Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa, the NZ Council of Christian Social Services, NZEI  Riu Roa, The Public Health Association, To Ora Hou, Every Child Counts  and CPAG have formed a coalition with a number of other organisations and individuals to promote Tick4Kids, a campaign to make children’s interests a central focus for the 2014-2017 parliamentary term. The spokesperson for this campaign is Deborah Morris-Travers, the advocacy spokesperson for UNICEF NZ.

Deborah has prepared a video: Hearing the voices of our children. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxnKtVHEmWg

For more details refer www.tick4kids.org.nz

The Equality Network, a group of New Zealand organisations dedicated to reducing inequality, is today releasing a rating of political parties and their policies on tackling income gaps

The ratings reveal the Greens out in front, with a rating of three stars out of a possible four, and Labour and the Mana Party not far behind.

The full ratings are:

Greens – three stars

Labour – two and a half stars

Mana – two and a half stars

New Zealand First – one and a half stars

Maori – one and a half stars

National – one star

Conservatives – half a star

United Future – half a star

ACT – no star

“Inequality and poverty is a leading concern at this time and people are looking to our political leaders do something about it.” says Equality Network spokesman Peter Malcolm.

The Equality Network is a non-partisan network of organisations—see www.equalitynetwork.org.nz – working under the mantra that more equal societies are better for all.

“New Zealand has seen significant change and growth over the last 30 years,” Peter Malcolm says.

“We are regarded as one of the least corrupt countries in the world and are valued for our innovation and sense of fair play. However, along with the benefits of growth has been an unprecedented rise in inequality. New Zealand’s income gaps increased faster than anywhere in the rich world between the mid-1980s and the mid-2000s.”

In the lead-up to the General Election on September 20, 2014, the Equality Network is calling for fundamental change in the areas that it believes have the most impact on inequality. It has ranked the parties’ policies in the following six areas:

• Getting more people into well-paid jobs
• Closing the salary gap in the workplace
• Reducing gaps through taxes and benefits
• Better education to break cycles of poverty
• Stronger health and housing to reduce poverty’s impacts
• Strengthening democracy to bring people together

Each of these areas has been broken down into specific policies.

In each area, the parties have been given a rating out of four stars for how much impact their policies will have on inequality, in which: no star = no impact; one star = small impact; two stars = moderate impact; three stars = strong impact; four stars = very strong impact.

In all the ratings, parties have been assessed based on a combination of their ambition (how strongly they are committed to tackling inequality) and their plan (the level of detail they have for policies to close income gaps).

For more information or comment, contact Peter Malcolm on (07) 5524809 (022)3086982.

For comment and information, contact Peter Malcolm phone 07 5524809                          mobile 022 3086982         Email [email protected]