Category Archives: News

The four things New Zealanders need for good health

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George Laking, the spinoff, 24 September 2020

Photo: Getty Images

From damp housing to unsafe work, doctors see every day the conditions worsening the health of thousands of New Zealanders. Dr George Laking of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians explains the four things we can do make a change for the better.

Physicians are specialist doctors who look after people with medical illnesses. We mostly don’t do operations. We listen to patients and whānau, find out what’s happening, and work out a plan for recovery.

Our plans may involve medicines, but we know health depends on a lot more. Health often requires linking people up with social supports. Most importantly, good health depends on change. We need to change the conditions that make health fail in the first place.

At hospitals, we often talk about the “revolving door” that keeps people coming back into care, again and again. The revolving door is there because the condition of people’s lives makes them sick. It does not need to go on like this. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) can point to four things that, when we get them right, will lead to good health for all New Zealanders.

These four things have long been known. They’re summed up in words famously associated with former Prime Minister Norman Kirk: “People don’t want much – just somewhere to live, someone to love, something to do and something to hope for”.

You won’t find a better prescription for a nation’s health than these words. They’re the starting point of the RACP’s work to #MakeItTheNorm. They’re backed up by our knowledge, experience, and evidence of the things that matter for health:

  1. Somewhere to live: It needs to be the norm that everyone has healthy housing.
  2. Someone to love: It needs to be the norm that all whānau enjoy wellbeing.
  3. Something to do: It needs to be the norm that everyone has good work.
  4. Something to hope for: There needs to be justice. Everyone has to have a fair go.

As Aotearoa goes to the polls, the RACP has one question: what are our elected leaders doing to make these four things the norm?

Our members are physicians and paediatricians working mainly in hospitals, all over the country. Every day, in clinics and on the wards, we see how New Zealand gets it wrong. We see the harm caused by cold, mouldy and damp housing; by whānau life on subsistence incomes; by unsafe and precarious jobs; and most perniciously, by inequity – the uneven access to resources that leads to avoidable and unjust loss of health.

The links have long been known between health and the conditions in which we gestate and are born, live, grow, work, play and age. Here, in more detail, is the prescription for change we need to make Aotearoa a healthier place.

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Māori Party housing policy includes immigration halt, homes on ancestral land.

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24 September 2020, rnz.co.nz/news

The Māori Party is promising to halt all immigration into New Zealand until housing supply catches up with demand, if it becomes part of the next government.

It is part of the party’s housing programme, Whānau Build, unveiled today by co-leader John Tamihere.

The party is also vowing to allocate half of all new social housing units to Māori, and build 2000 homes on ancestral land over the next two years.

It is estimated to cost of $600 million – tagged from the government announced $20 billion Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund.

“These houses will be funded by the state as a long-overdue investment that others have taken for granted,” Tamihere said.

“It will help in resetting and reorganising Māori whānau and Māori whenua by making available land for papakaīnga and ensuring that our land is used in the best possible way.”

Tamihere said there would be special exceptions for some migrants.

“If we’ve got skill gaps, only, we would bring in people. And family integration, we accept that, because we’re as human as all other people. But other than that, we will put the shutter down and say, we need to take a breather here.”

“We’ve had 50,000 new immigrants coming in per year in 2017 and 2018, and heading into 2019 … we need to build our supply side up for housing to meet our demand.”

Tamihere said vacant or empty houses would be taxed to force them into the housing market.

“In Auckland, there’s 38,000 of them and unless they are brought into the housing stock and used for rental – because they are by and large [of] good quality – we have a problem.

“The question is, why would people leave these houses vacant after they’ve bought them? It’s because they double in price every eight years, so you’re going into a casino where you can’t lose. So you have to, for the sake of all New Zealanders, tax foreign ownership of residential property, particularly if its left vacant. If we don’t do that we will never get out of the housing crisis.”

The Overseas Investment Act would also be required to apply to all residential housing purchases because many of these vacant houses were owned by foreign interests, he said.

“It is expected this policy will free up over 50,000 houses and ensure that an asset class people invest in, but can never lose, has some consequences for the greater common good of our country.

“Immigration must be stopped until the supply side of housing meets the demand side. Immigration is causing disruption and adding to the false elevation in demand and therefore elevation in prices.”

The Māori Party is also hoping to impose a capital gains tax of 2 percent of the appreciation per annum on any property not considered a whānau home.

It is also pledging to stop the sale of freehold land to off-shore interests.

Plan to charge for emergency housing back on

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A Government plan to charge people for emergency housing like motels was derailed by Covid-19, but will now come into effect two days after the election

Dileepa Fonseka, Newsroom, 22 September 2020

For most of us the biggest event of the last two years was Covid-19, but for one South Auckland family it was a home renovation.

A family of seven (two adults and five children) have lived beside rodents, been shunted to different corners of Auckland, and had their belongings flooded out in a garage they used for storage – after their landlord of five years decided to renovate the property they lived in.

There’s a shortage of social and transitional housing. Photo: Lynn Grieveson

Mary* spends her days looking for houses, making applications for rentals, getting rejected then taking those seven-eight applications in to Work and Income at the end of the week – where she waits in line for three hours – so she can prove she hasn’t been able to find a house.

“Most of the time I’m stressing out here trying to deal with housing every week. Reporting and following everything they tell me to do to keep us here for my boys to have a roof.

“I don’t know how to do this … I don’t sleep at night. Even if I’m tired. I can sleep for three hours and I wake up and I feel like tired, but I just won’t sleep.”

Read the full article here

Election 2020: Green Party and The Opportunities Party support introduction of rent caps

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Mandy Te, stuff.co.nz, 17 September 2020

The Green Party and The Opportunities Party have announced they will both support the introduction of rent caps which would limit the amount a landlord could increase rent.

At the Enough for All: Election Forum 2020 event in Wellington Central on Wednesday evening, a renter called Zoe told politicians about her renting experience in the capital city.

“In 2017, I moved into an eight-bedroom flat in central Wellington – nine of us lived there in order to make it affordable, and we shared a rent of $1600 per week,” she said.

“My rent for a room that could charitably be called a shoebox room was $205 a week which was more than half my income at the time.”

Affording the rent was stressful for Zoe and her flatmates – many had taken on one or more jobs while studying to cover it.

“It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence that me and my flatmates needed to often cover for our other flatmates because of the inability to pay rents on time.”

While they managed to make their payments every week, Zoe said their home was not warm or dry.

“In our first winter in the flat, I began to notice black mould on my ceiling.”

A month later, the roof in her room began to leak and later, pour, she said.

The flat was offered $200 in compensation.

Zoe said their rent was hiked up year after year – in 2018, it was $1700 per week and in 2019, it was put up to $1800.

To make rent affordable, 11 people were living in the property.

In February, the flat was told their rent was going up again by $200 – making it $2000 a week.

“Obviously we moved out because it was unaffordable and over that same period, my income and the same with my flatmates’ [income] had barely gone up.”

Renters needed action now, she told politicians.

“My question to you is: until the rental housing supply kicks up with demand, does your party support introducing rent caps to limit the amount by which landlords can raise rent?”

Green Party candidate Ricardo Menéndez-March says “we need to make sure landlords are not ripping us off in the middle of a housing crisis” (File photo).

Ricardo Menéndez-March from the Green Party said it supported “to legislate to ensure secure and affordable long-term rental accommodation”.

“I do think we need to we need to make sure landlords are not ripping us off in the middle of a housing crisis.”

It was “absolutely unfair” for people to be spending most of their income on rent and “people here are going without because of high rents”.

National Party’s Nicola Willis acknowledged that there was a massive housing challenge in Wellington but the party would not support the introduction of rent caps.

“We have to increase the supply of housing that’s why we’re committing to replacing and appealing the Resource Management Act … we believe that kind of systemic reform gets to the nub of our housing issue which comes down to not enough houses to keep up with demand. When we solve that, then rents and house ownership become more affordable.”

Taylor Arneil from New Zealand First said it advocated for the building of more homes instead of introducing rent caps.

Labour Party’s Andrew Little said it did not support introducing rent caps.

Labour Party’s Andrew Little says it had inherited a housing crisis from the previous Government (File photo)

“This Government has done a number of things. We have regulated what landlords can and cannot do or need to do in terms of quality of housing and many things are starting to kick in,” he said.

The Labour Party had inherited a housing crisis from the previous Government which had reduced the country’s state housing stock, he said.

The current Government had added to social housing, he said.

“There is more to do and Kiwibuild hasn’t been the success we would have hoped it might be, but we have built houses that are more affordable for more people, and we need to continue through things likes progressive home ownership schemes,” Little said.

The Opportunities Party leader Geoff Simmons said housing was the biggest issue facing New Zealand.

“To solve this problem we need to hold house prices and rents stable for another generation to allow our incomes to catch up,” Simmons said.

“So this is a massive, massive challenge – it is going to take lots of different actions to do that.”

Anna Mooney, spokeswoman for Renters United, a group that advocates for renters and has begun a petition for fair rent, said it was unfortunate “National, Labour and NZ First are offering no solutions to runaway rents other than increasing supply”.

“That will take decades, while renters fall deeper into hardship,” Mooney said.

“Renters United wants to see rent caps in which landlords cannot raise rent by more than inflation. This is the only way to stop rents from becoming more unaffordable.”

The subdued frustration of a debate on inequality

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Alex Braa, thespinoff.co.nz, 17 September 2020

LABOUR REPRESENTATIVE ANDREW LITTLE SPEAKING AT THE ENOUGH FOR ALL ELECTION FORUM (ALEX BRAAE)

Campaign groups are trying to get issues around the welfare system, housing and poverty onto the election agenda. Alex Braae was in Wellington to see a deeply frustrating debate play out.

Many election forums give politicians plenty of room to speak about whatever they want. But at a forum on inequality, the onus was reversed, with candidates asked to account directly and specifically for how their party would help those with the least.

The Enough for All forum was held at Wellington’s St Peter’s Church, hosted by a range of poverty action groups and attended by representatives of five parties. With the nature of the discussion being heavy, the mood of the room was subdued compared to the rowdiness of many events that aim to make the election fun.

People who had lived experiences of coming up against the more difficult and punitive aspects of the welfare system first outlined their stories, before follow up questions were directed at particular politicians. The stories were personal, deeply involved and bleak, illustrating the way many experience government policy as something that’s done to them, rather than for them.

Over the course of the evening, it seemed to become a particularly frustrating room for NZ First’s Rongotai candidate Taylor Arneal and National’s education spokesperson Nicola Willis, who faced more follow-up challenges than other candidates on stage.

The event also illustrated the gap between Labour and the Greens. Labour’s Andrew Little was repeatedly questioned on his statements by the Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez March, particularly on issues of raising core benefit rates, and relationship rules for beneficiaries. His needling was never really responded to by Little, who also took the opportunity to direct some barbs to his right at NZ First’s representative.

The first question came after a demonstration of wealth owned through the slicing of a pavlova. A tiny slice was shaved off to represent the 2.5 million New Zealanders with the least. When a massive slab was given to the top 10%, candidates were asked if they supported the wealthiest paying more, with a wealth tax being an example of how that might happen.

Answers all had to start with a simple yes or no. Willis came out with a no, before speaking about how people had to pay their fair share and that a growing economy would lift all. Taylor was also a no, saying that IRD needed to be properly resourced to make that happen.

Menendez March, joining the meeting through Zoom, was the first yes on that question. He talked about both a wealth tax at the top 6% and how a tax-free threshold of $10,000 was necessary to rebalance the tax system.

Little talked about the party’s policy of a new top tax rate and called that a yes, but didn’t go near a wealth tax in his answer. Opportunities Party leader Geoff Simmons said the devil was in the detail and said rather than a blanket wealth tax, there needed to be a tax on property.

Despite the best efforts of the organisers to pin politicians down with yes or no answers, the slipperiness still showed through. An example of this came in a follow-up question from Stacey Ryan, who has spent years living with chronic pain, making her unable to work. She asked candidates if their party’s policies would force her into work, even if she was too sick to manage.

Each candidate began their answer in much the same way – no, nobody should be forced into work if they have an illness or disability that makes it impossible. However, as Ryan’s question made clear, the hoops that she has to jump through to remain on the sickness benefit (like being required to provide regular medical certificates at her own expense) makes that something of a moot point.

After each question, moderator Susie Ferguson asked the questioner whether they felt they had got an answer. “I got answers, but they weren’t necessarily the ones I was hoping for,” quipped questioner Zoe, who asked about extortionate prices for substandard rental housing.

And that rather summed up the state of the evening. Poverty remains endemic for thousands of New Zealanders, with the downturn from Covid-19 ensuring that many others will soon join them. Progress on alleviating poverty over the last three years has largely been piecemeal, focused on addressing specific facets of the existing welfare system rather any sort of systemic change. With house prices tipped to continue rising amid everything else falling apart, those with wealth will continue to get wealthier.

While the questions that were asked gave Menendez March room to discuss the party’s significantly more ambitious policies, he was hamstrung by the political realities of the Greens having weak polling and having little leverage over Labour. At one point during his pitch, he even noted that Labour had recently ruled out raising core benefit rates. It came in the context of asking for votes, but illustrated just how difficult even a stronger Green Party would find sweeping welfare reform as part of a Labour government.

Picking up on that, Ferguson took a moment to ask Little why so few of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations had been brought in, particularly on the raising of core benefits by 47%. “We could not do that in one fell swoop because it’s expensive and there are competing priorities,” he said. Nicola Willis agreed, saying “we simply can’t afford that as a country” and argued that incomes from benefits shouldn’t be too close to incomes from jobs in order to incentivise work.

Audience polling conducted over Zoom by Action Station showed that an overwhelming majority of watchers backed what the Greens were saying, with TOP coming in second place, and Labour in third. Not a single person watching online voted for National. Regardless, Willis thanked those who had questioned her for sharing their stories.

“Maybe take some of these stories and kōrero back to your teams,” said Ferguson in closing. But these stories weren’t really new. They were unique examples of what thousands of people have experienced for decades. With candidates sticking closely to their party lines, the biggest frustration of all was clear – that not enough would be done to prevent these same stories needing to be told all over again in three years.

Link to article here

Political Roundup: Politicians making inequality worse

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Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project, 27 August 2020 https://democracyproject.nz/

Inequality and poverty look to be the forgotten issues of the election campaign, with not much more than lip-service being paid to them on the campaign trail. Yet decisions are currently being made that appear to be fuelling a greater gap between rich and poor.

Newsroom’s Bernard Hickey has tweeted this week to sum up how the Government has chosen to manage the Covid-19 health and economic crisis: “This Covid-19 response has all been about bailing out property owners, helping banks, propping up zombie small businesses, big grants and loans to well-connected big businesses and middle class welfare via special Covid dole to higher-paid jobless. Not a team of 5 million at all.”

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Why the wealthy need to step up now

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Graeme MacCormick, Stuff, Aug 25 2020

PROVIDENCE DOUCET/UNSPLASH
Graeme MacCormick: While most New Zealanders have been doing sufficiently well, way too many have not

OPINION: Whatever the shape of the next government it will need more revenue to deal with the multiple effects of Covid-19. One proposal has been to sell New Zealand residency to the mega rich. But that seems like selling our soul.

A net wealth tax, as now proposed by the Green Party has much more to commend it – although to be electorally acceptable it needs a higher level of exemption, affecting far fewer people.

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Covid 19 coronavirus: White New Zealanders more likely to get new, more generous benefit

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Isaac Davison, NZ Herald, 31 August 2020

Beneficiary advocate Kathleen Paraha said the two-tier welfare system created during Covid was unfair on those who had lost their jobs before the pandemic. Photo / Dean Purcel

White New Zealanders are much more likely to get a new, more generous welfare payment introduced in response to Covid-19.

The Government was warned that it was creating a “two-tier” welfare system which could potentially worsen racial inequality when it introduced the higher, tax-free, more accessible benefit in May.

The Covid Income Relief Payment (CIRP) of $490 a week was worth nearly twice as much as a single person’s unemployment benefit. Unlike most existing benefits, it was also available to people whose partners were earning – as long as that partner was making no more than $2000 a week.

When introduced, the Government said it was to “cushion the blow” for people who had an unexpected, sharp drop in income – but denied it was middle class welfare.

Welfare advocates said the policy gave the impression that long-term beneficiaries were less deserving than middle-class people who had just lost their jobs during the pandemic.

Maori households are over-represented in the long-term beneficiary category, and the National Party said that making the new benefit permanent could worsen racial inequality in the welfare system.

Ministry of Social Development (MSD) data released last week gives a snapshot of who has received the Covid Income Relief Payment so far. European New Zealanders (43 per cent) were claiming it at nearly three times the rate of Maori (16 per cent).

That contrasts with the less generous unemployment benefit. In the period since Covid arrived in New Zealand, Maori and European New Zealanders have received Jobseeker Support at a similar rate (35 per cent).

Auckland Action Against Poverty advocate Kathleen Paraha said beneficiaries she worked with all felt they were being “ripped off” when the Covid relief payment came in.

“It’s just not fair – it’s a two-tier thing,” she said

Paraha, who is herself on the Supported Living Payment, said beneficiaries constantly battled to get grants for food and other costs because core benefits did not pay enough.

Her organisation had applied for food grants for 16 people on Friday alone – all were declined.

Mangere East Family Services CEO Peter Sykes said jobless in his suburb were mostly casual workers and did not qualify for the more generous benefit payments. Photo / Greg Bowker

Mangere East Family Services CEO Peter Sykes said it was particularly frustrating for long-term beneficiaries who were competing in the same job market as newly jobless.

“The core poor remain poor and remain quite distrustful of the system,” he said. “Now, all of a sudden, people can just send an email and get a payment. Most of our community doesn’t believe it.”

Many of the people in his suburb were casual workers in hospitality and home care and did not qualify for the Covid payment when they lost their jobs. The payment has a minimum hours requirement.

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni stressed that the Covid payment was a short-term measure for an unprecedented crisis. Furthermore, many people found they were better off on a benefit than the temporary payment because of additional support they could be eligible for.

“People take a number of factors into account when applying for support,” Sepuloni said.

“For example their ability to work part time, termination pay, or they may consider the stability of an established payment like a benefit, instead of going on to a temporary payment like CIRP.”

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said some jobless were better off on a benefit than the new Covid payment, because of the additional support they could get. Photo / Mark Tantrum

Another rationale for the Covid payment is that those who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic are more likely to be mortgage-holders. If a large number of people defaulted on their mortgages it could significantly increase the economic impact of the pandemic.

Max Rashbrooke, a researcher who specialises in economic inequality, said there could be a potential upside to the new Covid payment. In countries where people were paid more in benefits if they earned more, there tended to be more support for the broader welfare system.

“Increased payments for middle-class households can lead to more political room to increase payments to genuinely poor households,” Rashbrooke said.

“It’s plausible that if they feel like they’re getting more out of the welfare state, they are then more likely to feel some sense of ownership over the system and feel more kinship with other people who are receiving welfare payments. That’s the optimistic take, from an inequality point of view”.

The Government lifted core benefits by $25 a week (13 per cent) in response to Covid, though that was at the bottom end of the 12-47 per cent increase recommended by a Welfare Expert Advisory Group last year.

The expert group found that core benefits were between $100 and $300 a week lower than recipients needed to pay their bills and live with dignity.

COVID-19 costs women 36 year wait to economic equality

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The latest Financy Women’s Index shows how COVID-19 has cost Australian women a further delay in achieving economic equality.

By Financy, August 18, 2020

The Coronavirus pandemic has prolonged the timeframe for achieving economic gender equality in Australia to 36 years due to a decline in female workforce participation in the June quarter.

The Financy Women’s Index shows that in just four months of the COVID-19 health crisis, four years had been added to the estimated time it will take to achieve economic equality. During the period, the gap between the number of men and women in full-time employment has widened.

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