Monday, April 7th, 2008
It is difficult to quantify the size of Helen Clark’s blunder when she signs the free-trade agreement with China today because although we don’t know the precise details, it is abundantly clear the agreement will be bad for New Zealand workers, bad for Chinese workers and a slap in the face for Tibetans struggling under China’s yoke.
The Government claims New Zealand will benefit from millions of dollars in extra trade which will grow our economy and make us richer. We are told we should be thrilled to be the first developed country to sign such a deal with China.
However, while trade will increase and, on paper, the economy will grow, it will not improve the standard of living of New Zealanders. In fact, for many of the most vulnerable it will be disastrous.
Back in the late 1980s New Zealand enjoyed a trade surplus with China. We exported more than we imported. This reversed dramatically when import tariffs were removed or phased out.
There was a flood of cheap imports from China which turned the trade surplus into a billion-dollar deficit. When the Government began negotiations for the free-trade agreement in December 2004 the deficit with China was $1.5 billion. A year later it had grown to over $2b. Our exports stagnated while China flooded the country with sweated imports.
Tens of thousands of jobs were lost from our manufacturing sector as New Zealand companies went to the wall. Some survived only by shifting their manufacturing base to China. Others transformed into importing companies and helped fill the shelves of The Warehouse with cheap junk we think we need.
But these bargain goods carry a very high price. The Ministry of Economic Development has estimated 16 jobs are lost for every $1 million of imported products we could make here.
A simple calculation shows about 50,000 jobs lost to Chinese imports alone. As more tariffs are phased out under the free-trade agreement we can expect as many as 20,000 more New Zealand workers to lose their jobs, with many more families driven below the poverty line.
None of this seems to concern the Government. To our politicians this is free trade on one of those fictitious level playing fields. The Chinese economy is built on long hours, child labour, forced labour and poverty wages. Is it free trade when New Zealand workers are expected to compete with workers paid less than $1 an hour for 16-hour days? Is it free trade when China operates prison labour camps where as many as seven million inmates work without pay and nothing in the way of health and safety standards, to produce goods to compete with New Zealand products? China has repeatedly refused to sign up to even the most basic of labour standards under the International Labour Organisation, such as bans on forced labour and the right to organise independent trade unions. Those Chinese who dare to speak out are silenced.
Why would New Zealand give preferential trade status to a regime like this?
Helen Clark had a different view back in November 1998. She decried National leader Jenny Shipley putting trade ahead of human rights and said we have had this pitiful simpering about there being a distinction between business issues and issues of human rights and democracy. If that value had been applied in 19th century England and North America, then we would still have slavery, because the representatives of those who employed slaves would claim that there was no connection between that issue and their business values.
A year later, in the speech from the throne, the newly elected Labour Government told us that legitimate issues of labour standards and environmental concerns need to be integrated better with trade agreements.
But all this has gone out the window. They were just pious platitudes. The Clark Government is dealing with these 21st century slave-owners, buying their products at reduced rates and helping the regime bolster its stranglehold on democracy and human rights.
And what about the Tibetans? The Government said it was very concerned at the reports of repression and violence in Tibet. Helen Clark said she was waiting for more information. It was a way of buying time and praying the Chinese army would crush the Tibetan struggle quickly so the story would drop from the headlines long enough for her to arrive in Beijing with her 150-strong delegation for her performance as the deal-making queen of international trade.
She may as well sign in the blood of Chinese workers and Tibetan freedom fighters.
Monday, March 31st, 2008
A couple of weeks back a union member called me in some distress. She had begun work at 4.30 in the morning but was not given a break until 11.45. She was tired and angry.She works in the departure lounge at Auckland International Airport serving food and drinks. It’s hard enough being on your feet all day, trying to engage in a friendly fashion with customers without the added burden of continuous work for many hours.
In the middle of last week I had another call from the same worksite. Another member was in trouble for taking an unauthorised break.
First, she had become embarrassed because a new co-worker, on her first day at work, had not received a break for six hours. Failing to find a supervisor she told the new worker to just take her break. Later, when she similarly took her own break (after seven hours work), she was confronted by an angry supervisor who dressed her down in front of other staff for taking her break when she hadn’t been released to do so.
These are just the latest in a long history of problems for staff taking breaks at this site. The union has raised this issue with management so often it’s become a pointless exercise. I have said to them so many times that these practices are unacceptable and all workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It’s a message which falls on deaf ears. I’m sick of hearing myself saying it.
Last April the union pointed out to the company it was breaching its own contract by giving only 10 minutes of paid breaks during an eight-hour shift instead of 20 minutes. They reluctantly relented and from the following day began giving 20 minutes of paid breaks.
It didn’t last long, however. They have now changed the rosters so that most workers do just a seven-hour shift to avoid the company having to give the extra break.
If this company’s actions sound childishly pathetic to you then you are in good company. Would any reader put up with this nonsense at their workplace?
The company is short-staffed but rather than pay decent wages to attract more staff the workers exist on or close to the minimum wage with Dickensian-type work conditions. Needless to say, staff turnover is very high but there is a supply of new staff, partly courtesy of Work and Income New Zealand who refer women re-entering the workforce to this worksite. The workers are mainly women and mainly Maori, Pacific or from recently migrated ethnic minorities.
Many readers will have passed through the departure lounge and will have seen these workers and have probably even been served a drink or a snack by them. They are a wonderful bunch of people.
Maintaining a strong union presence at a site like this is very difficult where workers change on a regular basis and are on rostered shifts over seven days of the week and 20 hours a day. However, union membership is rising and hopefully these appalling practices can be put to an end.
Last week, it was refreshing to see an announcement from Labour Minister Trevor Mallard and fellow Cabinet minister Maryan Street saying the Government is proposing to amend the Employment Relations Act to guarantee minimum meal and refreshment breaks along with breastfeeding opportunities for working mothers.
The real question is, why has it taken so long for such basic conditions as these to enter the law.
Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O’Reilly says employers are in favour of adequate meal and rest breaks but he said he has not seen any evidence that requires a new law. He says that in thousands of workplaces across the country employers and employees make sensible arrangements without having written rules. This is true, but there are problems in workplaces up and down the country. And it’s not just a few rogue employers who are the problem. The evidence is there for anyone who cares to look.
For a start, I suggest Phil O’Reilly visit Auckland airport and talk to these workers. As with businesses generally, the rights of workers come a distant second to profit for shareholders.
And who are the employers at the airport who run the oppressive operation I’ve described earlier? The workers are employed jointly by Auckland International Airport Limited (AIAL) and Host Marriot Services Corporation (HMSC).
HMSC is an international company running similar ventures around the world and is well-known for providing poor working conditions and keeping unions out of their businesses.
AIAL on the other hand is still locally owned. Among the shareholders are a who’s who of New Zealand business people as well as the Auckland and Manukau city councils.
The shareholders won’t do it so a law change is needed to give workers like these a break.
Monday, March 17th, 2008
There’s been plenty of petty politics around the government’s announcement of a $500 million fund for research in primary production but precious little analysis of what it means.
We are told that with interest and matching contributions from the private sector the fund could produce up to $2 billion invested over 15 years.
The Prime Minister has called it a “quantum leap forward” for scientific research and innovation. She describes the New Zealand Fast Forward Fund as part of a drive to transform the economy into an innovative supplier of high-value goods and services.
National leader John Key has condemned it as a “gimmick” and threatened to scrap the fund if National leads the next government.
More considered criticism has come from those who point to the narrow focus of the fund. It is devoted almost exclusively to primary production which brings in around 57% of our national income. The government’s logic is that we are investing in our existing strengths but this only serves to emphasise the underlying structural weakness of our economy.
In earlier times we sought to develop a self-reliant economy. The idea then was we were too dependent on primary product exports to Britain and needed to expand into markets elsewhere and promote manufacturing so we made more here and reduced our dependency on imports. We were told we needed to diversify our economy away from reliance on primary produce. We had tariffs to protect fledgling industries from cheap imports, financial incentives to develop new manufacturing plants and planned national infrastructure to support this developing economy. This same model was used to build every highly developed economy in the world.
New Zealand abandoned all this common-sense with the advent of neo-liberal economics and globalisation. The new fashionable theory says the world is becoming one large free market and countries should develop their economies based on what they do better than anyone else. China for example has become the world’s largest manufacturer, closing down factories in other parts of the world. Here the Warehouse has led the charge to bring in cheap Chinese imports and force kiwis out of relatively well-paid manufacturing jobs.
In New Zealand, so the theory goes, we are good at farming so let’s stick to our knitting so to speak and put the emphasis there. As a result our economy is bipolar based on primary production at one end and servicing at the other.
Last week’s government announcement continues down this dangerous, one-way track. We are seriously at risk like trampers on an exposed ridge. There is nothing better on a fine day but as soon as the wind whips up and the weather closes in you have to find shelter quickly. We have no shelter. We’ve destroyed most of it these past 20 years.
Our farming and political leaders are in a heady space at the moment seduced by high dairy prices. All manner of farmland is being converted to intensive dairying at an alarming rate with just next year’s profit margin in mind. Politicians are little better being addicted to thinking ahead only as far as the next election. We have no risk assessment for any of this short-termism.
What will happen here when countries such as China shift their production to domestic consumers ahead of international trade? What will happen when high dairy prices slump in the face of cheap imports from countries where labour and land are much cheaper? What will happen when the price of fuel rises such that our efforts to export from these islands (which are further from international markets than any other country) are uneconomic? What will happen when global warming makes the cost of sending protein around the world unsustainable? Or makes much of the country unsuitable for current farming practices?
In all these scenarios we are stuffed. All our eggs are in the one basket. How can our economy not collapse?
It’s interesting to think that the very people who talk about sensible investors having a balanced portfolio of investments are pushing our economy onto a single investment strategy with at best an uncertain future. It’s all bound to end in tears.
It’s not as though we’re even helping feed a hungry world as various farming spokespeople like to suggest. The hungry can’t afford our food. We are feeding the obesity epidemic instead.
It’s true the government’s research funding is looking ahead 15 years but its 15 years into a long narrow tunnel. It is a perilous path. Farming is more likely to be our Achilles Heel than our saviour.
There is already a chilly breeze out here on the ridge.
Monday, March 10th, 2008
The debate over ownership of Auckland Airport has been an interesting diversion this past week although it’s easily trumped by the more significant discussion on the future of our rail network.
Early in the week the government signalled its opposition to a possible 40% takeover of the airport by the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. It issued an order in council to emphasise cabinet ministers considering the proposed takeover must take into account whether the overseas investment “will, or is likely to, assist New Zealand to maintain New Zealand control of strategically important infrastructure on sensitive land”.
Business interests are fuming. They have labelled it “populist xenophobia”, “reckless” and even “socialist” (if only!) It’s nonsense of course. Every self-respecting country has much tighter rules on foreign ownership of strategic assets than New Zealand. Australia for example protects the likes of its banks and airports. New Zealand on the other hand sold our banks to Australia and every year more than two billion in bank profits crosses the ditch from kiwi wallets to enrich our Aussie cousins.
The more justified criticism is the government’s move coming so late in the piece. It’s been a year since takeover talk was first mooted but our Minister of Finance has been silent till five minutes to midnight.
National’s John Key has been squirming. Instinctively he supports private ownership of everything and has already announced policy to part-privatise what’s left of our major assets such as Solid Energy. But because public opposition to the airport sale is so widespread he says National supports the airport remaining in New Zealand hands.
Many commentators have suggested the public mood has changed to oppose privatisation of state assets but there has been no change. Every major privatisation undertaken by Labour and National in the past 24 years has had a solid majority opposed to it. Most people instinctively understand we would all be better off with 100% of the shares of essential infrastructure in public ownership. Selling assets means that instead of us all being shareholders, with the shares held in trust by the government, only a few wealthy corporates and a miniscule minority of “mum-and-dads” benefit.
Overlooked in the airport kerfuffle is the nonsense that suggests it matters whether the airport is owned by foreign capitalists or the home grown variety. Do we really expect local capitalists to be better stewards of our assets than foreigners? There is no evidence to say they are.
Think for a moment about the activities of our own Michael Fay and David Richwhite. These two kiwis were at the heart of many of the major privatisations of state assets over the past two decades. For example they were part of the group which bought New Zealand Rail and promptly ran this critical asset into the ground. They made pots of money in the meantime and then sold out just before the share price crashed. They left taxpayers to pick up the $270 million tab for upgrading the rail lines after 15 years of neglect. It’s hard to believe any foreign capitalists could have acted in a more self-serving manner. The disgraceful state our rail network should be seared on the national consciousness as a fundamental lesson in the danger of private greed over national service.
Every privatisation tells the same story. Whether it’s Air New Zealand, Telecom or our electricity network local private owners are no better than foreign owners. In every example it’s the all too familiar pattern of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.
Our politicians should have learnt by now. Full public ownership is the only way to protect our strategic assets and there is a glimmer of hope that this truth is penetrating even the thickest of parliamentary skulls. We were treated in the past couple of days to news the government has been negotiating to purchase back our railways and ferries from the Australian company Toll Holdings. It’s a welcome sign even if it’s five years too late. Back in 2003 calls were made for Labour to buy back the railways when the government picked up the battered remains after the likes of Fay and Richwhite has milked it dry. Instead Labour sold it to Toll only to find the Australian owners making incessant and increasing demands for subsidies.
The only surprise in all this is the time it’s taken for the stranglehold on common sense to be eased. It’s a welcome change for some debate about private versus public ownership to come to centre stage.
Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Virgin Blue’s Richard Branson has stolen a march on other airlines with a flight from London to Amsterdam on what many describe as the new wonder fuel, biofuel.
He was ecstatic. He fronted the cameras and gushed his excitement. He claimed the flight as the world’s first commercial airline flight powered by renewable energy.
“Today marks a vital breakthrough for the whole airline industry,” said a breathless Branson. It’s not the magic bullet but it’s an important step on the path to sustainable air travel.
It was a story with added colour because the fuel was a blend which included babassu oil produced from nuts picked from Amazon rainforests along with coconut oil.
How green can one get?
Air travel is often and rightly sighted as a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change, and at a superficial level Branson makes an important point.
Fuel produced by biofuels does not release additional carbon into the environment in the way fossil fuel does. Because they are made from plant material already in the environment they don’t add to the amount of carbon in circulation. On the other hand when coal, oil and gas are burned, carbon in the environment increases. In theory if we could convert to biofuels we could use as much as we like without disturbing the balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Is this too green to be true?
Yes is the simple answer.
Branson hinted at one of the major problems when he said the company chose not to use fuel from corn oil as this competed with the growth of food needed in a hungry world. This is not a new story. Across the globe land is being set aside to grow crops and already this is having a huge impact on food production and the price of food.
For example, in the United States two years ago, 20 per cent of the whole maize crop was used for biofuel production. With less grain available for food the price of grain- related food around the world is climbing quickly.
We are now being told the age of cheap food is over (if any of us were aware we were in such an age). In a deeply disturbing symptom of the problem international aid organisations are seeking greater donations to help purchase the food they need for existing food programmes even before they look at extending these for the one billion of the world’s population who go to bed hungry every night.
We get a better perspective on Branson’s claims when we see the extent of the land required for biofuel production to replace fossil fuels. Estimates have been made that an eye-popping three-quarters of all the cultivatable land on earth would be required to produce enough ethanol for vehicles in the United States alone.
We should remember also Branson’s biofuel was a mix of 20% renewable and 80% normal jet fuel. He predicts the mix could be increased to 40% renewable in future. In any case, the more biofuel used by aircraft the less is available for essential transport needs.
So let’s get real here. Branson’s biofuel is a boutique fuel which is masquerading as the saviour for air travel. If this is sustainable flying we are on a different planet.
Worse still the production of more biofuel can only result in those least able to pay increases in food prices supporting environmentally damaging air travel. To put it bluntly: the world’s poor are once more expected to subsidise, with their lives, the lifestyles of the world’s rich.
It’s been a very successful publicity stunt and Branson has a lot to gain telling us Virgin Blue is the new green in air travel. The expansion of his company depends on consumer perception. It’s not unlike the re-branding exercise conducted by BP several years ago when they changed to green with yellow trim and included a sunflower motif. It’s disturbing to think we can be so easily taken in with such superficiality to divert us from uncomfortable realities.
Branson claims he is committed to spending all the profits from his airline and rail business to combat global warming by cutting carbon emissions. On the one hand, this is an admirable objective and more research is needed into alternative renewable energy sources. But let’s keep our eyes open. Branson is killing the planet to find ways to save the planet. His carbon footprint is colossal and his proposed solution is unsustainable and self-serving.
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
The police have always been involved in schools as irregular visitors for one reason or another.
In my time teaching they have taken part in driving instruction, talked to an assembly about student safety on their way to and from school after a local flasher was sighted and given talks about drugs and crime.
All these are valid, sensible reasons for police to be in schools but there is now a very dangerous proposal to station police permanently in ten secondary schools in South Auckland. It’s a plan fraught with problems and should be abandoned.
The police say they want to be permanently in schools to gain the trust and confidence of students and hear from them about youth gangs, youth crime and anti-social activity generally associated with teenagers.
Most of the schools themselves are decile one, meaning their students come from families whose incomes are in the lowest 10% of incomes across New Zealand. These are called “troubled areas” with “troubled teens” as though the problem lies within these schools and within these communities. It doesn’t. It lies instead at the heart of the economic policies of successive governments.
We know from eight years of Labour that the much needed policy changes won’t come from Helen Clark and have even less chance of emerging from the “smiling assassin” John Key.
However instead of confronting the problem at the top of the cliff we continue to build a large infrastructure at the bottom. Each one of us knows that interventions like this don’t address the real problems but presumably make enough of us feel like we care or that we are doing something meaningful. Putting police in schools is a delusional activity. We may just as well chase after rainbows.
Setting aside for a moment the policy issue, what are the problems with the proposal?
The police desire to build trust and confidence in teenagers is shorthand for getting kids to nark on their friends and families.
This strategy has the potential to create much greater social problems for the very people it is trying to help. In middle-class areas parents would insist they are present when police interview their children for any reason. This legal right will be easily side-stepped in the playground where an innocent conversation with a fellow student or police officer could turn into family chaos or social tragedy for the students.
Schools are educational institutions and must be uncompromising in their focus on lifting student achievement. This is most especially true for schools in low-income areas where the long tail of underachievement is most obvious. Police in a school are just another distraction from this critical job. Schools are not there to provide captive audiences of children informing on their friends and families.
There is an important step all our schools could take to discourage anti-social behaviour by students and help build healthy communities. It’s called civics education.
It used to be a part of the teaching in our schools but has become lost as curricula have become more functional and less encouraging of critical thinking.
Civics education is education about our society and its institutions. It’s education about our democracy – how it works and how it might be improved; the history of struggle for people to get the vote; why we have MMP instead of first past the post. It would also examine our social and economic structures and encourage discussion about where they are failing and what policies might bring positive change. It would look at the ideas of people such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx while comparing and contrasting capitalism and socialism.
From all this comes the understanding that we are all interdependent human beings and why anti-social behaviour can be so destructive. The goal would be informed discussion where students see their roles as active participants in a civil society rather than passive, disconnected consumers.
It has the potential to benefit the whole community and encourage students to take greater responsibility within their communities for the benefit of everyone. It will be opposed by some for this very reason. They are doing well with things as they are.
In their list of ten South Auckland schools the police have left out the wealthiest private school in the country – Kings College in Otahuhu. One would have thought with the prevalence of corporate fraud and professional dishonesty in the business world, made evident by recent finance and property company crashes, the police would have been very keen to station officers permanently here as well.
Crime for some starts with broken windows, for others it starts with buying shares.
Monday, February 18th, 2008
It is time our sports officials gave up trying to say politics and sport do not mix.
It is precisely because they do mix that our Olympic officials are requiring New Zealand athletes at the Beijing Olympics to sign contracts by which they must “not make statements or demonstrations (whether verbally, in writing or by any act or omission) regarding political, religious or racial matters”.
This is an outrage. Why should New Zealanders’ freedom of speech be constrained when they travel to represent this country? Why should they be gagged because the host country for the Games has such little respect for human rights? Must we lower our democratic standards to the Chinese level?
Our Olympic officials say the ban has been in place for the last eight years and in any case, it is consistent with the Olympic charter. The ban attracted no controversy at the time of the last Games in Athens because the host country has an uncontroversial human rights record. But it seems clear the policy was put in place eight years ago for the very reason that Olympic officials looked ahead and saw the China human rights disaster looming.
It is a piece of verbal gymnastics for our Olympic officials to say the contract is consistent with the Olympic charter. The International Olympic Committee does not see it this way.
“Should a journalist ask an athlete a question, the athlete should respond as he or she sees fit,” says the IOC spokesperson, Giselle Davies.
Under criticism, the New Zealand Olympic Committee has begun one of those embarrassing backdowns. Instead of saying it made a mistake, NZOC communications manager Ashley Abbott is reported as saying athletes will not be muzzled. She says they will be allowed to express views on the regime in China if they want to.
“If one of our athletes were asked their feelings on an important issue, it would be absolutely their prerogative to answer as they see fit,” she says.
So why is the ban written into the athletes’ contract? The NZOC is reported as saying the contract simply offers athletes protection from comment on issues they felt would detract from their performance in Beijing. If anyone can work out what that piece of double-speak means, please let me know.
The question remains as to why athletes from around the world will be free to speak their minds, but New Zealand athletes will sign censorship contracts. Why is it that the sensitivities of the Chinese regime resonate so strongly in New Zealand? Why are we virtually alone in gagging our athletes?
It seems clear that one of the reasons is that among the crowd of countries attending the games, only New Zealand is negotiating a free-trade agreement with China.
This agreement is seen as a coup by the Clark government. It has been several years in the making, with negotiations finally ended and just a couple of months remaining while all the complex details are checked and rechecked before a classic photo opportunity is organised for Helen Clark to sign away yet more quality New Zealand jobs at the altar of the free market with the Chinese Premier.
It would be a disaster from the Government’s point of view if this went off the rails because a Kiwi athlete stirred controversy by pointing to the elephant in the room which is China’s abuse of human rights.
Politics have always mixed with sport at the Olympics. This year marks the 40th anniversary of possibly the most famous political statement made at any Games.
It was 1968 in Mexico at the height of the civil rights struggle in the United States. Black US athlete Tommie Smith won the 200m sprint in a world record time. When he stood on the winner’s podium alongside bronze medal winner John Carlos, they raised black gloved fists in a powerful symbol of resistance to racial oppression. Smith also wore a black scarf to represent black pride and black socks (no shoes) to represent the poverty of blacks in racist America. The iconic image of this brave duo will resonate down the centuries after their athletic prowess is long forgotten.
It may well be that Chinese organisations seize the opportunity, with the world spotlight on Beijing, to protest in the struggle for free speech and trade union rights.
If that happens, we should encourage our athletes to use their freedom of speech to actively support those in China who are denied the same rights. That is what we should expect a good athlete to do.
Monday, February 11th, 2008
I have never been to Happy Valley, but I am delighted there is a campaign to protect this beautiful West Coast valley from an open-cast coal mine.
Two weeks ago, the campaign celebrated its two-year occupation of the site as the longest environmental occupation in our history. Bravo!
Coal is one of the dirtiest, most climate-destroying fuels and despite Government rhetoric for New Zealand to become carbon neutral, the state-owned enterprise Solid Energy has an aggressive growth strategy for coal production which includes a new mine at Happy Valley.
The area is about 20km north-east of Westport and by all accounts is an outstanding example of the biodiversity of New Zealand. In 1998 the Department of Conservation recommended much of it be protected under DOC’s Protected Natural Areas Programme. Alas, the proposal did not get off the ground, with Solid Energy applying to destroy the area.
It is a bold plan and the figures must have impressed government ministers when they no doubt saw a power-point presentation from Solid Energy at the Beehive.
The government company plans a 256-hectare mine (about 350 football fields) which would involve removing 29 million cubic metres of rock and soil covering the coal and then digging two enormous pits up to 100 metres deep. Half-a-million tonnes of coal would be extracted each year for 10 years, most of which would be shipped offshore to fuel foreign industries. After all this, they say they will rehabilitate the site, at which even the least cynical of us will say – yeah, right!
Just across from Happy Valley is Solid Energy’s Stockton mine which has been seriously polluting local waterways for many years. The Greenpeace submission opposing the Happy Valley mine summed it up like this: “Acid mine drainage, coal fines and other sediments from the Stockton mine have virtually destroyed the ecology of the Mangatini Stream and severely degraded the lower Ngakawau River. Seepage from a diversion channel from Mount Frederick Mine and from the nearby water treatment lake contains aluminium, cadmium, copper, iron, lead, nickel, iron and zinc.”
Mining exposes all types of chemicals to air and water whereby acids are formed, which in turn release heavy metals from other rock material. These highly acidic waterways and dangerous metals create ecological havoc downstream. It is not safe to drink even after boiling.
Pete Lusk, from the Buller Conservation group, observed a couple of years back that the Mangatini Stream is so polluted it acts like a herbicide, with the mist rising from the Mangatini Falls killing the surrounding rainforest.
So what does Solid Energy plan to destroy? Aside from the obvious physical beauty of the area, many endangered species, habitats and ecological areas are caught up in the plan. Reading the detailed reports, you don’t need to be a tree-hugger to appreciate the depth of devastation the mine would leave in its wake.
Take just the wetland component for example. These areas were regarded as wasteland and early European settlers drained them for farmland. We are now only just beginning to understand their huge ecological significance. Put simply, they are important for the health of the planet and its ecology. In New Zealand, where 90 per cent of our wetlands have been destroyed, we are down to the dregs.
The spin from Solid Energy and its paid experts should be seen as the green-wash it is. Their highly publicised removal of 6000 endangered snails from the area is meant to improve their public image and convince us the company is really a conservation organisation in disguise.
Most of us accept that damage to the environment will be a consequence of most human activity, but the ecological vandalism proposed at Happy Valley is beyond the pale.
Meanwhile, Solid Energy has harassed the campaigners. It employed security firm Thompson and Clarke to infiltrate the Save Happy Valley environmental group and spy on the protest camp. Last October, the police joined in and included the group in its nationwide so-called anti-terror raids.
Despite all this, the campaign continues. Even if most of us never travel to Happy Valley, we should be pleased if the efforts of committed Kiwi conservationists can preserve this part of the country for the future.
More than 30 years ago, I joined thousands of volunteers around New Zealand collecting signatures for the Save Manapouri Campaign. That campaign was successful in spite of the government, and our country is much the better for it. We should all work to get the same result at Happy Valley because ecologically New Zealand is down to the last bite of our clean green apple.
As the protest banner says: Happy Valley is worth more than its weight in coal.
Monday, February 4th, 2008
It’s been a predictable, depressing week in politics. Coinciding with a spate of appalling murders, Helen Clark and John Key gave us their policies on youth education with John Key throwing in a boot camp for good measure.
Bits of both policies won’t work. Labour’s preference for keeping kids in school till they are 18 won’t and neither will National’s forcing alienated youth into military-style camps.
However when the policies are boiled down there is little difference between them and once the policy details are settled there will be even less to distinguish them.
The most worrying aspect of both sets of policies is the focus on education for the needs of employers rather than education for citizenship. Training in specific employment skills should always been paid for by employers but over the past 15 years the cost has been shifting onto taxpayers. The latest moves will see the expansion of “on-job” training with extra government funding to employers like McDonald’s. Coincidently in Britain last week Prime Minister Gordon Brown came under attack for allowing McDonald’s to offer national qualifications of dubious quality. It will be more of the same here. A McJob will now come with a McEducation.
Underlying Key’s proposal is the concept of a voucher for 16 and 17 year olds to leave school for study at a polytech, wanaga or private tertiary establishment. Just at a time when Labour is moving away from this “bums on seats” funding National wants to introduce more of the same. It seems for National anything goes when it comes to expanding the private sector at public expense. The policy also gives the opportunity for National to soften up the public to accept vouchers for schooling which is National’s holy grail in education.
It is important to remember that a 2005 Tertiary Education Commission survey of 480 PTE qualifications found 64% of the courses were of either low quality or low relevance. In other words we don’t need 30 bad hairdressers in Temuka but just as Labour finally begins to tighten up on this waste of public funds National wants to open the purse strings again.
Let’s also remember this policy is not for students from well-heeled families who will continue at school till form seven and then move on to university. Instead it’s for students leaving school in earlier years and disproportionately these will be students from lower income areas such as Maori and Pacifica Students who are already lured out of school onto a merry-go-round of low quality courses. They gain a few credits here and there but no meaningful qualifications. The waste of funding is a disgrace.
Neither National nor Labour’s proposals deal effectively with alienated students whose greatest risk factor is family income. These are predominantly students from low-income families where there is a cycle of disaffection exacerbated by free-market policies which have increased levels of poverty and encouraged the anti-social attitudes and behaviours which follow. Trying to keep these students in education will not succeed in most cases but getting Labour or National to address the problem honestly seems a hopeless task. They both prefer to pour more money into band-aid programmes at the bottom of the cliff instead of confronting economic policy at the top.
John Key’s “modern” boot camp is the soft face of the violent, authoritarian streak which runs close the surface in many New Zealanders. Christchurch City Councillor Barry Corbett revealed just how close when he commented that if he were a juror in the trial of the man who allegedly stabbed a tagger to death he would probably let him off. The thin veneer was gone. A day later he was softening his stance saying he agreed it was a silly thing to say but in the next breath said he’d had lots of support for his comments.
Here is a man with all the credentials for recognising the causes of poverty and alienation but who is stuck getting angry at the symptoms.
According to his promotional material he is a trustee of the Christchurch Casino Charitable Trust. He helps distribute profit from pokie machines but is blind to the enormous damage they cause to low-income families and youth whose anti-social behaviour he deplores.
Corbett should remember that youth behaviour is a reflection of the society they live in which he helps create. He is a greater part of the problem than the young taggers he so vehemently despises.
Young New Zealanders have had a fair political battering recently. Instead of automatically being seen as problems we should all remember how sensitive and vulnerable they are, despite the bravado and occasional stupidity.
Monday, January 28th, 2008
Tena koe Thabo Mbeki,
I understand a nomination has been put forward for me to receive a South African honour later this year, the Companions of O R Tambo Award, on behalf of HART and the anti-apartheid movement of New Zealand for our work campaigning to end apartheid in South Africa.
I note the particular honour is conferred by the President of South Africa and awarded to “foreign citizens who have promoted South African interests and aspirations through co-operation, solidarity and support”.
We are proud of the role played by the movement here to assist the struggle against apartheid and I appreciate the sentiment behind the nomination. However after the most careful consideration I respectfully request the nomination proceed no further. Were an award to be made I would decline to accept it either personally or on behalf of the movement.
New Zealanders who campaigned against apartheid did so to bring real and meaningful change in the lives of South Africa’s impoverished and disenfranchised black communities. We were appalled and angered at the callous brutality of a system based on racism and exploitation of black South Africans for the benefit of South African corporations.
However while political rights have been won and celebrated, social and economic rights have been sidelined. It is now 14 years since the first African National Congress government was elected to power but for most the situation is no better, and frequently worse, than it was under white minority rule.
The number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day more than doubled to 2.4 million in the first 10 years of ANC government. Despite strong economic growth overall poverty levels have not improved and the gap between rich and poor has increased with many black families being driven more deeply into poverty. Unemployment remains high at around 26%.
It seems the entire economic structure which underpinned apartheid is essentially unchanged. Oppression based on race has morphed seamlessly into oppression based on economic circumstance. The faces at the top have changed from white to black but the substance of change is an illusion.
None of us expected things to change overnight but we did expect the hope for change to always burn brightly as people looked ahead for their children and grandchildren. This is now a pale gleam, dimmed by the destructive power of free-market economics.
My own country New Zealand preceded the ANC in adopting free-market economic reforms. Since 1984 we have experienced a particularly virulent dose of these vicious policies which have brought wealth to the few at the expense of the many.
Hundreds of thousands of New Zealand families have been driven out of decent employment into poverty where they struggle to raise families on part-time, poorly paid work. They are worse off now than they were 20 years ago. The same policies have brought the same outcomes to South Africa. For the majority life is tougher now than at any time since the ANC came to power.
The promises made by those who drove through the reforms in New Zealand were a lie just as they are in South Africa. Wherever these policies have been put in place anywhere in the world they have resulted in a reverse Robin Hood – a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
When we protested and marched into police batons and barbed wire here in the struggle against apartheid we were not fighting for a small black elite to become millionaires. We were fighting for a better South Africa for all its citizens.
I take heart from the many community groups in South Africa fighting against privatisation of community assets; supporting settlements against forced removals; opposing police harassment and brutality; struggling for decent healthcare, water supplies and education; campaigning for decent pay, reasonable working conditions and affordable houses. These people, such as the Durban Shackdwellers, are looking for respect and dignity as human beings. Many carry the ideals of the Freedom Charter, once the bedrock document for ANC policy, close to their hearts.
Apartheid was accurately described as a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations and the ANC. I could not in all conscience attend a ceremony to receive an award conferred by your office while a similar crime is in progress.
Receiving an award would inevitably associate myself and the movement here with ANC government policies. At one time this may have been a source of pride but it would now be a source of personal embarrassment which I am not prepared to endure.
Yours sincerely,
John Minto