Our ageing population; one more reason to change the Government

I’ve just been lucky enough to sit through a lecture on population ageing with Natalie Jackson. It was absolutely fascinating. Here are a few of the points that she stressed.

Population ageing is not simply about the increase in the number of people over 65; it’s about the increasing proportion of people over 65.

Not to labour the point – the following graph shows that in the 50s there were more young people than older people, and that as time is passing more people are living longer and fewer children are being born. As a result more health services will be needed, and there will be fewer workers to provide the services, tax and support for the retired.

New Zealand has a slightly different pattern:

As you can see in the graph below, from 2001 we will be slightly more protected for a while compared to other countries. But over the next 5 years, as the baby boomers retire, structural ageing will become more obvious. There will be 100,000 people exiting the work force over the next 5 years. In just 12 years we will have more people aged over 65 than people aged under 15.

As a country, we are incredibly lucky that the pattern of population ageing for Maori is radically different from Pakeha (graph below). This may protect us as a country from some of the shock of the change.

This is the picture at a national level, but it doesn’t tell us the full story as there are already significant differences between regions in New Zealand.

In about 7% of Territorial Authorities (TAs) have 20% of the population is aged over 65; by 2026 that will be closer to 75% of TAs. Currently, almost 40% of TAs have more people exiting the labour force than entering it and this will grow to around 70% within five years.

This pattern will be even more noticeable in other high income countries, which will further globalise the labour market. This means young people with qualifications will pretty much be able to go anywhere and ask for whatever they want, and soon there will be a likely drop in tertiary education attendance as qualifications won’t be required any longer to get a job.

If we are to keep our young people in the country, and prepare those in their 30s for the much faster promotion trajectory, we need to increase our investment in social support and education while we have the tax base to do it.

And let me be clear, extending youth rates and fire at will legislation, attacking welfare provisions and reducing the real investment in education etc etc, will not create a generation of young people who feel valued and loyal.

Will you turn a blind eye?

Whose responsibility is child poverty? The movie Oranges and Sunshine brings attention to the outrageous situation of 130,000 poor children being sent unaccompanied to Australia from the U.K to help whiten Australia. This happened from the 19th Century until the 1970s. The Catholic Church, various charitable organisations, and both governments were actively engaged in this.

These children were often told their parents were dead, when in fact they were not. These children were sent into the most spartan of environments, usually given only a shirt and shorts, not even shoes, provided with the barest minimum of food and made to do the work of adults to pay for these ‘services.’ Many of the children were physically and sexually abused. These children were aged from 4 -15 years of age when deported to Australia.

A social worker uncovered this story in the mid 1980s and asked the U.K government and the other agencies involved to help reunite the children with their identities and family if they were still alive. The government and agencies refused to take any action to assist these children, now adults, for 23 years.

 While many of us may still have a very imperfect understanding of the role racism in colonisation, this story highlights how the poor/children were used as pawns in this. It was as if the U.K government thought it could eliminate a class of people while assisting Australia to eliminate an entire people. Is this what they thought was win-win problem solving?

Sadly I think the attitudes shown in the film continue today in the dominant attitudes to child poverty in this country. Those in power said the children were victims of terrible parents rather than any institution or government; they did not at any time consider these children as citizens or whole beings and there was no-one checking to see if their basic needs were being met.

We’re told by the Government that a rational response to the 270,000 children living in poverty in this country is to make those bad/lazy parents go to work and cut their benefits if they don’t (There is no such thing as the working poor, of course). Childrens’ rights as citizens and human beings are completely ignored in this scenario. While CYFs struggles to have the resources to respond to serious physical and sexual abuse, the state is not checking whether these 270,000 children have enough food, adequate shelter and clothing, let alone access to education.

A core Green Party policy for this election is to lift at least 100,000 children out of poverty by 2014. We believe all children are entitled to the basic human rights.

This can be done by:

• Extending working for families to beneficiaries
• Regulating rental housing
• Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour
• Reinstating and extending the Training incentive allowance

This is a choice for all of us; turn a blind eye, say it’s someone else’s problem; or vote to change it.

Child poverty is not an overly complex problem, in fact it’s one of the easier ones to solve.

Politics – with a capital P

I’m not actually that interested in the machinations of big P Politics, who got what in the polls, who’s doing deals with who, or who said what about who…

Specifically, I am not interested in political strategy when the focus is attracting the elusive middle-New Zealand voter.

I know some people will say this makes me politically naive, maybe it does, but I’d rather be naive than vulnerable to compromising my ideals.

However there’s one ‘Political’ thing I do want to quickly respond to. There has been a lot of discussion about Gareth Hughes not running for the candidate vote in Ohariu-Belmont. This has been compared to National not running for the candidate vote in Epsom in favour of ACT.

It is different in ways that the commentators don’t seem to understand.

The Greens only campaign for the party vote. We are not running any campaigns for electorate seats and we haven’t for the last three elections. There is a very simple reason for this, and it’s not that we don’t want to be or wouldn’t be good electorate MPs. It’s because it costs significantly more money to campaign for a seat as well as a party vote.

The reality for the Greens is we run more on love than money, and we are not in a position to campaign for the personal vote. It’s a shame because I do think there is something very privileged and special about representing an electorate.

National has the resources and the possibility of winning the Epsom seat, but they are choosing not to campaign for the candidate vote because they want ACT in Parliament with them.

Why vote?

I met with a group of 14 young Maori and Pacifica people looking for work yesterday.Some of the discussion went like this:

Me: What do you think when someone says politics?

Them: …Nothing…politicians…them up there deciding for us…

Me: So what do they get to make decisions about?

Them: Values… beliefs… their money… our money… mana whenua..

Me: So do they represent your values?

Them: NO … they represent themselves.

Then we had a discussion about why those in power don’t represent their values and what might change that. The ideas we discussed included – thinking about how they would like society to be, and then talking with others and letting people know what they think; then fighting for their vision, including voting for it. We also talked about how hard it is sometimes to believe it can be different when it doesn’t seem like anyone is listening.

Mixed up in all this was a critique of ownership vs belonging, money vs a sharing of resources and even the idea of one income for all. Radical stuff.

I was challenged and inspired. Someone noted that choosing not to vote is actually like voting for those with the most power.

The Minister of Youth Affairs Paula Bennet suggested these young people are unemployed because they have bad attitudes and bad families. I’m not sure it’s them with the bad attitudes.

A few quick mullings on privilege

I’ve been thinking about privilege again over the last couple of weeks:

This morning on Morning Report, Phil O’Reilly of Business New Zealand, talked about increasing cost of living and the need for unions and workers to be “responsible” and not put pressure on wages. Helen Kelly mentioned the need to challenge poverty – he didn’t respond to that point. I guess his privilege means that’s not something he sees or has to think about.

Last week I was listening to Sir Michael Marmot talk about the social determinants of health –  income inequality is a key determinant of health; there were murmurs about the missing race analysis in this picture.

Professor Papaarangi Reid talked about the need to keep naming the ‘isms’ while we talk about promoting equality and equity.  An American academic noted that the agenda for fairness in the U.S without mention of the ‘isms’, has resulted in the notion of ‘fairness’ being picked up by the Tea Party in their push for a reduction in taxation.

Talking about the ‘isms’ seems so 80′s, but we haven’t won those battles yet.

I know of someone who was in Auckland with family recently, and one of their group was jumped and attacked. When the police came they refused to take action saying it was just a brawl. When one of the group stood in front of the police car with hands in the air saying he was protesting against police racism the police drove into him and then arrested him. He was the only person arrested.

I know of a woman (not middle class) who was publicly abused by a police officer and told never to make contact them because she didn’t want to make a formal police complaint against her abuser.

I know it is much much harder to get accommodation in Wellington if you’re not pakeha and middle class.  I know whole families are living in one room in boarding houses around New Zealand as the only alternative to the streets.

I know a young incredibly sweet young Maori man who has started stealing because there is no food at home and he’s run out of the will to go into yet another place looking for a job and being turned down.

I know an increasing number of people and families are struggling to keep warm and keep a roof over their heads let alone eat well.

I know of transgender people who have been beaten and raped for being who they are.

I know how dizzying, infuriating and numbing these struggles can be and I am so aware of how insulated I am from these realities. I also realise that many New Zealanders don’t have a clue that this represents daily life for many others.

Talking about the economy, welfare, employment, justice, housing etc without acknowledging the ‘isms’ is, I believe, an exercise of recreating discrimination and oppression.

 

Roads of National Suicide

The Greens oppose the Sandhills Expressway. We oppose the Roads of National Significance initiative because it will demolish houses, We oppose it because it will sever entire communities, We oppose it because it will have a devastating impact on our local ecology And we oppose it because it is an appalling waste of our precious financial resources.

We are proud to be part of the opposition to these roads and a voice for the alternatives. Sandhills Expressway is bad for Community, Environment and Economy. Sandhills will be an American style expressway right through the heart of vibrant Kapiti communities, will bowl some stunning homes, and take more land from the precious remaining wahi tapu. This will ruin the aesthetic, peace and tranquillity of a beautiful place that people throughout the region treasure.

One rationale for this road has been cited as promoting development on the Kapiti Coast to shorten the commute for people into Wellington. I’m one of those people who commute into Wellington and I’m conscious of the impact of this on my ability to participate in the community. I leave early and get home late so it’s a real challenge to shop locally and it’s also really difficult to get involved in community activities. Creating more commuters will further compromise the culture and economy of our smaller communities.

This road is also bad for the community because it tells us our views aren’t important. Kapiti has spent over 20 years looking to improve mobility in the district. 30% of traffic on SH1 is local traffic, and locally, the bottle necks are around the existing motorway. Congestion and local mobility problems would be solved by upgrading SH1, having a link road and another bridge over the river.

This government stopped the local ‘Western Link’ road solution, while justifying the Sandhills Expressway by saying the community wants it NOW. Sandhills won’t be started until 2012 and won’t be finished until 2019. The Western Link road would have been completed by 2013.

The expressway is clearly bad for the environment as, ignoring peak oil, it will put 20% more cars onto the roads and there will be a consequent increase in transport related GHG emissions. If both are built there will be a projected 20% increase in traffic and a 13% decrease in rail patronage. That’s an extra 40,000 cars looking for a park in Wellington! Even if we don’t ignore peak oil we will be unnecessarily increasing our emission profile through the building of the motorway.

It will increase air pollution and put a road in the pathway of all the birds we’ve been slowly coaxing back onto the mainland. It will further degrade the waterways that are home to our beloved whitebait and other precious natives.

People may be used to arguments like those above to oppose new motorways but this road is also a bad decision economically. By the Government’s own estimate this road has a marginal cost benefit ratio. Basically this means it will cost more money to build than it will return to economy, and that was using conservative estimates on the cost of oil.

The US defence force, and International Energy Agency have both now acknowledged that are now in what is called peak oil and have been since 2006. Basically this means, while there may be small fluctuations, oil is now going to be harder for us to get and what we do manage to get will be more and more expensive. New Zealand engineer Dr Susan Krumdieck has noted we need to prepare not just for increase in the price of oil but a reduced supply as larger markets manage to secure a larger share of the remaining oil.

The other purpose of the expressway as opposed to a local road is supposedly to help move freight around the country more quickly and therefore boost the economy. This again ignores peak oil and assumes congestion will increase and ignores the impact on businesses of the rising price of oil. The sustainable solution for our economy needs to be reducing business reliance on oil, not increasing it.

Our economy requires an urgent investment in alternative freight and transport options. Rail and sea are less energy intensive compared to road and air. Our infrastructure is pitifully rundown and we are far from prepared for this transition.

To spend $2.4 billion dollars in the Wellington region alone, at a time of economic constraint to build new roads is frankly irresponsible.

To spend $2.4 billion in the Wellington region while we wait another 8 years for the trains to run on time and school students are kicked off early because of overcrowding is frankly bad for society and the economy.

I believe our country and economy would be better served in the short and long term by using that money to invest in early childhood education (with a 1:8 economic return) and public transport.

Our Solution

Listen to the local communities and mana whenua and build a local link road instead, a second bridge over the river, and transform our dilapidated rail network into a fast, reliable commuter rail system.

Here’s how:

• Ensure trains run on time, and put toilets and bike racks on all trains

• Ensure train fares are affordable for all commuters

• Increase the frequency of peak time trains to every five to ten minutes.

• Run 12 trains with 12 carriages at peak times, which would carry 10,000 passengers or the equivalent of 8-9,000 car trips.

• Transform bare, windy, exposed platforms into safe, attractive community hubs

• Extend the commuter rail network with light rail through to Courtenay Place, so commuters can travel right to their place of work

• Electrify and double track trains up to Otaki.

• Enhance park and ride facilities.

• Introduce integrated ticketing.

These solutions will build Community, Environment and Economy.

My speech from Slutwalk

Firstly I would like to acknowledge all those people who couldn’t be here today because by virtue of their job,trans identity, class or colour they live under the label slut on a daily basis. For some people slut is not just applied to their behaviour but who they are. By being on this march I do not want to give permission to any bastard to use the word  more freely against those who aren’t as respectable, old or white as me. I want all of us to be free.

 You all look gorgeous. As you can see I’m in my sexiest gear today, because there’s nothing sexier than a Green Party T-shirt.

 As friends family and survivors of sexual and gender based violence we are taking our power today to say it’s not for us to hold the pain, It’s not for us to feel the shame and it’s not for us to change.

 By standing here we are saying the pain and shame belongs to those who abuse and it’s their job to change.

 I’m here because I believe we all have the right to be safe and I believe the best way to stop sexual abuse is for abusers to stop abusing.

 A 2007 international study found 1 in 4 girls in this country are sexually abused before the age of 15. This was the highest rate of any country surveyed. Our rates of Domestic Violence are similarly awful and the police estimate that less than 20% of cases are reported. This is a crisis. We’re under attack and we’re being told it’s our own fault.

 I’ve spent many years working with refuge and in sexual abuse support and prevention and I know that the rates of abuse in this country are not a result of what we’re wearing, or what or even how we’re drinking.

 By far the majority of abuse happens in the home. Abusers most tragically are not often men in balaclavas or strangers out on the town late at night. All too often they’re our family and friends.

 While this march was started in response to a comment by a police officer in Canada there have been many more examples recently much closer to home that have effectively been saying the same thing.

Kathryn Ryan on National Radio last week asked – Is the real offender Alcohol? And why are young women just not getting the message. National Party MP Paul Quin said “there is a real issue with young ladies getting drunk” during a debate on rape, and ALAC felt it was ok to run TV campaign showing a young drunk woman about to be raped with the message it’s how we’re drinking. I say it’s not how we’re drinking it’s how they’re raping.

To focus on the behaviour, clothing, or drinking of victims is like blaming the gender pay gap on periods.

 If we’re going to reduce or stop sexual abuse we need name it properly and keep the focus on the abuse not the victims. After all abusers are in the best position to stop it.

 I’m thinking today of a old friend who I admire a lot who was once brave enough to quite publically go up to the man who had raped her and put her hand on his chest and said take this – it’s my pain from you raping me and it belongs to you.

 For me this march is our collective opportunity to say take this pain, and take this shame. It is not ours.

 We all need to keep challenging the idea that it’s our fault that it’s the fault of the victim and we need to work towards better laws and programmes and education so abusers realise they can’t get away with it any more.

 That’s why I’m proud to join you all here today as a Green Party Candidate to say enough is enough. 

 

This blog is from my column in the last Paekakriki Expressed. A local community run paper:

As such a recent addition to the village I feel humbled to add my piece to this final edition of Paekakariki Expressed.

This is the end of a unique and truly impressive exercise in local media and democracy by Don and Allie and so many other volunteers. I want to extend my congratulations and sincere appreciation to them for their contribution to the Paekakariki spirit.

It seems only fitting in this last column to write about participatory democracy, as this newspaper has played such an important role locally.

The Green Party policy on broadcasting notes that we have the lowest amount of local programming on television of any OECD country.

Four companies, all overseas owned dominate the New Zealand news media. There is a near duopoly of print and radio and a monopoly in pay TV and only three significant players in free to air television.

News-gathering and reporting has become more centralised , and the same stories are channeled into radio, television, the internet and print media. News reporting has become increasingly dramatic, emotive and sensationalized, as broadcasters compete for audience attention and advertising dollars.

As we are seeing with the inclusion of Takemore Trust and KCDC on the ‘Alliance’ which is overseeing the Sandhills Expressway the committee may have shifted from being the project management team to something more akin to an urban development corporation. In this model democratically elected officials are given an equal voice alongside the investment and building companies. This is also happening in Christchurch with CERA.

In Auckland and in discussions to create a Wellington Supercity we are hearing calls for larger more efficient councils with core services being put into business units, which is effectively a shift to representative democracy and urban development corporations.

At a national level this government has used urgency and side stepped the select committee process more than any previous government. Doing this they have again moved to a model of representative democracy and further away from participatory democracy.

In a recent media release the Human Rights Commission noted

“The lack of public participation in fundamental legal reforms is damaging parliamentary democracy, says the Human Rights Commission. In the past five years fundamental human rights issues such as the lack of public participation in submission processes, diminishing collective deliberation about fundamental changes, rushed legislation, the by-passing of select committees, and what appears to be less respect for submitters in select committee proceedings have been of concern, says Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor.”

There is a  trend in government at all levels towards models of corporate governance or representative democracy. In this trend though we lose our voices and any hope of nuanced decision-making and we are left only with the very blunt tool of general elections. With increasingly pressured and corporatised media we are left even without a watch dog.

Without community media we are in danger of not even noticing our democratic privileges have become a shadow of what we once knew. Thanks again Don and Allie for helping to protect our democracy.

 

Change in the face of urgent need or, the value of being in opposition

 

I’ve been having some interesting discussions recently about change and how to achieve it, particularly in relation to parliamentary politics and the Green Party in particular.

In the face of appalling child poverty and rheumatic fever rates, peak oil and irreversible climate change there are many people who feel a need to make change NOW.

I feel that anxiety, but tend to disagree with the conclusions some draw.

There are people who seem to believe that the Greens need to be in Government to make those changes.

I’m not sure who this quote is ascribed to but it has been mentioned to me more than once recently: “You can do more in one day of government than you can in three years in opposition.”

I think this quote must have been made before MMP, or before the Greens were in parliament, or was made by someone in Labour, or it was before the Maori Party joined this government.

Going into a coalition government as a small party entails many risks:

• being subsumed by the major party to the point you’re invisible, a la United Future/the Progressives.
• compromising your values to the point your kaupapa is lost and membership is disillusioned or ripped apart.
• being co-opted into the dominant paradigms so the integrity of your message is compromised.
• facing a public backlash by pushing the major party into agreeing to policies that the public resents.From my perspective the Green Party has been really clever by staying outside government. We have managed to achieve really significant changes: reducing youth rates, amending Section 59 of the Crimes Act, getting flexible working hours, opening up MP expenses, ensuring prisoners have the right to be at the their own trials, getting 180,000 homes insulated, allowing mothers to be able to have their babies with them in prison, waste minimisation legislation, funding for conservation, and community groups, cleaning up toxic sites, building cycle ways, an end to sow crates…

  This is remarkable and ALL from outside government. Over this time we have maintained the integrity of our message; our planet and people will not survive the status quo so we need a new way of working.

  In the face of climate change and peak oil and rapidly increasing inequality we need to keep our message clear and loud. All the evidence suggests being in government before our time will compromise the volume and/or purity of our message.

  The flaws in our financial systems, the worsening inequities and ecological and climate costs will become more and more obvious. I believe it’s our duty to make sure we are here and ready when that time comes.

  Some people think this will be too late. It may be, but without public support and a clear vision we can’t achieve what’s required anyway. I think it’s better to keep campaigning, keep our radical voice, and keep making the changes from outside until the “climate is right for change.”

Mana Campaign Launch speech

Thank you all for coming to the Mana Greens election year campaign launch. It’s an exciting day for us as it signals a changing of gears in our activism and for me personally a shift to part-time work and more of a chance to get out into our communities. I would like to firstly thank the Mana Greens for selecting me as their candidate and the north of electorate for such support in the by-election.. Raumati South and Paekakariki are two greenest places in NZ and I feel incredibly honoured and lucky to campaign in such a great place with such great people.

This election is a critical one for us as a community and for the entire country. We are fighting for the very heart of this land and community. The government is putting us into debt and riding over our views to build roads that will either increase CO2 or not be used as we pass peak oil. We know the only way we will stop this agenda is to change the government.

This week I’ve been remembering the last election and how I felt the day after – when we knew we were heading for a National government. While we had increased the number of Green MPs it still felt like a bleak day to me as I reflected on my memories of the 90s.

In the 90s I was working as the women’s coordinator with the National University Students Association and then setting up a Youth Health Service in the Hutt Valley. It was a time of continued social upheaval following on from the introduction of a relatively undiluted new right agenda by the 1984 Labour Government. It was a time of when we were told we were all individuals and rather than a duty to look after each other we had a duty to not lean on anyone else. Suicide increased dramatically over this time.

My enduring memory during the 90s was facilitating a workshop on the topic of suicide prevention with a group of young unemployed people aged up to 20. These young people had not been successful in school and were mostly completely disconnected from family and work and education. Despite this they were smart and had huge amounts energy and quite a few of them were really charismatic.

Asked who they thought was responsible for the success of a range of famous people. They all answered the individual themselves.

Even when presented with the leading question – Who do you think helped them and do you think that made a difference? “They resisted any world view that incorporated a sense of shared responsibility.

I found this workshop profoundly worrying. All of these young people were effectively saying they saw themselves as responsible for their own lack of success and thought they needed to find solutions alone. They were facing a life sentence outside of mainstream society and were at profoundly at risk.

More recently a friend was talking to a young person about some of the things going on in the world now and the young woman said “but we can’t do anything can we?.”
Again this doesn’t surprise me, in fact it could almost be taken as a reflection of the zeitgeist, but I’m not willing to accept this. It makes me too sad to accept it.

I need to be clear while I oppose the actions of this current government right down to the pit of my stomach, I do not believe they are solely responsible. Labour put the new right car into motion and during their 9 years in government they never addressed the fundamental mechanisms that held it in place and created so much harm.

I want a different future for the young people I mentioned. I want them to believe they count and that together with others they can make a difference to the streams in their neighbourhood, or to the benefit rates or indeed to feel they could stop a road being built over their wahi tapu. I mention their stories today because I believe political action and local organising can by itself and certainly in the long run can make a difference.

Each of us will find our drive from different things. I am so glad that you’ve all brought it to Raumati today. By bringing our visions of the future together and joining together to campaign we can move us all towards something entirely new. The Green vision is a new vision. It’s a vision that holds equity, economy and environment together and acknowledges we are all important and we have a duty of care to this planet without which we have no ground to stand on.

Our campaigning can reduce our own sense of isolation or disillusionment and give other people a new future that right now they may not even dare hope for.

I know you’re all fabulously talented and probably busy people but I do hope you will see our requests for assistance this year as opportunities to create something almost unimaginably wonderful in this country and give yourself a treat of community at the same time.

I absolutely loved the conversations I had with people and the gardens I got to see during the by-election, and I feel incredibly lucky and privileged to be the candidate for this electorate.
Globally the Greens are in the ascendance – Germany, Canada, Australia, the U.K. We are winning local seats and even winning a majority of votes. This is a time to take action and jump on that roller coaster.

If we’re lucky and work hard enough we may even stop the expressway and through smart green economics actually achieve some of our other social, environmental goals.

There is something we can do. And I’m stoked to be able to do my bit here in the gorgeous Kapiti Coast and I hope I get to spend time with all of you lovely people along the way.

Finally I would like all our wonderful team who helped make this happen:
Rachael our fundraising coordinator, Eli alias Hula Hope for the stunning music, Liz our campaign coordinator, Stacey the Mana Greens Convenor, Eleanor our volunteer coordinator, Prue our MMP campaign organiser for support with the raffle. Sue Kedgley for coming out and for such kind words, Maria for donating the piwakawaka and Rosemary O’Hara for the stunning baking dishes, and David and Rosemary for the Klezma Rebs CD and of course all of you for coming.

How lucky we all are for such talent and generosity.