come in and buy up New Zealand.
“This is National’s idea of economic management: The recovery has stalled. Business investment is ‘below average.’ Households are not spending. Homes aren’t selling. House prices are falling. Unemployment is higher than it was when National took office and wages have stalled.
“The Reserve Bank today made clear that this is all National’s fault. But will the Prime Minister accept that the buck stops with him? Don’t hold your breath,” Jim Anderton says.
The cuts in the top tax rate from 39 cents down to 33 cents since the 2008 election are helping to put New Zealand’s recovery on hold, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
The Reserve Bank today identified “elimination of New Zealand’s fiscal deficit” as a factor that’s adding pressure to interest rates and keeping the dollar high.
“The fiscal deficit is caused because the government reduced the top tax rate. 42% of the tax cuts since the 2008 election went to the top ten per cent of income earners.
“If the government had only pushed out the threshold at which the highest tax rate applies, and not cut the top tax rate from 39 cents to 33 cents, most of the fiscal deficit would not exist.
“Because of the irresponsible cut in the top rate, interest rates are higher and the dollar is higher - putting pressure on our exporters and making it cheaper for foreigners to come in and buy up New Zealand.
“This is National’s idea of economic management: The recovery has stalled. Business investment is ‘below average.’ Households are not spending. Homes aren’t selling. House prices are falling. Unemployment is higher than it was when National took office and wages have stalled.
“The Reserve Bank today made clear that this is all National’s fault. But will the Prime Minister accept that the buck stops with him? Don’t hold your breath,” Jim Anderton says.
Jim's E-News November 2010
08/11/10 16:40 Filed in: Newsletters
Opponent to review Kiwibank
Like putting a fox in charge of the chickens is how I described the decision by the National Government to appoint investment banker Rob Cameron to review New Zealand Post, the owner of Kiwibank. Had it been up to Mr Cameron, Kiwibank would not exist today.
When appointed to look at the business case for establishing Kiwibank, Mr Cameron reported to Treasury that it would neither succeed nor attract many customers. Both predictions proved wrong; Kiwibank has been a huge success and today has more than 800,000 customers.
Mr Cameron also predicted that Kiwibank would not be able to withstand the competitive response of the Australian banks. He was spectacularly wrong about that, too, and overlooked the benefits to New Zealand that occurred because the Australian banks were forced to reduce fees, improve services and stop closing branches.
The appointment of Mr Cameron to review New Zealand Post raises the obvious question about whether the it will be used as a launching pad for another round in the Government’s push to sell some or all of NZ Post and Kiwibank.
Why else would they appoint an individual who has prominently advocated for the privatisation of SOEs to help boost the share market?
The full statement can be found here.
Council inaction causing businesses to face closure
I have concluded that Council inaction and confusion in Christchurch is driving local businesses to the brink of closure following a ‘crunch’ meeting with Sydenham and Beckenham business owners, senior council staff and representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies and the commercial sector.
The meeting followed desperate calls from local owners whose businesses remain effectively paralysed two months after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake which rocked Christchurch. “Bricks, rubble and debris are piled high and have remained untouched for over eight weeks. The addition of cordons and traffic diversions are making pedestrian access a logistical nightmare for local businesses, and retail shops in particular are really suffering.
As a result of the meeting, the Christchurch City Council had effectively been put on notice to clear up the mess and put an end to the misery of local traders before many of them go out of business. Insurance companies have also agreed to treat individual cases on merit and on a ‘goodwill’ basis to speed up claims.
Too much time has been wasted since the earthquake, with conflicting advice, lack of communication and confusion over structural engineering reports, consent applications for repairs or demolition as well as new policy announcements on doubling the earthquake code requirement, all of which have delayed decisions on repairs and/or demolition. An urgent resolution is now critical, not only for the future but also for the very survival of a large amount of important businesses in Sydenham and Beckenham.
The full statement can be found here.
Also of interest:
Pleas to continue wage subsidy for quake hit firms [NZ Herald].
Sydenham retailers want action [Press]
Questions hang over future of shopping areas [Press]
Christchurch mayoralty
It took a seismic shift, but my bid for the Christchurch mayoralty was derailed by what was the third most significant natural disaster in the world so far this year. With incumbent Mayor Bob Parker trailing in the polls by 20%, the 7.1 magnitude Christchurch earthquake catapulted him into what turned out to be an unassailable lead, compounded by the assistance of an unquestioning media and the National Party in support.
Following the election result, I told a packed media conference that Mayor Bob Parker has a significant responsibility to deliver as the city’s rebuilding gets underway. I also warned that Mr Parker had received a clear message during the campaign that the secret decision-making and deals behind closed doors which had been a feature of his mayoralty would not be accepted by the people of Christchurch.
People’s Choice 2021, the centre-left coalition of Labour, Progressive Green and like-minded independents, had a successful local body campaign, doubling its representation on the City Council, from 2 seats to 4, and ensuring that community boards are now dominated by 2021 members.
I hope [the result] delivers a message to the new council that the people of Christchurch do want to see some change, and that some of the lessons learnt from the past are taken on board.
The Press summed up the post-election mood with the lead to its story: “He may have lost the mayoralty but Jim Anderton was treated like a rock star when he addressed his campaign supporters on Saturday night.”
Despite the mayoral loss, we have a great team in Christchurch and we will take the momentum from the mayoral race to the election campaign for a Labour-led victory in 2011.
And now, for something completely different
I may have lost the mayoral election, but during the campaign I discovered that I have a half-brother, Terry Byrne, living in Liverpool.
It transpires that my birth father, Matthew Byrne, left behind a family of three sons in the United Kingdom before coming to New Zealand where he married my mother. My father was subsequently killed in an accident and I was later adopted by his mother’s second husband, Victor Anderton.
Terry Byrne’s son realised the connection between our two families after reading about the story of my search for my natural father’s family origins in Drogheda, a town of 30,000 people 30 kilometres from Dublin. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although I was initially sceptical, the connection from both documents and family photographs became irrefutable.
Terry Byrne is the last of my UK siblings, brother still alive and l will go to Liverpool sometime soon to meet him.
For more, go here.
WARNING: Asset sales on Government agenda
I have warned that further asset sales could be on the Government’s agenda, and this could be one step closer with the release of the second 2025 Taskforce report which recommends that the Government should further privatise publicly-owned assets.
In a recent speech to the Fabian Society, I said that the National Party may well target power companies, roads, Kiwibank and a number of strategic local government assets such as water services, ports and airports for sale. I said the sales would be necessary to pay for the October 2010 tax cuts which gave huge benefits to the richest New Zealanders.
Asset sales coincided with the most dramatic collapse in New Zealand’s economic well-being in recent history, and led to a dramatic gap between the rich and poor. We lost 30% per capita income against Australia between 1970 and 1999, with the worst period between 1984 and 1994, the peak period when both Labour and National were selling assets.
Most of the assets sold during that period were at bargain-basement prices, the top 40 going for a total of $19 billion, just over one half of their combined real market value of $36 billion.
No example is more stark than the New Zealand Railways which was hocked off for around $400 million and allowed to become completely run down by the new American and then Australian owners. Subsequently, the Government was forced to buy back the tracks and then the rail company itself to guarantee the future of rail. The same for Air New Zealand.
By contrast, assets that have been retained have been a success; Meridian Energy’s business in Australia has returned $600 million to the New Zealand taxpayer, and been used to help pay for hospitals and schools. Most New Zealanders are opposed to selling our strategic publicly owned assets – but we have seen it done before and the National Party is indicating they will do it again if they get another term in government.
The Alcohol Reform Bill
boozedaznz – worth watching! Go to this You Tube video.
Two Drinks Max: Lobby power.
The new Alcohol Reform Bill is due to have its first reading in Parliament soon, following which the Select Committee will call for submissions from the public. This is the final opportunity to send comment to the Government about its response to the Law Commission’s review on the use of alcohol in New Zealand.
The Bill will focus on youth drinking and does not propose to deal with drink drive issues for two years, until further research is done.
The main features of the Bill include:
· Splitting the purchase age for alcohol to 18 years for on-license premises and 20 for off-license (by conscience vote).
· Restricting ‘ready to drink’ (RTDs) to a maximum of 5% alcohol and 1.5 standard drinks equals 10 grams of pure alcohol.
· Strengthening laws around parental provision of alcohol to minors.
· Continuing industry self-regulation of marketing and advertising while strengthening restrictions on advertising targeted to under-18 year olds
· Introducing default licensing hours of 8am to 4am for an on-license premises and 7am to 11pm for off- licenses.
· Implementing voluntary, local alcohol plans.
· Cutting down on excessive alcohol promotions at point of sale.
· Clarifying the definition of a supermarket.
· Undertaking further research on the effect of setting minimum price levels.
· Undertaking further research on blood alcohol levels for driving.
Alcohol Action NZ has produced submission postcards calling on Parliament to:
· Put an end to cheap alcohol, beginning with a minimum price for a standard drink.
· Make supermarkets alcohol-free.
· Ban alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
· Reduce the adult blood alcohol level for driving to at least 0.05 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood (presently at 0.08).
FREE submission postcards can be obtained by emailing: coordinator@alcoholaction.co.nz
More information can be found here.
TVNZ responds to Henry complaint
TVNZ has confirmed that comments by former Breakfast host, Paul Henry about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit breached standards of good taste and decency, were unfair and encouraged discrimination, in the Governor-General’s case, against New Zealanders who are not of a particular ethnicity.
In a formal complaint to TVNZ, I said that the question by Paul Henry to Prime Minister John Key, asking whether the next Governor- General would look and sound like a New Zealander, was a significant slur on the dignity and origins of the Governor-General, and in the worst possible taste.
I said that it was only after he and thousands of other New Zealanders complained about Mr Henry’s comments that Television New Zealand took the matter seriously, eventually leading to Mr Henry’s resignation. The Breakfast Show host repeatedly pushed the boundaries of good taste and was encouraged to be controversial by the broadcaster in search of ratings for its morning programme. It is not credible for a public broadcaster to egg on Paul Henry and then distance itself when he goes too far and crosses the line, TVNZ too must share responsibility.
Similarly, it is alarming that John Key just sat there and grinned when Henry made his comment. No other New Zealand Prime Minister would have allowed the comment to go unchecked. It was a significant failure of leadership, made worse by his lack of real action subsequently.
The ‘Henry’ incident was an ideal opportunity for the Government to look at the role and obligations of Television New Zealand and to refocus its position to that of a responsible public broadcaster.
Anderton addresses students at Lincoln
Telling students what it is like to be a ‘one-man band’ in Parliament was just one of the topics on the agenda when I recently addressed students at Lincoln University, just outside Christchurch.
They were described to me as an inquisitive class and they were. The 130 first year students asked a range of questions about my experience in Parliament and Cabinet, particularly given my long experience under MMP and the demands of juggling various roles and portfolios while in Government.
Conceding that, as one MP, I can’t get everything done nor can I get the media attention I might want for any given issue. However, I told the students that I picked out and put a lot of effort into a number of important areas: affordable dental care, alcohol and drug policies, superannuation, suicide prevention, banking and government support for research and development and for innovation.
Also addressed was the way in which I and the Progressive Party worked to form a cooperative coalition with Labour in government, made easier by the closeness of the philosophies and outlook of the respective parties. Although working closely with Labour, I also maintained my independence which meant that I was able to promote issues where, for example, our two parties may have had differing priorities.
One thing, I told the audience was that, while MMP can be improved, it provides better representation than the old two party, first past the post system. MMP also provides that, while the Government always has the majority in Parliament, there are more limits on its power than under the first past the post election system - the best news, I believe, those wanting a democratic form of government could hear.
Like putting a fox in charge of the chickens is how I described the decision by the National Government to appoint investment banker Rob Cameron to review New Zealand Post, the owner of Kiwibank. Had it been up to Mr Cameron, Kiwibank would not exist today.
When appointed to look at the business case for establishing Kiwibank, Mr Cameron reported to Treasury that it would neither succeed nor attract many customers. Both predictions proved wrong; Kiwibank has been a huge success and today has more than 800,000 customers.
Mr Cameron also predicted that Kiwibank would not be able to withstand the competitive response of the Australian banks. He was spectacularly wrong about that, too, and overlooked the benefits to New Zealand that occurred because the Australian banks were forced to reduce fees, improve services and stop closing branches.
The appointment of Mr Cameron to review New Zealand Post raises the obvious question about whether the it will be used as a launching pad for another round in the Government’s push to sell some or all of NZ Post and Kiwibank.
Why else would they appoint an individual who has prominently advocated for the privatisation of SOEs to help boost the share market?
The full statement can be found here.
Council inaction causing businesses to face closure
I have concluded that Council inaction and confusion in Christchurch is driving local businesses to the brink of closure following a ‘crunch’ meeting with Sydenham and Beckenham business owners, senior council staff and representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies and the commercial sector.
The meeting followed desperate calls from local owners whose businesses remain effectively paralysed two months after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake which rocked Christchurch. “Bricks, rubble and debris are piled high and have remained untouched for over eight weeks. The addition of cordons and traffic diversions are making pedestrian access a logistical nightmare for local businesses, and retail shops in particular are really suffering.
As a result of the meeting, the Christchurch City Council had effectively been put on notice to clear up the mess and put an end to the misery of local traders before many of them go out of business. Insurance companies have also agreed to treat individual cases on merit and on a ‘goodwill’ basis to speed up claims.
Too much time has been wasted since the earthquake, with conflicting advice, lack of communication and confusion over structural engineering reports, consent applications for repairs or demolition as well as new policy announcements on doubling the earthquake code requirement, all of which have delayed decisions on repairs and/or demolition. An urgent resolution is now critical, not only for the future but also for the very survival of a large amount of important businesses in Sydenham and Beckenham.
The full statement can be found here.
Also of interest:
Pleas to continue wage subsidy for quake hit firms [NZ Herald].
Sydenham retailers want action [Press]
Questions hang over future of shopping areas [Press]
Christchurch mayoralty
It took a seismic shift, but my bid for the Christchurch mayoralty was derailed by what was the third most significant natural disaster in the world so far this year. With incumbent Mayor Bob Parker trailing in the polls by 20%, the 7.1 magnitude Christchurch earthquake catapulted him into what turned out to be an unassailable lead, compounded by the assistance of an unquestioning media and the National Party in support.
Following the election result, I told a packed media conference that Mayor Bob Parker has a significant responsibility to deliver as the city’s rebuilding gets underway. I also warned that Mr Parker had received a clear message during the campaign that the secret decision-making and deals behind closed doors which had been a feature of his mayoralty would not be accepted by the people of Christchurch.
People’s Choice 2021, the centre-left coalition of Labour, Progressive Green and like-minded independents, had a successful local body campaign, doubling its representation on the City Council, from 2 seats to 4, and ensuring that community boards are now dominated by 2021 members.
I hope [the result] delivers a message to the new council that the people of Christchurch do want to see some change, and that some of the lessons learnt from the past are taken on board.
The Press summed up the post-election mood with the lead to its story: “He may have lost the mayoralty but Jim Anderton was treated like a rock star when he addressed his campaign supporters on Saturday night.”
Despite the mayoral loss, we have a great team in Christchurch and we will take the momentum from the mayoral race to the election campaign for a Labour-led victory in 2011.
And now, for something completely different
I may have lost the mayoral election, but during the campaign I discovered that I have a half-brother, Terry Byrne, living in Liverpool.
It transpires that my birth father, Matthew Byrne, left behind a family of three sons in the United Kingdom before coming to New Zealand where he married my mother. My father was subsequently killed in an accident and I was later adopted by his mother’s second husband, Victor Anderton.
Terry Byrne’s son realised the connection between our two families after reading about the story of my search for my natural father’s family origins in Drogheda, a town of 30,000 people 30 kilometres from Dublin. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although I was initially sceptical, the connection from both documents and family photographs became irrefutable.
Terry Byrne is the last of my UK siblings, brother still alive and l will go to Liverpool sometime soon to meet him.
For more, go here.
WARNING: Asset sales on Government agenda
I have warned that further asset sales could be on the Government’s agenda, and this could be one step closer with the release of the second 2025 Taskforce report which recommends that the Government should further privatise publicly-owned assets.
In a recent speech to the Fabian Society, I said that the National Party may well target power companies, roads, Kiwibank and a number of strategic local government assets such as water services, ports and airports for sale. I said the sales would be necessary to pay for the October 2010 tax cuts which gave huge benefits to the richest New Zealanders.
Asset sales coincided with the most dramatic collapse in New Zealand’s economic well-being in recent history, and led to a dramatic gap between the rich and poor. We lost 30% per capita income against Australia between 1970 and 1999, with the worst period between 1984 and 1994, the peak period when both Labour and National were selling assets.
Most of the assets sold during that period were at bargain-basement prices, the top 40 going for a total of $19 billion, just over one half of their combined real market value of $36 billion.
No example is more stark than the New Zealand Railways which was hocked off for around $400 million and allowed to become completely run down by the new American and then Australian owners. Subsequently, the Government was forced to buy back the tracks and then the rail company itself to guarantee the future of rail. The same for Air New Zealand.
By contrast, assets that have been retained have been a success; Meridian Energy’s business in Australia has returned $600 million to the New Zealand taxpayer, and been used to help pay for hospitals and schools. Most New Zealanders are opposed to selling our strategic publicly owned assets – but we have seen it done before and the National Party is indicating they will do it again if they get another term in government.
The Alcohol Reform Bill
boozedaznz – worth watching! Go to this You Tube video.
Two Drinks Max: Lobby power.
The new Alcohol Reform Bill is due to have its first reading in Parliament soon, following which the Select Committee will call for submissions from the public. This is the final opportunity to send comment to the Government about its response to the Law Commission’s review on the use of alcohol in New Zealand.
The Bill will focus on youth drinking and does not propose to deal with drink drive issues for two years, until further research is done.
The main features of the Bill include:
· Splitting the purchase age for alcohol to 18 years for on-license premises and 20 for off-license (by conscience vote).
· Restricting ‘ready to drink’ (RTDs) to a maximum of 5% alcohol and 1.5 standard drinks equals 10 grams of pure alcohol.
· Strengthening laws around parental provision of alcohol to minors.
· Continuing industry self-regulation of marketing and advertising while strengthening restrictions on advertising targeted to under-18 year olds
· Introducing default licensing hours of 8am to 4am for an on-license premises and 7am to 11pm for off- licenses.
· Implementing voluntary, local alcohol plans.
· Cutting down on excessive alcohol promotions at point of sale.
· Clarifying the definition of a supermarket.
· Undertaking further research on the effect of setting minimum price levels.
· Undertaking further research on blood alcohol levels for driving.
Alcohol Action NZ has produced submission postcards calling on Parliament to:
· Put an end to cheap alcohol, beginning with a minimum price for a standard drink.
· Make supermarkets alcohol-free.
· Ban alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
· Reduce the adult blood alcohol level for driving to at least 0.05 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood (presently at 0.08).
FREE submission postcards can be obtained by emailing: coordinator@alcoholaction.co.nz
More information can be found here.
TVNZ responds to Henry complaint
TVNZ has confirmed that comments by former Breakfast host, Paul Henry about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit breached standards of good taste and decency, were unfair and encouraged discrimination, in the Governor-General’s case, against New Zealanders who are not of a particular ethnicity.
In a formal complaint to TVNZ, I said that the question by Paul Henry to Prime Minister John Key, asking whether the next Governor- General would look and sound like a New Zealander, was a significant slur on the dignity and origins of the Governor-General, and in the worst possible taste.
I said that it was only after he and thousands of other New Zealanders complained about Mr Henry’s comments that Television New Zealand took the matter seriously, eventually leading to Mr Henry’s resignation. The Breakfast Show host repeatedly pushed the boundaries of good taste and was encouraged to be controversial by the broadcaster in search of ratings for its morning programme. It is not credible for a public broadcaster to egg on Paul Henry and then distance itself when he goes too far and crosses the line, TVNZ too must share responsibility.
Similarly, it is alarming that John Key just sat there and grinned when Henry made his comment. No other New Zealand Prime Minister would have allowed the comment to go unchecked. It was a significant failure of leadership, made worse by his lack of real action subsequently.
The ‘Henry’ incident was an ideal opportunity for the Government to look at the role and obligations of Television New Zealand and to refocus its position to that of a responsible public broadcaster.
Anderton addresses students at Lincoln
Telling students what it is like to be a ‘one-man band’ in Parliament was just one of the topics on the agenda when I recently addressed students at Lincoln University, just outside Christchurch.
They were described to me as an inquisitive class and they were. The 130 first year students asked a range of questions about my experience in Parliament and Cabinet, particularly given my long experience under MMP and the demands of juggling various roles and portfolios while in Government.
Conceding that, as one MP, I can’t get everything done nor can I get the media attention I might want for any given issue. However, I told the students that I picked out and put a lot of effort into a number of important areas: affordable dental care, alcohol and drug policies, superannuation, suicide prevention, banking and government support for research and development and for innovation.
Also addressed was the way in which I and the Progressive Party worked to form a cooperative coalition with Labour in government, made easier by the closeness of the philosophies and outlook of the respective parties. Although working closely with Labour, I also maintained my independence which meant that I was able to promote issues where, for example, our two parties may have had differing priorities.
One thing, I told the audience was that, while MMP can be improved, it provides better representation than the old two party, first past the post system. MMP also provides that, while the Government always has the majority in Parliament, there are more limits on its power than under the first past the post election system - the best news, I believe, those wanting a democratic form of government could hear.
Jim's E-News November 2010
08/11/10 16:40 Filed in: Newsletters
Opponent to review Kiwibank
Like putting a fox in charge of the chickens is how I described the decision by the National Government to appoint investment banker Rob Cameron to review New Zealand Post, the owner of Kiwibank. Had it been up to Mr Cameron, Kiwibank would not exist today.
When appointed to look at the business case for establishing Kiwibank, Mr Cameron reported to Treasury that it would neither succeed nor attract many customers. Both predictions proved wrong; Kiwibank has been a huge success and today has more than 800,000 customers.
Mr Cameron also predicted that Kiwibank would not be able to withstand the competitive response of the Australian banks. He was spectacularly wrong about that, too, and overlooked the benefits to New Zealand that occurred because the Australian banks were forced to reduce fees, improve services and stop closing branches.
The appointment of Mr Cameron to review New Zealand Post raises the obvious question about whether the it will be used as a launching pad for another round in the Government’s push to sell some or all of NZ Post and Kiwibank.
Why else would they appoint an individual who has prominently advocated for the privatisation of SOEs to help boost the share market?
The full statement can be found here.
Council inaction causing businesses to face closure
I have concluded that Council inaction and confusion in Christchurch is driving local businesses to the brink of closure following a ‘crunch’ meeting with Sydenham and Beckenham business owners, senior council staff and representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies and the commercial sector.
The meeting followed desperate calls from local owners whose businesses remain effectively paralysed two months after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake which rocked Christchurch. “Bricks, rubble and debris are piled high and have remained untouched for over eight weeks. The addition of cordons and traffic diversions are making pedestrian access a logistical nightmare for local businesses, and retail shops in particular are really suffering.
As a result of the meeting, the Christchurch City Council had effectively been put on notice to clear up the mess and put an end to the misery of local traders before many of them go out of business. Insurance companies have also agreed to treat individual cases on merit and on a ‘goodwill’ basis to speed up claims.
Too much time has been wasted since the earthquake, with conflicting advice, lack of communication and confusion over structural engineering reports, consent applications for repairs or demolition as well as new policy announcements on doubling the earthquake code requirement, all of which have delayed decisions on repairs and/or demolition. An urgent resolution is now critical, not only for the future but also for the very survival of a large amount of important businesses in Sydenham and Beckenham.
The full statement can be found here.
Also of interest:
Pleas to continue wage subsidy for quake hit firms [NZ Herald].
Sydenham retailers want action [Press]
Questions hang over future of shopping areas [Press]
Christchurch mayoralty
It took a seismic shift, but my bid for the Christchurch mayoralty was derailed by what was the third most significant natural disaster in the world so far this year. With incumbent Mayor Bob Parker trailing in the polls by 20%, the 7.1 magnitude Christchurch earthquake catapulted him into what turned out to be an unassailable lead, compounded by the assistance of an unquestioning media and the National Party in support.
Following the election result, I told a packed media conference that Mayor Bob Parker has a significant responsibility to deliver as the city’s rebuilding gets underway. I also warned that Mr Parker had received a clear message during the campaign that the secret decision-making and deals behind closed doors which had been a feature of his mayoralty would not be accepted by the people of Christchurch.
People’s Choice 2021, the centre-left coalition of Labour, Progressive Green and like-minded independents, had a successful local body campaign, doubling its representation on the City Council, from 2 seats to 4, and ensuring that community boards are now dominated by 2021 members.
I hope [the result] delivers a message to the new council that the people of Christchurch do want to see some change, and that some of the lessons learnt from the past are taken on board.
The Press summed up the post-election mood with the lead to its story: “He may have lost the mayoralty but Jim Anderton was treated like a rock star when he addressed his campaign supporters on Saturday night.”
Despite the mayoral loss, we have a great team in Christchurch and we will take the momentum from the mayoral race to the election campaign for a Labour-led victory in 2011.
And now, for something completely different
I may have lost the mayoral election, but during the campaign I discovered that I have a half-brother, Terry Byrne, living in Liverpool.
It transpires that my birth father, Matthew Byrne, left behind a family of three sons in the United Kingdom before coming to New Zealand where he married my mother. My father was subsequently killed in an accident and I was later adopted by his mother’s second husband, Victor Anderton.
Terry Byrne’s son realised the connection between our two families after reading about the story of my search for my natural father’s family origins in Drogheda, a town of 30,000 people 30 kilometres from Dublin. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although I was initially sceptical, the connection from both documents and family photographs became irrefutable.
Terry Byrne is the last of my UK siblings, brother still alive and l will go to Liverpool sometime soon to meet him.
For more, go here.
WARNING: Asset sales on Government agenda
I have warned that further asset sales could be on the Government’s agenda, and this could be one step closer with the release of the second 2025 Taskforce report which recommends that the Government should further privatise publicly-owned assets.
In a recent speech to the Fabian Society, I said that the National Party may well target power companies, roads, Kiwibank and a number of strategic local government assets such as water services, ports and airports for sale. I said the sales would be necessary to pay for the October 2010 tax cuts which gave huge benefits to the richest New Zealanders.
Asset sales coincided with the most dramatic collapse in New Zealand’s economic well-being in recent history, and led to a dramatic gap between the rich and poor. We lost 30% per capita income against Australia between 1970 and 1999, with the worst period between 1984 and 1994, the peak period when both Labour and National were selling assets.
Most of the assets sold during that period were at bargain-basement prices, the top 40 going for a total of $19 billion, just over one half of their combined real market value of $36 billion.
No example is more stark than the New Zealand Railways which was hocked off for around $400 million and allowed to become completely run down by the new American and then Australian owners. Subsequently, the Government was forced to buy back the tracks and then the rail company itself to guarantee the future of rail. The same for Air New Zealand.
By contrast, assets that have been retained have been a success; Meridian Energy’s business in Australia has returned $600 million to the New Zealand taxpayer, and been used to help pay for hospitals and schools. Most New Zealanders are opposed to selling our strategic publicly owned assets – but we have seen it done before and the National Party is indicating they will do it again if they get another term in government.
The Alcohol Reform Bill
boozedaznz – worth watching! Go to this You Tube video.
Two Drinks Max: Lobby power.
The new Alcohol Reform Bill is due to have its first reading in Parliament soon, following which the Select Committee will call for submissions from the public. This is the final opportunity to send comment to the Government about its response to the Law Commission’s review on the use of alcohol in New Zealand.
The Bill will focus on youth drinking and does not propose to deal with drink drive issues for two years, until further research is done.
The main features of the Bill include:
· Splitting the purchase age for alcohol to 18 years for on-license premises and 20 for off-license (by conscience vote).
· Restricting ‘ready to drink’ (RTDs) to a maximum of 5% alcohol and 1.5 standard drinks equals 10 grams of pure alcohol.
· Strengthening laws around parental provision of alcohol to minors.
· Continuing industry self-regulation of marketing and advertising while strengthening restrictions on advertising targeted to under-18 year olds
· Introducing default licensing hours of 8am to 4am for an on-license premises and 7am to 11pm for off- licenses.
· Implementing voluntary, local alcohol plans.
· Cutting down on excessive alcohol promotions at point of sale.
· Clarifying the definition of a supermarket.
· Undertaking further research on the effect of setting minimum price levels.
· Undertaking further research on blood alcohol levels for driving.
Alcohol Action NZ has produced submission postcards calling on Parliament to:
· Put an end to cheap alcohol, beginning with a minimum price for a standard drink.
· Make supermarkets alcohol-free.
· Ban alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
· Reduce the adult blood alcohol level for driving to at least 0.05 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood (presently at 0.08).
FREE submission postcards can be obtained by emailing: coordinator@alcoholaction.co.nz
More information can be found here.
TVNZ responds to Henry complaint
TVNZ has confirmed that comments by former Breakfast host, Paul Henry about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit breached standards of good taste and decency, were unfair and encouraged discrimination, in the Governor-General’s case, against New Zealanders who are not of a particular ethnicity.
In a formal complaint to TVNZ, I said that the question by Paul Henry to Prime Minister John Key, asking whether the next Governor- General would look and sound like a New Zealander, was a significant slur on the dignity and origins of the Governor-General, and in the worst possible taste.
I said that it was only after he and thousands of other New Zealanders complained about Mr Henry’s comments that Television New Zealand took the matter seriously, eventually leading to Mr Henry’s resignation. The Breakfast Show host repeatedly pushed the boundaries of good taste and was encouraged to be controversial by the broadcaster in search of ratings for its morning programme. It is not credible for a public broadcaster to egg on Paul Henry and then distance itself when he goes too far and crosses the line, TVNZ too must share responsibility.
Similarly, it is alarming that John Key just sat there and grinned when Henry made his comment. No other New Zealand Prime Minister would have allowed the comment to go unchecked. It was a significant failure of leadership, made worse by his lack of real action subsequently.
The ‘Henry’ incident was an ideal opportunity for the Government to look at the role and obligations of Television New Zealand and to refocus its position to that of a responsible public broadcaster.
Anderton addresses students at Lincoln
Telling students what it is like to be a ‘one-man band’ in Parliament was just one of the topics on the agenda when I recently addressed students at Lincoln University, just outside Christchurch.
They were described to me as an inquisitive class and they were. The 130 first year students asked a range of questions about my experience in Parliament and Cabinet, particularly given my long experience under MMP and the demands of juggling various roles and portfolios while in Government.
Conceding that, as one MP, I can’t get everything done nor can I get the media attention I might want for any given issue. However, I told the students that I picked out and put a lot of effort into a number of important areas: affordable dental care, alcohol and drug policies, superannuation, suicide prevention, banking and government support for research and development and for innovation.
Also addressed was the way in which I and the Progressive Party worked to form a cooperative coalition with Labour in government, made easier by the closeness of the philosophies and outlook of the respective parties. Although working closely with Labour, I also maintained my independence which meant that I was able to promote issues where, for example, our two parties may have had differing priorities.
One thing, I told the audience was that, while MMP can be improved, it provides better representation than the old two party, first past the post system. MMP also provides that, while the Government always has the majority in Parliament, there are more limits on its power than under the first past the post election system - the best news, I believe, those wanting a democratic form of government could hear.
Like putting a fox in charge of the chickens is how I described the decision by the National Government to appoint investment banker Rob Cameron to review New Zealand Post, the owner of Kiwibank. Had it been up to Mr Cameron, Kiwibank would not exist today.
When appointed to look at the business case for establishing Kiwibank, Mr Cameron reported to Treasury that it would neither succeed nor attract many customers. Both predictions proved wrong; Kiwibank has been a huge success and today has more than 800,000 customers.
Mr Cameron also predicted that Kiwibank would not be able to withstand the competitive response of the Australian banks. He was spectacularly wrong about that, too, and overlooked the benefits to New Zealand that occurred because the Australian banks were forced to reduce fees, improve services and stop closing branches.
The appointment of Mr Cameron to review New Zealand Post raises the obvious question about whether the it will be used as a launching pad for another round in the Government’s push to sell some or all of NZ Post and Kiwibank.
Why else would they appoint an individual who has prominently advocated for the privatisation of SOEs to help boost the share market?
The full statement can be found here.
Council inaction causing businesses to face closure
I have concluded that Council inaction and confusion in Christchurch is driving local businesses to the brink of closure following a ‘crunch’ meeting with Sydenham and Beckenham business owners, senior council staff and representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies and the commercial sector.
The meeting followed desperate calls from local owners whose businesses remain effectively paralysed two months after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake which rocked Christchurch. “Bricks, rubble and debris are piled high and have remained untouched for over eight weeks. The addition of cordons and traffic diversions are making pedestrian access a logistical nightmare for local businesses, and retail shops in particular are really suffering.
As a result of the meeting, the Christchurch City Council had effectively been put on notice to clear up the mess and put an end to the misery of local traders before many of them go out of business. Insurance companies have also agreed to treat individual cases on merit and on a ‘goodwill’ basis to speed up claims.
Too much time has been wasted since the earthquake, with conflicting advice, lack of communication and confusion over structural engineering reports, consent applications for repairs or demolition as well as new policy announcements on doubling the earthquake code requirement, all of which have delayed decisions on repairs and/or demolition. An urgent resolution is now critical, not only for the future but also for the very survival of a large amount of important businesses in Sydenham and Beckenham.
The full statement can be found here.
Also of interest:
Pleas to continue wage subsidy for quake hit firms [NZ Herald].
Sydenham retailers want action [Press]
Questions hang over future of shopping areas [Press]
Christchurch mayoralty
It took a seismic shift, but my bid for the Christchurch mayoralty was derailed by what was the third most significant natural disaster in the world so far this year. With incumbent Mayor Bob Parker trailing in the polls by 20%, the 7.1 magnitude Christchurch earthquake catapulted him into what turned out to be an unassailable lead, compounded by the assistance of an unquestioning media and the National Party in support.
Following the election result, I told a packed media conference that Mayor Bob Parker has a significant responsibility to deliver as the city’s rebuilding gets underway. I also warned that Mr Parker had received a clear message during the campaign that the secret decision-making and deals behind closed doors which had been a feature of his mayoralty would not be accepted by the people of Christchurch.
People’s Choice 2021, the centre-left coalition of Labour, Progressive Green and like-minded independents, had a successful local body campaign, doubling its representation on the City Council, from 2 seats to 4, and ensuring that community boards are now dominated by 2021 members.
I hope [the result] delivers a message to the new council that the people of Christchurch do want to see some change, and that some of the lessons learnt from the past are taken on board.
The Press summed up the post-election mood with the lead to its story: “He may have lost the mayoralty but Jim Anderton was treated like a rock star when he addressed his campaign supporters on Saturday night.”
Despite the mayoral loss, we have a great team in Christchurch and we will take the momentum from the mayoral race to the election campaign for a Labour-led victory in 2011.
And now, for something completely different
I may have lost the mayoral election, but during the campaign I discovered that I have a half-brother, Terry Byrne, living in Liverpool.
It transpires that my birth father, Matthew Byrne, left behind a family of three sons in the United Kingdom before coming to New Zealand where he married my mother. My father was subsequently killed in an accident and I was later adopted by his mother’s second husband, Victor Anderton.
Terry Byrne’s son realised the connection between our two families after reading about the story of my search for my natural father’s family origins in Drogheda, a town of 30,000 people 30 kilometres from Dublin. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although I was initially sceptical, the connection from both documents and family photographs became irrefutable.
Terry Byrne is the last of my UK siblings, brother still alive and l will go to Liverpool sometime soon to meet him.
For more, go here.
WARNING: Asset sales on Government agenda
I have warned that further asset sales could be on the Government’s agenda, and this could be one step closer with the release of the second 2025 Taskforce report which recommends that the Government should further privatise publicly-owned assets.
In a recent speech to the Fabian Society, I said that the National Party may well target power companies, roads, Kiwibank and a number of strategic local government assets such as water services, ports and airports for sale. I said the sales would be necessary to pay for the October 2010 tax cuts which gave huge benefits to the richest New Zealanders.
Asset sales coincided with the most dramatic collapse in New Zealand’s economic well-being in recent history, and led to a dramatic gap between the rich and poor. We lost 30% per capita income against Australia between 1970 and 1999, with the worst period between 1984 and 1994, the peak period when both Labour and National were selling assets.
Most of the assets sold during that period were at bargain-basement prices, the top 40 going for a total of $19 billion, just over one half of their combined real market value of $36 billion.
No example is more stark than the New Zealand Railways which was hocked off for around $400 million and allowed to become completely run down by the new American and then Australian owners. Subsequently, the Government was forced to buy back the tracks and then the rail company itself to guarantee the future of rail. The same for Air New Zealand.
By contrast, assets that have been retained have been a success; Meridian Energy’s business in Australia has returned $600 million to the New Zealand taxpayer, and been used to help pay for hospitals and schools. Most New Zealanders are opposed to selling our strategic publicly owned assets – but we have seen it done before and the National Party is indicating they will do it again if they get another term in government.
The Alcohol Reform Bill
boozedaznz – worth watching! Go to this You Tube video.
Two Drinks Max: Lobby power.
The new Alcohol Reform Bill is due to have its first reading in Parliament soon, following which the Select Committee will call for submissions from the public. This is the final opportunity to send comment to the Government about its response to the Law Commission’s review on the use of alcohol in New Zealand.
The Bill will focus on youth drinking and does not propose to deal with drink drive issues for two years, until further research is done.
The main features of the Bill include:
· Splitting the purchase age for alcohol to 18 years for on-license premises and 20 for off-license (by conscience vote).
· Restricting ‘ready to drink’ (RTDs) to a maximum of 5% alcohol and 1.5 standard drinks equals 10 grams of pure alcohol.
· Strengthening laws around parental provision of alcohol to minors.
· Continuing industry self-regulation of marketing and advertising while strengthening restrictions on advertising targeted to under-18 year olds
· Introducing default licensing hours of 8am to 4am for an on-license premises and 7am to 11pm for off- licenses.
· Implementing voluntary, local alcohol plans.
· Cutting down on excessive alcohol promotions at point of sale.
· Clarifying the definition of a supermarket.
· Undertaking further research on the effect of setting minimum price levels.
· Undertaking further research on blood alcohol levels for driving.
Alcohol Action NZ has produced submission postcards calling on Parliament to:
· Put an end to cheap alcohol, beginning with a minimum price for a standard drink.
· Make supermarkets alcohol-free.
· Ban alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
· Reduce the adult blood alcohol level for driving to at least 0.05 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood (presently at 0.08).
FREE submission postcards can be obtained by emailing: coordinator@alcoholaction.co.nz
More information can be found here.
TVNZ responds to Henry complaint
TVNZ has confirmed that comments by former Breakfast host, Paul Henry about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit breached standards of good taste and decency, were unfair and encouraged discrimination, in the Governor-General’s case, against New Zealanders who are not of a particular ethnicity.
In a formal complaint to TVNZ, I said that the question by Paul Henry to Prime Minister John Key, asking whether the next Governor- General would look and sound like a New Zealander, was a significant slur on the dignity and origins of the Governor-General, and in the worst possible taste.
I said that it was only after he and thousands of other New Zealanders complained about Mr Henry’s comments that Television New Zealand took the matter seriously, eventually leading to Mr Henry’s resignation. The Breakfast Show host repeatedly pushed the boundaries of good taste and was encouraged to be controversial by the broadcaster in search of ratings for its morning programme. It is not credible for a public broadcaster to egg on Paul Henry and then distance itself when he goes too far and crosses the line, TVNZ too must share responsibility.
Similarly, it is alarming that John Key just sat there and grinned when Henry made his comment. No other New Zealand Prime Minister would have allowed the comment to go unchecked. It was a significant failure of leadership, made worse by his lack of real action subsequently.
The ‘Henry’ incident was an ideal opportunity for the Government to look at the role and obligations of Television New Zealand and to refocus its position to that of a responsible public broadcaster.
Anderton addresses students at Lincoln
Telling students what it is like to be a ‘one-man band’ in Parliament was just one of the topics on the agenda when I recently addressed students at Lincoln University, just outside Christchurch.
They were described to me as an inquisitive class and they were. The 130 first year students asked a range of questions about my experience in Parliament and Cabinet, particularly given my long experience under MMP and the demands of juggling various roles and portfolios while in Government.
Conceding that, as one MP, I can’t get everything done nor can I get the media attention I might want for any given issue. However, I told the students that I picked out and put a lot of effort into a number of important areas: affordable dental care, alcohol and drug policies, superannuation, suicide prevention, banking and government support for research and development and for innovation.
Also addressed was the way in which I and the Progressive Party worked to form a cooperative coalition with Labour in government, made easier by the closeness of the philosophies and outlook of the respective parties. Although working closely with Labour, I also maintained my independence which meant that I was able to promote issues where, for example, our two parties may have had differing priorities.
One thing, I told the audience was that, while MMP can be improved, it provides better representation than the old two party, first past the post system. MMP also provides that, while the Government always has the majority in Parliament, there are more limits on its power than under the first past the post election system - the best news, I believe, those wanting a democratic form of government could hear.
Council should heed Ballantyne’s message
26/10/10 17:00 Filed in: News Releases
Progressive leader and Wigram MP Jim Anderton supports the call made by Richard Ballantyne in today’s Press to refocus on the important challenge of getting people back into the city centre.
“The Christchurch City Council should take heed of our most successful city retailer and take careful note of what he has to say”, Jim Anderton said.
“Ballantynes is Christchurch’s premier store and the only thing standing between success and disaster in Christchurch’s city centre, which has been dying for a number of years because of the proliferation and user-friendly environment of suburban shopping malls outside of the central business area.
“The Council should take on board Ballantyne’s views and include them in any plans to rejuvenate the heart of our city before it disintegrates any further,” says Jim Anderton.
“The Christchurch City Council should take heed of our most successful city retailer and take careful note of what he has to say”, Jim Anderton said.
“Ballantynes is Christchurch’s premier store and the only thing standing between success and disaster in Christchurch’s city centre, which has been dying for a number of years because of the proliferation and user-friendly environment of suburban shopping malls outside of the central business area.
“The Council should take on board Ballantyne’s views and include them in any plans to rejuvenate the heart of our city before it disintegrates any further,” says Jim Anderton.
Council inaction causing local businesses to face closure
31/10/10 17:00 Filed in: News Releases
Council inaction and confusion is driving local businesses to the brink of closure, says Wigram MP Jim Anderton.
A crunch meeting, chaired by Jim Anderton, was held on Thursday October 28th, between Sydenham and Beckenham business owners, senior council staff and representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies and the commercial sector.
The meeting agreed the situation had gone on for too long and an immediate resolution was required.
Insurance companies also agreed to treat individual cases on merit and on a ‘goodwill’ basis to speed up claims.
The Christchurch City Council has effectively been put on notice to clear up the mess and put an end to the misery of local traders before many of them go out of business.
“Almost two months after the earthquake parts of Sydenham and Beckenham still look like a war-zone.
“Bricks, rubble and debris are piled high and have remained untouched for over eight weeks. The addition of cordons and traffic diversions are making pedestrian access a logistical nightmare for local businesses and retail shops in particular are really suffering.
“The Council cleared up this kind of mess in the city centre weeks ago, so why has this iconic ‘character’ suburb of Christchurch been neglected?
“As a result of the meeting, I expect to see the clean-up and demolition finally get underway and for Colombo Street to be opened up to two-way traffic and parking again, as soon as possible.
“Too much time has been wasted since the earthquake, with conflicting advice, lack of communication and confusion over structural engineering reports, consent applications for repairs or demolition as well as new policy announcements on doubling the earthquake code requirement, all of which have delayed decisions on repairs and/or demolition.
“An urgent resolution to these matters is now critical, not only for the future but also for the very survival of a large amount of important businesses in Sydenham and Beckenham”, says Jim Anderton.
A crunch meeting, chaired by Jim Anderton, was held on Thursday October 28th, between Sydenham and Beckenham business owners, senior council staff and representatives from the insurance industry, government agencies and the commercial sector.
The meeting agreed the situation had gone on for too long and an immediate resolution was required.
Insurance companies also agreed to treat individual cases on merit and on a ‘goodwill’ basis to speed up claims.
The Christchurch City Council has effectively been put on notice to clear up the mess and put an end to the misery of local traders before many of them go out of business.
“Almost two months after the earthquake parts of Sydenham and Beckenham still look like a war-zone.
“Bricks, rubble and debris are piled high and have remained untouched for over eight weeks. The addition of cordons and traffic diversions are making pedestrian access a logistical nightmare for local businesses and retail shops in particular are really suffering.
“The Council cleared up this kind of mess in the city centre weeks ago, so why has this iconic ‘character’ suburb of Christchurch been neglected?
“As a result of the meeting, I expect to see the clean-up and demolition finally get underway and for Colombo Street to be opened up to two-way traffic and parking again, as soon as possible.
“Too much time has been wasted since the earthquake, with conflicting advice, lack of communication and confusion over structural engineering reports, consent applications for repairs or demolition as well as new policy announcements on doubling the earthquake code requirement, all of which have delayed decisions on repairs and/or demolition.
“An urgent resolution to these matters is now critical, not only for the future but also for the very survival of a large amount of important businesses in Sydenham and Beckenham”, says Jim Anderton.
Jim’s E-News July 2010
03/08/10 14:17 Filed in: Newsletters
Jim’s E-News July 2010.
Lowering the drink-drive limit is popular - why not do it? This government is so desperate to be liked it’ll make policy turns on anything unpopular, from Kiwibank and mining to foreign ownership of our land. So why won’t they follow the lead of 70% of New Zealanders who want to see the drink-drive limit lowered?
In Parliament this week, I criticised Transport Minister Steven Joyce for refusing to lower the drink-drive limit to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, in line with most other OECD countries like Australia.
At the moment the limit is 80mg. That is about 80% of a bottle of wine for an average man and about 60% of a bottle for an average woman, over a two hour period.
The URM poll shows that 70% of New Zealanders support lowering the drink-drive limit. Another poll on TVNZ’s Close Up program last night found that 68% favoured lowering the limit.
The truth is the alcohol lobby has got to John Key’s government and it has’t got the guts to do what’s right.
I asked Steven Joyce how he could reconcile his comments last year that the existing drink-driving limit was ‘ridiculous’ with his decision this week to spend two more years researching the ‘ridiculous’ limit.
The Motor Trade Association have said that it's surprised that the government needs a further two years of research. Our level is already high by international standards, and alcohol is recognised as a significant contributor to New Zealand's high road toll.
The Ministry of Transport has estimated that reducing the limit could save up to 33 lives, prevent as many as 680 injuries, and save up to $238 million every year.
We don’t need more research. We know that people are able to drive in this country while clinically intoxicated. That’s not good enough. What we need now is urgent action.
John Key’s government has shoved the issue in the too hard basket for reasons it is difficult to fathom.
How to keep your power bill down I chaired a public meeting last Sunday for Christchurch residents to hear from the experts on how to keep their energy bills down this winter.
Power companies based on hydro power, for example, do not emit lots of carbon, so they don’t have to pay a carbon fee. But they benefit from higher market prices for electricity.
These government-owned companies pay a dividend to the government. The profits come back to the government. There is no reason why the government can’t give some of that windfall profit back to you.
In the last election I campaigned for a $200 power rebate for people on low incomes. The chilling reality is that some people face winter power bills they simply can’t afford. When you are on a fixed income and then you get a $400 monthly power bill coming through the mail, how is that going to be paid for?
Just a quarter of the power companies’ gross profits would pay for a $200 winter power rebate for every low income household in New Zealand. That includes superannuitants.
Other countries have a winter rebate. In the UK for example the government provides a winter fuel payment of £250 for over 60s and £400 for over-80s. The State of Victoria in Australia has a similar scheme.
But I wouldn’t hold your breath with this National government. We managed to keep the ‘For Sale’ signs away from Kiwibank. But John Key has made it clear that the publically owned electricity companies could well be up for sale.
If that happens, one thing is for sure. Your power bills will go up even higher, and there will never be a chance for a winter rebate again.
A meeting like this can not only give useful advice on savings for your power bills but can give information on what to do if John Key and his government decide to sell the power companies. People need to be warned. Ask your local Member of Parliament to hold a meeting in your electorate on these issues.
Practical measures to save money on your power bills Community Energy Action’s Bede Martin and Orion Energy’s Roger Sutton set about providing practical solutions and advice at the Christchurch meeting on making efficient use of energy and reducing electricity bills this winter. The key things they recommended that can be done around the home to save $s are:
Community Energy Action’s Warm Babies Programme and Elderly Health Programme provide subsidies for those in the community most in need of a warm home to stay healthy. For more information Community Energy Action Trust on 03 374 7222 www.cea.co.nz or for advice call 0800 388 588 or www.energyadvice.org.nz
There is no way back to Kansas: Anderton speech in the House, 21 July We have just heard from the former spokesperson on the eradication of political correctness. And he wants to know why we were not making any noise while he spoke. It was because we were asleep. This is a government with no plan and no new ideas, but lots of smiles from Mr Key who is starting to look like a poor man’s Wizard of Oz. He is like a travelling magician who pulls out another trick every time that the one before does not work.
But we can only trick Dorothy and the Tin Man for so long, because the people of New Zealand are starting to see there is no plan. There is no way back to Kansas.
What has the Wizard of New Zealand pulled out of his bag so far? The 2025 Task Force? Don Brash has failed to deliver and is being kept on, to give another report next year. Yet he has run out of money already. That is some trick for the former Governor of the Reserve Bank, who was in charge of New Zealand’s monetary policy. He runs out of his budget in the first year of the task force.
Then we had the Job’s Summit. How is that going? There are no new jobs. Unemployment is on the rise. The government that my colleagues on my right and I were in halved unemployment to 4 percent by the time we went out of office. This government has increased unemployment by 50 percent already, and it is still rising.
Now the rate has almost returned to what it was under the previous National Government, and we cannot blame that on the recession, especially when the only idea to save jobs was a 9-day fortnight. That was meant to save thousands of jobs, by getting people to work less so that they were paid less, and businesses stayed afloat. That was the idea. At most it saved 100 jobs, for the whole of New Zealand.
Then John Key came up with another wizard idea. Employees could sell the fourth week of their holidays. That means the solution to New Zealand’s problems is to get people to work longer. Previously the solution was for people to work less, and now it is for them to work longer.
Then we had the cycle way. This was meant to create jobs. The cycle way was the great new innovation for New Zealand. Tourist industries were meant to pop up all along the cycle way. All we have seen so far is pictures of John Key on a bike, smiling as always. It will take more than a pushbike and a cycle way in New Zealand to fix up the New Zealand economy.
However, the government has the answer; it is mining. We dig up the country, just like Australia, and we’ll catch up to Australia. What happened to that idea? It is another flip-flop, because the smiling Prime Minister does not want to be unpopular. He discovered that this idea was not at all popular.
40,000 people marching in Queen Street convinced him of that. So that is not going to happen. If John Key and his government were serious about growing the economy, they would not pay just lip service to the farming sector. That sector is our largest economic earner. The truth is that agriculture makes up 43 percent of New Zealand’s exports.
There is nothing wrong with supporting tourism, but there is a heck of a lot wrong with not supporting farming, and ignoring it. If he thinks we can grow the New Zealand economy while ignoring the farming sector and building cycle ways, he is dreaming.
What kind of Mickey Mouse economics smashes the Fast Forward Fund for research in the primary sector, and cancels the Research and Development tax credit for business, in favour of a cycle way? We do away with the New Zealand Fast Forward Fund, we do away with research and development rebates for business, but we replace them with a cycle way. Now that will work. Yeah, right!
Handing over agriculture portfolio
I have announced I am handing over the role of opposition agriculture spokesperson as I want to give someone else the opportunity to get up to speed before next year’s election, given that I won’t be standing for Parliament again.
In my remaining time as an MP, I have decided to prioritise workable models for affordable dental treatment and the reform of alcohol legislation.
The Progressive Party campaigned for affordable dental treatment in the 2008 election. I have also been an active spokesperson for the +5 solution to alcohol reform which involves increasing the purchase age and curbing the sale and marketing of alcohol.
During my term as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry from 2005 to 2008, I set out to put the farming sector back where it should be, at the centre of the government’s economic strategy, after it had been demoted to a ‘sunset industry’ by former governments. I created the Fast Forward Fund which would have seen $2000 million go towards research and development in the primary sector. I will continue to advocate for agricultural issues in public life.
Affordable dental care update Since the last election, I've been looking at what it would take to introduce affordable dental care for all New Zealanders. It can be done. Our research tell us that it would cost less than $1 billion to finance basic dental care for the whole population. That includes the money we already spend on free visits for under 18 year olds. And it includes the cost of those who end up in emergency departments.
It would cost even less to give just the over 65s affordable care. I'm realistic that we would need to introduce subsidised care in stages, just like we did when we introduced affordable GP visits under a Labour-Progressive government. So why not start with the over 65s? We could raise this money either through income tax, or through a small ACC type earner’s levy. In return, people get a life time of free or affordable dental treatment.
The problem of looking after teeth in your later years is only going to get worse as the baby boomers age. In my parent’s day, teeth were extracted and false teeth provided, often as a 21st birthday present! The baby boomer generation on the other hand, will go into old age with their own teeth, often heavily filled and a number of them missing.
They're going to need help.
The other problem we have is a shortage of dentists in some provincial areas of New Zealand. There's a straight forward solution to that problem too. Bonding. At the moment young doctors can have their student loans paid off, if they agree to work in hard to staff areas for the first few years after they graduate. That scheme should be extended to dentists. It's already been extended to vets. If you have an emergency dental problem in Gisborne over the weekend, you have to drive to Napier. But getting young 'pioneer dentists' to Gisborne to work would solve that problem. Those young dentists might decide they like the East Coast lifestyle, and stay for even longer.
At the moment dental care is too expensive and fifty per cent of New Zealanders do not receive regular dental care. That's a national crisis and something has to be done. The solutions are staring us in the face, and I'll continue to fight for affordable dental treatment for all New Zealanders.
On ACC Earlier this year Ruth Dyson and I highlighted the actions of Nick Smith and the ACC which resulted in the imposition of unreasonable rules on those seeking surgery to remedy injuries caused by accidents. We predicted there would be a flood of ACC claimants seeking access to elective surgery because ACC would not fund them.
The Budget papers, released 10 days ago have proven us right.
In the first six months of last year, ACC turned down 5019 applications for surgery and the extra money Tony Ryall highlighted as being available for additional elective surgery, has gone to treat these cases with, of course, no reduction in the numbers of the waiting lists.
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Lowering the drink-drive limit is popular - why not do it? This government is so desperate to be liked it’ll make policy turns on anything unpopular, from Kiwibank and mining to foreign ownership of our land. So why won’t they follow the lead of 70% of New Zealanders who want to see the drink-drive limit lowered?
In Parliament this week, I criticised Transport Minister Steven Joyce for refusing to lower the drink-drive limit to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, in line with most other OECD countries like Australia.
At the moment the limit is 80mg. That is about 80% of a bottle of wine for an average man and about 60% of a bottle for an average woman, over a two hour period.
The URM poll shows that 70% of New Zealanders support lowering the drink-drive limit. Another poll on TVNZ’s Close Up program last night found that 68% favoured lowering the limit.
The truth is the alcohol lobby has got to John Key’s government and it has’t got the guts to do what’s right.
I asked Steven Joyce how he could reconcile his comments last year that the existing drink-driving limit was ‘ridiculous’ with his decision this week to spend two more years researching the ‘ridiculous’ limit.
The Motor Trade Association have said that it's surprised that the government needs a further two years of research. Our level is already high by international standards, and alcohol is recognised as a significant contributor to New Zealand's high road toll.
The Ministry of Transport has estimated that reducing the limit could save up to 33 lives, prevent as many as 680 injuries, and save up to $238 million every year.
We don’t need more research. We know that people are able to drive in this country while clinically intoxicated. That’s not good enough. What we need now is urgent action.
John Key’s government has shoved the issue in the too hard basket for reasons it is difficult to fathom.
How to keep your power bill down I chaired a public meeting last Sunday for Christchurch residents to hear from the experts on how to keep their energy bills down this winter.
Power companies based on hydro power, for example, do not emit lots of carbon, so they don’t have to pay a carbon fee. But they benefit from higher market prices for electricity.
These government-owned companies pay a dividend to the government. The profits come back to the government. There is no reason why the government can’t give some of that windfall profit back to you.
In the last election I campaigned for a $200 power rebate for people on low incomes. The chilling reality is that some people face winter power bills they simply can’t afford. When you are on a fixed income and then you get a $400 monthly power bill coming through the mail, how is that going to be paid for?
Just a quarter of the power companies’ gross profits would pay for a $200 winter power rebate for every low income household in New Zealand. That includes superannuitants.
Other countries have a winter rebate. In the UK for example the government provides a winter fuel payment of £250 for over 60s and £400 for over-80s. The State of Victoria in Australia has a similar scheme.
But I wouldn’t hold your breath with this National government. We managed to keep the ‘For Sale’ signs away from Kiwibank. But John Key has made it clear that the publically owned electricity companies could well be up for sale.
If that happens, one thing is for sure. Your power bills will go up even higher, and there will never be a chance for a winter rebate again.
A meeting like this can not only give useful advice on savings for your power bills but can give information on what to do if John Key and his government decide to sell the power companies. People need to be warned. Ask your local Member of Parliament to hold a meeting in your electorate on these issues.
Practical measures to save money on your power bills Community Energy Action’s Bede Martin and Orion Energy’s Roger Sutton set about providing practical solutions and advice at the Christchurch meeting on making efficient use of energy and reducing electricity bills this winter. The key things they recommended that can be done around the home to save $s are:
- Windows are the single biggest cause of lost heat. Insulation Kits will cut down drafts and make a big difference to the warmth of your home.
- Curtains, if drawn before the temperatures drop late afternoon, will keep the warmth in.
- Use ‘door sausages’ to reduce drafts.
- Fit plastic door and window seals to keep drafts out.
- Dry clothes outside to avoid the build up of moist air.
- Shop around the power companies for the competitive price plans or talk to your power company about your options.
- A night plan on your electricity bill can cut down power usage by 20%.
- By spending $50 on energy efficient bulbs, you can save an average of $100 a year.
- Heating water is one of the single biggest energy users. Insulating your water cylinder can save up to $100 a year on the fuel bill.
- Roof insulation can save up to $500 a year.
- Turning the beer fridge on only in the weekend can save $100 a year.
- Turning off a heated towel rail can save $100 a year.
- $150 a year is being wasted on appliances left on stand-by mode.
- Avoid using unflued gas heaters as they create moisture and are very expensive to run, plus they have health disadvantages.
- It is not necessary to have a heat pump running continuously. Put it on a timer and only use to heat up rooms when required.
- Shower rather than bath to save on hot water.
- Shop around for the best deals with insulation and heating options. Some companies quote a lower level of insulation or energy efficiency than is practical.
Community Energy Action’s Warm Babies Programme and Elderly Health Programme provide subsidies for those in the community most in need of a warm home to stay healthy. For more information Community Energy Action Trust on 03 374 7222 www.cea.co.nz or for advice call 0800 388 588 or www.energyadvice.org.nz
There is no way back to Kansas: Anderton speech in the House, 21 July We have just heard from the former spokesperson on the eradication of political correctness. And he wants to know why we were not making any noise while he spoke. It was because we were asleep. This is a government with no plan and no new ideas, but lots of smiles from Mr Key who is starting to look like a poor man’s Wizard of Oz. He is like a travelling magician who pulls out another trick every time that the one before does not work.
But we can only trick Dorothy and the Tin Man for so long, because the people of New Zealand are starting to see there is no plan. There is no way back to Kansas.
What has the Wizard of New Zealand pulled out of his bag so far? The 2025 Task Force? Don Brash has failed to deliver and is being kept on, to give another report next year. Yet he has run out of money already. That is some trick for the former Governor of the Reserve Bank, who was in charge of New Zealand’s monetary policy. He runs out of his budget in the first year of the task force.
Then we had the Job’s Summit. How is that going? There are no new jobs. Unemployment is on the rise. The government that my colleagues on my right and I were in halved unemployment to 4 percent by the time we went out of office. This government has increased unemployment by 50 percent already, and it is still rising.
Now the rate has almost returned to what it was under the previous National Government, and we cannot blame that on the recession, especially when the only idea to save jobs was a 9-day fortnight. That was meant to save thousands of jobs, by getting people to work less so that they were paid less, and businesses stayed afloat. That was the idea. At most it saved 100 jobs, for the whole of New Zealand.
Then John Key came up with another wizard idea. Employees could sell the fourth week of their holidays. That means the solution to New Zealand’s problems is to get people to work longer. Previously the solution was for people to work less, and now it is for them to work longer.
Then we had the cycle way. This was meant to create jobs. The cycle way was the great new innovation for New Zealand. Tourist industries were meant to pop up all along the cycle way. All we have seen so far is pictures of John Key on a bike, smiling as always. It will take more than a pushbike and a cycle way in New Zealand to fix up the New Zealand economy.
However, the government has the answer; it is mining. We dig up the country, just like Australia, and we’ll catch up to Australia. What happened to that idea? It is another flip-flop, because the smiling Prime Minister does not want to be unpopular. He discovered that this idea was not at all popular.
40,000 people marching in Queen Street convinced him of that. So that is not going to happen. If John Key and his government were serious about growing the economy, they would not pay just lip service to the farming sector. That sector is our largest economic earner. The truth is that agriculture makes up 43 percent of New Zealand’s exports.
There is nothing wrong with supporting tourism, but there is a heck of a lot wrong with not supporting farming, and ignoring it. If he thinks we can grow the New Zealand economy while ignoring the farming sector and building cycle ways, he is dreaming.
What kind of Mickey Mouse economics smashes the Fast Forward Fund for research in the primary sector, and cancels the Research and Development tax credit for business, in favour of a cycle way? We do away with the New Zealand Fast Forward Fund, we do away with research and development rebates for business, but we replace them with a cycle way. Now that will work. Yeah, right!
Handing over agriculture portfolio
I have announced I am handing over the role of opposition agriculture spokesperson as I want to give someone else the opportunity to get up to speed before next year’s election, given that I won’t be standing for Parliament again.
In my remaining time as an MP, I have decided to prioritise workable models for affordable dental treatment and the reform of alcohol legislation.
The Progressive Party campaigned for affordable dental treatment in the 2008 election. I have also been an active spokesperson for the +5 solution to alcohol reform which involves increasing the purchase age and curbing the sale and marketing of alcohol.
During my term as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry from 2005 to 2008, I set out to put the farming sector back where it should be, at the centre of the government’s economic strategy, after it had been demoted to a ‘sunset industry’ by former governments. I created the Fast Forward Fund which would have seen $2000 million go towards research and development in the primary sector. I will continue to advocate for agricultural issues in public life.
Affordable dental care update Since the last election, I've been looking at what it would take to introduce affordable dental care for all New Zealanders. It can be done. Our research tell us that it would cost less than $1 billion to finance basic dental care for the whole population. That includes the money we already spend on free visits for under 18 year olds. And it includes the cost of those who end up in emergency departments.
It would cost even less to give just the over 65s affordable care. I'm realistic that we would need to introduce subsidised care in stages, just like we did when we introduced affordable GP visits under a Labour-Progressive government. So why not start with the over 65s? We could raise this money either through income tax, or through a small ACC type earner’s levy. In return, people get a life time of free or affordable dental treatment.
The problem of looking after teeth in your later years is only going to get worse as the baby boomers age. In my parent’s day, teeth were extracted and false teeth provided, often as a 21st birthday present! The baby boomer generation on the other hand, will go into old age with their own teeth, often heavily filled and a number of them missing.
They're going to need help.
The other problem we have is a shortage of dentists in some provincial areas of New Zealand. There's a straight forward solution to that problem too. Bonding. At the moment young doctors can have their student loans paid off, if they agree to work in hard to staff areas for the first few years after they graduate. That scheme should be extended to dentists. It's already been extended to vets. If you have an emergency dental problem in Gisborne over the weekend, you have to drive to Napier. But getting young 'pioneer dentists' to Gisborne to work would solve that problem. Those young dentists might decide they like the East Coast lifestyle, and stay for even longer.
At the moment dental care is too expensive and fifty per cent of New Zealanders do not receive regular dental care. That's a national crisis and something has to be done. The solutions are staring us in the face, and I'll continue to fight for affordable dental treatment for all New Zealanders.
On ACC Earlier this year Ruth Dyson and I highlighted the actions of Nick Smith and the ACC which resulted in the imposition of unreasonable rules on those seeking surgery to remedy injuries caused by accidents. We predicted there would be a flood of ACC claimants seeking access to elective surgery because ACC would not fund them.
The Budget papers, released 10 days ago have proven us right.
In the first six months of last year, ACC turned down 5019 applications for surgery and the extra money Tony Ryall highlighted as being available for additional elective surgery, has gone to treat these cases with, of course, no reduction in the numbers of the waiting lists.
SIGN UP TO RECEIVE JIM’S E-NEWS IN YOUR INBOX HERE.
National Government has no ideas
21/07/10 17:54 Filed in: Speeches
Jim Anderton’s speech in the General Debate in parliament
This is a government with no plan, no new ideas - but lots of smiles from Mr Key - who is starting to look like the Wizard of Oz.
A traveling magician who pulls out another trick every time the last trick fails.
But you can only trick Dorothy and the tin man for so long.
Because the people of New Zealand are starting to see - there is no plan. There is no way back to Kansas.
What has the Wizard of New Zealand pulled out of his bag so far?
We’ve had the 2025 Taskforce which was meant to show how we could catch up Australia.
What happened to that? Nothing. Don Brash failed to deliver - no surprises there - as the Kiwi kid says about the Aussie kid on that TV ad.
But Don’s still being kept on to give another report next year!
Yet he’s run out of money already; some trick for a former Governor General of the Reserve Bank in charge of New Zealand’s monetary policy!
Then we had the job’s summit.
How’s that going?
No new jobs and unemployment is on the rise.
We halved the rate of unemployment when we were in government to under 4%.
Under this government it has risen to 6% already- an increase of 50%.
Now It’s almost returned to what it was under the last National government
You can’t blame that on the recession.
Especially when the only idea to save jobs was the 9-day fortnight. That was meant to save thousands of jobs by getting people to work less, so they get paid less, and businesses stay afloat.
At the most it saved only about one hundred jobs.
But now John Key has come up with another wizard idea: you can sell your 4th week of annual leave.
So he thinks the solution is to get people to work for longer - and that will save the economy?
Which is it? A 9-day fortnight and work less - or sell your holidays and work more?
And what a magicians slight of hand to suggest that you have the choice to ‘sell’ your annual leave.
In my book, it’s just working for an extra week and getting paid for it! Nothing new about that.
John Key says you can even sell your sick leave and your public holidays.
Why not take Christmas day tomorrow - then decide to sell it - and work anyway?
Then we had the cycle way. That was meant to create jobs. Tourist industries were meant to pop up all along the cycle way.
All we’ve seen so far is pictures of John Key on a bike - smiling as always.
It’ll take more than a push bike and cycle way to grow New Zealand.
Mining is now meant to save the New Zealand economy.
What happened to that? Another flip-flop because this smiling Prime Minister doesn’t want to be unpopular.
So what’s the next big idea?
There isn’t one.
If John Key and his government were serious about growing the economy, they wouldn’t just pay lip service to the the farming sector.
The truth is - Agriculture makes up 43% of New Zealand’s exports, compared to tourism which makes up 17%.
And yet John Key didn’t mention farming in 2008 in the post-election speech from the throne.
Didn’t mention it in 2009 in his speech in parliament at the beginning of the year.
Nothing wrong with supporting tourism. But there is something wrong with ignoring farming.
If he thinks he can grow the New Zealand economy while ignoring the farming sector and building cycle ways - he’s dreaming.
What kind of mickey mouse economics smashes the Fast Forward Fund for research into the primary sector, and cancels the tax credit for businesses in favour of a cycle way?
That was a loss of over $2 and half billion for the productive, export earning sectors of the New Zealand economy.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that the farming sector belongs at the centre of any government’s economic strategy.
Previous governments had demoted it to a ‘sunset industry’.
John Key’s government is doing the same.
Instead of playing wizard tricks on the people of New Zealand, John Key needs to get serious.
New Zealand could be a global centre for food production; for IT and for good ideas that add value to what we already do well - grow and make food.
This government has no plans to grow the economy. No plans to create jobs.
Like the Wizard of Oz - Mr Key is hiding behind bright lights and all the tricks of the trade.
But New Zealanders are starting to see that there are no more tricks in the bag. The Wizard has no clothes
This is a government with no plan, no new ideas - but lots of smiles from Mr Key - who is starting to look like the Wizard of Oz.
A traveling magician who pulls out another trick every time the last trick fails.
But you can only trick Dorothy and the tin man for so long.
Because the people of New Zealand are starting to see - there is no plan. There is no way back to Kansas.
What has the Wizard of New Zealand pulled out of his bag so far?
We’ve had the 2025 Taskforce which was meant to show how we could catch up Australia.
What happened to that? Nothing. Don Brash failed to deliver - no surprises there - as the Kiwi kid says about the Aussie kid on that TV ad.
But Don’s still being kept on to give another report next year!
Yet he’s run out of money already; some trick for a former Governor General of the Reserve Bank in charge of New Zealand’s monetary policy!
Then we had the job’s summit.
How’s that going?
No new jobs and unemployment is on the rise.
We halved the rate of unemployment when we were in government to under 4%.
Under this government it has risen to 6% already- an increase of 50%.
Now It’s almost returned to what it was under the last National government
You can’t blame that on the recession.
Especially when the only idea to save jobs was the 9-day fortnight. That was meant to save thousands of jobs by getting people to work less, so they get paid less, and businesses stay afloat.
At the most it saved only about one hundred jobs.
But now John Key has come up with another wizard idea: you can sell your 4th week of annual leave.
So he thinks the solution is to get people to work for longer - and that will save the economy?
Which is it? A 9-day fortnight and work less - or sell your holidays and work more?
And what a magicians slight of hand to suggest that you have the choice to ‘sell’ your annual leave.
In my book, it’s just working for an extra week and getting paid for it! Nothing new about that.
John Key says you can even sell your sick leave and your public holidays.
Why not take Christmas day tomorrow - then decide to sell it - and work anyway?
Then we had the cycle way. That was meant to create jobs. Tourist industries were meant to pop up all along the cycle way.
All we’ve seen so far is pictures of John Key on a bike - smiling as always.
It’ll take more than a push bike and cycle way to grow New Zealand.
Mining is now meant to save the New Zealand economy.
What happened to that? Another flip-flop because this smiling Prime Minister doesn’t want to be unpopular.
So what’s the next big idea?
There isn’t one.
If John Key and his government were serious about growing the economy, they wouldn’t just pay lip service to the the farming sector.
The truth is - Agriculture makes up 43% of New Zealand’s exports, compared to tourism which makes up 17%.
And yet John Key didn’t mention farming in 2008 in the post-election speech from the throne.
Didn’t mention it in 2009 in his speech in parliament at the beginning of the year.
Nothing wrong with supporting tourism. But there is something wrong with ignoring farming.
If he thinks he can grow the New Zealand economy while ignoring the farming sector and building cycle ways - he’s dreaming.
What kind of mickey mouse economics smashes the Fast Forward Fund for research into the primary sector, and cancels the tax credit for businesses in favour of a cycle way?
That was a loss of over $2 and half billion for the productive, export earning sectors of the New Zealand economy.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that the farming sector belongs at the centre of any government’s economic strategy.
Previous governments had demoted it to a ‘sunset industry’.
John Key’s government is doing the same.
Instead of playing wizard tricks on the people of New Zealand, John Key needs to get serious.
New Zealand could be a global centre for food production; for IT and for good ideas that add value to what we already do well - grow and make food.
This government has no plans to grow the economy. No plans to create jobs.
Like the Wizard of Oz - Mr Key is hiding behind bright lights and all the tricks of the trade.
But New Zealanders are starting to see that there are no more tricks in the bag. The Wizard has no clothes
Telecom share decline is a lesson for privatising government
25/05/10 15:50 Filed in: News Releases
This week's considerable reduction in Telecom's worth is only the latest chapter in a privatisation that should be a lesson to the current government's plans to resume asset sales, Progressive leader Jim Anderton says.
"Today's decline in value is the direct result of a monopoly that got privatised being unable to adapt when its monopoly position finally began to unwind.
"Telecom spent about fifteen years dramatically overcharging New Zealanders and blocking innovative competition because it was privatised as a monopoly.
"Billions of dollars were taken out of New Zealand by foreign owners, at a time when a National Government was saying it was owned by Kiwi Mums and Dads.
"Since its monopoly position has been eroded, Telecom has faded because its monopolistic behaviour was hard-baked into the company and it couldn't adapt.
"Most financial commentators supported the sale of Telecom, but it has been a disaster for New Zealand.
"Today the same commentators are still supporting privatisation of successful Kiwi businesses, like Kiwibank.
"I recall consultant Rob Cameron telling the NZ Post Board that Kiwibank would only have ten thousand 'low value' customers after five years. It has between seven and eight hundred thousand and that shows how much credibility he has in calling for privatisation now. Professor Tripe from Massey University claimed Kiwibank would be a dog, and now says it needs $600 million of private capital because it is growing so fast.
"Instead of listening to people who repeatedly get their predictions wrong, the government should look at the record of privatisation: Telecom, Air New Zealand, Kiwi Rail. Disaster, disaster, and even more disaster."
"Today's decline in value is the direct result of a monopoly that got privatised being unable to adapt when its monopoly position finally began to unwind.
"Telecom spent about fifteen years dramatically overcharging New Zealanders and blocking innovative competition because it was privatised as a monopoly.
"Billions of dollars were taken out of New Zealand by foreign owners, at a time when a National Government was saying it was owned by Kiwi Mums and Dads.
"Since its monopoly position has been eroded, Telecom has faded because its monopolistic behaviour was hard-baked into the company and it couldn't adapt.
"Most financial commentators supported the sale of Telecom, but it has been a disaster for New Zealand.
"Today the same commentators are still supporting privatisation of successful Kiwi businesses, like Kiwibank.
"I recall consultant Rob Cameron telling the NZ Post Board that Kiwibank would only have ten thousand 'low value' customers after five years. It has between seven and eight hundred thousand and that shows how much credibility he has in calling for privatisation now. Professor Tripe from Massey University claimed Kiwibank would be a dog, and now says it needs $600 million of private capital because it is growing so fast.
"Instead of listening to people who repeatedly get their predictions wrong, the government should look at the record of privatisation: Telecom, Air New Zealand, Kiwi Rail. Disaster, disaster, and even more disaster."
Jim Anderton's Budget 2010 speech
20/05/10 16:49 Filed in: Speeches
What is this government saying to families on low incomes in today’s budget?
Let them eat cake!
It says ‘don’t worry about an increase in GST and rising food prices, because the rich eat more than the poor, so they’ll pay more in GST.’
Is that meant to make low income families feel better?
You might not be able to afford to buy much food - but just think of the GST you’re saving when you don’t eat?
The rich have a choice if they want to spend more money and pay more GST. They can choose whether to upgrade the Mercedes or buy another boat. Those on lower incomes can’t choose whether or not to eat.
What is John Key saying to New Zealand families struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet on low incomes? Stop being envious.
Well they won’t be envious Mr Key, they’ll be angry - like I am.
Are New Zealand families more or less equal after this budget?
They are less equal - and shame on the Prime Minister. After today’s budget the most wealthy New Zealanders will take home thousands of extra dollars per week compared to those on average incomes.
People like Telecom’s CEO who earned $7 million last year will get a tax cut of $6,608 per week. State sector CEO’s who earn more than $600,000 in some cases, will get a tax cut of nearly $500 per week.
If you’re earning $50,000 after you pay more in GST at the supermarket, you’ll only take home $5 per week. And the chances are - that will be wiped out by inflation anyway!
Is a CEO who got a thousand dollar a week pay rise last year, really the highest priority for a seven hundred dollar a week tax cut this year?
New Zealand is now on a par with the UK which has one of the most entrenched income gaps between rich and poor.
Our ancestors came to this country to get away from that inequality! John Key is determined to bring it back with him from his years speculating overseas.
Others might be taken in by the Prime Minister’s ‘rags to riches’ story. Not me.
I remember he helped people make a pot of money speculating against the New Zealand dollar in the 1980s, at a cost to New Zealand of $700 million. Guess what? At the same time, New Zealand’s increasing rate of income inequality became one of the worst in the OECD.
Over the same period, Australia closed the gap between rich and poor. Income inequality widened again under National governments in the 1990s. And it started to get better during the period of a Labour-led government in 1999-2008.
Mr Key mis-led the House yesterday when he said - and I quote - “income gaps between rich and poor...became worse under the previous Labour Government".
No Mr Key! It became better, and is set to become worse again under this National government. (And today I’ll table the facts to prove it.)
Here they are. Under a Labour-Progressive government between 2001 and 2008 everyone became richer - even people like, Mr Key.
But those on low-middle incomes increased their wealth the most, thanks to the Working for Families tax break. We closed the gap - National is widening it.
The Prime Minister also said yesterday that it was a terrible injustice that 10% of the wealthiest New Zealanders pay 44% of the tax. What does the Prime Minister think they do in Australia? 10% pay 46% of all tax!
Turns out that’s what most countries do. Those who earn more, pay more tax, because they earn a higher share of the income. It’s a fair tax system.
But John Key is no Robin Hood. More like the Sheriff of Nottingham, looking after his own.
Will the average New Zealander be better off after the Sheriff’s budget? No.
Because they’re not getting the lion’s share of the tax cut. Guess who got the lion’s share from the last round of tax cuts? The same top earners. Has the penny dropped yet? If people are not on a high income, this government is not going to help.
Some might have voted for them in 2008 - but they can make them a one-term government in 2011. The first since 1975 - and good riddance. If they’re on an average income but had aspirations to do better - forget it.
This is a budget that puts reinforced glass into the glass ceiling.
This government is showing its true colours today. It doesn’t want all our people to prosper. It wants them to know their place.
Will there be more children lifted out of poverty after today’s budget? No.
A recent UNICEF survey of the well-being of children puts New Zealand almost last - 24th out of 25 countries. It measured immunisation levels, infant death and early death from injury and illness.
Greece’s economy is collapsing and the streets are on fire as people protest - but they’re way ahead of New Zealand when it comes to looking after children!
Here’s what a respected Professor of Epidemiology in New Zealand said recently “In New Zealand, social injustice is killing and maiming our children on a grand scale” We top the scales for OECD rates of whooping cough, rheumatic fever, pneumonia and other diseases in children.
We spend less than the OECD average on child health, and the only thing that will change as a result of this budget is that this appalling situation will get worse.
28% of our children still live in poverty.
That rate started to decline under the last Labour Progressive government for the first time in decades. Working for Families lifted about 100,000 children out of poverty.
Senior people in the medical profession know what the problem is - and they know what the answer is. The politics of inequality.
Why do we have such high rates of child illness and death? Poverty. And how do you get rid of poverty? You increase people’s incomes, give them decent wages and jobs.
Will there be more jobs after today? No.
There is nothing in this budget to create new jobs. Our unemployment rates have ballooned since this government came to power - to over 7%.
The National government can’t blame the recession. Because at the same time, Australia’s unemployment has dropped to just over 5%.
How many jobs has John Key’s cycle way created so far? None!
What about the nine day fortnight? It was meant to save thousands of jobs - but didn’t.
New Zealand doesn’t have a tax problem - it has a wage problem.
National has no plan to increase wages. If John Key thinks that cutting the top tax rate will stop young doctors or entrepreneurs going overseas, he’s dreaming. Australia’s top tax rate is 45 cents in the dollar - much higher than New Zealand’s.
New Zealand’s tax system compared to the rest of the world has been one of the most progressive for average income earners, according to a recent OECD report.
John Key should ask himself why he left the country to go into the world of international speculation. Did he leave to avoid our high taxes? I doubt it.
I’m sure he left because he could earn more overseas. Tax cuts for the wealthy won’t increase the wage packet of ordinary New Zealanders.
Will the economy grow as a result of the Sheriff’s budget today? No.
There is nothing in this budget to increase our exports.
Nothing to encourage us to save.
Nothing to grow the economy.
No new ideas.
The wealthy few who get a hefty tax cut today will most likely invest the extra cash overseas.
Where’s the money for science and research & development?
John Key has scrapped the $2 billion worth of spending on R&D that we had set aside under a Labour-Progressive government. And what’s he replaced it with? A science advisor and a few ‘vouchers’.
The whole package, including the new vouchers in the budget amount to less than 26% of what business and science would have got under a Labour-Progressive government.
Does this anti-science government think that new technologies will just appear out of thin air?
In the meantime, will most New Zealanders pay more? Yes.
The larger the tax cut National gives to the top income earners, the smaller the amount left over for people on the average wage. Someone has to pay.
More GST at the shops.
Increased property tax will increase rents.
More at the petrol pump.
More for power bills
More for ACC.
More for student loans.
More for early childhood education.
This is not a budget for hardworking New
Zealanders and Kiwi families.
Some voted for this government because they thought the Prime Minister’s ‘rags to riches’ story might rub off on our country.
But it turns out Robin Hood is really the Sheriff of Nottingham with a false smile - and the message is clear.
‘Let them eat cake!’
This budget is a disgrace and this parliament should be both ashamed and angry to receive it.
Let them eat cake!
It says ‘don’t worry about an increase in GST and rising food prices, because the rich eat more than the poor, so they’ll pay more in GST.’
Is that meant to make low income families feel better?
You might not be able to afford to buy much food - but just think of the GST you’re saving when you don’t eat?
The rich have a choice if they want to spend more money and pay more GST. They can choose whether to upgrade the Mercedes or buy another boat. Those on lower incomes can’t choose whether or not to eat.
What is John Key saying to New Zealand families struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet on low incomes? Stop being envious.
Well they won’t be envious Mr Key, they’ll be angry - like I am.
Are New Zealand families more or less equal after this budget?
They are less equal - and shame on the Prime Minister. After today’s budget the most wealthy New Zealanders will take home thousands of extra dollars per week compared to those on average incomes.
People like Telecom’s CEO who earned $7 million last year will get a tax cut of $6,608 per week. State sector CEO’s who earn more than $600,000 in some cases, will get a tax cut of nearly $500 per week.
If you’re earning $50,000 after you pay more in GST at the supermarket, you’ll only take home $5 per week. And the chances are - that will be wiped out by inflation anyway!
Is a CEO who got a thousand dollar a week pay rise last year, really the highest priority for a seven hundred dollar a week tax cut this year?
New Zealand is now on a par with the UK which has one of the most entrenched income gaps between rich and poor.
Our ancestors came to this country to get away from that inequality! John Key is determined to bring it back with him from his years speculating overseas.
Others might be taken in by the Prime Minister’s ‘rags to riches’ story. Not me.
I remember he helped people make a pot of money speculating against the New Zealand dollar in the 1980s, at a cost to New Zealand of $700 million. Guess what? At the same time, New Zealand’s increasing rate of income inequality became one of the worst in the OECD.
Over the same period, Australia closed the gap between rich and poor. Income inequality widened again under National governments in the 1990s. And it started to get better during the period of a Labour-led government in 1999-2008.
Mr Key mis-led the House yesterday when he said - and I quote - “income gaps between rich and poor...became worse under the previous Labour Government".
No Mr Key! It became better, and is set to become worse again under this National government. (And today I’ll table the facts to prove it.)
Here they are. Under a Labour-Progressive government between 2001 and 2008 everyone became richer - even people like, Mr Key.
But those on low-middle incomes increased their wealth the most, thanks to the Working for Families tax break. We closed the gap - National is widening it.
The Prime Minister also said yesterday that it was a terrible injustice that 10% of the wealthiest New Zealanders pay 44% of the tax. What does the Prime Minister think they do in Australia? 10% pay 46% of all tax!
Turns out that’s what most countries do. Those who earn more, pay more tax, because they earn a higher share of the income. It’s a fair tax system.
But John Key is no Robin Hood. More like the Sheriff of Nottingham, looking after his own.
Will the average New Zealander be better off after the Sheriff’s budget? No.
Because they’re not getting the lion’s share of the tax cut. Guess who got the lion’s share from the last round of tax cuts? The same top earners. Has the penny dropped yet? If people are not on a high income, this government is not going to help.
Some might have voted for them in 2008 - but they can make them a one-term government in 2011. The first since 1975 - and good riddance. If they’re on an average income but had aspirations to do better - forget it.
This is a budget that puts reinforced glass into the glass ceiling.
This government is showing its true colours today. It doesn’t want all our people to prosper. It wants them to know their place.
Will there be more children lifted out of poverty after today’s budget? No.
A recent UNICEF survey of the well-being of children puts New Zealand almost last - 24th out of 25 countries. It measured immunisation levels, infant death and early death from injury and illness.
Greece’s economy is collapsing and the streets are on fire as people protest - but they’re way ahead of New Zealand when it comes to looking after children!
Here’s what a respected Professor of Epidemiology in New Zealand said recently “In New Zealand, social injustice is killing and maiming our children on a grand scale” We top the scales for OECD rates of whooping cough, rheumatic fever, pneumonia and other diseases in children.
We spend less than the OECD average on child health, and the only thing that will change as a result of this budget is that this appalling situation will get worse.
28% of our children still live in poverty.
That rate started to decline under the last Labour Progressive government for the first time in decades. Working for Families lifted about 100,000 children out of poverty.
Senior people in the medical profession know what the problem is - and they know what the answer is. The politics of inequality.
Why do we have such high rates of child illness and death? Poverty. And how do you get rid of poverty? You increase people’s incomes, give them decent wages and jobs.
Will there be more jobs after today? No.
There is nothing in this budget to create new jobs. Our unemployment rates have ballooned since this government came to power - to over 7%.
The National government can’t blame the recession. Because at the same time, Australia’s unemployment has dropped to just over 5%.
How many jobs has John Key’s cycle way created so far? None!
What about the nine day fortnight? It was meant to save thousands of jobs - but didn’t.
New Zealand doesn’t have a tax problem - it has a wage problem.
National has no plan to increase wages. If John Key thinks that cutting the top tax rate will stop young doctors or entrepreneurs going overseas, he’s dreaming. Australia’s top tax rate is 45 cents in the dollar - much higher than New Zealand’s.
New Zealand’s tax system compared to the rest of the world has been one of the most progressive for average income earners, according to a recent OECD report.
John Key should ask himself why he left the country to go into the world of international speculation. Did he leave to avoid our high taxes? I doubt it.
I’m sure he left because he could earn more overseas. Tax cuts for the wealthy won’t increase the wage packet of ordinary New Zealanders.
Will the economy grow as a result of the Sheriff’s budget today? No.
There is nothing in this budget to increase our exports.
Nothing to encourage us to save.
Nothing to grow the economy.
No new ideas.
The wealthy few who get a hefty tax cut today will most likely invest the extra cash overseas.
Where’s the money for science and research & development?
John Key has scrapped the $2 billion worth of spending on R&D that we had set aside under a Labour-Progressive government. And what’s he replaced it with? A science advisor and a few ‘vouchers’.
The whole package, including the new vouchers in the budget amount to less than 26% of what business and science would have got under a Labour-Progressive government.
Does this anti-science government think that new technologies will just appear out of thin air?
In the meantime, will most New Zealanders pay more? Yes.
The larger the tax cut National gives to the top income earners, the smaller the amount left over for people on the average wage. Someone has to pay.
More GST at the shops.
Increased property tax will increase rents.
More at the petrol pump.
More for power bills
More for ACC.
More for student loans.
More for early childhood education.
This is not a budget for hardworking New
Zealanders and Kiwi families.
Some voted for this government because they thought the Prime Minister’s ‘rags to riches’ story might rub off on our country.
But it turns out Robin Hood is really the Sheriff of Nottingham with a false smile - and the message is clear.
‘Let them eat cake!’
This budget is a disgrace and this parliament should be both ashamed and angry to receive it.
Let them eat cake!
20/05/10 16:44 Filed in: News Releases
The gap between rich and poor is set to widen after today’s budget, says Jim Anderton MP for Wigram.
“This National led government has shown its true colours today. The CEO of Telecom who reportedly earned $7 million last year, will now get an extra $6608 per week. Those on $600,000 will take home about an extra $500.
Meanwhile working Kiwis on $50,000 will spend about an extra $23 on increased GST at the supermarket, so their tax cut will be a miserly $5.50. More likely it will be wiped out by inflation.
Those on low incomes will pay more as a result of an increase in GST from 12.5% to 15%.
“What is this government saying to families on lower incomes in today’s budget? ‘Let them eat cake!’ It says ‘don’t worry about an increase in GST and rising food prices, because the rich consume more than the poor, so they’ll pay more in GST. Is that meant to make low income families feel better? ‘You might not be able to afford to buy much food - but just think of the GST you’re saving when you don’t eat?’
“There is nothing in this budget to help grow the economy or create jobs. John Key has got rid of $2 billion worth of Research and Development set up by the last Labour-Progressive government and replaced it with his own personal science advisor and just over a quarter of what scientists would have got under our government.
“New Zealand’s rates of increasing income inequality were amongst the worst in the world according to OECD figures. We only started to close that gap under a Labour-Progressive government. Now the gap will widen again.”
A recent UNICEF survey of the well-being of children puts New Zealand almost last - 24th out of 25 countries. It measured immunisation levels, infant death and early death from
injury and illness.
“Here’s what a respected Professor of Epidemiology in New Zealand said recently ‘In New Zealand, social injustice is killing and maiming our children on a grand scale.’ Nothing in this budget is going to change that.
“If you voted for this government because you thought John Key’s ‘rag to riches’ story might rub off on the country, now you know he is no Robin Hood - more a Sheriff of Nottingham”, Jim Anderton said today.
“This National led government has shown its true colours today. The CEO of Telecom who reportedly earned $7 million last year, will now get an extra $6608 per week. Those on $600,000 will take home about an extra $500.
Meanwhile working Kiwis on $50,000 will spend about an extra $23 on increased GST at the supermarket, so their tax cut will be a miserly $5.50. More likely it will be wiped out by inflation.
Those on low incomes will pay more as a result of an increase in GST from 12.5% to 15%.
“What is this government saying to families on lower incomes in today’s budget? ‘Let them eat cake!’ It says ‘don’t worry about an increase in GST and rising food prices, because the rich consume more than the poor, so they’ll pay more in GST. Is that meant to make low income families feel better? ‘You might not be able to afford to buy much food - but just think of the GST you’re saving when you don’t eat?’
“There is nothing in this budget to help grow the economy or create jobs. John Key has got rid of $2 billion worth of Research and Development set up by the last Labour-Progressive government and replaced it with his own personal science advisor and just over a quarter of what scientists would have got under our government.
“New Zealand’s rates of increasing income inequality were amongst the worst in the world according to OECD figures. We only started to close that gap under a Labour-Progressive government. Now the gap will widen again.”
A recent UNICEF survey of the well-being of children puts New Zealand almost last - 24th out of 25 countries. It measured immunisation levels, infant death and early death from
injury and illness.
“Here’s what a respected Professor of Epidemiology in New Zealand said recently ‘In New Zealand, social injustice is killing and maiming our children on a grand scale.’ Nothing in this budget is going to change that.
“If you voted for this government because you thought John Key’s ‘rag to riches’ story might rub off on the country, now you know he is no Robin Hood - more a Sheriff of Nottingham”, Jim Anderton said today.
Anti-science government axes jobs
16/03/10 13:29 Filed in: News Releases
Future growth in the most productive parts of New Zealand’s economy will be reduced because of the Government’s decision to axe forty jobs at AgResearch, Opposition agriculture spokesperson Jim Anderton says.
“Our future prosperity and jobs depend on science and innovation, and the sector where innovation and science makes the most difference in New Zealand is the primary sector.
“But today the government is hacking off over forty jobs, mainly in meat and wool research.
“I thought when the government axed the $700 million Fast Forward primary sector and innovation fund that it was coasting in neutral. But this is actually going backwards.
“Fast Forward was meant to work in partnership with the private sector and with agencies like AgResearch to speed up New Zealand’s economic development. After it was axed, nothing has happened for eighteen months - that’s why demand for AgResearch’s long term research and development is falling.
“Farmers won’t carry all the costs on their own back. They need a commitment from government as well.
“Having canned the innovation fund, the loss of jobs announced today is the direct result of the government’s anti-science policies,” Jim Anderton said.
“Our future prosperity and jobs depend on science and innovation, and the sector where innovation and science makes the most difference in New Zealand is the primary sector.
“But today the government is hacking off over forty jobs, mainly in meat and wool research.
“I thought when the government axed the $700 million Fast Forward primary sector and innovation fund that it was coasting in neutral. But this is actually going backwards.
“Fast Forward was meant to work in partnership with the private sector and with agencies like AgResearch to speed up New Zealand’s economic development. After it was axed, nothing has happened for eighteen months - that’s why demand for AgResearch’s long term research and development is falling.
“Farmers won’t carry all the costs on their own back. They need a commitment from government as well.
“Having canned the innovation fund, the loss of jobs announced today is the direct result of the government’s anti-science policies,” Jim Anderton said.
FAI Money should never have been given a Crown guarantee
11/03/10 14:00 Filed in: News Releases
A decision by FAI to stop raising money from the public without the government guarantee shows the company should never have been given a Crown guarantee in the first place, Progressive Party leader and Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
FAI Money has reportedly written to investors saying the company would no longer be raising money from the public to fund its lending. FAI is owned by Hanover and, through a network of companies, by Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson.
“The Crown guarantee was the only thing that kept FAI Money in the public marketplace,” Jim Anderton said.
“But FAI should not have been in the public marketplace after what happened to Hanover, and the behaviour of Mr Hotchin and Mr Watson.”
Jim Anderton says the Crown guarantee was introduced to make sure there wouldn’t be a run on financial institutions in the difficult global economic conditions of late 2008 and 2009.
“The guarantee was never intended to provide backing for businesses that were not going to cut the mustard in more normal times. Treasury’s guidelines for considering a Crown guarantee were ‘the maintenance of public confidence in New Zealand’s financial system; and maintaining the confidence of general public depositors in New Zealand financial institutions.’
“The guarantee for FAI never met that guideline. The Treasury says factors that should be taken into account in giving a guarantee include the size of the entity and related party exposure, the business practice of the entity, the ‘good character’ and business acumen of the entity and “The track record of the entity.”
“Bill English should never have allowed Hotchin and Watson’s business to get a Crown guarantee and the confirmation today that they will not be seeking funds from the pubic proves it.
“The Crown guarantee was a good policy; but that doesn’t mean everyone should have got it”
Jim Anderton has been raising queries about the Crown guarantee for FAI since early 2009.
In 2008, before the global meltdown and the Crown guarantee, Hanover froze over half a billion of investors’ money.
FAI Money has reportedly written to investors saying the company would no longer be raising money from the public to fund its lending. FAI is owned by Hanover and, through a network of companies, by Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson.
“The Crown guarantee was the only thing that kept FAI Money in the public marketplace,” Jim Anderton said.
“But FAI should not have been in the public marketplace after what happened to Hanover, and the behaviour of Mr Hotchin and Mr Watson.”
Jim Anderton says the Crown guarantee was introduced to make sure there wouldn’t be a run on financial institutions in the difficult global economic conditions of late 2008 and 2009.
“The guarantee was never intended to provide backing for businesses that were not going to cut the mustard in more normal times. Treasury’s guidelines for considering a Crown guarantee were ‘the maintenance of public confidence in New Zealand’s financial system; and maintaining the confidence of general public depositors in New Zealand financial institutions.’
“The guarantee for FAI never met that guideline. The Treasury says factors that should be taken into account in giving a guarantee include the size of the entity and related party exposure, the business practice of the entity, the ‘good character’ and business acumen of the entity and “The track record of the entity.”
“Bill English should never have allowed Hotchin and Watson’s business to get a Crown guarantee and the confirmation today that they will not be seeking funds from the pubic proves it.
“The Crown guarantee was a good policy; but that doesn’t mean everyone should have got it”
Jim Anderton has been raising queries about the Crown guarantee for FAI since early 2009.
In 2008, before the global meltdown and the Crown guarantee, Hanover froze over half a billion of investors’ money.
Equal pay
18/02/10 13:05 Filed in: Speeches
Rally of the NZ Federation of Business and Professional Women for Equal Pay
Jim Anderton with other Opposition MPs and rally organisers at the rally at Parliament on Thursday, 18 February 2010.
The New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women should be proud of itself today.
You continue to keep equal pay for women in the spotlight year after year, and one day I am sure your efforts will be rewarded.
The world is changing all the time.
I see that in 1988, you marked Equal Pay Day with a Red Purse.
Now you’ve progressed to a Red Bag, which is bigger than a purse.
I’d like to think that symbolically, this marks the fact that some progress has been made in closing the pay gap between men and women.
Or perhaps it just means we have a lot more data on inequality and now we need a bag to carry it all around.
But I know that there is more to be done.
I have just done a quick check on Public Service chief executive salaries. The facts bear out that you have a good reason to be here today.
While there are 29 chief executives that are men, there is only six that are women. The male CEOs get an average salary package of between $454,166 to $463,332 – while women CEOs are paid almost to the dollar, $100,000 lower per year.
Equal pay - equity and equality in the workplace - is unfortunately still an issue. So too are conditions and attitudes to women in the workplace.
Paid parental leave has helped. But we can do a lot more to make sure that women don’t get the short straw when it comes to pay.
The Obama administration should be applauded for introducing ground-breaking equal pay legislation in the first few days of taking power.
We have to look at why women end up in lower paid situations, and look at changing not just the pay they get, but also the conditions and the flexibility in the work place.
The recommendations of the Pay and Employment Equity Taskforce should be implemented.
But what did the new Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson do as soon as National came to power?
She closed the Pay and Employment Equity Unit because, she said “it had completed its work”.
Clearly pay equity is not a priority for this government.
Eliminating the 12% gender pay gap has been put on the back burner.
But you have proved you’re in for the long haul, and we will keep fighting alongside you for equal pay.
Good wishes for the battle.
Jim Anderton with other Opposition MPs and rally organisers at the rally at Parliament on Thursday, 18 February 2010.
The New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women should be proud of itself today.
You continue to keep equal pay for women in the spotlight year after year, and one day I am sure your efforts will be rewarded.
The world is changing all the time.
I see that in 1988, you marked Equal Pay Day with a Red Purse.
Now you’ve progressed to a Red Bag, which is bigger than a purse.
I’d like to think that symbolically, this marks the fact that some progress has been made in closing the pay gap between men and women.
Or perhaps it just means we have a lot more data on inequality and now we need a bag to carry it all around.
- I’m proud that in government we introduced paid parental leave, and four weeks paid annual leave,
- Raised the minimum wage by over 70% or $200 per week, and
- Introduced subsidies for pre-school care so that mothers could re-enter the work force.
But I know that there is more to be done.
I have just done a quick check on Public Service chief executive salaries. The facts bear out that you have a good reason to be here today.
While there are 29 chief executives that are men, there is only six that are women. The male CEOs get an average salary package of between $454,166 to $463,332 – while women CEOs are paid almost to the dollar, $100,000 lower per year.
Equal pay - equity and equality in the workplace - is unfortunately still an issue. So too are conditions and attitudes to women in the workplace.
Paid parental leave has helped. But we can do a lot more to make sure that women don’t get the short straw when it comes to pay.
The Obama administration should be applauded for introducing ground-breaking equal pay legislation in the first few days of taking power.
We have to look at why women end up in lower paid situations, and look at changing not just the pay they get, but also the conditions and the flexibility in the work place.
The recommendations of the Pay and Employment Equity Taskforce should be implemented.
But what did the new Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson do as soon as National came to power?
She closed the Pay and Employment Equity Unit because, she said “it had completed its work”.
Clearly pay equity is not a priority for this government.
Eliminating the 12% gender pay gap has been put on the back burner.
But you have proved you’re in for the long haul, and we will keep fighting alongside you for equal pay.
Good wishes for the battle.
National has no plan for the economy
10/02/10 13:13 Filed in: Speeches
Jim Anderton’s Speech in Parliament on the Prime Minister’s statement
On Monday 20 October 2008, National leader, John Key told a press conference that morning that if National was elected and did “a half decent job” at growing the economy, then increasing GST would not be necessary”.
Well, presumably it has not even done a half decent job. This is the man that used to taunt the previous Labour-Progressive government about what it said it should do.
John Key, who had been overseas all those years working and shuffling money around, speculating against the New Zealand dollar and all the rest of it, he told us we had to keep our word.
He said if National did a half decent job it would not have to increase GST. So presumably it has done a lousy job, why doesn’t it resign now and go back and have another press conference?
John Key said to the Wall Street Journal: We can use this recession to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with.
Running faster? We are actually crawling backwards. That is what has happened.
Mr Key in opposition used to taunt the previous Labour-Progressive government about Australia.
We were stagnant in terms of our research and development last year – worse still the $2000 million Fast Forward fund was cancelled. The government said it would make a leap forwards, a step change.
We found out about the step change at the Select Committee when I asked how much money has been invested in research, science and technology in the most important agricultural and horticultural sectors of the New Zealand economy.
The answer from MAF’s CEO was zero – nothing.
That would be bad if it was a mistake, but when in the House I asked David Carter, the Minister of Agriculture, why the Government had made zero investment in agriculture and horticulture, where we earn 65 percent of our overseas exchange, he said it was part of his plan.
So it was not just a mistake, it was not something that he forgot; he meant not to spend any money.
When we look at the Budget this year, $40 million is to be spent – that is over 2 years so that is $20 million a year – compared with the $700 million we put into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which would have built itself up with the private sector and interest to $2000 million.
That is called running when one comes out of a recession. Oh really! How does putting up GST make us run faster than the other countries that we compete with? Well, I can tell members that I was one who opposed GST. That is a matter of record, so no one can taunt me on that.
One of the reasons I did so was that it is the most regressive form of tax known to mankind. Does Mr Key know that the introduction of GST and the halving of the top tax rate that New Zealand introduced – dare I say a Labour Government introduced – in the 1980s - led to the greatest increase of wealth gap between rich and poor in New Zealand’s history.
The top tax rate was 66c in the dollar. It was halved to 33c so the people on the top rate got, and still get, a huge windfall in comparison with what they used to pay.
They got 33c on every dollar over the threshold, and that was a lot of dollars, whereas the poorest people in New Zealand were paying 20c in the dollar and they went down to 15c.
So they got 5c, the richest got 33c, and then they all paid 10 percent GST. That is fair, is it not?
The richest have discretionary income and they do not have to pay it all, whereas the poorest people have to pay all of their money on goods and services. Mr Key is either disingenuous or he thinks we are thick, because he said that is just a small increase in GST.
A small increase – 2.5 percent. If we look at the records, we see that GST income revenue for the government is about $11.55 billion. A 2.5% increase on $11.55 billion is another nearly $2 billion. That is $2000 million. That is just a small increase for Mr Key – he is a slow earner – but that means that every single New Zealander will face an increase on all goods and services they pay for.
That is particularly so for people on low incomes and medium incomes, which represents 75 percent of the country, I might tell members. Seventy-five percent of the country is on around or below the average wage.
Those people will face a $2000 million increase on all the goods and services they pay for. How does that work? And if we are to compensate those people with the $2000 million that we are forcing them to pay, then what is the point.
There is only one point if one is not going to compensate them with the same amount of money, then one cannot spend it.
But no, Mr Key thinks that we can take $2000 million out of the pockets of most New Zealanders, many of whom are below the average wage, and we will compensate them with the same amount of money that we charge them for GST, and that somehow it will all work out on the night.
If one believes that, then one believes in voodoo economics.
The Labour-Progressive Government had a research and development tax credit that would have amounted to about $380 million for science and technology, and we had to fight very hard to get that.
I thought that would be one of the policies that National would be sure to steal. Why would it not? No it cancelled it.
In the speech we heard today, there was talk about improving productivity and the rest of it in the agricultural and horticultural sector. Actually, while we were in government, the agricultural and horticultural had the highest productivity of any sector of the economy as a matter of fact, but it will not have it much longer, because all of that research and development investment has gone.
Here is what John Key said, again, in January 2008. It was a prolific year for John, that year. He stated: “Do you really believe this is as good as it gets for New Zealand? He went on to ask: “Or are you prepared to back yourselves and this country to be greater still?”
Greater still by increasing GST, canning investment in research and technology for the future, and not providing a skill base for tens of thousands of young Kiwis who will make a contribution to Australia, I presume, because that is where they will end up. We used to get hammered for that, but just watch this space as we go through this lot.
John Key’s speech lacks ideas. If one reads the 23 pages of it – I went through it and it is a big ask, I can tell members – one sees that there is not an original idea in it.
If one is looking for a strategic plan for New Zealand to do the sort of stuff he talks about, such as catching up with Australia, he mentions, among other things, rebuilding the Kopu Bridge.
I know that Queensland will be terrified at the thought that we will say that they may well have signed a contract for $100 billion of coal exports to China, but we are building the Kopu Bridge, so they should watch out. I mean is he serious?
While we are going through all this, Australia is up and running, which is the thing that we should have been planning for. We should have had a strategic plan.
I know that late in 2008, if we had won the last election, there would have been meetings of Cabinet over Christmas after that election. I think that the previous Prime Minister would have had meetings at her place over a roast chicken and would have used Christmas Day for an emergency Budget, and we would have had plans to get New Zealand through this and out of it with everything running.
What did we get from this new government?
Those members all went on holiday, and they stayed there.
We were almost wondering if they would ever meet again and whether there would be a Parliament, and one would have thought that everything in the world was hunky-dory, yet the rest of the world was melting down.
This is the result: a no think strategy.
When I was in the Labour government of the day, I used to say that there was one thing worse than a Think Big strategy, and that was a no think strategy. We had that then, and this is it now.
The thing is like Nightmare on Elm Street 3. One would think that someone would have learnt something from what did not work. This did not work.
If it had worked well, then why are we would not be in the problem we are now. If all this had worked well, then why are we in the hole we are in?
We did not go through all the meltdown in the financial sector that people in America went through and all the rest of it, so we had a great chance here.
We had good finances, low public debt, a strong financial balance sheet, and all the rest of it. That is what got us through.
That lot have no plan to deal with the crisis that we face with our own people.
This is the thought that I think I should leave the National members with: 150 relatively unskilled jobs available in a supermarket in South Auckland and 2.500 people queuing up for them.
If that doesn’t register, if those members do not know what that means, then they know nothing about New Zealand.
On Monday 20 October 2008, National leader, John Key told a press conference that morning that if National was elected and did “a half decent job” at growing the economy, then increasing GST would not be necessary”.
Well, presumably it has not even done a half decent job. This is the man that used to taunt the previous Labour-Progressive government about what it said it should do.
John Key, who had been overseas all those years working and shuffling money around, speculating against the New Zealand dollar and all the rest of it, he told us we had to keep our word.
He said if National did a half decent job it would not have to increase GST. So presumably it has done a lousy job, why doesn’t it resign now and go back and have another press conference?
John Key said to the Wall Street Journal: We can use this recession to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with.
Running faster? We are actually crawling backwards. That is what has happened.
Mr Key in opposition used to taunt the previous Labour-Progressive government about Australia.
We were stagnant in terms of our research and development last year – worse still the $2000 million Fast Forward fund was cancelled. The government said it would make a leap forwards, a step change.
We found out about the step change at the Select Committee when I asked how much money has been invested in research, science and technology in the most important agricultural and horticultural sectors of the New Zealand economy.
The answer from MAF’s CEO was zero – nothing.
That would be bad if it was a mistake, but when in the House I asked David Carter, the Minister of Agriculture, why the Government had made zero investment in agriculture and horticulture, where we earn 65 percent of our overseas exchange, he said it was part of his plan.
So it was not just a mistake, it was not something that he forgot; he meant not to spend any money.
When we look at the Budget this year, $40 million is to be spent – that is over 2 years so that is $20 million a year – compared with the $700 million we put into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which would have built itself up with the private sector and interest to $2000 million.
That is called running when one comes out of a recession. Oh really! How does putting up GST make us run faster than the other countries that we compete with? Well, I can tell members that I was one who opposed GST. That is a matter of record, so no one can taunt me on that.
One of the reasons I did so was that it is the most regressive form of tax known to mankind. Does Mr Key know that the introduction of GST and the halving of the top tax rate that New Zealand introduced – dare I say a Labour Government introduced – in the 1980s - led to the greatest increase of wealth gap between rich and poor in New Zealand’s history.
The top tax rate was 66c in the dollar. It was halved to 33c so the people on the top rate got, and still get, a huge windfall in comparison with what they used to pay.
They got 33c on every dollar over the threshold, and that was a lot of dollars, whereas the poorest people in New Zealand were paying 20c in the dollar and they went down to 15c.
So they got 5c, the richest got 33c, and then they all paid 10 percent GST. That is fair, is it not?
The richest have discretionary income and they do not have to pay it all, whereas the poorest people have to pay all of their money on goods and services. Mr Key is either disingenuous or he thinks we are thick, because he said that is just a small increase in GST.
A small increase – 2.5 percent. If we look at the records, we see that GST income revenue for the government is about $11.55 billion. A 2.5% increase on $11.55 billion is another nearly $2 billion. That is $2000 million. That is just a small increase for Mr Key – he is a slow earner – but that means that every single New Zealander will face an increase on all goods and services they pay for.
That is particularly so for people on low incomes and medium incomes, which represents 75 percent of the country, I might tell members. Seventy-five percent of the country is on around or below the average wage.
Those people will face a $2000 million increase on all the goods and services they pay for. How does that work? And if we are to compensate those people with the $2000 million that we are forcing them to pay, then what is the point.
There is only one point if one is not going to compensate them with the same amount of money, then one cannot spend it.
But no, Mr Key thinks that we can take $2000 million out of the pockets of most New Zealanders, many of whom are below the average wage, and we will compensate them with the same amount of money that we charge them for GST, and that somehow it will all work out on the night.
If one believes that, then one believes in voodoo economics.
The Labour-Progressive Government had a research and development tax credit that would have amounted to about $380 million for science and technology, and we had to fight very hard to get that.
I thought that would be one of the policies that National would be sure to steal. Why would it not? No it cancelled it.
In the speech we heard today, there was talk about improving productivity and the rest of it in the agricultural and horticultural sector. Actually, while we were in government, the agricultural and horticultural had the highest productivity of any sector of the economy as a matter of fact, but it will not have it much longer, because all of that research and development investment has gone.
Here is what John Key said, again, in January 2008. It was a prolific year for John, that year. He stated: “Do you really believe this is as good as it gets for New Zealand? He went on to ask: “Or are you prepared to back yourselves and this country to be greater still?”
Greater still by increasing GST, canning investment in research and technology for the future, and not providing a skill base for tens of thousands of young Kiwis who will make a contribution to Australia, I presume, because that is where they will end up. We used to get hammered for that, but just watch this space as we go through this lot.
John Key’s speech lacks ideas. If one reads the 23 pages of it – I went through it and it is a big ask, I can tell members – one sees that there is not an original idea in it.
If one is looking for a strategic plan for New Zealand to do the sort of stuff he talks about, such as catching up with Australia, he mentions, among other things, rebuilding the Kopu Bridge.
I know that Queensland will be terrified at the thought that we will say that they may well have signed a contract for $100 billion of coal exports to China, but we are building the Kopu Bridge, so they should watch out. I mean is he serious?
While we are going through all this, Australia is up and running, which is the thing that we should have been planning for. We should have had a strategic plan.
I know that late in 2008, if we had won the last election, there would have been meetings of Cabinet over Christmas after that election. I think that the previous Prime Minister would have had meetings at her place over a roast chicken and would have used Christmas Day for an emergency Budget, and we would have had plans to get New Zealand through this and out of it with everything running.
What did we get from this new government?
Those members all went on holiday, and they stayed there.
We were almost wondering if they would ever meet again and whether there would be a Parliament, and one would have thought that everything in the world was hunky-dory, yet the rest of the world was melting down.
This is the result: a no think strategy.
When I was in the Labour government of the day, I used to say that there was one thing worse than a Think Big strategy, and that was a no think strategy. We had that then, and this is it now.
The thing is like Nightmare on Elm Street 3. One would think that someone would have learnt something from what did not work. This did not work.
If it had worked well, then why are we would not be in the problem we are now. If all this had worked well, then why are we in the hole we are in?
We did not go through all the meltdown in the financial sector that people in America went through and all the rest of it, so we had a great chance here.
We had good finances, low public debt, a strong financial balance sheet, and all the rest of it. That is what got us through.
That lot have no plan to deal with the crisis that we face with our own people.
This is the thought that I think I should leave the National members with: 150 relatively unskilled jobs available in a supermarket in South Auckland and 2.500 people queuing up for them.
If that doesn’t register, if those members do not know what that means, then they know nothing about New Zealand.
Plan for economy does not stack up
09/02/10 16:00 Filed in: News Releases
The plan for our economy announced by the Government this morning is a huge disappointment, Progressive leader Jim Anderton says.
“National thinks all we need to do to catch up to Australia is increase the price of a loaf of bread, increase the price of a litre of milk, increase the price of a litre of petrol, and put up the price of electricity,” Jim Anderton said.
“This from a prime minister who said before the election, “if National is elected and does a ‘half decent job’ at growing the economy, then increasing GST and the top tax rate will not be necessary.”
“New Zealand needs higher incomes not higher costs.
“The National Government has no plan for jobs, and no plan to increase wages.
“National slashed the R&D tax credit and abolished the two billion dollar Fast Forward fund. When it now says we need more science - those are just words. Its actions tell a different story.
Last year John Key told the Wall Street Journal, “We can use this recession to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with.”
"His plan today will not transform the economy and make us stronger? How does putting up GST make us run faster than countries we compete with?
"Changing the tax system is not economic change. Compare that pathetic response to the Labour-Progressive government’s R&D tax credit of around $350 million, the largest ever company tax cut, a huge programme of personal tax cuts particularly for low to middle income earners and the largest ever investment in science in New Zealand.
“It just doesn’t stack up,” Jim Anderton said in Parliament.
“National thinks all we need to do to catch up to Australia is increase the price of a loaf of bread, increase the price of a litre of milk, increase the price of a litre of petrol, and put up the price of electricity,” Jim Anderton said.
“This from a prime minister who said before the election, “if National is elected and does a ‘half decent job’ at growing the economy, then increasing GST and the top tax rate will not be necessary.”
“New Zealand needs higher incomes not higher costs.
“The National Government has no plan for jobs, and no plan to increase wages.
“National slashed the R&D tax credit and abolished the two billion dollar Fast Forward fund. When it now says we need more science - those are just words. Its actions tell a different story.
Last year John Key told the Wall Street Journal, “We can use this recession to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with.”
"His plan today will not transform the economy and make us stronger? How does putting up GST make us run faster than countries we compete with?
"Changing the tax system is not economic change. Compare that pathetic response to the Labour-Progressive government’s R&D tax credit of around $350 million, the largest ever company tax cut, a huge programme of personal tax cuts particularly for low to middle income earners and the largest ever investment in science in New Zealand.
“It just doesn’t stack up,” Jim Anderton said in Parliament.
FTT better than increasing GST
21/01/10 11:43 Filed in: News Releases
A financial transactions tax is a better option for widening the tax base and reducing income tax than increasing GST, MP for Wigram and Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton says.
“GST is a regressive tax,” Jim Anderton says.
“GST falls hardest on people who spend most of their income every week - low and middle income earners. For people on fixed incomes, like superannuitants, it’s almost impossible to make up for the price rises they would pay at the shops.
“Instead of increasing GST, the government should look at paying for personal tax cuts by introducing a low financial transactions tax.
“A financial transaction tax could be set at a rate that for most transactions would be similar to the fee people pay for using an ATM, EFT-POS or electronic banking.
“A financial transaction tax is fairer than increasing GST because the majority of financial transactions are made by people with large sums of money to move around.
“Moving more of the tax burden to people who move very large sums of money around in search of speculative gains means people who actually work for a living have to pay less of the total tax share.
“James Tobin, the economist who invented the modern financial transaction tax, points out that it would reduce speculation and volatility in financial markets. After the global financial crisis exposed the irresponsibility of the finance sector, the time is right to take a fresh look at the idea.”
For more about financial transaction tax, see this Guardian newspaper article from December 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/07/tobin-tax-climate-change-investment
And this November 2009 column by Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, “a financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1
“GST is a regressive tax,” Jim Anderton says.
“GST falls hardest on people who spend most of their income every week - low and middle income earners. For people on fixed incomes, like superannuitants, it’s almost impossible to make up for the price rises they would pay at the shops.
“Instead of increasing GST, the government should look at paying for personal tax cuts by introducing a low financial transactions tax.
“A financial transaction tax could be set at a rate that for most transactions would be similar to the fee people pay for using an ATM, EFT-POS or electronic banking.
“A financial transaction tax is fairer than increasing GST because the majority of financial transactions are made by people with large sums of money to move around.
“Moving more of the tax burden to people who move very large sums of money around in search of speculative gains means people who actually work for a living have to pay less of the total tax share.
“James Tobin, the economist who invented the modern financial transaction tax, points out that it would reduce speculation and volatility in financial markets. After the global financial crisis exposed the irresponsibility of the finance sector, the time is right to take a fresh look at the idea.”
For more about financial transaction tax, see this Guardian newspaper article from December 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/07/tobin-tax-climate-change-investment
And this November 2009 column by Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, “a financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1
Jim's E-News, November 2009
16/11/09 15:00 Filed in: Newsletters
DENTAL CARE ISSUES FOR NEW ZEALANDERS
I am involving myself in a project to raise the profile of, and extend the services for, dental treatment in New Zealand.
The cost of dental treatment is a significant barrier to lifetime dental care and as a result, neglected teeth and gums are a hidden but critical problem for New Zealand’s healthcare system which needs to be urgently addressed.
It is my strongly held view that a high quality, accessible and affordable dental system should be part of the general medical health system in New Zealand. This would provide a public-private partnership which would enable all of our citizens from their earliest years right through to their last, to have their teeth cared for by qualified dental professionals at an affordable cost.
From one end of New Zealand to the other I have been made aware of the importance of this issue to a large number of our citizens, young and old, and it is well beyond time when action rather than words was seen and heard to be taking place.
I would be grateful to hear from you by email, fax or letter about your thoughts on this vital issue.
Contact me here.
ACC IS THE BEST IN THE WORLD - BIKERS RALLY, CHRISTCHURCH
Let’s be clear about one thing; New Zealand has the best accident compensation scheme in the world. It’s not broken, so why try and fix it; and no matter what Nick Smith tries to tell you - it’s not broke. It has reserves of money. It has over $11 billion of reserves, and last year it collected $1 billion more in levies, than it spent on claims.
Bikers are being unfairly targeted – Nick Smith wants them to pay three times as much in ACC levies as they are paying today.
Today motorcyclists are paying about $252. Tomorrow they will be paying $735.
This is outrageous. And it is completely unnecessary - because ACC can pay its bills without making them pay three times as much.
ACC was set up as a no-fault system to be run by a government-owned company so that everyone who has an accident gets looked after, and at a lower cost than overseas.
It was never intended to penalise certain groups that it saw as ‘high risk’ - otherwise where do you stop? If its bikers today, why not old people who are more likely to fall over than anyone else; why not 6 year boys who play rugby and are more likely to get hurt than kids playing chess?
The point of the scheme was to avoid this situation, and draw on the overall resources of the whole community. So we all pay a bit, and no one is disadvantaged. Every one avoids the very large lawyers’ bills and insurance company profits that have to be paid under a private insurance system.
We gave up the right to sue under this system, in return for the fair treatment of injured people.
The National-led government is playing dirty with the figures. It’s insisting that all imagined accidents in the future should be paid right now by people like the bike riders. But this wasn’t what ACC was set up to do. It was always intended to be a ‘pay as you go’ scheme.
That means the levies received in any one year, pay for the accidents in that year. And that system has been working fine - in fact ACC has even managed to put aside significant resources.
The real agenda here, is to set up ACC for a gradual return to a privately run insurance scheme. Scaremongering about costs is just the Trojan horse. And inside the Trojan horse is a bunch of lawyers and foreign insurance companies, licking their lips and looking forward to getting their hands on your levies!
I am entirely opposed to any private scheme. And I totally reject the National government’s attempt to make bikers pay three times as much.
URGENT INQUIRY INTO MONETARY POLICY NOW
We should put party politics aside and come up with a new approach to monetary policy which supports people in New Zealand who produce tradeable goods, rather than those who speculate on property and take the profits off-shore.
The National-led government and its coalition partners refused to take part in the inquiry, with the PM cynically calling it a ‘stunt’ from the opposition parties.
I don’t believe in the “nothing we can do” stance of this government. We could be looking to remove the incentives for those buying investment properties. Banks need to be encouraged to lend to businesses; and we need to review our tax system which at the moment encourages unproductive property investment and discourages investment in the productive tradeable export goods sector.
We need to look at regulating the banking sector so that ordinary New Zealanders don’t pay (in interest rates or hidden bank fees) while the Australian-owned banks make excessive profits.
With the National-led government complacently sitting on the sidelines, New Zealanders will be the losers for it.
To download the banking inquiry report, go here, or get in touch with my office.
BANKING INQUIRY BACKGROUNDER AND FINDINGS
The ‘big four’ Australian banks control nearly 90% of banking assets in New Zealand. The three New Zealand owned banks have 4% of banking assets.
Have the Banks made a profit?
The combined profits of the ‘big four’ Australian owned banks now exceed the combined profits of all other companies listed on the stock exchange NZX 50 series.
In 2008 Banks earned $3.26 billion; the earnings of the NZX 50 were $2.89 billion.
Did the Banks pass on the cut to the Official Cash Rate (OCR)?
The Reserve Bank cut the OCR from its high of 8.25 % in mid 2008, to only 2.5% today.
But the overseas owned banks reduced interest rates by less than the fall in the OCR. 1% margin in interest rates was not passed on to bank customers. 1% extra interest added $787 million to costs for New Zealand businesses; and 1% higher margin on loans added $460 million to the net interest costs to the farming sector.
The biggest cost was in the housing sector: 1% extra interest cost added over $1.6 billion to mortgage repayments.
New Zealand businesses are suffering
In 2009 bank lending for home loans rose about $3.2 billion (to $164.8 billion). Meanwhile business lending fell by about $3 billion (to $78 billion.)
The effects on the farming sector have been negative
Federated Farmers interest rates survey in June 2009 found that farm business overdraft interest rates had fallen an average of 2.68 % since December 2008. Meanwhile the OCR was cut by 4%.
Ordinary New Zealanders had problems paying their mortgages
In five years, Budgeting and Family Support Services has only seen one family lose their house in a mortgage sale. But in the first three months on 2009, fifteen families had already lost their home.
Have the Banks contributed to overseas debt and a housing bubble?
In the last ten years, personal lending has almost doubled, from $60 billion to $105 billion; most of the lending has been for housing.
Home loans now make up 55% of bank lending, up from 35% ten years ago. The banks borrowed more money to fund property price increases which contributed to a rise in overseas debt.
Between 2003 and 2009 net overseas liabilities rose from $100.6 billion to $176.3 billion; that’s a rise from 76.8% of GDP to 98%.
What have the banks got to do with our volatile exchange rate?
High overseas borrowing has impacted on the exchange rate which is subject to high volatility. The export sector makes up roughly 30% of GDP - about $40 billion per year but suffers the most from currency instability which means uncertain returns.
PROGRESSIVE SUBMISSION ON THE LAW COMMISSION PAPER: ‘ALCOHOL IN OUR LIVES’ I am under no illusion about the challenge involved if we are to seriously reduce the harm caused by alcohol. But doing nothing is not an option.
Alcohol is by far the most damaging drug in the country. It causes between $2-$3 billion dollars worth of economic and social harm each year. The personal cost to families and loved ones is incalculable. How can we measure the cost of a family tragedy?
One of the most damaging drugs we face right now is not even illegal; our kids can buy it in the local dairy; they play sports and have it promoted to them all the time; they see it on TV, on billboards and hear about it on the radio.
The abuse of alcohol amongst our young people is on the rise and it’s destroying lives.
I have been working with others like Dr Doug Sellman of the Otago School of Medicine to raise awareness of the damage that alcohol is causing. We have a unique opportunity right now to do something, through the Law Commission’s review of the legislation to do with the drinking age, the availability and the advertising of alcohol.
Did you know that every advertisement seen by a young person increases the number of drinks they consume by 1%. They become customers for life. And people like you end up picking up the pieces.
Currently, $200,000 per day is spent on marketing and advertising alcohol. About half the marketing is spent on sponsorship.
I welcome the Law Commission’s issues paper which gives New Zealanders a unique opportunity to reform the legal framework in which alcohol is sold, advertised and promoted.
It gives us a chance today to do more to protect New Zealanders from the harm caused by the abuse of alcohol.
The Progressive Party submission calls on the Law Commission to do more in its final recommendations to guide law makers on how to further curb alcohol advertising, particularly to the most vulnerable New Zealanders - the young. I would like to see more options put forward by the Law Commission on how we can greatly reduce the availability of alcohol to young people. I have also given my opinions and made comments on every option put forward in the Law Commission’s paper, ‘Alcohol in our Lives’.
For the full submission: go here.
For my speech to the National CAYAD hui, go here.
"Ten things the alcohol industry won't tell you about alcohol"
Alcohol Action are holding their last two last meetings this week with presenter Dr. Doug Sellman.
The meetings are at: CHRISTCHURCH: Art Gallery Theatre, Tuesday 17th November, 7.30-9pm PORIRUA: Helen Smith Community Room, Wednesday 18th November, 7.30-9pm
There is still time to get in a late submissions to the Law Commission.
Use milk payout to farmers to strengthen industry
It's important that the increase in Fonterra's payout to farmers is used to strengthen the industry, and not squandered.
The increased pay out is very timely for a large number of farmers who have been struggling with higher input prices and enormous costs for financing. Interest rates for many farmers have not come down.
But the risk is that the higher payout will lead to higher farm valuations and in turn to yet more farm indebtedness. That's what happened too often when the milk payout reached $7 a kilo. When the price then dropped, it left a lot of farmers under mortgage stress.
Banks should be careful about getting into the same position of lending against valuations based on favourable milk payouts.
The payout shows New Zealand is well positioned as a food producer to continue to earn a living when global conditions are less than favourable.
When payouts increase as much as this one has, the extra earnings need to be used to strengthen the industry, for example by stronger investment in research and development, and strenthening balance sheets to reduce our exposure to rapacious overseas owned banks.
A generation of kids will be lost – New Zealand must do more
Launch of the Mutima Project in Christchurch
16,000 children are dying from hunger every day because food aid is now at its lowest level in twenty years, but the National government remains determined not to use our aid for ‘poverty reduction.
The head of the United Nation’s World Food Programme recently announced that tens of millions of the world’s poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because some OECD countries have slashed aid after the financial crisis.
The Mutima project is a volunteer organisation and will send a team of cardiac surgeons to Zambia to perform life-saving heart surgery on young adults.
I commend them for the strength of their personal commitment and their determination to serve. We are a stronger and more caring community because of people like these Christchurch surgeons. Because of them, a hundred young Zambians will have a second chance at life.
About 60% of the Zambian population are living on less than a $1 per day.
But where is the urgency from the National government to save a generation of children who will die from starvation if the world does nothing?
The National government has recently announced that it will abolish the goal of ‘poverty reduction’ for our aid, and replace it with a goal of ‘economic development’.
I am a strong champion of economic development but you can’t do much business development if people don’t have enough to eat or clean water to drink.
I want to see the National government do more about bad governance and corruption in some of the poorest countries and see New Zealand get behind a new international Natural Resource Charter which sets out ‘best practice’ in countries with natural resources like oil (or copper in Zambia), so proceeds of those resources go to the poorest people and don’t end up in the pockets of the corrupt.
For the speech, go here.
Who owns the ASB? Not us.
The ASB has been an Australian owned bank for the last two decades, and it is misleading the public when it pretends to be a ‘Kiwi Bank’.
The ABS is running promotional ads claiming ‘We’ve been a Kiwi Bank since 1847’.
The truth is we don’t really know who owns the ASB. We know it is owned 100% by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), but who owns the Commonwealth Bank?
It used to be owned by the Federal Government of Australia but it was privatised in stages beginning in 1991.
Almost half of the current owners of the Commonwealth Bank are ‘nominee’ companies.
That means their identities are hidden behind other well-known companies, like the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).
We don’t really know who owns ASB. All we know for sure is that New Zealand doesn’t.
For the release, go here.
An ‘unfortunate arrangement’
The Auditor General’s findings about Bill English’s accommodation arrangements go significantly further than findings that caused Marion Hobbs and Phillida Bunkle to stand down from ministerial office in 2001. This makes Mr English’s position as finance minister very difficult. I have been in the same position as Mr Key, in having to make a decision on the future of the Minister. A precedent for the right thing to do has been set.
I wrote to the Auditor-General saying Mr English’ arrangements needed scrutiny. The report finds Mr English’s arrangements were not within the rules. The Auditor General’s report states:
The result was that the Crown was renting a property for Mr English from a trust in which he had an interest, and the arrangement was explicitly based on a view that he did not have an interest. Clearly, this was unfortunate.
The report discloses Mr English went to some lengths to arrange his affairs around the accommodation allowance entitlement. That is not a good look for a Minister of Finance.
The Auditor-General’s advice does not even mention other issues that the Prime Minister still needs to consider: that Mr English was giving his Wellington address as his home for the purpose of being a director of a company (incidentally, the company that owns his Dipton investment), but claiming to live in Dipton for the purpose of receiving an accommodation allowance.
A prudent minister might have noticed the contradiction between those two claims.
I have always welcomed the idea of Mr English having his family with him in Wellington. That is not the issue. The question is whether he was right to claim entitlements for doing so. It would not have been in any way objectionable if Mr English had lived in Wellington with his family and claimed an out of town allowance for his occasional trips to Dipton.
For the release, go here.
I am involving myself in a project to raise the profile of, and extend the services for, dental treatment in New Zealand.
The cost of dental treatment is a significant barrier to lifetime dental care and as a result, neglected teeth and gums are a hidden but critical problem for New Zealand’s healthcare system which needs to be urgently addressed.
It is my strongly held view that a high quality, accessible and affordable dental system should be part of the general medical health system in New Zealand. This would provide a public-private partnership which would enable all of our citizens from their earliest years right through to their last, to have their teeth cared for by qualified dental professionals at an affordable cost.
From one end of New Zealand to the other I have been made aware of the importance of this issue to a large number of our citizens, young and old, and it is well beyond time when action rather than words was seen and heard to be taking place.
I would be grateful to hear from you by email, fax or letter about your thoughts on this vital issue.
Contact me here.
ACC IS THE BEST IN THE WORLD - BIKERS RALLY, CHRISTCHURCH
Let’s be clear about one thing; New Zealand has the best accident compensation scheme in the world. It’s not broken, so why try and fix it; and no matter what Nick Smith tries to tell you - it’s not broke. It has reserves of money. It has over $11 billion of reserves, and last year it collected $1 billion more in levies, than it spent on claims.
Bikers are being unfairly targeted – Nick Smith wants them to pay three times as much in ACC levies as they are paying today.
Today motorcyclists are paying about $252. Tomorrow they will be paying $735.
This is outrageous. And it is completely unnecessary - because ACC can pay its bills without making them pay three times as much.
ACC was set up as a no-fault system to be run by a government-owned company so that everyone who has an accident gets looked after, and at a lower cost than overseas.
It was never intended to penalise certain groups that it saw as ‘high risk’ - otherwise where do you stop? If its bikers today, why not old people who are more likely to fall over than anyone else; why not 6 year boys who play rugby and are more likely to get hurt than kids playing chess?
The point of the scheme was to avoid this situation, and draw on the overall resources of the whole community. So we all pay a bit, and no one is disadvantaged. Every one avoids the very large lawyers’ bills and insurance company profits that have to be paid under a private insurance system.
We gave up the right to sue under this system, in return for the fair treatment of injured people.
The National-led government is playing dirty with the figures. It’s insisting that all imagined accidents in the future should be paid right now by people like the bike riders. But this wasn’t what ACC was set up to do. It was always intended to be a ‘pay as you go’ scheme.
That means the levies received in any one year, pay for the accidents in that year. And that system has been working fine - in fact ACC has even managed to put aside significant resources.
The real agenda here, is to set up ACC for a gradual return to a privately run insurance scheme. Scaremongering about costs is just the Trojan horse. And inside the Trojan horse is a bunch of lawyers and foreign insurance companies, licking their lips and looking forward to getting their hands on your levies!
I am entirely opposed to any private scheme. And I totally reject the National government’s attempt to make bikers pay three times as much.
URGENT INQUIRY INTO MONETARY POLICY NOW
We should put party politics aside and come up with a new approach to monetary policy which supports people in New Zealand who produce tradeable goods, rather than those who speculate on property and take the profits off-shore.
The National-led government and its coalition partners refused to take part in the inquiry, with the PM cynically calling it a ‘stunt’ from the opposition parties.
I don’t believe in the “nothing we can do” stance of this government. We could be looking to remove the incentives for those buying investment properties. Banks need to be encouraged to lend to businesses; and we need to review our tax system which at the moment encourages unproductive property investment and discourages investment in the productive tradeable export goods sector.
We need to look at regulating the banking sector so that ordinary New Zealanders don’t pay (in interest rates or hidden bank fees) while the Australian-owned banks make excessive profits.
With the National-led government complacently sitting on the sidelines, New Zealanders will be the losers for it.
To download the banking inquiry report, go here, or get in touch with my office.
BANKING INQUIRY BACKGROUNDER AND FINDINGS
The ‘big four’ Australian banks control nearly 90% of banking assets in New Zealand. The three New Zealand owned banks have 4% of banking assets.
Have the Banks made a profit?
The combined profits of the ‘big four’ Australian owned banks now exceed the combined profits of all other companies listed on the stock exchange NZX 50 series.
In 2008 Banks earned $3.26 billion; the earnings of the NZX 50 were $2.89 billion.
Did the Banks pass on the cut to the Official Cash Rate (OCR)?
The Reserve Bank cut the OCR from its high of 8.25 % in mid 2008, to only 2.5% today.
But the overseas owned banks reduced interest rates by less than the fall in the OCR. 1% margin in interest rates was not passed on to bank customers. 1% extra interest added $787 million to costs for New Zealand businesses; and 1% higher margin on loans added $460 million to the net interest costs to the farming sector.
The biggest cost was in the housing sector: 1% extra interest cost added over $1.6 billion to mortgage repayments.
New Zealand businesses are suffering
In 2009 bank lending for home loans rose about $3.2 billion (to $164.8 billion). Meanwhile business lending fell by about $3 billion (to $78 billion.)
The effects on the farming sector have been negative
Federated Farmers interest rates survey in June 2009 found that farm business overdraft interest rates had fallen an average of 2.68 % since December 2008. Meanwhile the OCR was cut by 4%.
Ordinary New Zealanders had problems paying their mortgages
In five years, Budgeting and Family Support Services has only seen one family lose their house in a mortgage sale. But in the first three months on 2009, fifteen families had already lost their home.
Have the Banks contributed to overseas debt and a housing bubble?
In the last ten years, personal lending has almost doubled, from $60 billion to $105 billion; most of the lending has been for housing.
Home loans now make up 55% of bank lending, up from 35% ten years ago. The banks borrowed more money to fund property price increases which contributed to a rise in overseas debt.
Between 2003 and 2009 net overseas liabilities rose from $100.6 billion to $176.3 billion; that’s a rise from 76.8% of GDP to 98%.
What have the banks got to do with our volatile exchange rate?
High overseas borrowing has impacted on the exchange rate which is subject to high volatility. The export sector makes up roughly 30% of GDP - about $40 billion per year but suffers the most from currency instability which means uncertain returns.
PROGRESSIVE SUBMISSION ON THE LAW COMMISSION PAPER: ‘ALCOHOL IN OUR LIVES’ I am under no illusion about the challenge involved if we are to seriously reduce the harm caused by alcohol. But doing nothing is not an option.
Alcohol is by far the most damaging drug in the country. It causes between $2-$3 billion dollars worth of economic and social harm each year. The personal cost to families and loved ones is incalculable. How can we measure the cost of a family tragedy?
One of the most damaging drugs we face right now is not even illegal; our kids can buy it in the local dairy; they play sports and have it promoted to them all the time; they see it on TV, on billboards and hear about it on the radio.
The abuse of alcohol amongst our young people is on the rise and it’s destroying lives.
I have been working with others like Dr Doug Sellman of the Otago School of Medicine to raise awareness of the damage that alcohol is causing. We have a unique opportunity right now to do something, through the Law Commission’s review of the legislation to do with the drinking age, the availability and the advertising of alcohol.
Did you know that every advertisement seen by a young person increases the number of drinks they consume by 1%. They become customers for life. And people like you end up picking up the pieces.
Currently, $200,000 per day is spent on marketing and advertising alcohol. About half the marketing is spent on sponsorship.
I welcome the Law Commission’s issues paper which gives New Zealanders a unique opportunity to reform the legal framework in which alcohol is sold, advertised and promoted.
It gives us a chance today to do more to protect New Zealanders from the harm caused by the abuse of alcohol.
The Progressive Party submission calls on the Law Commission to do more in its final recommendations to guide law makers on how to further curb alcohol advertising, particularly to the most vulnerable New Zealanders - the young. I would like to see more options put forward by the Law Commission on how we can greatly reduce the availability of alcohol to young people. I have also given my opinions and made comments on every option put forward in the Law Commission’s paper, ‘Alcohol in our Lives’.
For the full submission: go here.
For my speech to the National CAYAD hui, go here.
"Ten things the alcohol industry won't tell you about alcohol"
Alcohol Action are holding their last two last meetings this week with presenter Dr. Doug Sellman.
The meetings are at: CHRISTCHURCH: Art Gallery Theatre, Tuesday 17th November, 7.30-9pm PORIRUA: Helen Smith Community Room, Wednesday 18th November, 7.30-9pm
There is still time to get in a late submissions to the Law Commission.
Use milk payout to farmers to strengthen industry
It's important that the increase in Fonterra's payout to farmers is used to strengthen the industry, and not squandered.
The increased pay out is very timely for a large number of farmers who have been struggling with higher input prices and enormous costs for financing. Interest rates for many farmers have not come down.
But the risk is that the higher payout will lead to higher farm valuations and in turn to yet more farm indebtedness. That's what happened too often when the milk payout reached $7 a kilo. When the price then dropped, it left a lot of farmers under mortgage stress.
Banks should be careful about getting into the same position of lending against valuations based on favourable milk payouts.
The payout shows New Zealand is well positioned as a food producer to continue to earn a living when global conditions are less than favourable.
When payouts increase as much as this one has, the extra earnings need to be used to strengthen the industry, for example by stronger investment in research and development, and strenthening balance sheets to reduce our exposure to rapacious overseas owned banks.
A generation of kids will be lost – New Zealand must do more
Launch of the Mutima Project in Christchurch
16,000 children are dying from hunger every day because food aid is now at its lowest level in twenty years, but the National government remains determined not to use our aid for ‘poverty reduction.
The head of the United Nation’s World Food Programme recently announced that tens of millions of the world’s poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because some OECD countries have slashed aid after the financial crisis.
The Mutima project is a volunteer organisation and will send a team of cardiac surgeons to Zambia to perform life-saving heart surgery on young adults.
I commend them for the strength of their personal commitment and their determination to serve. We are a stronger and more caring community because of people like these Christchurch surgeons. Because of them, a hundred young Zambians will have a second chance at life.
About 60% of the Zambian population are living on less than a $1 per day.
But where is the urgency from the National government to save a generation of children who will die from starvation if the world does nothing?
The National government has recently announced that it will abolish the goal of ‘poverty reduction’ for our aid, and replace it with a goal of ‘economic development’.
I am a strong champion of economic development but you can’t do much business development if people don’t have enough to eat or clean water to drink.
I want to see the National government do more about bad governance and corruption in some of the poorest countries and see New Zealand get behind a new international Natural Resource Charter which sets out ‘best practice’ in countries with natural resources like oil (or copper in Zambia), so proceeds of those resources go to the poorest people and don’t end up in the pockets of the corrupt.
For the speech, go here.
Who owns the ASB? Not us.
The ASB has been an Australian owned bank for the last two decades, and it is misleading the public when it pretends to be a ‘Kiwi Bank’.
The ABS is running promotional ads claiming ‘We’ve been a Kiwi Bank since 1847’.
The truth is we don’t really know who owns the ASB. We know it is owned 100% by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), but who owns the Commonwealth Bank?
It used to be owned by the Federal Government of Australia but it was privatised in stages beginning in 1991.
Almost half of the current owners of the Commonwealth Bank are ‘nominee’ companies.
That means their identities are hidden behind other well-known companies, like the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).
We don’t really know who owns ASB. All we know for sure is that New Zealand doesn’t.
For the release, go here.
An ‘unfortunate arrangement’
The Auditor General’s findings about Bill English’s accommodation arrangements go significantly further than findings that caused Marion Hobbs and Phillida Bunkle to stand down from ministerial office in 2001. This makes Mr English’s position as finance minister very difficult. I have been in the same position as Mr Key, in having to make a decision on the future of the Minister. A precedent for the right thing to do has been set.
I wrote to the Auditor-General saying Mr English’ arrangements needed scrutiny. The report finds Mr English’s arrangements were not within the rules. The Auditor General’s report states:
The result was that the Crown was renting a property for Mr English from a trust in which he had an interest, and the arrangement was explicitly based on a view that he did not have an interest. Clearly, this was unfortunate.
The report discloses Mr English went to some lengths to arrange his affairs around the accommodation allowance entitlement. That is not a good look for a Minister of Finance.
The Auditor-General’s advice does not even mention other issues that the Prime Minister still needs to consider: that Mr English was giving his Wellington address as his home for the purpose of being a director of a company (incidentally, the company that owns his Dipton investment), but claiming to live in Dipton for the purpose of receiving an accommodation allowance.
A prudent minister might have noticed the contradiction between those two claims.
I have always welcomed the idea of Mr English having his family with him in Wellington. That is not the issue. The question is whether he was right to claim entitlements for doing so. It would not have been in any way objectionable if Mr English had lived in Wellington with his family and claimed an out of town allowance for his occasional trips to Dipton.
For the release, go here.
Urgent inquiry into monetary policy now
11/11/09 10:08 Filed in: News Releases
We must put party politics aside and come up with a new approach to monetary policy which supports people in New Zealand who produce tradeable goods, rather than those who speculate on property and take the profits off-shore, says MP for Wigram and Progressive Party leader, Jim Anderton.
The Report from the Parliamentary Banking Inquiry was released today.
The inquiry was held by the Progressive Party, The Labour Party and the Greens. The National-led government and its coalition partners refused to take part in the inquiry.
The report proves that the ‘big four’ Australian owned banks did not pass on all of the cut in the OCR (Official cash Rate). The Reserve Bank cut the OCR from its high in mid 2008 of 8.25 per cent, to only 2.5 per cent today. But the banks kept a one per cent margin in interest rates for themselves. One per cent extra interest added $787 million in costs for New Zealand businesses; $460 million extra to the cost of loans in the farming sector; and $1.6 billion to the cost of mortgage repayments.
“This tells us it doesn’t matter what the Reserve Bank does with interest rates; the big Australian-owned banks will do whatever they want. Changing the OCR rate to try and help businesses or home owners during hard times isn’t working.”
“Fifty organisations and individuals made submissions - from the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association to the Council of Trade Unions. Each of them asked the inquiry to put pressure on the New Zealand parliament and the Reserve Bank to review monetary policy now.
“The government can no longer sit on the side-lines and say ‘there’s nothing we can do’.
“We need to look at how we can remove incentives to invest in property, otherwise we’re headed for another boom and bust cycle in property prices, and another recession. Banks must be encouraged to lend to businesses; and we need to review our tax system which at the moment encourages unproductive property investment and discourages investment in the productive tradeable good export sector.
"We need to look at regulating the banking sector so that ordinary New Zealanders don’t pay (in interest rates or hidden bank fees) while the Australian-owned banks make excessive profits.
“There’s always more we can do. We just need the political will to do it,” says Jim Anderton.
Download the banking inquiry report here. [Pdf, 3.2 Mb]
Visit the banking inquiry website here.
The Report from the Parliamentary Banking Inquiry was released today.
The inquiry was held by the Progressive Party, The Labour Party and the Greens. The National-led government and its coalition partners refused to take part in the inquiry.
The report proves that the ‘big four’ Australian owned banks did not pass on all of the cut in the OCR (Official cash Rate). The Reserve Bank cut the OCR from its high in mid 2008 of 8.25 per cent, to only 2.5 per cent today. But the banks kept a one per cent margin in interest rates for themselves. One per cent extra interest added $787 million in costs for New Zealand businesses; $460 million extra to the cost of loans in the farming sector; and $1.6 billion to the cost of mortgage repayments.
“This tells us it doesn’t matter what the Reserve Bank does with interest rates; the big Australian-owned banks will do whatever they want. Changing the OCR rate to try and help businesses or home owners during hard times isn’t working.”
“Fifty organisations and individuals made submissions - from the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association to the Council of Trade Unions. Each of them asked the inquiry to put pressure on the New Zealand parliament and the Reserve Bank to review monetary policy now.
“The government can no longer sit on the side-lines and say ‘there’s nothing we can do’.
“We need to look at how we can remove incentives to invest in property, otherwise we’re headed for another boom and bust cycle in property prices, and another recession. Banks must be encouraged to lend to businesses; and we need to review our tax system which at the moment encourages unproductive property investment and discourages investment in the productive tradeable good export sector.
"We need to look at regulating the banking sector so that ordinary New Zealanders don’t pay (in interest rates or hidden bank fees) while the Australian-owned banks make excessive profits.
“There’s always more we can do. We just need the political will to do it,” says Jim Anderton.
Download the banking inquiry report here. [Pdf, 3.2 Mb]
Visit the banking inquiry website here.
‘Big four’ banks failed farmers in recession year
16/11/09 09:00 Filed in: Columns
It’s official; the ‘big four’ Australian owned banks failed to pass on the Reserve Bank’s cut in interest rates (the Official Cash Rate or the OCR) and farmers, New Zealand businesses and home owners paid heavily during the worst recession this country has seen since the 1930s.
If you’re a farmer, you already know this because this has been a tough year; not only are you a farmer running your own business, but you’re likely to be a home owner too with a mortgage. You know what it felt like personally. Here’s what the numbers looked like for 2009:
The Reserve Bank cut the OCR from its high in mid 2008 of 8.25 per cent, to only 2.5 per cent today. But a one per cent margin in interest rates was not passed on by the big banks to their customers, to farmers, businesses and home owners. The banks kept it for themselves.
One per cent extra interest added $787 million in costs for New Zealand businesses; and $460 million extra to the cost of loans in the farming sector.
The biggest cost was in the housing sector: home owners paid an extra $1.6 billion in mortgage repayments thanks to the banks holding back that one per cent for themselves.
This tells us it doesn’t matter what the Reserve Bank does with interest rates; the big Australian-owned banks will do whatever they want. Changing the OCR rate to try and help businesses or home owners during hard times hasn’t worked.
All New Zealanders should be worried about that. At the moment the banks have every incentive to borrow more money from overseas so that they can keep lending to anyone wanting to invest in property. They don’t care that this will likely kick start another housing boom and increase New Zealand’s debt, and possibly lead to another recession. It’s not their job to care.
It is the job of the government to care.
I was part of the Banking Inquiry, along with my colleagues in the Labour Party and the Greens. The parliamentary parties who weren’t there should be ashamed. It’s not good enough to say ‘there’s nothing we can do’ to support those who trade with the world and are at the whim of volatile exchange rates and high interest rates at the banks.
We have to find new tools and new ways to support exporters -to support people who produce things rather than those who speculate on properties and take their money off-shore. Otherwise our overseas debt will continue to grow and our quality of life will slip while the property investors get rich.
I want to see an urgent multi-party review of monetary policy. And this time, the government must be there, along with the Reserve Bank. The National Party, Act, The Maori Party and United owe it to New Zealanders to look at the ideas that came up during the Banking Inquiry - from Federated Farmers, the Council for Trade Unions, the Manufacturers and Exporters Association and many others.
We need to look at how we can remove incentives to invest in property, and instead encourage banks to lend to businesses. This could mean a review of our tax system which at the moment encourages unproductive property investment and discourages investment in the productive tradeable good export sector.
We need to look at ways of regulating the banking sector so that ordinary New Zealanders don’t pay (in interest rates or hidden bank fees) while the Australian-owned banks make a profit and take the money off-shore.
It will not be good enough for the government to stand on the side-lines next time, and say “There’s nothing we can do”. There’s always more we can do. We just need the political will to do it.
If you’re a farmer, you already know this because this has been a tough year; not only are you a farmer running your own business, but you’re likely to be a home owner too with a mortgage. You know what it felt like personally. Here’s what the numbers looked like for 2009:
The Reserve Bank cut the OCR from its high in mid 2008 of 8.25 per cent, to only 2.5 per cent today. But a one per cent margin in interest rates was not passed on by the big banks to their customers, to farmers, businesses and home owners. The banks kept it for themselves.
One per cent extra interest added $787 million in costs for New Zealand businesses; and $460 million extra to the cost of loans in the farming sector.
The biggest cost was in the housing sector: home owners paid an extra $1.6 billion in mortgage repayments thanks to the banks holding back that one per cent for themselves.
This tells us it doesn’t matter what the Reserve Bank does with interest rates; the big Australian-owned banks will do whatever they want. Changing the OCR rate to try and help businesses or home owners during hard times hasn’t worked.
All New Zealanders should be worried about that. At the moment the banks have every incentive to borrow more money from overseas so that they can keep lending to anyone wanting to invest in property. They don’t care that this will likely kick start another housing boom and increase New Zealand’s debt, and possibly lead to another recession. It’s not their job to care.
It is the job of the government to care.
I was part of the Banking Inquiry, along with my colleagues in the Labour Party and the Greens. The parliamentary parties who weren’t there should be ashamed. It’s not good enough to say ‘there’s nothing we can do’ to support those who trade with the world and are at the whim of volatile exchange rates and high interest rates at the banks.
We have to find new tools and new ways to support exporters -to support people who produce things rather than those who speculate on properties and take their money off-shore. Otherwise our overseas debt will continue to grow and our quality of life will slip while the property investors get rich.
I want to see an urgent multi-party review of monetary policy. And this time, the government must be there, along with the Reserve Bank. The National Party, Act, The Maori Party and United owe it to New Zealanders to look at the ideas that came up during the Banking Inquiry - from Federated Farmers, the Council for Trade Unions, the Manufacturers and Exporters Association and many others.
We need to look at how we can remove incentives to invest in property, and instead encourage banks to lend to businesses. This could mean a review of our tax system which at the moment encourages unproductive property investment and discourages investment in the productive tradeable good export sector.
We need to look at ways of regulating the banking sector so that ordinary New Zealanders don’t pay (in interest rates or hidden bank fees) while the Australian-owned banks make a profit and take the money off-shore.
It will not be good enough for the government to stand on the side-lines next time, and say “There’s nothing we can do”. There’s always more we can do. We just need the political will to do it.
Research and development: from Fast Forward to slow and slower...
20/10/09 09:04 Filed in: Columns
Column for Canterbury Farmer
One of the strangest moments in the last election campaign was when the National party announced that it would abolish the Fast Forward Fund, and cut tax incentives for our most innovative businesses prepared to invest in research and development in agriculture.
Unfortunately the National-led government has kept that promise, and we're now facing a crisis in funding for research in the primary production sector.
Fast Forward came out of the 20/20 Summit I hosted as Minister of Agriculture at the end of 2007. A key recommendation of the gathering was to create a dedicated fund to finance research and development. The goal was to take each stage of production, from the production of the raw product on farms, to manufacturing and ultimately to markets here and overseas, and to add value at each stage.
In 2008 we announced the launch of the Fast Forward Fund with the intention of using it to catapult the New Zealand economy into the future.
We had a model where the funding was shared between government and the private sector. The Crown made a commitment to put $700 million up front into the fund which was matched by a similar amount from the private sector.
We had a joint Crown/private sector board to oversee the investment and the allocation of funds which was to have a life span of at least a decade to give certainty over a decent period of time.
The Fast Forward was placed under the management of three independent ‘Guardians’ who would invest it. Treasury and MAF estimated that the Fund plus interest would reach $2000M over a ten-year period.
The National-led Government cancelled the Fund.
The Fast Forward board had already held four meetings and was developing its overall strategy and the principles to be used to oversee the allocation to programmes and projects. Suddenly it was stopped and the initial investment from the government of $700 million plus $15 million of interest that it had earned, less the costs of getting it established, was returned.
Minister of Agriculture David Carter has replaced Fast Forward with the 'Primary Growth Partnership’ (PGP) which is apparently now 'up and running' with $30 million to spend in its first year and a total of $160M over the next three years.
Hon. Carter has yet to tell me how many research project proposals the PGP has received, nearly twelve months after Fast Forward was already working.
This is a huge opportunity lost. We are already facing a crisis in research and development. Meat & Wool New Zealand has announced it will stop any wool-related activities because of the loss of the wool levy in the recent referendum. This means there is no more money to fund the research and development of our wool based products.
The recently established Government Taskforce needs to give hope to the wool sector that there is a plan to increase the demand for our wool with a lift of prices for the producers, particularly for the coarse wool sector where research is so badly needed. Companies, like Ice Breaker using fine wool merino are already world leaders when it comes to making the most of research and development to expand their markets.
Finally, though, what the primary production sector really needs is not government taskforces; it needs money to fund research and development, and it needs the certainly of knowing that funds will not be taken away arbitrarily by politicians or government departments.
One of the strangest moments in the last election campaign was when the National party announced that it would abolish the Fast Forward Fund, and cut tax incentives for our most innovative businesses prepared to invest in research and development in agriculture.
Unfortunately the National-led government has kept that promise, and we're now facing a crisis in funding for research in the primary production sector.
Fast Forward came out of the 20/20 Summit I hosted as Minister of Agriculture at the end of 2007. A key recommendation of the gathering was to create a dedicated fund to finance research and development. The goal was to take each stage of production, from the production of the raw product on farms, to manufacturing and ultimately to markets here and overseas, and to add value at each stage.
In 2008 we announced the launch of the Fast Forward Fund with the intention of using it to catapult the New Zealand economy into the future.
We had a model where the funding was shared between government and the private sector. The Crown made a commitment to put $700 million up front into the fund which was matched by a similar amount from the private sector.
We had a joint Crown/private sector board to oversee the investment and the allocation of funds which was to have a life span of at least a decade to give certainty over a decent period of time.
The Fast Forward was placed under the management of three independent ‘Guardians’ who would invest it. Treasury and MAF estimated that the Fund plus interest would reach $2000M over a ten-year period.
The National-led Government cancelled the Fund.
The Fast Forward board had already held four meetings and was developing its overall strategy and the principles to be used to oversee the allocation to programmes and projects. Suddenly it was stopped and the initial investment from the government of $700 million plus $15 million of interest that it had earned, less the costs of getting it established, was returned.
Minister of Agriculture David Carter has replaced Fast Forward with the 'Primary Growth Partnership’ (PGP) which is apparently now 'up and running' with $30 million to spend in its first year and a total of $160M over the next three years.
Hon. Carter has yet to tell me how many research project proposals the PGP has received, nearly twelve months after Fast Forward was already working.
This is a huge opportunity lost. We are already facing a crisis in research and development. Meat & Wool New Zealand has announced it will stop any wool-related activities because of the loss of the wool levy in the recent referendum. This means there is no more money to fund the research and development of our wool based products.
The recently established Government Taskforce needs to give hope to the wool sector that there is a plan to increase the demand for our wool with a lift of prices for the producers, particularly for the coarse wool sector where research is so badly needed. Companies, like Ice Breaker using fine wool merino are already world leaders when it comes to making the most of research and development to expand their markets.
Finally, though, what the primary production sector really needs is not government taskforces; it needs money to fund research and development, and it needs the certainly of knowing that funds will not be taken away arbitrarily by politicians or government departments.
Fonterra capital restructuring
18/09/09 16:43 Filed in: News Releases
The Opposition will be listening very carefully to farmer comment about the proposals, agriculture spokesperson Jim Anderton says.
"New proposals for Fonterra's capital restructuring appear to provide more stability for Fonterra and avoid the trap of opening the back door to overseas ownership.
"It's difficult to balance the ambition of a global multinational with the benefits of a cooperative structure, and if farmers accept the latest proposal then it will be a good sign for the future of Fonterra and of our dairy company that the right balance has been reached.
"But the government should be careful not to bully farmers into the deal. Farmers know better than the government what is best for their own businesses. Government's role is to help where it can make a difference and step in when wider community interests are at stake. It shouldn't replace farmers' own judgments about the best capital structure for them, when farmers have legitimate interests to look out for."
"New proposals for Fonterra's capital restructuring appear to provide more stability for Fonterra and avoid the trap of opening the back door to overseas ownership.
"It's difficult to balance the ambition of a global multinational with the benefits of a cooperative structure, and if farmers accept the latest proposal then it will be a good sign for the future of Fonterra and of our dairy company that the right balance has been reached.
"But the government should be careful not to bully farmers into the deal. Farmers know better than the government what is best for their own businesses. Government's role is to help where it can make a difference and step in when wider community interests are at stake. It shouldn't replace farmers' own judgments about the best capital structure for them, when farmers have legitimate interests to look out for."
Power company profits at the expense of consumers
04/09/09 13:00 Filed in: News Releases
The enormous profit declared by Mighty River Power shows that electricity companies have been overcharging consumers, Progressive MP Jim Anderton says.
He is calling for some of the dividend from the power companies to go to consumers as a rebate instead of the government as a dividend.
“I have record numbers of people approaching my electorate office with problems paying their power bills at the same time that a state owned power company is declaring a record profit, and paying the government a dividend of $230 million dollars.
“One way or another, the profits of the power companies are earned from the consumer paying power bills. The public energy companies are effectively being used as a form of tax – for providing a strategic essential service like electricity.
“I have people like a solo mother with four kids coming to see me with a $450 power bill at the same time that a public energy company is paying the government a special dividend of $150 million.”
Jim Anderton has been highlighting cases in his electorate that include a solo mother with an eleven month old baby who got a power bill for $369 for a four-week period; A low income young working couple in a Housing NZ flat got a power bill for $400 for four weeks, and a superannuitant living alone in his own home got a power bill for $205.
"Many families are wondering how they will pay their bills. Power bills have been driven up by a combination of an early start to winter, with very cold months early this year, and power bills that haverisen faster than inflation. The result is that many low income familiesare frightened to turn their heaters on, even in the middle of winter.
"Instead of making record profits, publicly-owned power companies should be charging consumers less,” Jim Anderton said.
He is calling for some of the dividend from the power companies to go to consumers as a rebate instead of the government as a dividend.
“I have record numbers of people approaching my electorate office with problems paying their power bills at the same time that a state owned power company is declaring a record profit, and paying the government a dividend of $230 million dollars.
“One way or another, the profits of the power companies are earned from the consumer paying power bills. The public energy companies are effectively being used as a form of tax – for providing a strategic essential service like electricity.
“I have people like a solo mother with four kids coming to see me with a $450 power bill at the same time that a public energy company is paying the government a special dividend of $150 million.”
Jim Anderton has been highlighting cases in his electorate that include a solo mother with an eleven month old baby who got a power bill for $369 for a four-week period; A low income young working couple in a Housing NZ flat got a power bill for $400 for four weeks, and a superannuitant living alone in his own home got a power bill for $205.
"Many families are wondering how they will pay their bills. Power bills have been driven up by a combination of an early start to winter, with very cold months early this year, and power bills that haverisen faster than inflation. The result is that many low income familiesare frightened to turn their heaters on, even in the middle of winter.
"Instead of making record profits, publicly-owned power companies should be charging consumers less,” Jim Anderton said.
Families in energy poverty while Brownlee looks for magic pudding solution
12/08/09 14:41 Filed in: News Releases
New recommendations on energy costs provide no hope of quick relief for
households facing huge power bills this year, Progressive Wigram MP Jim
Anderton says.
"Gerry Brownlee is relying on a magic pudding solution that reduces
costs but no one's going to pay.
"Finding a new structure in energy could take years, while there is a
crisis of electricity poverty this winter," Jim Anderton says.
His Wigram electorate office has been inundated with record numbers of
people who can't afford their winter power bills.
For example, a solo mother with an eleven month old baby got a power
bill for $369 for a four-week period. A low income young working couple
in a Housing NZ flat got a power bill for $400 for four weeks, and a
superannuitant living alone in his own home got a power bill for $205.
"Many families are wondering how they will pay their bills. Power bills
have been driven up by a combination of an early start to winter, with
very cold months early this year, and power bills that have risen faster
than inflation.
"There are alternatives. The state of Victoria, for example, provides
low-income households with more than $1 billion a year in concessions
for essential services. It pays a rebate to some households that reduces
the cost of LPG heating gas. In the United Kingdom, the government
provides a winter fuel payment of NZ$750 for pensioners over 60, and it
pays NZ$1200 for the over-80s.
"Today's review shows energy companies are charging too much for power
and some of those profits should be used to help very poor New Zealand
households," Jim Anderton said.
households facing huge power bills this year, Progressive Wigram MP Jim
Anderton says.
"Gerry Brownlee is relying on a magic pudding solution that reduces
costs but no one's going to pay.
"Finding a new structure in energy could take years, while there is a
crisis of electricity poverty this winter," Jim Anderton says.
His Wigram electorate office has been inundated with record numbers of
people who can't afford their winter power bills.
For example, a solo mother with an eleven month old baby got a power
bill for $369 for a four-week period. A low income young working couple
in a Housing NZ flat got a power bill for $400 for four weeks, and a
superannuitant living alone in his own home got a power bill for $205.
"Many families are wondering how they will pay their bills. Power bills
have been driven up by a combination of an early start to winter, with
very cold months early this year, and power bills that have risen faster
than inflation.
"There are alternatives. The state of Victoria, for example, provides
low-income households with more than $1 billion a year in concessions
for essential services. It pays a rebate to some households that reduces
the cost of LPG heating gas. In the United Kingdom, the government
provides a winter fuel payment of NZ$750 for pensioners over 60, and it
pays NZ$1200 for the over-80s.
"Today's review shows energy companies are charging too much for power
and some of those profits should be used to help very poor New Zealand
households," Jim Anderton said.
Electricity poverty crisis
05/08/09 12:00 Filed in: News Releases
Electricity poverty crisis
There is a crisis of electricity poverty underway in New Zealand this winter, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
His electorate office has been inundated with record numbers of people who can’t afford their winter power bills.
Examples include:
“What is a solo mum with four kids meant to do with a power bill of $400 for four weeks? All four children have recurrent upper and lower respiratory tract infections. That is what happens when you have electricity poverty. Health problems that cost much more than the power bill.
“I understand that Housing New Zealand is not even allowing energy community action to enter homes to undertake a report on insulation and heating options.
“There is no other expense that is similar to electricity bills - a seasonal spike that is an unavoidable expense, unpredictable and sometimes quite extreme in the context of a family budget;
“There are alternatives. The state of Victoria, for example, provides low-income households with more than $1 billion a year in concessions for essential services. It pays a rebate to some households that reduces the cost of LPG heating gas.
“In the United Kingdom, the government provides a winter fuel payment of NZ$750 for pensioners over 60, and it pays NZ$1200 for the over-80s.
“I believe we need some urgent intervention to help New Zealand homes. Energy prices have been rising steadily for around fifteen years. That has now combined with a very cold couple of months.
“The result is electricity poverty and real hardship for thousands of New Zealanders,” Jim Anderton said.
There is a crisis of electricity poverty underway in New Zealand this winter, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
His electorate office has been inundated with record numbers of people who can’t afford their winter power bills.
Examples include:
- A solo mother with an eleven month old baby got a power bill for $369 for a four-week period. She has a wood burner but can’t afford wood. She has a medical certificate from her GP about the respiratory condition of her baby. She lives in a Housing New Zealand home, but can’t get a heat pump or carpet to help keep the house warm. How is she supposed to pay that bill?
- A young couple in another Housing NZ home have one source of power – a wall heater. They got a power bill for $400 for four weeks. These are working people on a very low income, already struggling to pay their rent. There is paint peeling off the walls because of mould. They are on the waiting list for a heat pump, but won’t be getting it before the winter is over.
- A young solo mother with four children came to my office with a power account of $400 for four weeks. They are in a Housing New Zealand home with a log burner, and on the urgent waiting list for a heat pump.
- I had a superannuitant who came to see me, living in his own home, alone. He got a power bill for $205. If you are living on a fixed income and you get a power bill of $205 for four weeks, what are you supposed to do?
“What is a solo mum with four kids meant to do with a power bill of $400 for four weeks? All four children have recurrent upper and lower respiratory tract infections. That is what happens when you have electricity poverty. Health problems that cost much more than the power bill.
“I understand that Housing New Zealand is not even allowing energy community action to enter homes to undertake a report on insulation and heating options.
“There is no other expense that is similar to electricity bills - a seasonal spike that is an unavoidable expense, unpredictable and sometimes quite extreme in the context of a family budget;
“There are alternatives. The state of Victoria, for example, provides low-income households with more than $1 billion a year in concessions for essential services. It pays a rebate to some households that reduces the cost of LPG heating gas.
“In the United Kingdom, the government provides a winter fuel payment of NZ$750 for pensioners over 60, and it pays NZ$1200 for the over-80s.
“I believe we need some urgent intervention to help New Zealand homes. Energy prices have been rising steadily for around fifteen years. That has now combined with a very cold couple of months.
“The result is electricity poverty and real hardship for thousands of New Zealanders,” Jim Anderton said.
Address in Reply debate
10/12/08 17:00 Filed in: Speeches
Mr Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the government on their achievement in winning the general election and the confidence and trust of many New Zealanders.
The responsibility the public has handed them is enormous.
And though I strongly oppose some of the plans they have made for New Zealand, as a loyal New Zealander the Government has my very best wishes for success in their stewardship of our economy and our country.
I hope their promises will come true.
They promised to make significant reductions in crime.
They promised New Zealanders would stop leaving to live a while in other countries.
They promised our wages would equal or pass the wages of Australians.
They promised they could radically cut taxes on ordinary working families and increase spending on all our social services at the same time.
They promised the government wouldn’t overtax New Zealanders with fiscal surpluses, nor project deficits into the future; but it would instead berth the fiscal supertanker precisely on a low tax, high-spending button every single budget.
The Prime Minister travelled to very disadvantaged streets and promised we would no longer have pockets of deprivation in our cities where some kids are left behind in poverty.
He promised all our children would be able to read and write because the testing they introduce to the education system will make all the difference in the world.
He promised us world class infrastructure, the fastest broadband in the world, and an end to disputes over water allocation, instant resource management decisions and new motorways where today there are only broken dirt tracks.
The prime minister spent the election campaign travelling to every marginal seat and making solemn pledges of unbudgeted Think Big spend ups totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. And all those towns and cities are now patiently expecting him to deliver.
So I say to the government - good luck with all that!
There is not a single item on that list that I wouldn’t wish them to succeed in delivering.
As promises go, they are slightly more ambitious than I would have made. I would have recommended that promising absolutely everything to absolutely everybody risked disappointing someone sooner or later.
However, I will be the first to congratulate the government if it pulls off a significant portion of its stunningly immodest programme.
It will start its term this week with a swag of legislation.
It won’t send those new laws to select committee, as democracy and good government would require.
This is a government that campaigned in opposition against what it said was the end of democracy.
In Opposition it promised a fresh new standard of good government.
And its very first act in government is to throw out democratic standards like select committee hearings on its proposals.
The government is entitled, of course, to put in place the policy it has a mandate for.
But it makes a mistake if it thinks every bill it drafts will be perfect at the outset.
So it starts out with the defining combination of mediocrity - weakness and arrogance.
Too weak to hold public hearings on its laws.
Too insecure in the strength of its ideas to truly believe that they will hold up under scrutiny.
Too arrogant to admit its ideas could be improved.
Too mediocre to deliver on the promises it has made to New Zealand.
Already in the short month since the election we have seen one example of a weak arrogant government in action: its reaction to the potential ACC budget.
I have listened to ministers bumble through this issue with growing amazement that anyone could enter government so little prepared for its challenges.
Confronted with a change in the actuarial calculation facing ACC, ministers panicked.
This is an inexperienced government. It has yet to understand that officials will come to them every month, perhaps every week, demanding more money for something they say faces a crisis.
This week it is ACC.
Next week it will be the hospital system. Will they panic again when DHBs report their annual deficits?
Let me make some predictions: Some defence and IT projects will suddenly develop cost over runs worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Some SOEs will reduce their profit projections from rosy to deficits. They will demand huge capital injections to remain viable.
A new biosecurity scare will need tens of millions of dollars to eradicate or control.
Every other week, another mundane crisis will come before Cabinet.
Ministers need to be strong enough to deal with them.
But what did we get in the ACC episode? Did we get strength? Did we get sophistication? Did we get the wisdom that says - yes, ACC actuarial calculations go up and down?
No. We got the arrogance that is already beginning to look like the colour of this government. We got a massive over-reaction. Even a ministerial inquiry.
The prime minister has set a low bar for ministerial inquiries and we will be having a lot of them at this rate.
They need to toughen up.
They need to toughen up because they can’t have the free lunch their policy promised.
They will have to make some hard choices.
In 1999, the last government was elected with Crown net debt over 20 per cent of GDP.
By last year, that net debt had gone.
We had positive net financial assets.
Now this National government wants to blow it all again.
Treasury won’t report its current set of forecasts for Crown debt until after the government’s new laws have been passed under urgency.
In other words, they will spend the money before they know whether they even have it.
This is what National always does in government - it takes from the future for its short term advantage today.
National’s rushed increases in overseas borrowing are not to strengthen our economy.
They aren’t to fund more research and development; National is cutting that.
It’s not increasing borrowing to invest in higher education standards.
It’s not increasing borrowing to promote exports as a proportion of GDP.
It’s not increasing overseas borrowing to strengthen our regions or to create more jobs.
No, the increased borrowing is to fund additional personal tax cuts.
Those cuts are more generous to the most affluent, rather than to the people who are most vulnerable in a global economic downturn.
Someone in the future will have to pay for National’s irresponsibility.
When you borrow from overseas to splurge on tax cuts for people who need them least - someone has to pay for it.
Someone in the future will have to pay more tax. Someone in the future will have their services cut.
And the problem is being compounded because National is reducing the ability of kiwis to create their own nest eggs.
The party that used to say it was all about personal responsibility is slashing Kiwisaver to pieces.
At the very time when we most need to strengthen New Zealand for the future, the National government is doing the opposite.
It is a mediocre government with mediocre ideas about how to meet the challenges New Zealand faces.
How mediocre?
The very first bill they announced today is the Tax bill.
And the centre piece of that bill is the largest ever increase in tax on business in New Zealand.
The very first thing this government does is to increase tax on innovation.
The very first thing it does is to say we have too much innovation in New Zealand.
Of all the criticisms I have ever heard of the New Zealand economy, National’s claim we have too much innovation, and too much research and development is the silliest.
But from this day forward, National will always be the party of higher tax on business.
It will always be the party that imposed the highest ever increase in the total business tax burden.
And it will reap the consequences in poorer long term economic performance.
Let me make a prediction: Under this government, unemployment will rise. Economic growth will be slower than over the average of the last nine years. The wage gap with Australia will grow.
That is what a weak government with no vision will accomplish?
Let me spell out some more visionary ideas for how New Zealand might prosper in the coming years and months, as the rainfall of global economic crisis both threatens us, and presents us with an unprecedented opportunity.
First, they should increase, not reduce, New Zealanders’ ability to own more assets here and around the world.
And the way to do that is to push for more saving and investment.
The best way to protect the vulnerable in these troubled economic times globally is to direct tax cuts most heavily to those who are most vulnerable - not to those who are most able to protect themselves.
But what does this government plan to do?
It plans to give the bulk of tax cuts to the highest income earners. It plans to give least to those who need it most.
And as the government invests and looks to stimulate the economy through the global downturn, it could ensure that it invests in measures that make the most difference to those who need help the most.
Instead of capping state housing, it could invest in more housing.
As we read in the news this morning of thousands of predicted job losses in the construction industry, there has seldom been a more opportune time to build more state houses, to employ those builders and construction workers and to make home ownership more affordable for New Zealand families.
A visionary government would look at how it can improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders, instead of how it can get away with stripping as many services as possible.
I recommend to the new government that it looks at ways to make dental care more affordable and accessible for New Zealanders. I will be bringing some more ideas about how to do that into this parliament, as I promised I would do during the election campaign.
And I will also bring forward some more ideas on reducing crime.
Sixty percent of New Zealanders who are arrested are affected by alcohol at the time of the offending for which they are arrested. Two out of three arrests are alcohol related.
And the evidence shows very strongly that the problem has got much worse since alcohol laws were relaxed and alcohol became much more widely available.
If you want a common element in the crime spree in South Auckland this year, it’s hard to go past the easy availability of alcohol.
Alcohol is available on street corners everywhere, at all hours, promoted heavily in all media and sold in ever-increasing quantities to teenagers.
But there wasn’t a word about that in the speech from the throne.
Instead, the government blames P. It blames sentencing. Well P is a problem, but ask any expert, ask any police officer - what causes the most social and human damage in New Zealand, day in and day out - and the answer is alcohol abuse.
And that is not because alcohol is intrinsically the most dangerous drug, but because it is the most widely available drug.
So I will be bringing proposals to this House to make alcohol less available and I challenge the government to act on them. Because if you are in favour of the unlimited availability of alcohol, you are pro-crime.
And finally I want to say that if there is one area where we have much more to do, it is poverty, both here in New Zealand and globally.
I heard the pledges of the government in the speech from the Throne to end the cycle of disadvantage. That is a worthy ambition and I support it. But I listened hard for how they are going to do it, and the cupboard of ideas is as bare as the food cupboards of some of our most impoverished homes.
I have watched around the world with fascination at the speed with which governments have been able to act to bail out huge companies and banks when they have been in desperate need.
They have shown that with goodwill, action is possible to help in an emergency. That governments can act to help when help is needed.
And it leaves a question for all of us in this parliament - if we can do that for big companies and big banks in times of crisis, why can’t we do it for people in crisis?
Why can’t we do it for the hundreds of millions of people who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have clean water, who can’t hope for basic medicine? Why can’t we bail them out?
New Zealand should be a voice for them internationally, and a voice for the compelling new ideas that are emerging internationally to solve these global problems.
At a time when global crisis threatens to deepen global poverty and darken even further the skies over the lives of the world’s least privileged, we should be saying that if the world can offer crisis help to the strong, then we must also offer emergency bailout for the weakest and poorest.
I call on our government to work constructively across party lines to see how New Zealand can use our almost unique position in the world as an efficient food producer to make a difference.
And I pledge my support for any efforts they make to do so.
The responsibility the public has handed them is enormous.
And though I strongly oppose some of the plans they have made for New Zealand, as a loyal New Zealander the Government has my very best wishes for success in their stewardship of our economy and our country.
I hope their promises will come true.
They promised to make significant reductions in crime.
They promised New Zealanders would stop leaving to live a while in other countries.
They promised our wages would equal or pass the wages of Australians.
They promised they could radically cut taxes on ordinary working families and increase spending on all our social services at the same time.
They promised the government wouldn’t overtax New Zealanders with fiscal surpluses, nor project deficits into the future; but it would instead berth the fiscal supertanker precisely on a low tax, high-spending button every single budget.
The Prime Minister travelled to very disadvantaged streets and promised we would no longer have pockets of deprivation in our cities where some kids are left behind in poverty.
He promised all our children would be able to read and write because the testing they introduce to the education system will make all the difference in the world.
He promised us world class infrastructure, the fastest broadband in the world, and an end to disputes over water allocation, instant resource management decisions and new motorways where today there are only broken dirt tracks.
The prime minister spent the election campaign travelling to every marginal seat and making solemn pledges of unbudgeted Think Big spend ups totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. And all those towns and cities are now patiently expecting him to deliver.
So I say to the government - good luck with all that!
There is not a single item on that list that I wouldn’t wish them to succeed in delivering.
As promises go, they are slightly more ambitious than I would have made. I would have recommended that promising absolutely everything to absolutely everybody risked disappointing someone sooner or later.
However, I will be the first to congratulate the government if it pulls off a significant portion of its stunningly immodest programme.
It will start its term this week with a swag of legislation.
It won’t send those new laws to select committee, as democracy and good government would require.
This is a government that campaigned in opposition against what it said was the end of democracy.
In Opposition it promised a fresh new standard of good government.
And its very first act in government is to throw out democratic standards like select committee hearings on its proposals.
The government is entitled, of course, to put in place the policy it has a mandate for.
But it makes a mistake if it thinks every bill it drafts will be perfect at the outset.
So it starts out with the defining combination of mediocrity - weakness and arrogance.
Too weak to hold public hearings on its laws.
Too insecure in the strength of its ideas to truly believe that they will hold up under scrutiny.
Too arrogant to admit its ideas could be improved.
Too mediocre to deliver on the promises it has made to New Zealand.
Already in the short month since the election we have seen one example of a weak arrogant government in action: its reaction to the potential ACC budget.
I have listened to ministers bumble through this issue with growing amazement that anyone could enter government so little prepared for its challenges.
Confronted with a change in the actuarial calculation facing ACC, ministers panicked.
This is an inexperienced government. It has yet to understand that officials will come to them every month, perhaps every week, demanding more money for something they say faces a crisis.
This week it is ACC.
Next week it will be the hospital system. Will they panic again when DHBs report their annual deficits?
Let me make some predictions: Some defence and IT projects will suddenly develop cost over runs worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Some SOEs will reduce their profit projections from rosy to deficits. They will demand huge capital injections to remain viable.
A new biosecurity scare will need tens of millions of dollars to eradicate or control.
Every other week, another mundane crisis will come before Cabinet.
Ministers need to be strong enough to deal with them.
But what did we get in the ACC episode? Did we get strength? Did we get sophistication? Did we get the wisdom that says - yes, ACC actuarial calculations go up and down?
No. We got the arrogance that is already beginning to look like the colour of this government. We got a massive over-reaction. Even a ministerial inquiry.
The prime minister has set a low bar for ministerial inquiries and we will be having a lot of them at this rate.
They need to toughen up.
They need to toughen up because they can’t have the free lunch their policy promised.
They will have to make some hard choices.
In 1999, the last government was elected with Crown net debt over 20 per cent of GDP.
By last year, that net debt had gone.
We had positive net financial assets.
Now this National government wants to blow it all again.
Treasury won’t report its current set of forecasts for Crown debt until after the government’s new laws have been passed under urgency.
In other words, they will spend the money before they know whether they even have it.
This is what National always does in government - it takes from the future for its short term advantage today.
National’s rushed increases in overseas borrowing are not to strengthen our economy.
They aren’t to fund more research and development; National is cutting that.
It’s not increasing borrowing to invest in higher education standards.
It’s not increasing borrowing to promote exports as a proportion of GDP.
It’s not increasing overseas borrowing to strengthen our regions or to create more jobs.
No, the increased borrowing is to fund additional personal tax cuts.
Those cuts are more generous to the most affluent, rather than to the people who are most vulnerable in a global economic downturn.
Someone in the future will have to pay for National’s irresponsibility.
When you borrow from overseas to splurge on tax cuts for people who need them least - someone has to pay for it.
Someone in the future will have to pay more tax. Someone in the future will have their services cut.
And the problem is being compounded because National is reducing the ability of kiwis to create their own nest eggs.
The party that used to say it was all about personal responsibility is slashing Kiwisaver to pieces.
At the very time when we most need to strengthen New Zealand for the future, the National government is doing the opposite.
It is a mediocre government with mediocre ideas about how to meet the challenges New Zealand faces.
How mediocre?
The very first bill they announced today is the Tax bill.
And the centre piece of that bill is the largest ever increase in tax on business in New Zealand.
The very first thing this government does is to increase tax on innovation.
The very first thing it does is to say we have too much innovation in New Zealand.
Of all the criticisms I have ever heard of the New Zealand economy, National’s claim we have too much innovation, and too much research and development is the silliest.
But from this day forward, National will always be the party of higher tax on business.
It will always be the party that imposed the highest ever increase in the total business tax burden.
And it will reap the consequences in poorer long term economic performance.
Let me make a prediction: Under this government, unemployment will rise. Economic growth will be slower than over the average of the last nine years. The wage gap with Australia will grow.
That is what a weak government with no vision will accomplish?
Let me spell out some more visionary ideas for how New Zealand might prosper in the coming years and months, as the rainfall of global economic crisis both threatens us, and presents us with an unprecedented opportunity.
First, they should increase, not reduce, New Zealanders’ ability to own more assets here and around the world.
And the way to do that is to push for more saving and investment.
The best way to protect the vulnerable in these troubled economic times globally is to direct tax cuts most heavily to those who are most vulnerable - not to those who are most able to protect themselves.
But what does this government plan to do?
It plans to give the bulk of tax cuts to the highest income earners. It plans to give least to those who need it most.
And as the government invests and looks to stimulate the economy through the global downturn, it could ensure that it invests in measures that make the most difference to those who need help the most.
Instead of capping state housing, it could invest in more housing.
As we read in the news this morning of thousands of predicted job losses in the construction industry, there has seldom been a more opportune time to build more state houses, to employ those builders and construction workers and to make home ownership more affordable for New Zealand families.
A visionary government would look at how it can improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders, instead of how it can get away with stripping as many services as possible.
I recommend to the new government that it looks at ways to make dental care more affordable and accessible for New Zealanders. I will be bringing some more ideas about how to do that into this parliament, as I promised I would do during the election campaign.
And I will also bring forward some more ideas on reducing crime.
Sixty percent of New Zealanders who are arrested are affected by alcohol at the time of the offending for which they are arrested. Two out of three arrests are alcohol related.
And the evidence shows very strongly that the problem has got much worse since alcohol laws were relaxed and alcohol became much more widely available.
If you want a common element in the crime spree in South Auckland this year, it’s hard to go past the easy availability of alcohol.
Alcohol is available on street corners everywhere, at all hours, promoted heavily in all media and sold in ever-increasing quantities to teenagers.
But there wasn’t a word about that in the speech from the throne.
Instead, the government blames P. It blames sentencing. Well P is a problem, but ask any expert, ask any police officer - what causes the most social and human damage in New Zealand, day in and day out - and the answer is alcohol abuse.
And that is not because alcohol is intrinsically the most dangerous drug, but because it is the most widely available drug.
So I will be bringing proposals to this House to make alcohol less available and I challenge the government to act on them. Because if you are in favour of the unlimited availability of alcohol, you are pro-crime.
And finally I want to say that if there is one area where we have much more to do, it is poverty, both here in New Zealand and globally.
I heard the pledges of the government in the speech from the Throne to end the cycle of disadvantage. That is a worthy ambition and I support it. But I listened hard for how they are going to do it, and the cupboard of ideas is as bare as the food cupboards of some of our most impoverished homes.
I have watched around the world with fascination at the speed with which governments have been able to act to bail out huge companies and banks when they have been in desperate need.
They have shown that with goodwill, action is possible to help in an emergency. That governments can act to help when help is needed.
And it leaves a question for all of us in this parliament - if we can do that for big companies and big banks in times of crisis, why can’t we do it for people in crisis?
Why can’t we do it for the hundreds of millions of people who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have clean water, who can’t hope for basic medicine? Why can’t we bail them out?
New Zealand should be a voice for them internationally, and a voice for the compelling new ideas that are emerging internationally to solve these global problems.
At a time when global crisis threatens to deepen global poverty and darken even further the skies over the lives of the world’s least privileged, we should be saying that if the world can offer crisis help to the strong, then we must also offer emergency bailout for the weakest and poorest.
I call on our government to work constructively across party lines to see how New Zealand can use our almost unique position in the world as an efficient food producer to make a difference.
And I pledge my support for any efforts they make to do so.
Why is National guaranteeing FAI Finance?
25/02/09 13:28 Filed in: News Releases | Backgrounder
A taxpayer guarantee for a finance company owned by Hanover has Wigram’s Progressive MP Jim Anderton puzzled. The government has given a Crown guarantee to FAI Finance - wholly owned by Hanover and, through a network of companies, by Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson.
“The absolutely top policy guidelines specified by Treasury for considering a Crown guarantee are ‘the maintenance of public confidence in New Zealand’s financial system; and maintaining the confidence of general public depositors in New Zealand financial institutions.’ It is not clear how a guarantee for Hanover companies fits that guideline,” Jim Anderton said.
The Treasury says factors that should be taken into account in giving a guarantee include the size of the entity and related party exposure, the business practice of the entity, the ‘good character’ and business acumen of the entity and “The track record of the entity.”
Last year Hanover froze over half a billion of investors money and investors approved a recovery plan in December.
In June last year, the latest date recorded in its prospectus issued this month, FAI had assets in loans worth a total of $28,582,000, at an average interest rate of 21.63%. This sum included $15,119,000 due in 2-5 years. Investors had $18,542,000 in FAI at an average interest rate of 9.9%. Among those entitled to their money back, $6,468,000 was on call, $7,514,000 due in 6-12 months, and $382,000 due in more than two years.
The Crown receives a fee for the guarantee, which could be worth as little as $28,000 a year.
Jim Anderton said a Crown guarantee to Hanover is a strange response to the financial crisis.
“The point of the guarantee is to prevent the entire deposit base of New Zealand fleeing. But there is still room for non-guaranteed businesses that should be able to charge an interest rate reflecting their risk. Hanover is the sort of company that the market can make its own decisions about.
“Mr Hotchin and Mr Watson appear to be affluent men and it is hard to see why they shouldn’t give the guarantee from their own resources instead of those of the Crown.”
Who owns FAI Finance?
Companies Office records, 24 February 2009
FAI Finance
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 15,766,588 - all held by Hanover Finance
Hanover Finance
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 71,651-596
Hanover Capital
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 5,000,000 all owned by Hanover Financial Services
Hanover Financial Services
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 13,303,620 all owned by Hanover Group.
Hanover Group
Directors: Mark Flay
Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Eric Watson
Shares: 207,327,000 all owned by Hanover Group Holdings
Hanover Group Holdings
Directors: Mark Flay
Mark Hotchin
Eric Watson
Shares: 87,871,057
Of these:
Hotchin Investments
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Dwayne McGorman
Shares: 39,500,000 all owned by Hotchin Trustee Ltd
Hotchin Trustee Ltd
Directors: John Radley
Tony Thomas
Shares: 1000, all owned by the directors (= trustees).
Forefront Investments
Directors: Leslie Archer
Mark Flay
Eric Watson
Shares: 596,933;
Of these:
Peak NZ
Directors: Bruce Armitage
Don Stanway
Eric Watson
Shares: 100, all owned by Foreshore Investments
Foreshore Investments
Directors: Leslie Archer
Mark Flay
Shares: 100, all owned by Cire Trust
Cire Trust
Directors: Mark Flay
Eric Watson
Shares: 100, all owned by Eric Watson.
FAI’s loans/deposits
FAI Prospectus 7, registered 9 February 2009.
At 20 June 2008, FAI had assets in loans worth a total of $28,582,000, at an average interest rate of 21.63%.
This sum included $15,119,000 due in 2-5 years.
At the same date it had deposit liabilities (i.e. Money that investors have invested in FAI securities) 0f $18,542,000, at an average interest rate of 9.9%.
This included 6,468,000 on call, $7,514,000 due in 6-12 months, and $382,000 due in more than two years.
“The absolutely top policy guidelines specified by Treasury for considering a Crown guarantee are ‘the maintenance of public confidence in New Zealand’s financial system; and maintaining the confidence of general public depositors in New Zealand financial institutions.’ It is not clear how a guarantee for Hanover companies fits that guideline,” Jim Anderton said.
The Treasury says factors that should be taken into account in giving a guarantee include the size of the entity and related party exposure, the business practice of the entity, the ‘good character’ and business acumen of the entity and “The track record of the entity.”
Last year Hanover froze over half a billion of investors money and investors approved a recovery plan in December.
In June last year, the latest date recorded in its prospectus issued this month, FAI had assets in loans worth a total of $28,582,000, at an average interest rate of 21.63%. This sum included $15,119,000 due in 2-5 years. Investors had $18,542,000 in FAI at an average interest rate of 9.9%. Among those entitled to their money back, $6,468,000 was on call, $7,514,000 due in 6-12 months, and $382,000 due in more than two years.
The Crown receives a fee for the guarantee, which could be worth as little as $28,000 a year.
Jim Anderton said a Crown guarantee to Hanover is a strange response to the financial crisis.
“The point of the guarantee is to prevent the entire deposit base of New Zealand fleeing. But there is still room for non-guaranteed businesses that should be able to charge an interest rate reflecting their risk. Hanover is the sort of company that the market can make its own decisions about.
“Mr Hotchin and Mr Watson appear to be affluent men and it is hard to see why they shouldn’t give the guarantee from their own resources instead of those of the Crown.”
Who owns FAI Finance?
Companies Office records, 24 February 2009
FAI Finance
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 15,766,588 - all held by Hanover Finance
Hanover Finance
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 71,651-596
- 37,835,596 held by Hanover Financial Services
- 33,815,000 held by Hanover Capital
Hanover Capital
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 5,000,000 all owned by Hanover Financial Services
Hanover Financial Services
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Shares: 13,303,620 all owned by Hanover Group.
Hanover Group
Directors: Mark Flay
Mark Hotchin
Greg Muir
Eric Watson
Shares: 207,327,000 all owned by Hanover Group Holdings
Hanover Group Holdings
Directors: Mark Flay
Mark Hotchin
Eric Watson
Shares: 87,871,057
Of these:
- 77,279,174 owned by Hotchin Investments.
- 10,591,883 owned by Forefront Investments.
Hotchin Investments
Directors: Mark Hotchin
Dwayne McGorman
Shares: 39,500,000 all owned by Hotchin Trustee Ltd
Hotchin Trustee Ltd
Directors: John Radley
Tony Thomas
Shares: 1000, all owned by the directors (= trustees).
Forefront Investments
Directors: Leslie Archer
Mark Flay
Eric Watson
Shares: 596,933;
Of these:
- 5000 owned by Eric Watson
- 591,933 owned by Peak NZ
Peak NZ
Directors: Bruce Armitage
Don Stanway
Eric Watson
Shares: 100, all owned by Foreshore Investments
Foreshore Investments
Directors: Leslie Archer
Mark Flay
Shares: 100, all owned by Cire Trust
Cire Trust
Directors: Mark Flay
Eric Watson
Shares: 100, all owned by Eric Watson.
FAI’s loans/deposits
FAI Prospectus 7, registered 9 February 2009.
At 20 June 2008, FAI had assets in loans worth a total of $28,582,000, at an average interest rate of 21.63%.
This sum included $15,119,000 due in 2-5 years.
At the same date it had deposit liabilities (i.e. Money that investors have invested in FAI securities) 0f $18,542,000, at an average interest rate of 9.9%.
This included 6,468,000 on call, $7,514,000 due in 6-12 months, and $382,000 due in more than two years.
Speech Notes: Launch of Wool to Weta
10/03/09 13:16 Filed in: Speeches
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.
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.
Auckland road tax shows National doesn’t get agriculture
17/03/09 13:05 Filed in: News Releases
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.”
“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.”
Comment on economics and the recession
21/05/09 12:37 Filed in: Columns
Response to Daniel Silva's comments for Country-wide magazine
So Daniel Silva thinks that the current international recession isn’t going to affect New Zealand much. Well that’s all right then? Actually – no. He’s quite wrong to think so for two significant reasons quite aside from the fact that any nation which earns its living as an international commodities trader is going to be affected by what happens to purchasing power in our major markets.
The first of these reasons is that it’s perfectly true that the New Zealand banking and finance sectors have not to anything like the same extent been in the business of offering the sorts of ‘toxic loans’ that banks in the United States and Europe have been. That’s to say they have not been lending large sums of money on securities which are wholly inadequate to cover the loans, to people who can’t afford the repayments and then packaging the loans in ways that make it almost impossible to untangle the debt and which spread it far beyond the originating banks.
But we have nevertheless experienced an overheated speculative housing boom which has now come to an end. At the same time our financial securities market which, although it was re-regulated to an extent following the excesses of the nineteen eighties and nineties remains significantly less regulated than others in the OECD, has paid the price in an unprecedented series of finance company crashes.
All of this exacts a toll that leads to recessionary pressures which when coupled with the impact of the international recession means a significant downturn in our economic growth. Fortunately for the incoming government they have two major advantages to assist them in responding to this situation. The first is the healthy state of the New Zealand economy because of the prudent, some thought over conservative management, of the economy over the last nine years by Finance Minister Michael Cullen.
The irony of that is that had he followed the then advice of his successor Bill English and engaged in significant tax cutting three or four years ago the current Minister of Finance would be far less well placed to cope with recessionary pressures than he actually is. No doubt that irony is lost on Mr Silva.
The second is that there is the backstop of local financial institutions, including the Kiwibank, which are able to pick up a certain amount of the slack although they obviously don’t have the capacity of the major Australian banks which do business here and which we know are more significantly affected by the international downturn.
The second reason why Mr Silva is wrong is that we are already feeling the negative effects. It may be, of course, that he leads a very cloistered life and has not picked up on the reports of job losses which are beginning to come with increasing rapidity.
The unemployed stand at 115,000 for the quarter to March or 5% with more job losses reported daily and the Treasury reporting a possible high of more than 8%.
This compares very unfavourably with the figures for the past nine years which reached lows of just over 3%, a figure not seen for over two decades.
In another of life’s little ironies these unemployment rates were largely the result of the Labour-Progressive government’s emphasis on regional growth and development. Both as Minister of Economic Development and Agriculture I was intent on placing considerable emphasis on regional development to the extent that we inherited an economy in which many regions were in negative growth mode and within three years we had all regions growing at rates which had not been seen for decades in some cases.
We maintained this throughout our nine years in office and thereby provided a cushion against subsequent unemployment. It will be interesting to see if the current government can maintain that record. I do know however that they will not do it by building bicycle tracks or by cutting back on the working fortnight which are measures which are no more likely to resolve unemployment than similar schemes did in the Depression of the thirties. Nor will they do it by cutting public expenditure which didn’t work in the thirties either.
The other area in which the impact is being felt, but which is possibly outside the ken of Mr Silva, is in the voluntary sector in which many organisations rely upon charitable and community trusts and similar bodies to underwrite their activities, many of which are vital to the well being of our communities. These trusts, for very good reasons, have traditionally diversified their investments and in some cases had significant sums invested in overseas securities.
The Auckland Community Trust alone is reported as having suffered losses amounting to two billion dollars and has had to regretfully tell some of its long term beneficiaries that they can no longer be supported. The potential ripple effect of that sort of loss may be incalculable.
Mr Silva is, however, right about one thing. We won’t get through the current downturn by panicking. We need to keep our nerve and mange our way through the recession by continuing to invest in our future as an exporting nation. But hiding our head under the blankets and pretending it isn’t happening is not going to get us there.
So Daniel Silva thinks that the current international recession isn’t going to affect New Zealand much. Well that’s all right then? Actually – no. He’s quite wrong to think so for two significant reasons quite aside from the fact that any nation which earns its living as an international commodities trader is going to be affected by what happens to purchasing power in our major markets.
The first of these reasons is that it’s perfectly true that the New Zealand banking and finance sectors have not to anything like the same extent been in the business of offering the sorts of ‘toxic loans’ that banks in the United States and Europe have been. That’s to say they have not been lending large sums of money on securities which are wholly inadequate to cover the loans, to people who can’t afford the repayments and then packaging the loans in ways that make it almost impossible to untangle the debt and which spread it far beyond the originating banks.
But we have nevertheless experienced an overheated speculative housing boom which has now come to an end. At the same time our financial securities market which, although it was re-regulated to an extent following the excesses of the nineteen eighties and nineties remains significantly less regulated than others in the OECD, has paid the price in an unprecedented series of finance company crashes.
All of this exacts a toll that leads to recessionary pressures which when coupled with the impact of the international recession means a significant downturn in our economic growth. Fortunately for the incoming government they have two major advantages to assist them in responding to this situation. The first is the healthy state of the New Zealand economy because of the prudent, some thought over conservative management, of the economy over the last nine years by Finance Minister Michael Cullen.
The irony of that is that had he followed the then advice of his successor Bill English and engaged in significant tax cutting three or four years ago the current Minister of Finance would be far less well placed to cope with recessionary pressures than he actually is. No doubt that irony is lost on Mr Silva.
The second is that there is the backstop of local financial institutions, including the Kiwibank, which are able to pick up a certain amount of the slack although they obviously don’t have the capacity of the major Australian banks which do business here and which we know are more significantly affected by the international downturn.
The second reason why Mr Silva is wrong is that we are already feeling the negative effects. It may be, of course, that he leads a very cloistered life and has not picked up on the reports of job losses which are beginning to come with increasing rapidity.
The unemployed stand at 115,000 for the quarter to March or 5% with more job losses reported daily and the Treasury reporting a possible high of more than 8%.
This compares very unfavourably with the figures for the past nine years which reached lows of just over 3%, a figure not seen for over two decades.
In another of life’s little ironies these unemployment rates were largely the result of the Labour-Progressive government’s emphasis on regional growth and development. Both as Minister of Economic Development and Agriculture I was intent on placing considerable emphasis on regional development to the extent that we inherited an economy in which many regions were in negative growth mode and within three years we had all regions growing at rates which had not been seen for decades in some cases.
We maintained this throughout our nine years in office and thereby provided a cushion against subsequent unemployment. It will be interesting to see if the current government can maintain that record. I do know however that they will not do it by building bicycle tracks or by cutting back on the working fortnight which are measures which are no more likely to resolve unemployment than similar schemes did in the Depression of the thirties. Nor will they do it by cutting public expenditure which didn’t work in the thirties either.
The other area in which the impact is being felt, but which is possibly outside the ken of Mr Silva, is in the voluntary sector in which many organisations rely upon charitable and community trusts and similar bodies to underwrite their activities, many of which are vital to the well being of our communities. These trusts, for very good reasons, have traditionally diversified their investments and in some cases had significant sums invested in overseas securities.
The Auckland Community Trust alone is reported as having suffered losses amounting to two billion dollars and has had to regretfully tell some of its long term beneficiaries that they can no longer be supported. The potential ripple effect of that sort of loss may be incalculable.
Mr Silva is, however, right about one thing. We won’t get through the current downturn by panicking. We need to keep our nerve and mange our way through the recession by continuing to invest in our future as an exporting nation. But hiding our head under the blankets and pretending it isn’t happening is not going to get us there.
Budget 2009 Speech
28/05/09 12:30 Filed in: Speeches
This is a budget that has all the competence that you would expect from the people responsible for Melissa Lee’s Mt Albert by-election campaign.
The good news: Inflation is no longer a problem. We have finally got the low inflation economy the National Party always said would deliver us its dream economy. How’s that working out now?
National has produced a lacklustre budget that Bill Birch would have been proud of.
In troubled times, when the economy is rocking on the waves of global economic storms, the government has responded weakly.
Not with a vision for the future.
Not with bold steps that will lead New Zealand on a developmental path.
But with a weak, uncertain, sitting on their hands response.
Governments around the world are investing in the future.
This one has slashed the future.
This one is the Broken Promise budget.
The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.
It is cutting nearly as much out of science and research in the primary sector as it is investing in infrastructure.
Government spending on science and research, on a like for like basis, falls from around a billion government dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in National’s replacement.
With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.
In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit.
This is huge cut in science and research.
It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.
It is a disaster for the future of our most important economic sector.
Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of this recession stronger.
New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.
The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research.
That is what David Carter repeatedly promised.
He promised it as recently as this year.
Farmers and our agri businesses will be looking it up.
And they will find not increases, but cuts.
It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.
I want to turn to some other features of this disappointing budget.
I want to draw the House’s attention to the table on Page 55 of the fiscal strategy report.
In there the government points to its expected increases in nominal average wages over the next four years.
If you deduct those from the CPI – the cost of living index - there will be no increases in real wages for four years.
No increase in real wages for four years!
This is the curious branch of economics that says the way to make New Zealand better off is to make everyone worse off.
Not since the eighties have we had an economy that didn’t increase real wages for four consecutive years.
It’s hardly conducive to keeping working New Zealanders here.
If they were leaving before, wait until John Key’s policies result in no increase in real wages for four years.
I have to give the National party credit for one thing.
There was a time in the past when National would have said the way to fix that would be to spend up on tax cuts.
At least Bill English and John key have now accepted that tax cuts do not stimulate the economy.
But that is not what they said when they wanted to get elected.
They promised New Zealanders tax cuts.
They now say they can’t afford them. Fair enough. But that’s not what they said when they wanted a vote.
Back then they said their promises took into account the worsening economic climate.
Back then they said
“National has structured its economic package to take account of the changing international climate.”
They weren’t telling the truth when they made the promises that got them elected.
They said: “Our tax cut programme will not require any additional borrowing”.
They weren’t telling the truth when they made the promises that got them elected.
The only way that promise could have been true is if his tax policy wouldn’t require borrowing because it was never going to go ahead anyway - and John Key knew that even before the election
Last year John Key said his tax policy was "appropriate for the current conditions" and would require "no additional borrowing.”
There is no excuse for this.
John Key was here in the eighties and he was here in the nineties when governments got elected and immediately tossed out the promises they got elected on.
I was in here in 1991.
I remember the Bolger government got away with the 1991 budget to begin with.
People gave them the benefit of the doubt that the economy had been wrecked by Roger Douglas and needed hard measures.
But over time it was a disaster.
This one will be too.
Those tax cuts needed to be cancelled.
But they should never have been promised in the first place.
John Key owes New Zealand an apology for getting himself elected on a promise that could never have been kept.
Did he know before the election that the international economic situation was deteriorating, or did he only find out when the Treasury told him?
Neither possible answer reflects well on his fitness to lead a country through a crisis.
I want to turn in the time left to the cuts to the Super Fund.
This is very sneaky politics.
Cutting the Super Fund now reduces the ability of any government in the future to provide for super at anything like existing rates or retirement age.
So what Bill English is doing is pushing out by ten years the hard decisions about the huge tax increases or cuts to super that will be needed to make super affordable.
He has calculated he won’t be finance minister in ten years.
He is right about that!
After this budget he won’t be finance minister in three years.
But he has delivered an enormous burden to future taxpayers.
The affordability of superannuation in the future must decline because we are no longer putting aside something now to pay for some of it in the future.
It was going to pay for around fifteen percent of the future cost.
Now it will pay for less than seven per cent.
That means the age of eligibility for superannuation will be increased to around 67; or else there will be huge tax increases required to pay for it.
That is the doozy the government has announced today.
This is not a budget that prepares New Zealand for the challenges of the future.
There is not a word in here about preparing New Zealand for the effects of climate change.
The Green party will be disappointed that the sum put aside for home insulation has been slashed from a billion dollars to $244 million.
Then we look over at the infrastructure spend, and we can see that the government is shifting $258 million of spending from rail to roads.
So this is what the Greens have got for their cooperation deal with the National party.
They have actually lost money!
They have lost $14 million!
Then what about the Maori party?
Who do they think is going to be hardest hit by this recession?
The National party is not doing anything for new jobs, and the Maori Party is voting for that!
At least Pita Sharples can wave at the unemployed as he drives by in his new car.
The good news: Inflation is no longer a problem. We have finally got the low inflation economy the National Party always said would deliver us its dream economy. How’s that working out now?
National has produced a lacklustre budget that Bill Birch would have been proud of.
In troubled times, when the economy is rocking on the waves of global economic storms, the government has responded weakly.
Not with a vision for the future.
Not with bold steps that will lead New Zealand on a developmental path.
But with a weak, uncertain, sitting on their hands response.
Governments around the world are investing in the future.
This one has slashed the future.
This one is the Broken Promise budget.
The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.
It is cutting nearly as much out of science and research in the primary sector as it is investing in infrastructure.
Government spending on science and research, on a like for like basis, falls from around a billion government dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in National’s replacement.
With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.
In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit.
This is huge cut in science and research.
It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.
It is a disaster for the future of our most important economic sector.
Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of this recession stronger.
New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.
The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research.
That is what David Carter repeatedly promised.
He promised it as recently as this year.
Farmers and our agri businesses will be looking it up.
And they will find not increases, but cuts.
It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.
I want to turn to some other features of this disappointing budget.
I want to draw the House’s attention to the table on Page 55 of the fiscal strategy report.
In there the government points to its expected increases in nominal average wages over the next four years.
If you deduct those from the CPI – the cost of living index - there will be no increases in real wages for four years.
No increase in real wages for four years!
This is the curious branch of economics that says the way to make New Zealand better off is to make everyone worse off.
Not since the eighties have we had an economy that didn’t increase real wages for four consecutive years.
It’s hardly conducive to keeping working New Zealanders here.
If they were leaving before, wait until John Key’s policies result in no increase in real wages for four years.
I have to give the National party credit for one thing.
There was a time in the past when National would have said the way to fix that would be to spend up on tax cuts.
At least Bill English and John key have now accepted that tax cuts do not stimulate the economy.
But that is not what they said when they wanted to get elected.
They promised New Zealanders tax cuts.
They now say they can’t afford them. Fair enough. But that’s not what they said when they wanted a vote.
Back then they said their promises took into account the worsening economic climate.
Back then they said
“National has structured its economic package to take account of the changing international climate.”
They weren’t telling the truth when they made the promises that got them elected.
They said: “Our tax cut programme will not require any additional borrowing”.
They weren’t telling the truth when they made the promises that got them elected.
The only way that promise could have been true is if his tax policy wouldn’t require borrowing because it was never going to go ahead anyway - and John Key knew that even before the election
Last year John Key said his tax policy was "appropriate for the current conditions" and would require "no additional borrowing.”
There is no excuse for this.
John Key was here in the eighties and he was here in the nineties when governments got elected and immediately tossed out the promises they got elected on.
I was in here in 1991.
I remember the Bolger government got away with the 1991 budget to begin with.
People gave them the benefit of the doubt that the economy had been wrecked by Roger Douglas and needed hard measures.
But over time it was a disaster.
This one will be too.
Those tax cuts needed to be cancelled.
But they should never have been promised in the first place.
John Key owes New Zealand an apology for getting himself elected on a promise that could never have been kept.
Did he know before the election that the international economic situation was deteriorating, or did he only find out when the Treasury told him?
Neither possible answer reflects well on his fitness to lead a country through a crisis.
I want to turn in the time left to the cuts to the Super Fund.
This is very sneaky politics.
Cutting the Super Fund now reduces the ability of any government in the future to provide for super at anything like existing rates or retirement age.
So what Bill English is doing is pushing out by ten years the hard decisions about the huge tax increases or cuts to super that will be needed to make super affordable.
He has calculated he won’t be finance minister in ten years.
He is right about that!
After this budget he won’t be finance minister in three years.
But he has delivered an enormous burden to future taxpayers.
The affordability of superannuation in the future must decline because we are no longer putting aside something now to pay for some of it in the future.
It was going to pay for around fifteen percent of the future cost.
Now it will pay for less than seven per cent.
That means the age of eligibility for superannuation will be increased to around 67; or else there will be huge tax increases required to pay for it.
That is the doozy the government has announced today.
This is not a budget that prepares New Zealand for the challenges of the future.
There is not a word in here about preparing New Zealand for the effects of climate change.
The Green party will be disappointed that the sum put aside for home insulation has been slashed from a billion dollars to $244 million.
Then we look over at the infrastructure spend, and we can see that the government is shifting $258 million of spending from rail to roads.
So this is what the Greens have got for their cooperation deal with the National party.
They have actually lost money!
They have lost $14 million!
Then what about the Maori party?
Who do they think is going to be hardest hit by this recession?
The National party is not doing anything for new jobs, and the Maori Party is voting for that!
At least Pita Sharples can wave at the unemployed as he drives by in his new car.
May Edition of Jim's eNews
29/05/09 12:15 Filed in: Newsletters
Budget Day 09 - Huge cuts in primary sector science
28.05.09
Nearly as much is being cut out of science and research in the primary sector as the government is investing in infrastructure.
The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion provided for in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.
Like for like government spending over ten years falls from around a billion dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in the government’s replacement. “With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.
In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit. Overall, the government is cutting innovation spending by more than the value of the personal tax cuts.
This is huge cut in science and research. It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.
Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of recession stronger. New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.
The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research. It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.
Winter rebate from electricity companies would be appreciated
22.05.09
The knowledge that many elderly New Zealanders huddle under blankets rather than turn on unaffordable heating should be a wake-up call to the power companies to return a winter rebate to their consumers this winter.
For many New Zealanders, this wintry weather brings on a bitter struggle with the cold and the dilemma of whether they can turn on a heater or not. Low income households, the elderly and students fear their electricity bills and well they might. I remember when the electricity bills came every two months – now the monthly bill is the same – or more – than the bi-monthly one was.
The Commerce Commission’s investigation into the wholesale and retail electricity markets showed that the electricity companies have not breached Part 2 of the Commerce Act but their extra $4.3 billion in earnings from 2001 to mid-2007 reveals they are charging with a take no prisoners mentality. The electricity companies’ profits are at the expense of New Zealand’s most economically vulnerable.
Since 2002, I have pushed for a return to consumers of some of the big profit increases from the state-owned power companies to help them with winter power bills. Low income households could be given $200 toward winter heating costs and power companies would still contribute as much to the government as 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.
The Commerce Commission’s ruling on the power companies should not be seen as a sign off for a return to business as usual. I am sure that New Zealanders would be hugely relieved to see the companies acting in the interests’ of their consumers with a winter rebate during this winter.
Comment on economics and the recession Response to Daniel Silva’s article in the Country-wide magazine
21.05.09
So Daniel Silva thinks that the current international recession isn’t going to affect New Zealand much. Well that’s all right then? Actually – no.
He’s quite wrong to think so for two significant reasons quite aside from the fact that any nation which earns its living as an international commodities trader is going to be affected by what happens to purchasing power in our major markets.See website for full response
Aucklanders should have elected, not appointed leaders
19.05.09
Letting Auckland vote would be a better way to make appointees to the Auckland super city transitional agency than a secret process in a government where decision-making is melting down.
Why is the government even appointing a board? The way we find people to run local government in New Zealand is we have democratic elections.
A government that listened to New Zealanders would not have a problem making a choice of leadership. The people do the appointing for it. In a democratic election, you are much more likely to get leadership that looks like Auckland. National seems interested only in leadership that looks like the National or ACT Party.
I am very concerned that the quality of decision-making in the government is falling apart as the pressure of actually governing comes on. The National government is making poor decisions or refusing to make them at all. It created a sense of urgency for itself over Auckland’s super city, and now it can’t even meet its own urgent timetable.
Needle Exchange Programme proven it worth
19.05.09
On the 21st Anniversary of the Needle Exchange Programme (NEP) - and the 4th year of the free one-for-one exchange of needles, I again would support and expand a needle exchange programme that provides free needles for intravenous drug users.
The Progressive Party successfully bid in 2004 for $4 million over four years to fund free-to-users, one-for-one exchange of used needles because we wanted to minimise the harm caused by drugs”.
Back in 2002, I was appointed as the Associate Minister of Health and the minister responsible for drug policy. I received an independent review of the needle and syringe exchange programme. It reported that the programme saves lives. It said the programme saved - back then, seven years ago - $35 million in treatment costs since it had been established.
The report said plainly that the needle exchange programme reduces the harm caused by drug use. It told me the programme had helped to prevent twenty deaths from AIDS and more than two thousand cases of Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.
When you get a report like that in government, you sit up and take notice.
It makes a pleasant change from all the doom and gloom about things that don’t work. Here was clear evidence of a programme that worked.
There were people who sneered at that as liberal political correctness. I can tell you from personal experience there aren’t many votes in being wise or liberal about this stuff. But it was then, and is now, the right thing to do anyway.
The results have been very worthwhile. Obviously, I wish we didn’t need this programme. I wish we didn’t have drug use causing the harm it does, wrecking the lives of many people, and wrecking many communities.
But it does happen. It will keep happening. And if we care about vulnerable victims then our responsibility is to reduce the harm to them as much as we can. The needle exchange programme does just that and I endorse it for that reason.
Anderton brands Auckland bill as the “Removal of Democracy” bill
18.05.09
The Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill which will usher in Auckland’s “supercity” should be renamed the Removal of Democracy Bill.
The Local Government Act would have given Aucklanders a say in one of the most significant changes in local government in their region that they will see in their lifetime, but they are not going to have a chance to have that say.
In essence it is a great leap backwards to the days when 21 out of twenty two councillors lived east of Queen Street. It was the reason why a ward system had to be introduced so that all Aucklanders could actually be represented on their own Council. The conservative right-wingers have always resented that change and this proposal returns Auckland to the past they have always hankered after.
In real life terms it means, for example, the end of free swimming pools for the kids of South Auckland and any other future say for most Aucklanders in the way they want their local communities to deliver for them. Does anyone believe that those pools will continue to be free under the government’s proposal? I can already hear the self appointed Mayor of the super city, John Banks, making speeches about why the ratepayers of Auckland City shouldn’t be subsidising the swimming pools of south Auckland.
I support a strong regional government for Auckland. There used to be one – the Auckland Regional Authority (ARA) and I know about it because I was elected to it in 1977. We bought all the major regional parks and replaced the entire ancient bus fleet with new Mercedes Benz vehicles.
In 1989, the Labour government replaced the ARA with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). In 1992, the then National government wanted to sell the Ports of Auckland and the water services, so they diverted ownership of these and other profitable assets into the newly established Auckland Regional Services Trust (ARST) with the plan to sell. What a shambles that would have been if it had been allowed to happen. It took all of the strength of the political group I led at the time to put a stop to that. Auckland has reaped the benefit ever since,” Jim Anderton said.
Now they’re having another go. This is a privatisers’ dream to sell the community assets of Auckland, and is entirely in line with Rodney Hide and the ACT party’s ideologies. Does anyone believe that this is in the best interests of Aucklanders?
You can understand in those circumstances why the National ACT government doesn’t want people to have a say as to whether or not they want this outrageous piece of community destruction to go ahead.
Tribute to Senior-Constable Len Snee
12.05.09
I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee. I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.
I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.
Maybe the most sombre thing we do in Parliament and government is send men and women into danger on our behalf. We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back alive. When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders. They are there for us.
They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.
Every police officer knows that they go about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking. They take on that danger on our behalf. We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.
Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days. We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community. So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.
I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.
It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.
I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations. That was the right response. There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.
I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.
This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.
Launch of the Finsec Banking petition
05.05.09
I would like to express my support for the Finsec petition, and for the retention of New Zealand jobs. Banks in New Zealand have been making enormous profits by mistreating customers and exploiting staff.
In the current global financial situation - the overseas owned banks in New Zealand are some of the most profitable in the world.
But they are still firing staff.
It’s time for them to give something back. It’ time for them to support New Zealand as good corporate citizens.
The taxpayer is giving the banks a crucial government guarantee. The government is right to do so. The banks need the guarantee to keep functioning. In a crisis, New Zealanders should be prepared to help each other out. And we should be prepared to use the power of government to make our economy stronger.
But there is a quid pro quo. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that in exchange for getting support from New Zealanders, the banks should, in return, support New Zealand in general and their own staff in particular.
MPs should not be able to fight by-elections
05.05.09
It’s a farce that sitting MPs are standing for election to parliament. I am drafting a members’ bill to stop MPs from standing for parliament in by-elections. In Mt Albert, there are three MPs standing for parliament. They are already MPs. If they want to represent the electorate, they already can. Any list MP can open an electorate office in Mt Albert and be a good representative.
What those MPs are really doing is using their parliamentary salaries and resources to bring in someone on a party list who has nothing to do with Mt Albert. For example, if the National candidate were to win she would be an MP just as she is now. But she would bring in a new MP who virtually no one has heard of, and who might never have visited Mt Albert in his or her life.
MPs who contest the seat but lose bring MMP into disrepute. Since there are three MPs contesting the seat, at least two of them have to lose and maybe all three will lose. If they are going to test their mandate, they should be prepared to live with the result.
In a general election, no MP has insurance. They have to get enough votes in their electorate or for their party, or they are out. It’s a democratic farce to have different rules in a by-election.
A simple bill that stopped a sitting MP standing in a by-election would force MPs to make a meaningful choice - if they really want to contest a seat, they should resign from parliament and contest it on the same basis as anyone else.
MPs shouldn’t fight a parliamentary by-election while they’re drawing a full parliamentary salary.
28.05.09
Nearly as much is being cut out of science and research in the primary sector as the government is investing in infrastructure.
The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion provided for in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.
Like for like government spending over ten years falls from around a billion dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in the government’s replacement. “With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.
In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit. Overall, the government is cutting innovation spending by more than the value of the personal tax cuts.
This is huge cut in science and research. It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.
Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of recession stronger. New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.
The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research. It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.
Winter rebate from electricity companies would be appreciated
22.05.09
The knowledge that many elderly New Zealanders huddle under blankets rather than turn on unaffordable heating should be a wake-up call to the power companies to return a winter rebate to their consumers this winter.
For many New Zealanders, this wintry weather brings on a bitter struggle with the cold and the dilemma of whether they can turn on a heater or not. Low income households, the elderly and students fear their electricity bills and well they might. I remember when the electricity bills came every two months – now the monthly bill is the same – or more – than the bi-monthly one was.
The Commerce Commission’s investigation into the wholesale and retail electricity markets showed that the electricity companies have not breached Part 2 of the Commerce Act but their extra $4.3 billion in earnings from 2001 to mid-2007 reveals they are charging with a take no prisoners mentality. The electricity companies’ profits are at the expense of New Zealand’s most economically vulnerable.
Since 2002, I have pushed for a return to consumers of some of the big profit increases from the state-owned power companies to help them with winter power bills. Low income households could be given $200 toward winter heating costs and power companies would still contribute as much to the government as 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.
The Commerce Commission’s ruling on the power companies should not be seen as a sign off for a return to business as usual. I am sure that New Zealanders would be hugely relieved to see the companies acting in the interests’ of their consumers with a winter rebate during this winter.
Comment on economics and the recession Response to Daniel Silva’s article in the Country-wide magazine
21.05.09
So Daniel Silva thinks that the current international recession isn’t going to affect New Zealand much. Well that’s all right then? Actually – no.
He’s quite wrong to think so for two significant reasons quite aside from the fact that any nation which earns its living as an international commodities trader is going to be affected by what happens to purchasing power in our major markets.See website for full response
Aucklanders should have elected, not appointed leaders
19.05.09
Letting Auckland vote would be a better way to make appointees to the Auckland super city transitional agency than a secret process in a government where decision-making is melting down.
Why is the government even appointing a board? The way we find people to run local government in New Zealand is we have democratic elections.
A government that listened to New Zealanders would not have a problem making a choice of leadership. The people do the appointing for it. In a democratic election, you are much more likely to get leadership that looks like Auckland. National seems interested only in leadership that looks like the National or ACT Party.
I am very concerned that the quality of decision-making in the government is falling apart as the pressure of actually governing comes on. The National government is making poor decisions or refusing to make them at all. It created a sense of urgency for itself over Auckland’s super city, and now it can’t even meet its own urgent timetable.
Needle Exchange Programme proven it worth
19.05.09
On the 21st Anniversary of the Needle Exchange Programme (NEP) - and the 4th year of the free one-for-one exchange of needles, I again would support and expand a needle exchange programme that provides free needles for intravenous drug users.
The Progressive Party successfully bid in 2004 for $4 million over four years to fund free-to-users, one-for-one exchange of used needles because we wanted to minimise the harm caused by drugs”.
Back in 2002, I was appointed as the Associate Minister of Health and the minister responsible for drug policy. I received an independent review of the needle and syringe exchange programme. It reported that the programme saves lives. It said the programme saved - back then, seven years ago - $35 million in treatment costs since it had been established.
The report said plainly that the needle exchange programme reduces the harm caused by drug use. It told me the programme had helped to prevent twenty deaths from AIDS and more than two thousand cases of Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.
When you get a report like that in government, you sit up and take notice.
It makes a pleasant change from all the doom and gloom about things that don’t work. Here was clear evidence of a programme that worked.
There were people who sneered at that as liberal political correctness. I can tell you from personal experience there aren’t many votes in being wise or liberal about this stuff. But it was then, and is now, the right thing to do anyway.
The results have been very worthwhile. Obviously, I wish we didn’t need this programme. I wish we didn’t have drug use causing the harm it does, wrecking the lives of many people, and wrecking many communities.
But it does happen. It will keep happening. And if we care about vulnerable victims then our responsibility is to reduce the harm to them as much as we can. The needle exchange programme does just that and I endorse it for that reason.
Anderton brands Auckland bill as the “Removal of Democracy” bill
18.05.09
The Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill which will usher in Auckland’s “supercity” should be renamed the Removal of Democracy Bill.
The Local Government Act would have given Aucklanders a say in one of the most significant changes in local government in their region that they will see in their lifetime, but they are not going to have a chance to have that say.
In essence it is a great leap backwards to the days when 21 out of twenty two councillors lived east of Queen Street. It was the reason why a ward system had to be introduced so that all Aucklanders could actually be represented on their own Council. The conservative right-wingers have always resented that change and this proposal returns Auckland to the past they have always hankered after.
In real life terms it means, for example, the end of free swimming pools for the kids of South Auckland and any other future say for most Aucklanders in the way they want their local communities to deliver for them. Does anyone believe that those pools will continue to be free under the government’s proposal? I can already hear the self appointed Mayor of the super city, John Banks, making speeches about why the ratepayers of Auckland City shouldn’t be subsidising the swimming pools of south Auckland.
I support a strong regional government for Auckland. There used to be one – the Auckland Regional Authority (ARA) and I know about it because I was elected to it in 1977. We bought all the major regional parks and replaced the entire ancient bus fleet with new Mercedes Benz vehicles.
In 1989, the Labour government replaced the ARA with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). In 1992, the then National government wanted to sell the Ports of Auckland and the water services, so they diverted ownership of these and other profitable assets into the newly established Auckland Regional Services Trust (ARST) with the plan to sell. What a shambles that would have been if it had been allowed to happen. It took all of the strength of the political group I led at the time to put a stop to that. Auckland has reaped the benefit ever since,” Jim Anderton said.
Now they’re having another go. This is a privatisers’ dream to sell the community assets of Auckland, and is entirely in line with Rodney Hide and the ACT party’s ideologies. Does anyone believe that this is in the best interests of Aucklanders?
You can understand in those circumstances why the National ACT government doesn’t want people to have a say as to whether or not they want this outrageous piece of community destruction to go ahead.
Tribute to Senior-Constable Len Snee
12.05.09
I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee. I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.
I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.
Maybe the most sombre thing we do in Parliament and government is send men and women into danger on our behalf. We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back alive. When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders. They are there for us.
They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.
Every police officer knows that they go about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking. They take on that danger on our behalf. We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.
Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days. We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community. So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.
I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.
It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.
I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations. That was the right response. There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.
I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.
This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.
Launch of the Finsec Banking petition
05.05.09
I would like to express my support for the Finsec petition, and for the retention of New Zealand jobs. Banks in New Zealand have been making enormous profits by mistreating customers and exploiting staff.
In the current global financial situation - the overseas owned banks in New Zealand are some of the most profitable in the world.
But they are still firing staff.
It’s time for them to give something back. It’ time for them to support New Zealand as good corporate citizens.
The taxpayer is giving the banks a crucial government guarantee. The government is right to do so. The banks need the guarantee to keep functioning. In a crisis, New Zealanders should be prepared to help each other out. And we should be prepared to use the power of government to make our economy stronger.
But there is a quid pro quo. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that in exchange for getting support from New Zealanders, the banks should, in return, support New Zealand in general and their own staff in particular.
MPs should not be able to fight by-elections
05.05.09
It’s a farce that sitting MPs are standing for election to parliament. I am drafting a members’ bill to stop MPs from standing for parliament in by-elections. In Mt Albert, there are three MPs standing for parliament. They are already MPs. If they want to represent the electorate, they already can. Any list MP can open an electorate office in Mt Albert and be a good representative.
What those MPs are really doing is using their parliamentary salaries and resources to bring in someone on a party list who has nothing to do with Mt Albert. For example, if the National candidate were to win she would be an MP just as she is now. But she would bring in a new MP who virtually no one has heard of, and who might never have visited Mt Albert in his or her life.
MPs who contest the seat but lose bring MMP into disrepute. Since there are three MPs contesting the seat, at least two of them have to lose and maybe all three will lose. If they are going to test their mandate, they should be prepared to live with the result.
In a general election, no MP has insurance. They have to get enough votes in their electorate or for their party, or they are out. It’s a democratic farce to have different rules in a by-election.
A simple bill that stopped a sitting MP standing in a by-election would force MPs to make a meaningful choice - if they really want to contest a seat, they should resign from parliament and contest it on the same basis as anyone else.
MPs shouldn’t fight a parliamentary by-election while they’re drawing a full parliamentary salary.
Banks repatriating ‘enormous amounts’
01/07/09 12:10 Filed in: News Releases
Banks repatriating ‘enormous amounts’
New Zealand bank branches paid their overseas owners $11.7 billion in interest and profit last year.
Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton told a Federated Farmers conference today that the situation poses a risk for the agriculture sector, which is facing a ‘perfect storm’ of input price rises, threats to demand and now finance risks.
Total bank lending to agriculture in April this year was $43.7 billion, or 13.8 per cent of the total lent to New Zealand.
“Two thirds of that is lending to the dairy industry - at a time when one estimate says Fonterra could be forced to cut its payout from the current $4.55 if our dollar stays over sixty US cents. This would be very hard on some farming businesses that thought the last couple of years’ high prices would last longer. If interest rates came down just one per cent, farmers would save $450 million,” Jim Anderton said.
“The banking system has begun repatriating enormous amounts of New Zealand money.”
Remittances by banks in New Zealand to their overseas owners climbed from $3.8 billion in 2000, to 4.6 billion in 2004, and then began climbing steeply: $6 billion in 2005; $7.8 billion in 2006; $9.1 billion in 2007 and $11.7 billion last year.
“That’s more than the entire GST revenue of New Zealand. It is more than the entire education budget. And in a single year it is far more than the entire proceeds of the asset sales programme that caused so much pain through the eighties and nineties.”
“The huge remittances to banks are the result of the Australian banks funding our balance of payments deficit, now at sixteen billion dollars a year. They are taking an enormous clip of the ticket for doing it. We need to rely more on our own savings, instead of spending the savings of others.
“Interest rates are too high at a time when banks should be reducing them. In a recession, while banks around the world have been under pressure, the big banks here have been smirking. In the current environment, a lot of farms are facing a squeeze and they will struggle to meet the payments on their debt.”
New Zealand bank branches paid their overseas owners $11.7 billion in interest and profit last year.
Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton told a Federated Farmers conference today that the situation poses a risk for the agriculture sector, which is facing a ‘perfect storm’ of input price rises, threats to demand and now finance risks.
Total bank lending to agriculture in April this year was $43.7 billion, or 13.8 per cent of the total lent to New Zealand.
“Two thirds of that is lending to the dairy industry - at a time when one estimate says Fonterra could be forced to cut its payout from the current $4.55 if our dollar stays over sixty US cents. This would be very hard on some farming businesses that thought the last couple of years’ high prices would last longer. If interest rates came down just one per cent, farmers would save $450 million,” Jim Anderton said.
“The banking system has begun repatriating enormous amounts of New Zealand money.”
Remittances by banks in New Zealand to their overseas owners climbed from $3.8 billion in 2000, to 4.6 billion in 2004, and then began climbing steeply: $6 billion in 2005; $7.8 billion in 2006; $9.1 billion in 2007 and $11.7 billion last year.
“That’s more than the entire GST revenue of New Zealand. It is more than the entire education budget. And in a single year it is far more than the entire proceeds of the asset sales programme that caused so much pain through the eighties and nineties.”
“The huge remittances to banks are the result of the Australian banks funding our balance of payments deficit, now at sixteen billion dollars a year. They are taking an enormous clip of the ticket for doing it. We need to rely more on our own savings, instead of spending the savings of others.
“Interest rates are too high at a time when banks should be reducing them. In a recession, while banks around the world have been under pressure, the big banks here have been smirking. In the current environment, a lot of farms are facing a squeeze and they will struggle to meet the payments on their debt.”
Federated Farmers conference
01/07/09 12:05 Filed in: Speeches
Speech to Federated Farmers conference, 12 Noon Wednesday, 1 July 2009
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk to you as the Opposition spokesperson on agriculture. Can I also acknowledge the generous comments I have received from many farmers in recent months.
I have always been confident in the future of New Zealand’s agricultural industries. You have to be, because agriculture is intrinsic to our economy’s strength and our success. And it has been the backbone of our economy for most of our economic history because of our competitive advantage as a farming nation.
But while I am confident, I am realistic as well. There are a number of issues we need to deal with:
I’m glad you’re meeting here in Auckland, because it emphasises that the prosperity even of our largest city is dependent on the performance of our farmers. Agriculture is as relevant to Queen Street as it is to Hokitika, to Matamata, to Geraldine or to Carterton.
For that matter, the services that cities can provide can be crucial to our primary industries, too. In my home town, Christchurch, some of the most innovative scientists in New Zealand are rivaled only by their contemporaries in cities like Palmerston North and Hamilton in their research contribution to New Zealand.
There is always a risk that our economic backbone will be ignored in public debate about our economy.
At the start of this year, when the then new government opened its year in parliament with the Speech from the Throne, the word ‘agriculture’ didn’t even get a mention. It was the first time in at least a decade that our farmers were ignored. There is not much chance of developing the right policy for the agricultural sector, when farming isn’t even being contemplated by the government.
The policy environment in Wellington today, like every capital around the world right now, is occupied with the difficult global economic environment. Many developed countries are in recession. Some of them are in deep recession. We can take some comfort that demand for food holds up better in a recession than demand for the cars of General Motors or Chrysler.
But we can’t be too comfortable.
Reduced demand around the world is likely to result in reduced prices for our exports. Ultimately that means incomes will fall. And because the same reduced prices affect farmers everywhere, we can expect farmers in every country to redouble efforts to increase productivity and production, because this lowers costs per unit of output.
And since every farmer around the world is in the same situation, total production will increase, with prices falling and demand increasing only slowly.
On top of that, there is input price pressure. One of the critical elements in soil fertility is nitrogen. Industrial fertiliser is produced from gas or coal, and the price of fossil fuels are high. Persistent increases in the price of oil and gas would lead to higher fertilizer costs, so you get higher input costs and reduced demand.
Hand in hand with that picture, we can expect to see rising protectionism in many markets, particularly in agriculture. So that makes market access more difficult.
This is a tough recipe for farms.
There are only two ways to increase farm profitability: reducing the costs of inputs, or increasing the value of production from given inputs. A combination of both strategies is inevitable.
The underlying trend in the export prices for our commodity agricultural products is down, over the long term. With some medium term exceptions, such as China’s expansion and climate events, prices for agricultural exports have been under long-term downward pressure. The strong expansion of China in recent years has helped to push up the prices of many raw materials - including some that farmers compete for, such as energy - while also increasing the price for agricultural products.
But relying on that to continue forever is not a prudent long-term strategy for New Zealand.
At the same time that we are confronting the difficult environment for farm prices, agricultural finance is under stress as well.
This is what I call a perfect storm: input price rises, threats to demand and now finance risks.
I’ve been looking at New Zealand’s accounts with the rest of the world. When you look at our merchandise trade - our exports against our imports, the deficit is large but manageable. But we face a massive deficit in one crucial area - investment income.
We have been using the savings of people in other countries instead of our own earnings or our own savings to pay for our lifestyle. And the bill for that is starting to come in. The bill is coming in from banks.
How much do you think New Zealanders send overseas each year to the big Australian banks?
In the nineties we sent overseas about three billion dollars a year in profits and interest on loans extended to New Zealand banks. For the first half of this decade it was stable around about four billion dollars a year.
But something dramatic has happened. The banking system has begun repatriating enormous amounts of New Zealand money.
Last year, calendar 2008, the banks repatriated 11-point-7 billion dollars in profit and interest paid on loans. That is, the New Zealand branches paid their overseas owners $11.7 billion in interest and profit.
The total has risen from $3.8 billion in 2000 to $11.7 billion last year. That’s more than the entire GST revenue of New Zealand. It is more than the entire education budget. And in a single year it is far more than the entire proceeds of the asset sales programme that caused so much pain through the eighties and nineties.
Behind this enormous repatriation of New Zealanders’ money is a serious balance of payments deficit. It now stands at $16 billion - that’s about nine per cent of GDP.
In other words, our total overseas debt increased by sixteen billion dollars last year. Debt like this is easy to run up and hard to pay back. It poses a risk for the agriculture sector specifically. Total bank lending to agriculture in April this year was $43.7 billion, or 13.8 per cent of the total lent to New Zealand.
Two thirds of that is lending to the dairy industry - at a time when one estimate says Fonterra could be forced to cut its payout from the current $4.55 if our dollar stays over sixty US cents. This would be very hard on some farming businesses that thought the last couple of years’ high prices would last longer.
Relief from interest rates would help. As Federated Farmers’ Lachlan McKenzie pointed out yesterday, every one per cent drop in interest you pay on that debt is worth $450 million. That’s a lot of money that comes straight off farmers’ bottom line.
How refreshing it is to hear the farming sector focussing on this issue. In the nineties, some farming leaders used to applaud higher interest rates and the monetary policies that deliberately punished the productive sector.
Today, interest rates are too high at a time when banks should be reducing them.
In a recession, while banks around the world have been under pressure, the big banks here have been smirking.
In the current environment, a lot of farms are facing a squeeze and they will struggle to meet the payments on their debt.
This is serious, and it needs serious attention urgently. I’m not confident it will get it.
I’ll tell you what I would do if I were still the agriculture minister: I would immediately convene a taskforce of the best and brightest in the sector to develop a short-, medium-, and long-term strategy to the deal with the issue.
The huge remittances to banks are the result of the Australian banks funding our balance of payments deficit. They are taking an enormous clip of the ticket for doing it.
We need to rely more on our own savings, instead of spending the savings of others.
And we need some fresh thinking on the balance of payments problem too.
We need a broad-based focus to reduce our imports. We could make a start if we were able to reduce our dependence on imported oil.
If we could develop reasonably-priced biofuels and other forms of new energy, and reduce waste energy, we would score a huge opportunity for farming:
On top of all these advantages, it would help us to prosper in a world where consumers are becoming more demanding, and asking more searching questions about sustainability.
This is partly about how we manage our emissions - but it’s about a lot more than that as well.
If New Zealand is going to achieve a higher price for our production than our competitors, then quality and a perceived advantage as being more environmentally responsible will be part of our national brand.
As every responsible study shows, clean performance means we need to be responsible about our carbon emissions, too.
That’s why the Opposition is taking a constructive approach to working with the government on emissions trading. Only yesterday we voted with the government on a new climate change bill, in a spirit of working in the best interests of all our industry sectors.
Some conclusions are inescapable. As a general principle, polluters, one way or another, will have to bear the cost of their emissions. There are developments on the table, such as Gordon Brown’s proposal yesterday for a global development fund to help poor countries replace their emissions with cleaner alternatives.
The world is also moving closer to a global carbon trading scheme. Once that happens, New Zealand taxpayers will not long pay to subsidise polluters, as we are now. Any government of New Zealand is going to have to deal with emissions if we are a prudent country. What won’t work is hoping that the problem goes away.
And I continue to believe environmental sustainability is a competitive advantage for New Zealand. When you see the ugly factory farms in many parts of the world, and you compare their practices to the clean and open countryside we farm in New Zealand, you can see we have a huge opportunity.
I know there are few New Zealanders as passionate about the land as our farmers.
And so as the world cares more about the good of our planet, this should be an enormous opportunity for us.
It will require care to seize the opportunity, though, because it is implicit in seizing the opportunity that we will live up to our promise.
We can’t just say we are cleaner and higher quality than our competitors. We have to BE it.
Consumers will not be impressed if we are seen to be dragged into better environmental performance kicking and screaming.
If you want to know what happens when change takes too long, ask the pork industry how its animal welfare standards are perceived by the public.
Now I support giving that sector time to change. I also hope that a review of the animal welfare code for pigs this year will impose higher standards. But none of us should be uncertain about the costs to the entire industry of the strategy it followed.
The public saw it as too slow to change, instead of adopting a strategy of having the highest quality. The reputational damage has made the pork industry the subject of more letters to my office than anything else right now, including the smacking referendum.
If it can happen in that sector, it can happen in any other. We cannot be seen to be the source of dirty water or unsustainable users of resources. We cannot be seen as polluters when our industry is based on healthy growth, on food and on good health.
So overall, we have an environmental challenge. We have a challenge to the industry’s financial stability. We have a squeeze on its cost structure. We have a struggle in global markets.
The solutions will be discovered by science. Sustained, deep and ongoing investment in research and development in the industry is crucial - to identify cost-saving opportunities, and to identify new processes and new products that will extract more value.
As has been well rehearsed now - I put my stake in the ground for research and development in the primary industries sector. The NZ Fast Forward Fund was a commitment of seven hundred million dollars, which would earn interest and private sector partnerships and grow to be worth two billion dollars over its lifetime.
It’s been replaced by a relatively puny seventy million dollar annual commitment - for just four years.
There is no guaranteed long term commitment. There is no chance to earn interest and fund very large projects from an annual appropriation when science has to compete with every other demand on taxpayers’ purses.
It would be unfortunate if the message that politicians drew from this episode is that there is no political problem with cutting r&d. I believe there is a huge divide over this issue between the different sides of politics. Our side says the way out of our problems is investment in r&d and people. Our side says the way out of our problems is investment in knowledge, training and skills.
This is an important debate, and it is crucial for farmers. But whatever choice government makes, it is now up to our agricultural industry to lead investment.
Investment in science and in research and development is the most significant commitment we can make across all of our agriculture, to determine our own future.
Investment in marketing, and in market-responsive structures. Investment in talent, in creativity and in the strong communities that attract people to rural lifestyles.
Our r&d, our talent, and the structures underpinning them give our agriculture a competitive advantage over competing countries with temperate climates. Our competitive advantage is our science and research. It is our people and our lifestyle.
Our competitive advantage in the future will be in our superior products. In costs driven down by innovation, not exploitation. In processes focused on delivering a better product to consumers. In environmental sustainability driven by science, not wishes.
And the agriculture sector is going to have to lead investment to keep us at the forefront in all these areas, because innovation is not going to come from anywhere else.
It won’t happen on its own.
And it isn’t happening fast enough in other parts of the economy. When you look through our economy to where the wealth has been created, there are some pretty compelling facts to confront. One is that our corporate sector has spent most of the last twenty years - overall - destroying shareholder wealth.
When you compare stock market results to the performance of farms and agri-business, you get a clear picture of where the strength of our economy resides. I understand the stock exchange chief executive was invited along to Treasury recently to lecture State Owned Enterprises about behaving more like the corporate sector.
If they were to behave like our corporate sector, they would destroy value.
They would grow productivity more slowly than comparable overseas businesses.
They would focus not on doing a better job, but on sending more of New Zealanders’ cash to overseas owners.
The stock markets agenda is to lobby for more privatisation of our SOEs, rather than focusing on growing more successful New Zealand corporates that deliver returns to shareholders by doing well in global markets.
I would have more New Zealand corporates behave more like our most successful agri-businesses. Then they would grow productivity faster than the average of the New Zealand economy. They would focus on expanding their international connections. They would grow the scale and and expertise they need to be world class businesses. They would build on genuine, science-led innovation and send the returns back to creative and entrepreneurial businesspeople in the many communities around New Zealand that are at the heart of our agriculture.
As I started out saying - there is a lot to be confident about in our agriculture. But I am a realist too.
Realistic that we need to deal with the massive debt problem, and the too-high interest rates we are paying to Australian banks. $11.7 billion a year in profits and interest payments? That’s where earnings from agriculture are going.
Realistic that we need to invest in r&d and creativity to come out of tough global conditions stronger.
Realistic that we need to turn environmental challenges into an opportunity.
And realistic that we can do all of this.
But it will take a fierce commitment of energy and co-operation across the sector.
I saw a comment from Don Nicholson that New Zealand's best exporters are found out there, in the fields and paddocks of New Zealand under rain, sun or snow working every single day, to bring wealth to New Zealand. I agree with that, and it’s up to the rest of us to match that commitment and to add our work to their success.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk to you as the Opposition spokesperson on agriculture. Can I also acknowledge the generous comments I have received from many farmers in recent months.
I have always been confident in the future of New Zealand’s agricultural industries. You have to be, because agriculture is intrinsic to our economy’s strength and our success. And it has been the backbone of our economy for most of our economic history because of our competitive advantage as a farming nation.
But while I am confident, I am realistic as well. There are a number of issues we need to deal with:
- Farm profitability is uncertain in stormy international economic conditions.
- There are broad risks in the financial strength of the agricultural sector.
- Global awareness about environmental impacts and animal welfare are forcing change in our markets, and changing the business environment - as well as affecting the raw materials farming depends on, like climate and water.
I’m glad you’re meeting here in Auckland, because it emphasises that the prosperity even of our largest city is dependent on the performance of our farmers. Agriculture is as relevant to Queen Street as it is to Hokitika, to Matamata, to Geraldine or to Carterton.
For that matter, the services that cities can provide can be crucial to our primary industries, too. In my home town, Christchurch, some of the most innovative scientists in New Zealand are rivaled only by their contemporaries in cities like Palmerston North and Hamilton in their research contribution to New Zealand.
There is always a risk that our economic backbone will be ignored in public debate about our economy.
At the start of this year, when the then new government opened its year in parliament with the Speech from the Throne, the word ‘agriculture’ didn’t even get a mention. It was the first time in at least a decade that our farmers were ignored. There is not much chance of developing the right policy for the agricultural sector, when farming isn’t even being contemplated by the government.
The policy environment in Wellington today, like every capital around the world right now, is occupied with the difficult global economic environment. Many developed countries are in recession. Some of them are in deep recession. We can take some comfort that demand for food holds up better in a recession than demand for the cars of General Motors or Chrysler.
But we can’t be too comfortable.
Reduced demand around the world is likely to result in reduced prices for our exports. Ultimately that means incomes will fall. And because the same reduced prices affect farmers everywhere, we can expect farmers in every country to redouble efforts to increase productivity and production, because this lowers costs per unit of output.
And since every farmer around the world is in the same situation, total production will increase, with prices falling and demand increasing only slowly.
On top of that, there is input price pressure. One of the critical elements in soil fertility is nitrogen. Industrial fertiliser is produced from gas or coal, and the price of fossil fuels are high. Persistent increases in the price of oil and gas would lead to higher fertilizer costs, so you get higher input costs and reduced demand.
Hand in hand with that picture, we can expect to see rising protectionism in many markets, particularly in agriculture. So that makes market access more difficult.
This is a tough recipe for farms.
There are only two ways to increase farm profitability: reducing the costs of inputs, or increasing the value of production from given inputs. A combination of both strategies is inevitable.
The underlying trend in the export prices for our commodity agricultural products is down, over the long term. With some medium term exceptions, such as China’s expansion and climate events, prices for agricultural exports have been under long-term downward pressure. The strong expansion of China in recent years has helped to push up the prices of many raw materials - including some that farmers compete for, such as energy - while also increasing the price for agricultural products.
But relying on that to continue forever is not a prudent long-term strategy for New Zealand.
At the same time that we are confronting the difficult environment for farm prices, agricultural finance is under stress as well.
This is what I call a perfect storm: input price rises, threats to demand and now finance risks.
I’ve been looking at New Zealand’s accounts with the rest of the world. When you look at our merchandise trade - our exports against our imports, the deficit is large but manageable. But we face a massive deficit in one crucial area - investment income.
We have been using the savings of people in other countries instead of our own earnings or our own savings to pay for our lifestyle. And the bill for that is starting to come in. The bill is coming in from banks.
How much do you think New Zealanders send overseas each year to the big Australian banks?
In the nineties we sent overseas about three billion dollars a year in profits and interest on loans extended to New Zealand banks. For the first half of this decade it was stable around about four billion dollars a year.
But something dramatic has happened. The banking system has begun repatriating enormous amounts of New Zealand money.
Last year, calendar 2008, the banks repatriated 11-point-7 billion dollars in profit and interest paid on loans. That is, the New Zealand branches paid their overseas owners $11.7 billion in interest and profit.
The total has risen from $3.8 billion in 2000 to $11.7 billion last year. That’s more than the entire GST revenue of New Zealand. It is more than the entire education budget. And in a single year it is far more than the entire proceeds of the asset sales programme that caused so much pain through the eighties and nineties.
Behind this enormous repatriation of New Zealanders’ money is a serious balance of payments deficit. It now stands at $16 billion - that’s about nine per cent of GDP.
In other words, our total overseas debt increased by sixteen billion dollars last year. Debt like this is easy to run up and hard to pay back. It poses a risk for the agriculture sector specifically. Total bank lending to agriculture in April this year was $43.7 billion, or 13.8 per cent of the total lent to New Zealand.
Two thirds of that is lending to the dairy industry - at a time when one estimate says Fonterra could be forced to cut its payout from the current $4.55 if our dollar stays over sixty US cents. This would be very hard on some farming businesses that thought the last couple of years’ high prices would last longer.
Relief from interest rates would help. As Federated Farmers’ Lachlan McKenzie pointed out yesterday, every one per cent drop in interest you pay on that debt is worth $450 million. That’s a lot of money that comes straight off farmers’ bottom line.
How refreshing it is to hear the farming sector focussing on this issue. In the nineties, some farming leaders used to applaud higher interest rates and the monetary policies that deliberately punished the productive sector.
Today, interest rates are too high at a time when banks should be reducing them.
In a recession, while banks around the world have been under pressure, the big banks here have been smirking.
In the current environment, a lot of farms are facing a squeeze and they will struggle to meet the payments on their debt.
This is serious, and it needs serious attention urgently. I’m not confident it will get it.
I’ll tell you what I would do if I were still the agriculture minister: I would immediately convene a taskforce of the best and brightest in the sector to develop a short-, medium-, and long-term strategy to the deal with the issue.
The huge remittances to banks are the result of the Australian banks funding our balance of payments deficit. They are taking an enormous clip of the ticket for doing it.
We need to rely more on our own savings, instead of spending the savings of others.
And we need some fresh thinking on the balance of payments problem too.
We need a broad-based focus to reduce our imports. We could make a start if we were able to reduce our dependence on imported oil.
If we could develop reasonably-priced biofuels and other forms of new energy, and reduce waste energy, we would score a huge opportunity for farming:
- Potentially a new source of revenue for farmers.
- Potential cost-savings.
- A contribution to a better climate and the natural resources our farms depend on.
- And a substantial reduction in our trading deficit with the rest of the world.
On top of all these advantages, it would help us to prosper in a world where consumers are becoming more demanding, and asking more searching questions about sustainability.
This is partly about how we manage our emissions - but it’s about a lot more than that as well.
If New Zealand is going to achieve a higher price for our production than our competitors, then quality and a perceived advantage as being more environmentally responsible will be part of our national brand.
As every responsible study shows, clean performance means we need to be responsible about our carbon emissions, too.
That’s why the Opposition is taking a constructive approach to working with the government on emissions trading. Only yesterday we voted with the government on a new climate change bill, in a spirit of working in the best interests of all our industry sectors.
Some conclusions are inescapable. As a general principle, polluters, one way or another, will have to bear the cost of their emissions. There are developments on the table, such as Gordon Brown’s proposal yesterday for a global development fund to help poor countries replace their emissions with cleaner alternatives.
The world is also moving closer to a global carbon trading scheme. Once that happens, New Zealand taxpayers will not long pay to subsidise polluters, as we are now. Any government of New Zealand is going to have to deal with emissions if we are a prudent country. What won’t work is hoping that the problem goes away.
And I continue to believe environmental sustainability is a competitive advantage for New Zealand. When you see the ugly factory farms in many parts of the world, and you compare their practices to the clean and open countryside we farm in New Zealand, you can see we have a huge opportunity.
I know there are few New Zealanders as passionate about the land as our farmers.
And so as the world cares more about the good of our planet, this should be an enormous opportunity for us.
It will require care to seize the opportunity, though, because it is implicit in seizing the opportunity that we will live up to our promise.
We can’t just say we are cleaner and higher quality than our competitors. We have to BE it.
Consumers will not be impressed if we are seen to be dragged into better environmental performance kicking and screaming.
If you want to know what happens when change takes too long, ask the pork industry how its animal welfare standards are perceived by the public.
Now I support giving that sector time to change. I also hope that a review of the animal welfare code for pigs this year will impose higher standards. But none of us should be uncertain about the costs to the entire industry of the strategy it followed.
The public saw it as too slow to change, instead of adopting a strategy of having the highest quality. The reputational damage has made the pork industry the subject of more letters to my office than anything else right now, including the smacking referendum.
If it can happen in that sector, it can happen in any other. We cannot be seen to be the source of dirty water or unsustainable users of resources. We cannot be seen as polluters when our industry is based on healthy growth, on food and on good health.
So overall, we have an environmental challenge. We have a challenge to the industry’s financial stability. We have a squeeze on its cost structure. We have a struggle in global markets.
The solutions will be discovered by science. Sustained, deep and ongoing investment in research and development in the industry is crucial - to identify cost-saving opportunities, and to identify new processes and new products that will extract more value.
As has been well rehearsed now - I put my stake in the ground for research and development in the primary industries sector. The NZ Fast Forward Fund was a commitment of seven hundred million dollars, which would earn interest and private sector partnerships and grow to be worth two billion dollars over its lifetime.
It’s been replaced by a relatively puny seventy million dollar annual commitment - for just four years.
There is no guaranteed long term commitment. There is no chance to earn interest and fund very large projects from an annual appropriation when science has to compete with every other demand on taxpayers’ purses.
It would be unfortunate if the message that politicians drew from this episode is that there is no political problem with cutting r&d. I believe there is a huge divide over this issue between the different sides of politics. Our side says the way out of our problems is investment in r&d and people. Our side says the way out of our problems is investment in knowledge, training and skills.
This is an important debate, and it is crucial for farmers. But whatever choice government makes, it is now up to our agricultural industry to lead investment.
Investment in science and in research and development is the most significant commitment we can make across all of our agriculture, to determine our own future.
Investment in marketing, and in market-responsive structures. Investment in talent, in creativity and in the strong communities that attract people to rural lifestyles.
Our r&d, our talent, and the structures underpinning them give our agriculture a competitive advantage over competing countries with temperate climates. Our competitive advantage is our science and research. It is our people and our lifestyle.
Our competitive advantage in the future will be in our superior products. In costs driven down by innovation, not exploitation. In processes focused on delivering a better product to consumers. In environmental sustainability driven by science, not wishes.
And the agriculture sector is going to have to lead investment to keep us at the forefront in all these areas, because innovation is not going to come from anywhere else.
It won’t happen on its own.
And it isn’t happening fast enough in other parts of the economy. When you look through our economy to where the wealth has been created, there are some pretty compelling facts to confront. One is that our corporate sector has spent most of the last twenty years - overall - destroying shareholder wealth.
When you compare stock market results to the performance of farms and agri-business, you get a clear picture of where the strength of our economy resides. I understand the stock exchange chief executive was invited along to Treasury recently to lecture State Owned Enterprises about behaving more like the corporate sector.
If they were to behave like our corporate sector, they would destroy value.
They would grow productivity more slowly than comparable overseas businesses.
They would focus not on doing a better job, but on sending more of New Zealanders’ cash to overseas owners.
The stock markets agenda is to lobby for more privatisation of our SOEs, rather than focusing on growing more successful New Zealand corporates that deliver returns to shareholders by doing well in global markets.
I would have more New Zealand corporates behave more like our most successful agri-businesses. Then they would grow productivity faster than the average of the New Zealand economy. They would focus on expanding their international connections. They would grow the scale and and expertise they need to be world class businesses. They would build on genuine, science-led innovation and send the returns back to creative and entrepreneurial businesspeople in the many communities around New Zealand that are at the heart of our agriculture.
As I started out saying - there is a lot to be confident about in our agriculture. But I am a realist too.
Realistic that we need to deal with the massive debt problem, and the too-high interest rates we are paying to Australian banks. $11.7 billion a year in profits and interest payments? That’s where earnings from agriculture are going.
Realistic that we need to invest in r&d and creativity to come out of tough global conditions stronger.
Realistic that we need to turn environmental challenges into an opportunity.
And realistic that we can do all of this.
But it will take a fierce commitment of energy and co-operation across the sector.
I saw a comment from Don Nicholson that New Zealand's best exporters are found out there, in the fields and paddocks of New Zealand under rain, sun or snow working every single day, to bring wealth to New Zealand. I agree with that, and it’s up to the rest of us to match that commitment and to add our work to their success.
All talk and no jobs
15/07/09 11:53 Filed in: News Releases
National is talking big about agriculture, but it’s running up a surrender flag with no new ideas, Opposition agriculture spokesperson Jim Anderton says.
“Today John Key billed his speech as a major statement on the economy, but he had no new ideas while unemployment is increasing.
“Unemployment in a region like Gisborne increased from 3.8% in 2006 to 7.8% in March this year and it will be inevitably higher now. Yet while unemployment is rising quickly in regional New Zealand, National has no ministry or policy for regional development or industry development. They never did and they don’t have now.
“National imposed a massive tax increase on research and development and it cancelled a two-billion dollar partnership between the government and private sector to invest in primary sector innovation.
“While John Key talks about the economic performance of agriculture, he has no idea about why our farms, businesses and homeowners are paying much higher interest rates than Australians, when the same banks are doing the lending.
“John Key is all talk and no jobs,” Jim Anderton said.
Fitch warning a wake up on bank profits.
17/07/09 11:50 Filed in: News Releases
Warnings of a credit downgrade because of our current account deficit are a wake up call about the sums we are paying foreign banks in interest and profit to fund the deficit, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
The Fitch rating agency warns that New Zealand has a fifty-fifty chance of a credit downgrade because the current account is very high. Unless it halves, we will be downgraded, and households, farmers and businesses will have to pay higher interest rates.
Jim Anderton says the external deficit is already costing New Zealand too much.
“We sent $11.7 billion in interest and profit to overseas-owned banks last year, more than the government collected in GST revenue. Farmers alone are paying interest of around six billion dollars in farm debt.
“Interest rates charged here by the Australian-owned banks are higher than the same banks charge in Australia. Their margins are higher.
“We are sending that money to the overseas-owned banks because they are financing the current account deficit. When house prices rose, New Zealanders borrowed against the capital, bought new plasma tvs, but didn’t increase our capacity to earn more.
“Now the bill is starting to come in.
“Current account deficits have a history of reversing themselves sharply, with very sudden falls in consumption. That amounts to a poor outlook when the government is already hoping the recession will end by itself.
“Unfortunately the government doesn’t have any economic plans to reduce the current account deficit and it doesn’t even recognise the level of profits going to overseas-owned banks are a problem.
“Rogernomics was meant to end the current account deficit problem for ever. It failed abysmally.”
Treasury claims about privatisation boosting productivity
21/07/09 11:48 Filed in: News Releases
Treasury’s claim that privatisation boosts productivity is an old song that Treasury should be embarrassed about, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
“Treasury made the exact same claim about the privatisation of rail. It could not have been more wrong. The privatisation of rail was a disaster on any reasonable measure.”
Jim Anderton tabled in parliament Treasury’s 1999 report “The Privatisation of New Zealand Rail.”
In the report, produced when Bill English was finance minister, Treasury claimed, “welfare increased from the privatisation of rail. This reflects the remarkable improvement in productivity that took place.”
“Treasury has long made a habit of calling for the same medicine regardless of the facts. When the facts showed Treasury’s advice about privatising rail was hopelessly wrong, they made up a case that said it was great anyway! You can’t beat this for poor quality advice. If Treasury was a doctor, the patient would be dead.
In an ironic twist on Treasury’s call for other government departments to contract out more work, the discredited rail report was produced under contract for Treasury.
Banks have questions to answer
21/07/09 11:46 Filed in: News Releases
Banks are charging interest rates in New Zealand that are higher than the same banks charge in Australia, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
He is supporting a cross-party inquiry into bank profits, because he says the banks have questions to answer about why there is a difference in the rates they charge.
“Overseas-owned banks took $11.7 billion out of New Zealand last year in interest and profits. That’s more than the entire sum collected in GST revenue. The amount they have been paying themselves has increased rapidly over the last three or four years.
“Interest rates charged by the overseas banks are especially affecting farmers.
“Total farm debt at the moment is around $43 billion. At farm lending rates of 13-14 per cent, that means our farmers are having to pay $5.5-6 billion a year in interest alone to the Australian banks.
“Every one per cent of interest charged represents $450 million off the bottom line of New Zealand’s farms.
“The Australian banks charge interest on unsecured loans of 17.95%, compared to 16.9% charged by Kiwibank.
“Interest on a standard Westpac credit card is 19.45%. In Australia, the comparable interest rate charged on a standard Westpac card is 17.74%. Australia has a higher official cash rate than we do. Kiwibank is able to charge 12.9% on its standard credit cards.
“An inquiry will help to establish why Aussie banks charge us more than they charge Australians.”