John Minto

A seemingly positive and uncontroversial proposal to change taxation arrangements for charitable donations will return to parliament this week.

The change means wage and salary earners can have charitable donations made by automatic payment from their pay each week with the government arranging a quick tax refund of a third of the donation.

Legislation to do this was introduced last year and is being reported back to parliament this week from the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

It follows from Labour’s decision to increase the limit for tax subsidies for charitable donations and National’s follow-up announcement early this year to lift the limit much further so that a person can now donate up to the full value of their annual income and receive a third back as a tax refund.

For every $300 donated the government refunds $100 to the donor.

New charitable organisations are registering rapidly to take advantage of the policy. There are over 22,000 groups now qualifying, astonishing for a country of just four million.

So where is the downside? Isn’t this just a welcome explosion of kiwi support for charities? We like to think we are generous people and isn’t this just an example of the government encouraging that kiwi spirit of giving? And surely it will help reduce poverty?

Philanthropy New Zealand director Robyn Scott is reported as saying “It’s starting to feel to some of us that maybe we are starting to move into a new age. There seems to be an increased awareness of the needs of others at this time”.

However the implications of all this taxpayer subsidised giving has serious downsides. We are increasingly shifting the responsibility for funding social services from the government and onto voluntary organisations. This has two important effects. Firstly those groups which receive funding from well-off philanthropists are only ones of which the prosperous approve. So instead of what can be argued is a community decision to fund services via taxation without fear or favour we are left with funding based on the impulses and prejudices of donors. Secondly the government’s forgone taxation will effectively shift the tax burden further onto those on the lowest incomes.

Put another way these tax refund changes amount to increased social engineering with those with the ability to make large donations using their economic resources to steer society in a direction they approve at the expense of taxpayers.

So there is plenty to worry about here and yet there’s been no sign of a public debate.

John Key has made no secret of his desire to see New Zealand develop this American model of philanthropy but as we know from the US it does not help to reduce poverty. That country of great abundance has more than 30 million (and rapidly growing) of its citizens living below the poverty line.

Donations to religious organisations and to state and integrated schools also attract the tax rebate. We can expect to see fringe religious groups receiving a boost from the taxpayer with renewed ability to promote all kinds of socially destructive policies as they do in the US.

The effects on schools will also be profound.

Schools in higher income areas will benefit substantially because large donations can now be provided by parents with the government giving a third back to the donor. Auckland Grammar for example, a state school, has an Academic Endowment Fund which will qualify for rebates. The school says this fund is designed to “…attract, reward and retain quality teaching staff” and is a mechanism to “…address the gap between state and private school salaries”. How many public schools will be able to compete with the salary top-ups Auckland Grammar can deliver?

To date the Fund has distributed more than $500,000 to the school staff. Where is the fund for the hard working teachers at our neediest schools? Parents in these communities already struggle to pay the voluntary donations the schools seek. At one school in Otara the annual donations taken over the whole school amounted to an average of $1.30 per student. At Auckland Grammar the voluntary donation, paid by almost all parents, is $700. With families in low-income areas now bearing the brunt of the recession with growing unemployment there will be fewer donations than before. The same benefit from the tax policy will be absent.

So over time the policy will extend the social, racial and economic gaps across New Zealand just as the same policy has added to American woes.

New Zealand is already a sharply divided country and in a multitude of ways this tax rebate policy will exacerbate the divisions as the affluent indulge their whims and fancies at taxpayer expense.

ENDS

John Minto The Press Column

It’s easy to understand Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples’s frustration last week when he called for Maori to have open entry to university. Maori educational statistics have been poor for a long time and have worsened since the 1970s. As a group they are more likely to leave school without qualifications; less likely to gain entry to university; less likely to go if they do gain entry and more likely to drop out before completing a degree.

There have been numerous studies, several pilot programmes, some extra money here and there and much talking but the problem persists. The only significant relief recently has come with the development of NCEA assessment which has quite rightly valued skills and knowledge not formerly recognised in single high-stakes written exams. Students from low-income communities have benefited and the achievement has been real despite the sometimes justified claims of poor quality assessments.

The reasons for the problem of Maori underachievement have been hotly debated. On the one hand are claims of racism and cultural insensitivity in higher educational institutions dominated by Pakeha. Even the most liberal Pakeha can be patronisingly racist unintentionally but in a way which damages and denigrates.

The counter to Sharples’s call has been predictable and based on ethnocentrism – seeing the world from one’s own ethnic perspective to the exclusion of other views. The thoughtless whinging on talk-back radio claims everyone has the same chance at school and if Maori kids want to go to university they should just front up, do the work and be accepted or rejected alongside everyone else. This view contains the assumption that everyone begins the steeplechase to university from the same start line. However most Maori begin well behind the bunch and are forced to overcome many more obstacles. Their track is longer, the water jump is deeper and the fences are so high they must be scaled rather than hurdled. Their lane lacks the smooth running surface of most other competitors.

Some criticism of Sharples has been much more valuable. There is compelling evidence that the main reason Maori are underrepresented at university is because most come from low-income communities and this factor has a much greater impact than race.

Consider women for example. For most of the last century they were largely absent from university through direct barriers and what we now see as archaic social attitudes. Women now are frequently the majority in university courses so can the same change in social attitudes towards Maori participation make the same gains here? Unfortunately no. It is young women from the middle and upper classes who dominate women’s participation at university while young females from low-income communities remain as badly represented as do other groups which predominate in poorer communities.

Similarly Maori who do enter and succeed at university for the most part come from middle class backgrounds. The overt racism of the past is much diminished as are the attitudes which formerly prevented women attaining higher education.

Others in the Maori Party such as Te Ururoa Flavell have suggested pushing for the re-organisation of Maori colleges such as Hawkes Bay’s Te Aute College which produced so many parliamentary Maori leaders 100 years ago. The argument goes that this would provide a fillip for a Maori educational renaissance. These schools have lost their “elite” status because they have taken a broader range of Maori students which means that the single minded focus on narrow academic achievement has been lost. But this rehashes the same problem. Excluding working class Maori from such schools will improve the schools’ academic results but won’t improve the overall results for Maori. It will simply reinforce the argument that socio-economic status rather than race is the key to understanding Maori achievement levels in education.

So the question “why are Maori not entering university at the same rate as Pakeha?” has a simple answer. It’s because Maori predominate in the low-income communities where the educational success rate for everyone, Maori, Pacific, Pakeha and Asian, is much lower than for middle class communities or the children of our political and business elites.

So it’s very disappointing to see Pita Sharples blaming schools. This is unfair and based on sloppy thinking. Most schools agonise over Maori achievement and have put in place numerous policies and programmes to try to ensure Maori kids don’t fall through the cracks.

Making the situation worse was a decision last year by Auckland University to restrict entry even to students who meet the criteria to enrol. This will impact harder on the very students Pits Sharples is talking about. Often they work hard to scrape through the entry criteria only to now face yet another hurdle from the gatekeepers to higher education.

But most importantly the way forward in education is to redirect the frustration over race into determination to reduce income inequality across New Zealand.

ENDS

John Minto The Press Column

I live in the Mt Albert electorate and being at the centre of a parliamentary election outside the three yearly cycle has been interesting because the intensity of campaigning has been much greater than usual.

We have been bombarded with the usual electoral material from all parties these past six weeks and there seems to have been more election hoardings than usual. But there’s been much more in-your-face campaigning than at last year’s general election. We’ve had automated phone calls from ACT candidate John Boscowan; numerous phone calls from pollsters and political parties; door-knocking visits from all and sundry (including former Labour cabinet minister Pete Hodgson); party stalls in the local mall and mini cavalcades through the streets with blaring megaphones.

Labour campaigned hard but not on any issue. Their candidate David Shearer played it safe and said nothing of significance. He spoke about listening to constituents and representing the electorate but avoided policy debate on the big issues.

The more mistakes National’s Melissa Lee made the more bland Shearer became so that by the end of the campaign his comments were an indistinguishable mush, like pureed infant food. This was understandable because the big issues for the residents are all Labour’s legacies from 10 years in government.

He was most waffly on the supercity issue and he needed to be. Aucklanders in every part of the city don’t like it. They are mistrustful of the proposal itself and the process being used to get there. Shearer resorted to implying he doesn’t agree with it when it was Labour which established the Royal Commission into Auckland Governance which led to an entirely predictable outcome.

Melissa Lee’s disastrous campaign has received much comment. I was at the Unite Union meeting for the candidates when she was asked how she would live if she was paid just the minimum wage of $12.50 per hour. She proceeded to tell 200 low-paid, mainly young Pacific audience she only earned $2 an hour. She was presumably referring to what she thought were her long hours of work but it went down like the proverbial cup of cold sick.

She also told the meeting how her grandmother had a recipe which guaranteed they were never hungry even in the hardest of times. I’m pleased no-one thought to ask her for it even though many families need real advice along these lines. Her answer would undoubtedly have increased the distance between her audience and the other planet she inhabits as an MP on $131,000 plus expenses.

The union meeting produced a definitive difference between the parties when they were each asked to sign the Unite Union petition for a citizens initiated referendum for a $15 an hour minimum wage. The Greens and Labour signed while National and ACT refused. When it was placed in front of her Melissa Lee said “I don’t sign petitions…”

The only significant local policy difference between National and Labour relates to the construction of a motorway through the electorate. National’s cheaper option is a mainly overland motorway while Labour would tunnel through at much greater expense and which they would most likely have funded as a toll road. Shearer was wisely silent on this despite repeated taunts asking where the money would come from.

Public transport remains the critical issue for Auckland. It will never progress beyond clogged motorways without decent rail and bus networks. This is accepted now in all quarters and even Rodney Hide feels obliged occasionally to utter these words which are heresy to his supporters.

Shearer claimed strong support for public transport but was neatly undone when Green Party candidate Russel Norman pointed out that the last Labour government spent $5 on roads for every $1 spent on public transport. Aucklanders pay in traffic jams every day for this lost decade.

Labour’s win was predictable and John Key, having disowned two MPs in a week, Richard Worth and Melissa Lee, has had his worst week as Prime Minister.

It will be left to community groups to fight the battles over the supercity and the proposed motorway. Labour will merely milk them for political value rather than organise to fight them. David Shearer after all told his new electorate the day after his election that he intends to go to parliament and breathe through his nose.

He epitomises politics based on not making mistakes rather than politics based on exciting ideas, stimulating debate and visionary policies.

Sorry David – the people of this electorate expect more for our $131,000 than listening to you breathe.

John Minto The Press Column

Have you ever done a night school class at a local secondary school? If the answer’s yes then you’re in good company. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have expanded their interests, tried new things or built up skills for a new job via night classes at their local high school.

The classes, called Adult and Community Education or ACE by the government, include such things as car maintenance, healthy cooking, quilting, budgeting, ballroom dancing, computing skills, yoga and a hundred and one others. What makes these courses so popular and accessible are government subsidies which keep the costs low.

But night school is now under a death sentence from an 80% cut in government funding in the budget. In one slash-and-burn move the government has ended its commitment to life-long learning and displayed its contempt for what the Minister derides as just “hobby” classes.

It was a neat cover-up on budget night. The government painted education as a winner because overall education funding increased by 2.9 percent from $10.5 billion to $10.8 billion. Not bad in the teeth of a developing recession. However most of the extra spending was for capital development for new schools and what was hidden from view was a wide range of savage cuts in all areas of public education.

The funding cuts for ACE are particularly harsh and it is here that the greatest community impact will be felt. Funding for these programmes in the tertiary sector has been almost halved while the subsidies high school night classes have been slashed by four fifths.

The sector is rightly angry and determined to fight the cuts. Community Learning Association in Schools (CLASS) President, Maryke Fordyce, says over 200,000 adults enrol in Adult and Community Education (ACE) courses every year and these funding cuts “will change the landscape of community learning as we know it”. She says the association is devastated by the likely impact of the cuts on communities.

The 212 high schools involved employ a part-time co-ordinator each and between them the schools employ some 15,000 tutors. All this is now under threat and its not just hobby courses which will be affected. For example Maryke points out that schools are required to use at least 9.5 percent of their ACE funding to fund programmes provided by community groups and this includes assistance for refugees and migrants, preparing healthy food, anti-violence courses and courses for Maori and Pacifica communities.

Moana Papa is the ACE co-ordinator at Tangaroa College in the Auckland suburb of Otara. She says “we are devastated as National want to go to a user pays system. Any hobby courses will no longer be subsidised by the government. e.g. $45 sewing course will be $135 in 2010. Communities like Otara will suffer - no one will be able to afford to come to ACE courses”

ACE co-ordinator at Napier’s Colenso High School, Maxine Boag, says in Hawkes Bay this year some $50,000 is being spent on classes run by Women’s Refuge, the Napier Family Centre, Napier Parents’ Centre, Pukemokimoki Marae and a Drivers Licence course in Samoan.

When he was in opposition National’s Finance Minister Bill English was strongly supportive of night school: “For more than 50 years, night classes have provided a leg-up for people wanting to return to the education system. National supports these low-cost courses. The current system of night classes through schools works well and should not be tampered with”. This political cant comes from the man who is now cutting the $16 million government subsidy to just $3 million.

The value for money of these courses isn’t in question. A report prepared in 2007 by Price Waterhouse Coopers for the Adult Community Education organization in New Zealand concluded the estimated national economic gain of this type of adult education is in the range of $4.8 billion to $6.3 billion. Not bad for a government investment of just $16 million per year.

Remember this is a government which found $35 million extra to increase the subsidy for the privileged who attend private schools but can’t maintain just half that amount for night schools to benefit the entire community.

Budget documents spell out bluntly the effects of the cuts: “It is likely that there will be only a small number of schools receiving ACE funding for 2010 and beyond”

If enough people are angry and let their local MPs know then the government will reinstate this funding. If you don’t do it for yourself, make a call to your MP or send a letter on behalf of your friends, family and neighbours who may be learning Moroccan cooking or how to manage the family budget in a recession.

Do your bit to stop Bill English’s irresponsible act of community vandalism.

ENDS

John Minto The Press Column

In a budget dominated by threats to downgrade New Zealand’s credit rating and projected budget deficits for the next decade it was expected National would produce a predictable, conventional budget.

Finance Minister Bill English abolished promised tax cuts and halted contributions to the Cullen Superannuation Fund for the next 10 years.

These measures were sensible and largely uncontroversial. The only criticism I’ve seen of the tax cut decision is from the right-wing fringe in the Mt Albert by-election where a Libertarian billboard bleats “Where are our tax cuts you bastards?”

Halting contributions to the national superannuation fund is also a sensible move because national superannuation can and should be paid from taxation rather than relying on borrowing to invest in erratic markets to fund retirement incomes.

So how did social sectors such as education fair in the budget?

There are a couple of good decisions. Education Minister Anne Tolley has extended the funding for 20 free hours of early childhood education to Kohanga Reo and Playcentres. These are usually not “teacher-led” centres and so missed out under Labour policy. However they provide a quality alternative for children and parents so this decision is welcomed.

Also to be welcomed is the $51 million for children with special education needs who are approved for ORRS (Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme) funding. This will alleviate pressure on the SEG (Special Education Grant) and give a bit more breathing space for schools which accept children with special needs. However the big problems with the funding mechanisms for kids with special needs remain unaddressed.

But the big educational winners in the budget were private schools. These schools educate less than 4% of our kids but gained $35 million in additional funding whereas the other 96% of our kids received just $320 million extra. A simple bit of maths shows the budget delivered around three times the amount of additional funding to private schools compared to public schools. This is a disgrace especially when one considers the biggest problem facing education is the long tail of underachievement at schools in our low-income areas.

New Zealand’s children in middle class and high income areas compete with the best anywhere in the world but we have very poor outcomes where economic deprivation is greatest. The long tail of underachievement is the long tail of poverty where Maori and Pacific kids are over-represented. This relates directly to the dramatic increase in inequality in New Zealand these past 25 years.

National’s adding icing to the educational cake at our wealthiest private schools should be no surprise. They did the same in the 1990s so that by 1999 when Labour took over, private school subsidies had reached $40 million. Labour maintained this high level of subsidy so that Auckland’s Kings College for example, where Prime Minister John Key is a parent, has received approx $2 million per year for the last ten years. Not happy with this Key says he wants to increase these subsidies to $70 million per year so that the annual Kings College payout will rise to $3.5 million.

On this basis one might think our highest education priority was the state of the cricket pitch at Kings rather than the educational opportunities for Maori and Pacific students on the other side of the wire mesh fence which separates Kings College from Otahuhu College, the largest decile one school in the country where educational needs are much greater and which could do wonders with any extra funding.

The government’s claim that this increase will make private schools “more affordable” to New Zealand parents is a joke because private schools exist precisely because they want the “right” to select the students they want and keep out the likes of the brown proletariat while state schools must accept all students eligible to enrol. Maintaining high fees is another way to keep the riff-raff away.

Parents of children at state schools must now pay twice for education. Firstly through their taxes to maintain high quality public schools and secondly to pay subsidies for Michael Cullen’s “rich pricks” to send their children to socially-cleansed educational environments.

Elsewhere in the Budget the government signalled a $50 million cut to teacher staffing budgets for public schools (equivalent to 700 teachers) from 2010 and will slash 80% from the funding for community education classes. These are outrageous cutbacks. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders every year take part in community education classes described disdainfully by the Minister as “hobby” classes.

So while ordinary kiwis will struggle with extra costs for school and community education the government has given more taxpayer largesse to an already privileged minority.

John Minto The Press Column

Most New Zealanders have little idea of the struggle of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka aside from television pictures of the horrendous outcomes of the civil war on Tamil civilians. These pictures have appeared more frequently over the last month and we’ll see more in coming weeks following the defeat of the Tamil resistance movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), by the Sri Lankan army.

In recent weeks some 10,000 have been killed, 50,000 wounded and around 275,000 made homeless.

For most of us it’s just part of the wallpaper of a violent world of human inhumanity but for the people directly involved and their friends and family overseas it has been devastating.

On Saturday I was at a meeting of the Tamil community in Auckland where the 150 people were emotionally exhausted from the last traumatic months of knowing their homeland communities have been destroyed and their families made refugees. All knew of people who had been killed but they felt the helplessness of those viewing events far from the conflict zone.

It’s been a very grim, brutal end to this phase of the Tamil struggle but like all struggles based on justice and self-determination it will not end with this military defeat.

The immediate need is for humanitarian aid to get through to the so-called “welfare camps” established by the Sri Lankan army. The need for food, water and basic medicines is urgent but just as important the eyes of the world are needed to witness and monitor the Sri Lankan army. It has a well-deserved reputation for racist hatred of Tamils and is held responsible by international human rights groups for numerous assassinations, disappearances and genocidal attacks on Tamils. According to the Asian Human Rights Commission “The Sri Lankan security forces are using systematic rape and murder of Tamil women to subjugate the Tamil population. Impunity continues to reign as rape is used as a weapon of war in Sri Lanka.”

At the Auckland meeting it was encouraging to hear National Party Member of Parliament Jackie Blue and Green MP Keith Locke speak knowledgeably and passionately on behalf of Tamils and stress the need to get humanitarian aid in while making refugee camps accessible to international agencies and taken out of the control of the Sri Lankan army which has placed heavy restrictions on aid agencies gaining entry to the camps.

The Tamil struggle for self determination is a story all too familiar. Britain left its colony of Ceylon 1948 with the single administration and the Sinhalese majority gaining control. In 1956 the Sinhalese established their Sinhala language as the only official language which forced most Tamils out of government jobs and into the role of second-class citizens facing systematic discrimination. This Tamil minority, approximately 14% of the population, with their own language and religion (Hindu as opposed to Buddhism) and geographical location (the North Eastern area of the country) began to agitate for independence and self-government.

They have made some gains. The Tamil language is now officially recognised and Tamil MPs sit in parliament but the desire for self-determination has strengthened over the decades.

The Sri Lankan government has seen this as a threat and have used their dominance to violently suppress Tamil aspirations. Anti-Tamil riots have been a regular feature of the past 60 years alongside targeted assassinations and disappearances of Tamil activists.

This came home to me personally in a dramatic way a few years back. In May 2005 I met with Tamil MP and human rights activist Joseph Pararajasingham on a visit he made to Auckland. He was an engaging, sincere man who represented Batticoloa in the Tamil North-East of the country. Seven months after his visit here we learned he had been assassinated while attending a Catholic Church service in Sri Lanka on December 27^th that same year.

The assassination took place despite him supposedly being under the military protection of the Sri Lankan government.

This is not to say the Tamil resistance fighters are blameless. Alongside the Sri Lankan army the LTTE has also been accused of human rights abuses and terrorist actions against civilians such as suicide bombings as they have fought a bitter civil war on and off for the past 26 years.

However while both sides have been accused of human right violations the cause of the conflict has been the Sri Lankan government determination to put down a legitimate struggle for self-determination.

New Zealand’s response to all this will be decided by Foreign Minister Murray McCully. So far he seems determined to make trade priorities dictate our foreign policy with human rights concerns taking a back seat. There is a lot riding on Jackie Blue convincing him there is a right and wrong in Sri Lanka and that New Zealand’s voice can make a significant difference.

John Minto The Press Column

Those living outside Auckland are probably getting tired of the supercity debate. Labour has been filibustering in parliament to stall the legislation creating a transitional authority while Maori Party supporters are planning a series of hikoi in Auckland to protest the lack of Maori representation. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance proposal that there be three Maori representatives (two elected and one appointed) to sit on a 23 person council has been sidelined by Act and National.

Labour has been careful to attack the process of the supercity without attacking the concept because it was Labour which established the Royal Commission after blaming parochial in-fighting in Auckland for Trevor Mallard’s failure to get region-wide approval for the waterfront stadium for the 2011 World Rugby Cup.

So there’s a lively debate going on here. However it’s a kilometre wide but just a centimetre deep. Aucklanders are more bemused than involved.

US commentator Noam Chomsky describes such democratic debate like this:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

If Chomsky were viewing the energetic supercity debate he’d recognise his words in action. There has been a lot of heated argument but it has been around the periphery of the issue rather than the substance of what the change actually represents for Auckland.

Green MP Sue Kedgely got closest to the truth last week when she accused Act Party leader and Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide of staging “Rogernomics part two” by passing a law under urgency to strip Auckland’s local councils of their powers and transferring control to the Auckland Transition Agency peopled with Rodney Hide’s cronies.

She was right, but Rogernomics part two extends well beyond the transitional agency. The entire concept of the supercity is based around business running the city for the benefit of business. It represents the culmination of a well-orchestrated campaign for several years by the likes of the Employers and Manufacturers Association for control of the region’s local government policy and community assets to the value of some $28 billion.

The second round of Rogernomics will really wind up once business interests dominate the region-wide council. Twelve council seats will be elected locally and will reflect the makeup of the local areas they represent (each one about twice the size of a parliamentary electorate) while the other eight will be elected at large and will be dominated by the grouping with the resources to run a regionwide campaign. This will be the “party” of business with John Banks as their candidate for the all-powerful position of mayor.

The biggest losers will be the low-income areas of South Auckland which is currently the biggest portion of the Manukau City Council. Take water supply for example. For many years Manukau City residents have steadfastly refused to adopt so-called user-pays charges for water supplies despite two determined attempts by former mayor Barry Curtis to foist this on the city’s inhabitants. However we have been told already the supercity will have one single supplier of water and wastewater services and this will no doubt be provided on a user-pays basis as it is currently in Auckland City.

Local Manukau residents will now be overruled and user-pays charges will be forced on this community where so many are least able to pay.

To help prepare the way for privatised water Act leader Rodney Hide is appointing Chief Executive of Watercare Services Limited, Mark Ford, to head the Auckland Transition Agency. Ford is a strong supporter of user-pays and the privatised provision of water as in Papakura whose local council contracted out it’s water services to multinational United Water on a long term contract.

Courtesy of Rodney Hide, John Banks and the like-minded Mark Ford the better-off citizens of Auckland’s northern and eastern suburbs will see decreases in their overall rates and water charges while New Zealand’s lowest income families in Manukau will face stiff increases.

We are indeed into Rogernomics part two but listening to the bluff and bluster from Labour and National one would never know.

And just wait till ACT/National get their grubby hands on the $28 billion of local body assets in Auckland. Roger Douglas will then complete his resurrection.

ENDS

John Minto The Press Column

There is something fundamentally wrong with Judith Collins’s plan for the private sector to run prisons.

If the state takes the extreme step of depriving a person of their liberty then those the state employs to incarcerate must surely be directly accountable to the state. Privatising that accountability is wrong in principle.

New Zealand has experienced a privately run prison before and a lot has been made of how well the Auckland Central Remand Prison (ACRP) was run after a National-led government awarded the management contract to Sydney-based Australian Correctional Management (ACM) in the 1990s.

The feedback from Maori groups in particular was very good and some Maori expressed dismay when the private contract was not renewed by the Labour government in 2005. Local iwi representatives said they had been consulted well by the company before the contract was let and enjoyed excellent relations with the prison management. They were made to feel welcome and involved in rehabilitation programmes. National also claimed the cost was lower with a private contract. At the time National’s Tony Ryall said the cost per prisoner at ACRP was $43,000 compared to $54,000 in state run prisons. However his figures were a con because they compared the cost at a remand facility with those associated with maximum security prisons where the costs are much higher. Labour has since released figures to show that the actual cost per prisoner at state-run remand centres was just $36,000 compared to the higher figure at the ACRP.

It was important for National and ACM that the first private contract to run a prison in New Zealand would be successful. It was therefore funded especially well by the government while the company took care not to scrimp on spending.

In supermarket terminology this was a “loss leader”. Once they got their foot in the door this would open up bigger opportunities for private investment and government-guaranteed profits. The involvement of Maori early on was also a key part of their strategy because it helped blunt opposition to privatisation. If Maori, as those most negatively affected by imprisonment, were seen to support privatisation then those opposing had an uphill battle.

This same strategy was used to get the Auckland Skycity Casino up and running. Never mind that down the track Maori are disproportionately the victims of gambling, the up-front involvement of Maori was a successful, cynical strategy to help bulldoze opposition to thousands of pokies invading Auckland.

The private sector certainly know how to run a scam and it’s useful to look at the behaviour of ACM’s parent company – the US-based Wackenhut – once it was established running prisons for profit in the US.

The company was started by former FBI agent George Wackenhut whose corporate empire extended to providing services in strikebreaking, international security work (which included providing security for chemical weapons shipments to Saddam Hussein in Iraq) and beating anti-nuclear protestors as well as running private prisons.

After becoming well established in prisons their loss leaders became cash cows. The results were disastrous.

Wackenhut lost contracts to run prisons in Louisiana and Texas in 1999 after scandals involving mistreatment of prisoners and profit-taking at the expense of such things as drug rehabilitation, counselling and literacy programmes. A Louisiana judge called one Wackenhut jail unsafe, violent and inhumane while a government review reported assaults, abuse and humiliation of juvenile prisoners. Two Wackenhut-run prisons in New Mexico had appalling management and experienced numerous riots and murders.

This was the company National chose to run the ACRP and while it’s not the only private prison contractor there are plenty more like just like them waiting in the wings.

Private contractors make their prison profits by lowering staffing levels, 15% lower is the typical overseas figure, and employing staff on poorer pay and conditions of work. None of this is helpful to prisoners or rehabilitation. Quite the opposite in fact.

It’s virtually certain the first new prison contract will be awarded in conjunction with an iwi group. Just as with the ACRP contract this will again be the entry point for the private sector into our prisons.

Already the Maori Party are keen to provide the political cover. Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia says private management of prisons is an investment opportunity for iwi while the usually astute Maori MP Hone Harawira simply says the state has failed Maori in prisons and it’s time to try something new. He’s right about the failure so it’s plain stupid to race ahead even faster in the same direction.

Mad as it is, New Zealand prison policy is about to get worse. If you are frustrated at all this mindlessness then put in a submission to oppose the privatisation of prisons. You have till the end of next week to have your voice heard.

John Minto The Press Column

I’ve been surprised at the degree of irresponsible media reporting on the swine flu epidemic.

It was unlikely from the outset that New Zealanders were under deadly threat as claimed. There were deaths in Mexico where the virus strain originated but all reports have shown most people experience very mild flu-like symptoms at worst. That could change if the virus mutates but the same can apply to any virus.

Nevertheless the media beat it into a frenzy. Promoting panic is a sure winner for newspaper sales and essential TV viewing so there was a vested interest in sensationalising the story.

After all it had all the hallmarks of a great story. Death out of the blue from an unseen killer is naturally frightening. If Alfred Hitchcock had made a film about a viral attack he would have been onto a winner. And what a great name – swine flu. Hollywood couldn’t have done better.

A week later and it’s clear it was a beat-up. More New Zealanders will die of the usual strains of influenza this winter than those with swine flu symptoms we’ve seen so far.

Despite all this, irrational behaviour seems to have spread faster than the virus. Pigs are being slaughtered in Egypt, Mexican travellers are being randomly put in quarantine in various countries and a couple of Auckland hotels have refused to take in unwell tourists.

This is not to say there isn’t the potential for a pandemic such as the world saw in 1919 with the so-called Spanish flu outbreak which killed tens of millions worldwide. With air travel so widespread now the spread of such an infection would be more rapid and potentially much more devastating were a viral strain with similar deadly potential to emerge.

How likely is such an event in the near future?

It seems the answer is a resounding yes with the focus less on “if” and more a matter of “when”. So why not some in depth reporting to follow up the over-heated swine flu story?

With the financial crisis there were voices raised warning of the serious dangers at every step taken in the deregulation of financial markets in the past 20 years. Similarly there have been many voices sounding in recent years of the dangers of “greed-driven” meat production and its propensity to produce the very virus strains we see in so-called swine flu.

The swine flu virus is a combination of bird, pig and human viruses and it isn’t the first time such a strain has emerged. In 1998 a similar combination developed in an industrial pig farm in North Carolina and spread across the US. Intensive farming practices were blamed at the time where pigs and birds were farmed in cramped conditions, in sheds which were side by side and tended by the same human staff.

A study published by the University of Iowa College of Public Health in November 2005 investigated the risks of viruses jumping from animals to people. It pointed out that family farms were being replaced by industrial farms. In the US in 1965 there were more than a million farmers with an average of 50 pigs each but by 2005 there were 50,000 farmers with an average of 900 pigs each. The numbers of farmers continues to decrease while the number of pigs continues to increase. Some pig farms now have tens or even hundreds of thousands of pigs living in overcrowded, inhumane conditions.

In the new industrial farms the Iowa study argued that “the potential for animal-to-animal transmission will be much greater than on a traditional farm because of the pigs’ crowding resulting in prolonged and more frequent contact”.

“In addition, virus-laden secretions from pigs may be more concentrated, and reductions in ventilation and sunshine exposure may prolong viral viability.”

Workers on these farms are most at risk. “They may serve as a conduit for a novel virus to move from swine to man or from man to swine,” the study said and warned this could initiate epidemics by mixing viral strains which would then trigger a pandemic.

It isn’t certain at this point but it seems the latest outbreak originated in an industrial pig-farming area east of Mexico City.

So while we have been bombarded with all the drama of the outbreak the apparent cause has received scant attention.

Wouldn’t it be great if Health Minister Tony Ryall announced New Zealand support for an investigation into the cause of the outbreak instead of planning to spend more large sums preparing for the next epidemic?

ENDS

John Minto The Press Column

These past two weeks I’ve been on my first visit to South Africa. Having been a critical observer from a distance for 15 years since the first democratic elections, I was keen to see how the post-apartheid policies were affecting the everyday lives of people.

While I was there the African National Congress won political power for the fourth time in a row with a majority of two-thirds of the popular vote. On the surface it appears people are happy and have given the ANC’s leadership a vote of confidence. The reality is very different.

The most significant aspect of the election campaign was a report from the ANC Women’s League released just a day before the country went to the polls. The league had been speaking with people across the country’s nine provinces in the lead-up to the election. They visited urban areas, black townships and rural communities. Their report was a blunt message to the ANC leadership that people were angry and frustrated with the government and the lack of progress for the poorest and most alienated South Africans. People said they had voted for the ANC for the previous three elections but still lived in poverty without housing or basic services such as electricity and water while education was in a mess and health services under-staffed and under-resourced.

Having visited activists, trade unionists and community leaders across the country in my brief visit I can attest to the strength of this feeling. In this latest election enough of the poor have given the ANC their vote again but I don’t believe there will be any significant change for these people in the next five years. The ANC leadership is in another world altogether.

Their campaign slogan “working together we can do better” had neither promise nor vision and their campaign message had another more subtle change. In past elections the ANC has proudly proclaimed the number of houses the government has provided with water and electricity but this election it talked about the number of homes which have been provided with “access” to these services. These services are now more widespread but they are provided at unaffordable prices for the majority of people. In some areas the number of disconnections exceeds new connections and this is expected to get worse. For some of the poorest communities water is provided via pre-paid meters at a far higher price than for water to middle-class homes.

A similar story applies in housing. In one new housing development close to Cape Town residents told me they were promised if they paid R350 per month for five years they would then own their modest houses in a rent-to-buy arrangement. However the local council sold the houses to a private company and within two years the rents have more than doubled to R800 per month. Many families have faced eviction and it’s only through sticking together in a determined campaign that they are able to keep a roof over their heads.

At another development in Kliptown near Johannesburg 1300 housing units (houses and flats) were developed in an area where 40,000 live in abject poverty. However despite earlier promises from local councillors these houses have been given to families from well outside the area because the local people can’t afford the high rents the council and private developers are demanding.

These essential services of housing, electricity and water are provided on a user pays basis where market-forces determine the price. These policies, like those of the previous apartheid regime, prioritise the development of a black middle class. In practise it means locking out the poor who are the majority of the population.

This is all a far cry from the heady days of the early 1990s when Mandela was released from prison and the country voted for the first time in 1994 for a democratic government which promised to transform this deeply-scarred country.

Meanwhile business has never been better in South Africa. The ANC has delivered the corporate sector a free-market capitalist economy they could only have dreamt about. Companies which grew fat on apartheid’s race-based slavery are continuing to cream it. Economic apartheid has proved to be more effective in exploiting South Africans than the crude racist policies of the old regime.

On top of all its existing problems unemployment in South Africa is independently calculated at 40%. With this figure rising in the global recession and no real prospect for significant policy change South Africa is heading down the familiar path to a failed state.

There is a saying that the most dangerous thing a society can produce is young men with nothing to do. The ANC is producing them in their millions.

John Minto The Press Column