The concept of the development of Paerata began before Franklin became part of Auckland when the then Auckland Regional Council were looking for areas to build more houses. One of the other areas they were considering was the Pukekohe A&P Showgrounds, and that subsequently took some 5 years to fight off.
I was Chairman of the Franklin Economic Development Agency at the time, bringing together the economic, business and tourism groups to look at ways to develop opportunities for Franklin.
There are many who believe that the sole reason for annexing Franklin into Auckland City was purely and simply a land grab to enable them to build the huge number of houses they anticipated would be needed for the burgeoning Auckland population - and they had pretty much run out of land in the city.
One of the issues raised then and still relevant, is the use of elite soils on which to build houses. Now we are flat out building dormitory suburbs in Franklin in elite soils.. And the fact is that Franklin will go from being one of the least populated of the 21 Wards of Auckland, to the most populated in a relatively short period of time.
The owners of the land were looking at how to develop that and originally were looking at a concept of Live, Work, Play. This would be a mix of businesses and homes so people could either bicycle or walk to work and hence develop a true sense of community where people got to spend more time with their families and be involved in their community. A lovely ideal.
Regardless of the model, for me there are a couple of issues with any housing development. The first is using elite soils to build on. The second is our approach of people first, then infrastructure.
In 1950 the average farm fed 27 people, by 1917 the number had risen to 150 people fed per farm. The experts predict that by 2050 the world population will reach 9.6 billion. That is a lot of mouth's to feed. To meet that future demand, the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation estimates that agricultural production will need to increase by 60%.
More homes are needed to house that population. Its a world wide issue. However the world's farmland is decreasing. Every two years an area roughly the size of Britain is lost to agriculture. as houses are built on prime agricultural elite soils. So what is Auckland's food security policy? Or will we just increase our food imports from unregulated providers elsewhere in the world.
One of New Zealand's most popular and colourful local politicians, Dove-Meyer Robinson was the longest serving mayor of Auckland city, holding office for 18 years between 1959 and 1980. He had a vision of the future and the development north of the city. And he wanted to build a bridge that would see the road, rail, pedestrian, cycling needs of a growing city way into the future. The Government of the day said he didn't need that and offered him one third of the cost. Of course we all know more capacity for road traffic was needed pretty soon after and more recently we have been regretting the lack of that rail link.
That minimalist approach to infrastructure has continued, hence we are always playing catch-up.
Currently I drive 48 kilometres to work. If I were to take public transport, it could be three train rides and at least one bus. It takes around an hour and a half by car, sometimes two, and God willing there are no accidents which stem the flow completely.
That is at least 3 hours per day, 15 hours per week, 750 hours a year I do not get to spend with family, community or other interests such as, sport and church. As thousands more houses come on line, that commute is going to increase substantially and in a very short space of time. As new house come on line and are occupied, there will be more and more commuter traffic. The wasted time will dramatically increase and the social cost to families and communities will be immense.
The only major infrastructure project to deal with or more likely mitigate somewhat is the short stretch of motorway widening between Karaka and Takanini.
I had the good fortune to see a development in China. I saw houses, highways, rail, town centre, schools and services - everything you would need to support a large population but not a single person in sight except construction workers. When everything was finished then the people came to take up residence.
How sensible is that?
Extracts from this BLOG were first published by Stuff.co.nz on Monday 3rd December 2018.
Monday, December 3, 2018
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Welcome to The Royal A&P Show 2018
Good
evening Mr President, I would also like to introduce members of the RAS Executive here this evening, Vice President, Brent Snellex from Rangiora, Kelly Allison from the deep south and Cara O'Connor who has been equestrian judging all day and unable to be with us this evening.The RAS CEO, Debbie Cameron is also attending the show.
The Royal
Agricultural Society of New Zealand is the umbrella group for the 97 A&P
Shows and 65 Breed & Kindred Societies in New Zealand. It is also one of
the oldest organisations in NZ, with its own Act of Parliament and Royal
Charter.
Yoda, the
Star Wars Jedi Master so prophetical said, “Difficult to see. Always in motion
is the future.”
That is
certainly the case with the Agricultural economy.
Gene
editing technology has highlighted some benefits it could bring to
agriculture, such as removing allergy
causing compounds in cow’s milk; disease proofing Manuka honey; speeding up
apple variety selection; significantly reducing pest levels and shortening the
time to market for developing new crops.
The
Agri-Science community is, without doubt, an exciting place to be.
It is
also great to see the launch by the Red Meat Profit Partnership, of the Key
Performance Indicators booklet with 16 core KPIs to help farmers measure their
business performance.
And on a
more basic note, experience based observations such as that revealed by Steve
Wynn-Harris in a recent Farmers Weekly. He disclosed that at 60 he isn’t fast
enough to catch stud lambs to tag.
He has
taken to using a fishing net to catch them. The net, apparently, is also handy
for popping over one of the triplet lambs and standing on the handle while he
deals with the siblings.
Innovation
drives growth and unearths opportunities. From this gamut of innovation,
development and practical experience we must remember the community in which we
live and to whom we sell.
We must
be aware of the issues of environment; animal well-being; nutrition; ethical
and sustainable production; how red meat is being produced; and evolving
consumer expectations and concerns.
We should
not be allowing the Vegan Lobby under the guise of animal welfare to dictate the
negative and biased establishment media agenda.
We have
not been doing a good job of anticipating or responding to those issues.
Therefore many people are misinformed about farming. Young people, the next
generation of consumers, have their own expectations. Many urban kids have no
idea there is a whole other world outside their suburb. It is easier for them,
and their parents, to absorb click bait headlines adorned with emotion than it
is to read in-depth articles that pursue the evidence.
We need
to take everyone with us & leave no-one behind!
And that,
ladies and gentlemen, is why we need A&P Shows.
Over the
26 week season there will be 97 of them quite literally from one end of the
country to the other.
These
Shows are a unique, marketing, educative, relationship building machine that no
one business could ever dream of recreating to promote their interest. The
A&P platform provides fun; opportunities for hands on; asking questions
without feeling intimidated and to get a positive and good understanding of our
industry.
Shows are
important to illustrate reality at a glance.
And what
is more, this promotional machine comes with a huge voluntary and sponsor
support network.
Mr
President, thanks to you and your great Hawkes Bay A&P team here at the Showgrounds
Hawkes Bay Tomoana, your generous sponsors and volunteers, for getting together
to create something special, The New Zealand Royal A&P Show 2018, the
flagship event of the 97 Show network.
Hopefully
many agriculturally vested interest groups recognise this amazing opportunity
to showcase; to tell the story; to create the news; and to engage with the
wider and influential urbanised community.
Finally, Mr
President, I am pleased to advise you that the Executive of the Royal
Agricultural Society have awarded the Hawkes Bay A&P the right to host a
Royal A&P Show for the next three years. We are most grateful for the work
you have done for the brand and we wish you all the best for the future.
Monday, October 8, 2018
The T2 Driving Schmucks Club
Each morning I access the motorway at Karaka to join many
others for a while on the way to my office.
The on ramp is
divided into three lanes, all clearly signed for purpose. Two of them are for
folk like me, one person per vehicle. We have to queue up and our access to the
motorway is controlled by a set of traffic lights which moderate the traffic to
hopefully improve traffic flow. A third lane on the left is reserved for heavy
or commercial vehicles (over 3.5 tonne) and vehicles with 2 or more passengers.
Their flow onto the motorway is not hindered by traffic lights.
I have noticed that apparently there are some exceptions to
the T2 rules. Some vehicles which have only one driver, or are a ute under 3.5
tonnes, have the right to use this lane they would not otherwise qualify for.
Using this lane puts them up to 20-30 vehicles ahead in the queue. Use doesn’t
seem to be universal though, for example, not all utes with one person on board
get to use the lane.
This would be a club worth belonging to.
It is frustrating when you have observed all the rules,
worked your way to the head of the queue, to have a vehicle like AKA6**, with
one person, come swooping up on your inside to nudge their way ahead of you
into the next queue.
So how do I get to belong to this club? Initially I assumed
they were some kind of emergency worker required immediately somewhere to save
a life or prevent a domestic flight hi-jacking, but apparently not.
In a community like ours, if you don’t know something you do
not have to ask too many people to get the right connection. And I know a
person or two who know stuff. But to my complete surprise I could find not a
single person who knew how to get membership to this special and privileged
club.
I had contemplated hopping out of my car and asking the
driver of AKA6**., after all he had a sign on the tailgate window of his
station wagon which read ‘Intelligent Protection System’, but no he was off on
his next busy move.
I had given up ever finding out how I could become a member
of this club and gain such a traffic advantage. That was until I ended up
sitting next to an older chap having a coffee at Mangere Bridge Village. We
were chatting away and I raised this subject then asked him if, by chance, he
knew anything about this club.
I was quite unprepared for his very enthusiastic revelation
in response. Thank goodness I wasn’t sitting across from him otherwise I would
have been showered by a mouthful of Chai Latte (without sugar)!
That was followed by a burst of words, many of which I
wouldn’t normally use and from what others tell me, are not printable. But I
did pick up what I thought was a key word in my search for the club –
‘Schmucks!’
Success! Finally, a
vital word clue in my search for membership of this special and exclusive club.
So I am off to chat with another friend, Mr Google, to find out more about this
‘T2 Driving Schmucks Club’. I’ll let you know how I get on.
First published in the Franklin County News on 27th September 2018
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Techno Nosey Parkers
Your employer could be using your social media presence to see if you are looking for a new job.
You may recall a month or so back I wrote about Facebook and how we are now keenly aware of how our data is being accessed and manipulated, often without our knowledge.
And if you post a picture of yourself, and your face is visible, you can be identified by those nosey parkers. Well, there is a whole new meaning to nosey parker now.
Google tracks your movements even if you have turned location history off. An investigation has found that even if you explicitly tell Google not to track your location and movements on your iPhone or your Android smartphone, they do anyway.
The investigation found that users are being misled by Google’s claim that for those who turn off Location History “the places you go are no longer stored.” In fact, even with Location History turned off, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking. For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches which have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude, accurate to the square foot, and save it to your Google account.
So many of the company’s services track your location, it’s virtually impossible for the user to know just how many services they need to disable to regain their privacy. Now that you have digested that, take a swallow of this next revelation.
There is a powerful new “face search” engine that could be a privacy nightmare. Cybersecurity firm Trustwave has released an open source tool to find accounts of large volumes of people across social media platforms by automatically matching names and profile pictures.
The tool, Social Mapper, is designed for testing security measures and gain access to computers. Social Mapper users provide their own login credentials to various social networks, along with a file specifying names and facial images of the people they are interested in targeting. The tool then logs into the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and uses the sites search tools and open source facial recognition tools to find and log likely matches.
Whilst designed for a specific security purpose, there have to be concerns about whether it could be used for malicious purposes or to violate people’s privacy. And we already know privacy doesn’t count for much in this techno world. Once Social Mapper has finished running and the reports have been collected here are just a couple of uses that information could be used for:
In San Francisco, hiQ, a data mining company helps employers predict which of their employees are thinking about jumping ship.
They built their business on the back of a valuable cache of data – public user profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Is the data you share publically on social networking sites like an announcement in a public space?
LinkedIn says ‘No’.
hiQ says ‘Yes’ and recently a California judge sided with hiQ.
First published in the Franklin County News Thursday 6th September 2018.
You may recall a month or so back I wrote about Facebook and how we are now keenly aware of how our data is being accessed and manipulated, often without our knowledge.
And if you post a picture of yourself, and your face is visible, you can be identified by those nosey parkers. Well, there is a whole new meaning to nosey parker now.
Google tracks your movements even if you have turned location history off. An investigation has found that even if you explicitly tell Google not to track your location and movements on your iPhone or your Android smartphone, they do anyway.
The investigation found that users are being misled by Google’s claim that for those who turn off Location History “the places you go are no longer stored.” In fact, even with Location History turned off, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking. For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches which have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude, accurate to the square foot, and save it to your Google account.
So many of the company’s services track your location, it’s virtually impossible for the user to know just how many services they need to disable to regain their privacy. Now that you have digested that, take a swallow of this next revelation.
There is a powerful new “face search” engine that could be a privacy nightmare. Cybersecurity firm Trustwave has released an open source tool to find accounts of large volumes of people across social media platforms by automatically matching names and profile pictures.
The tool, Social Mapper, is designed for testing security measures and gain access to computers. Social Mapper users provide their own login credentials to various social networks, along with a file specifying names and facial images of the people they are interested in targeting. The tool then logs into the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and uses the sites search tools and open source facial recognition tools to find and log likely matches.
Whilst designed for a specific security purpose, there have to be concerns about whether it could be used for malicious purposes or to violate people’s privacy. And we already know privacy doesn’t count for much in this techno world. Once Social Mapper has finished running and the reports have been collected here are just a couple of uses that information could be used for:
- Create fake social media profiles to ‘friend’ the targets and send them links to credential capturing landing pages or download malware. Recent statistics show social media users are more than twice as likely to click on links and open documents compared to those delivered via email.
- Trick users into disclosing their emails and phone numbers.
- View target photos looking for employee access card badges and familiarise yourself with building interiors.
In San Francisco, hiQ, a data mining company helps employers predict which of their employees are thinking about jumping ship.
They built their business on the back of a valuable cache of data – public user profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Is the data you share publically on social networking sites like an announcement in a public space?
LinkedIn says ‘No’.
hiQ says ‘Yes’ and recently a California judge sided with hiQ.
First published in the Franklin County News Thursday 6th September 2018.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Communities Redefined
A while
back in the good ol days of the Franklin District I recall attending a
community meeting in Waiuku to discuss the Council Plan. I was fresh back from
a visit to the States where I had spent a few days in Tucson Arizona as the
guest of the University Business School. Water was pretty precious there in the
desert. I was impressed that every house had two separate supplies of water.
One was treated water for human consumption the other was recycled grey and
waste water to be used for flushing the toilet, watering the garden, washing
the car.
Have we missed the opportunity to lead by example, in our clean green country, to redefine residential real-estate development for the next three billion people coming to the planet?
At the
Council meeting in Waiuku I asked what our plans were for water recycling, and
also why every house didn’t have a water tank. Neither of those were on the
agenda.
Of course
now we are flat out building dormitory suburbs in Franklin on A class growing
soils. Instead of doing what we always do, the development could have been a
fabulous opportunity to make a difference.
There are
those who argue our modern lifestyle is utterly unsustainable. The technology
already exists to change that and it is just a matter of applying science into
the architecture of everyday life.
ReGen
Villages is a start-up real estate development company aiming to build small,
self-sustaining residential communities around the world. The first one is
expected to be completed in Almere in the Netherlands in 2018. It will collect
and store its own water and energy, grow its own food, and process much of its
own waste. Also, no cars. Each completed village will house 100 families on
about 50 acres. ReGen villages are designed to give people an environmentally
friendly alternative to urban life.
ReGen
stands for regenerative, where the outputs of one system are the inputs of another.
The concept combines a variety of innovative technologies, such as energy
positive homes, renewable energy, energy storage, door-step high yield organic
food production, vertical farming aquaponics / aeroponics, water management and
waste-to-resource systems. Food waste will turn into fish food for aquaculture,
and houses will filter rain water.
Homes in
these communities are totally designed for sustainable living. The community
shares water storage facilities and there are areas for livestock, communal
dinning, playgrounds and communal learning centres.
A living
machine system will use plants and trees to filter sewage, and a separate
anaerobic digester will handle the neighbourhood’s sewage and provide
irrigation or water reused in energy systems. A system for processing food and
animal waste will use black soldier flies and aquatic worms to digest the waste
and create both chicken and fish feed.
James
Ehrlich is the founder of ReGen Villages. He reckons a neighbourhood can be
connected the way it’s supposed to be which is around natural resources. As
cities become increasingly expensive and crowded, Ehrlich believes this type of
development may become more common.
There is
a terrible housing crisis and Governments around the world are in a desperate
situation to build probably over a billion new homes. At the same time they
wrestle with a number of things including the commercial interests of farmers,
the commercial interests of traditional real estate developers and material
companies which have been doing things the same way for a long time. Without
doubt we need to provide new kinds of suburbs and new kinds of neighbourhoods.
Have we missed the opportunity to lead by example, in our clean green country, to redefine residential real-estate development for the next three billion people coming to the planet?
First published in the Franklin County News 21 August 2018
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Our Web ID Tag
I am not
a big user of face book. Unless I am expecting some news or information via
that medium, or I want to put something up, I might check it out for an hour
twice a week.
Don’t get
me wrong, I think face book is a great idea. I enjoy keeping up with family and
friends. It’s a delight to see younger relations growing and vicariously
sharing their development and learning through regular updates on facebook.
When I
first accessed this service I was invited to read the conditions and rules.
Never did and don’t know anyone else who did. If I wanted to use face book I
had to agree, so I would take my chances.
When the
recent face book / Cambridge Analytica affair broke cover there was outrage. As
the matter progressed I began to feel the outrage was unwarranted and perhaps
the type we inflict on others when we have made a mistake and they have
exploited it.
You see
neither face book or Cambridge Analytica did anything wrong. We, the users of
face book had accepted the terms on which we would access and use this
communication tool. There may have been some aspects of use not particularly or
specifically covered in the agreement, but then there was no rule saying it
couldn’t be done.
Instead
of being vilified, Cambridge Analytica should be congratulated for their
incredibly clever idea and using what they had gathered so creatively and
powerfully.
That
congratulations should also include thanks for them drawing our own
irresponsibility and downright stupidity into such compelling and frightenly
close focus. We are now keenly aware of how our data is being accessed and
manipulated, often without our knowledge.
Both face
book and Google gather information about us from things we actually provide to
them, like geotagged photos, messages, emails and profile information. But they
and other tech companies can also assemble huge troves of data about us – what
we like, what we read, the trips we are thinking of making – by following us
around the web.
They can
also track us when we go from web page to web page if those pages have like and
share buttons on them, or even just comment fields.
It
doesn’t even matter if we interact with these buttons and comments or not.
Every app we load is another open door inviting organisations and people,
completely unknown to us (let alone their motivation), to gather information,
make assumptions about us, and share with others for commercial gain.
It’s not
just the social media and search giants that use sneaky techniques to follow us
around the web. Virtually every other online ad and data company uses another
intrusive method known as fingerprinting. This allows us to be identified by
them identifying a unique set of characteristics of the device that we are
using. These characteristics include configuration, fonts and plug ins that
they use to assign us a unique finger print or ID tag and track both us and our
device.
And if
you put a picture of yourself, and your face is visible, you can be identified
by those nosey parkers. Sobering though huh?
[First published in the Franklin County News 17th July 2018 page 6.]
Thursday, June 14, 2018
The slaughtering is futile and senseless
The dreaded words mycoplasma
bovis arrived in our vocabulary as a bit of a shock.
Given we were one of about
two countries in the world that did not have the disease present, I would have
thought at least an air raid alarm would have started sounding relentlessly
demanding our attention. But apparently not.
And then, oh my goodness, there
seemed to be a bit of it about. Suddenly late in January The NZ Dairy Event
(Dairy Week) Chair received a letter from Dairy NZ advising that although the
Event was perceived to be low risk in light of the fact that not all links with
infected farms had yet been completed, their advice, “...was to avoid
co-mingling of cattle between islands.” MPI supported the advice.
Consequently
the Event Committee made the decision to request South Island exhibitors to
withdraw their show and sale entries from the 2018 event. This effectively
excluded some of the top dairy cattle in New Zealand attending the National
event. Now more people were sitting up and paying attention. However, the
expectation was to reduce the risk of infection until other measures were found
to eradicate the disease. And the slaughtering of cattle started in the belief
the disease could be eliminated.
Mycoplasma bovis is a bacterial disease
commonly found in cattle all over the world. It leads to serious conditions in
cattle and therefore constitutes an animal welfare and productivity issue. It
spreads from animal to animal through close contact, and between farms through
the movement of animals that are infected but may not be showing symptoms. It
does not infect humans and presents no food safety risk. There is no concern
about eating meat, milk and milk products.
My interest stems from my role as
the President of the Royal Agricultural Society of NZ (RAS) which is the
umbrella group for the 95 Agricultural & Pastoral (A&P) Shows
throughout the country and 65 Breed Societies and associated groups. Our RAS Southern
District Council in the South Island met and a number of shows made the
decision not to run dairy and or beef cattle classes to minimise any risk.
A
major decision for an A&P Show, given one of their prime purpose is to
bring country to town, providing an educative platform for showing excellence
in agriculture.
I attended a round of meetings throughout the country from
Whangarei in the north to Winton in the deep south, where we discussed the
issue at our livestock forums.
There was universal concern that the focus was
solely on the elimination of the disease, which was looking less and less achievable.
Our Shows, Exhibitors and Breeders wanted to know, given the commercial cattle
industry continues to prosper and cattle showing continues unabated and
unhindered in dozens of other countries living with the disease, whether there
was information as to whether the management of cattle herds was a common
denominator in seeing the rapid spread of the disease, and what contingency
plans the Government and MPI intend to implement if the disease could not be
eliminated.
And then the disease was in the North Island and down the road in
Cambridge! It should be clear to
everyone by now, the slaughtering is futile and senseless.
Published
in the Franklin County News Thursday 14th June 2018
Monday, May 28, 2018
The working poor
Opinions on poverty are often formed with little
first - hand understanding of the impact of on-going material hardship.
A 2017 MSD
paper estimates 40 per cent of children in material hardship have working
caregivers. These families are facing undue hardship. They are households that
cannot escape hardship despite at least one adult working full time.
The current minimum wage is $16.75 x 35 hours per week equals $586 per week. Deduct tax at 17% which is $99.62 leaving a net pay of $486.38. Work & Income rates 28hrs a week as full time work. The lowest average rent for South Auckland mentioned above is $449.00, leaving you $37.38 to live on.
The most
important thing is that we know that a sizeable portion of the poor kids
come from working families.
The effects
of low wages - found in a 2018 MBIE report that analysed tax records
- might be obvious to some. Low-wage workers have more short-term jobs, hold
multiple jobs at once, and find themselves on the benefit more often. We have
increasing numbers of people employed on contract work, as-and-when needed, and
work that can just change at any time.
Research
consistently shows poverty / hardship leads to more ill-health, much lower life
satisfaction, much more associated with crime, and lower educational attainment.
These are all of the things we absolutely don't want in society.
In New
Zealand, we pay low wages and work long hours. By comparison Australians earn
on average 32 per cent more, Canadians 22 per cent and the British 9 per cent.
The working
poor - You could work all week and have only $20 to show for it.
You could be
mother-of-two Joanna, working a retail job in Henderson, with take-home
pay of $550 eaten up by rent of $530 every week.
This isn't a
story about rental prices in Auckland. This is a story about low
wages, high living costs, and the working poor. And it's a story that's
increasingly being told around the country.
For
almost two years, a solo mum in Motueka has struggled to find a
home for her family. The working mum and her young son have been homeless.
They have couch-surfed, stayed with friends, slept in a car and stayed on the
floor of a family member's home. Flooding during the February storms meant they
were displaced again, the tent they had been living in was damaged, the
domain they were camped out at now closed.
Unless you
have a safe place to live with privacy and security, it isn’t a home. And
without a proper home life is very difficult to manage.
Many kids
won't have the stationary they need for school, they won't have warm clothes,
lunch to eat, clean undies, their own bed tonight to sleep in or shoes on
their feet.
A husband works 40 hours a week as a
mechanic, earning $20 an hour. After tax, he gets $460. But their rent is $330.
Then there's power, and petrol. Other
things come up and they've taken out loans, because as the saying goes, they've
had to rob Peter to pay Paul. By the time they get to buying groceries, they
are looking at $80 to feed five people - two adults and three children.
Brand new doesn't exist
for them, instead they have op shop things. Gone also are the days of
having meat and veggies on the table every night. They now often
have noodles, eggs and baked beans. The wife and husband often skip meals
to feed the kids. Sometimes, the wife doesn't have tea at all and doesn't say
anything to her husband so he won't feel bad.
Unemployment is at its
lowest in a decade but wage growth has stagnated. So you can get a job, but it
might not cover all the bills.
Sitting between employment
rates and wage statistics are the working poor - employed, but doing
it hard.
Joanna, is 49, and
has been behind the counter at a major New Zealand retailer for almost 20
years. It takes Joanna around 40 hours at $20.40 an hour - $4 above the minimum
wage - to earn the week's rent. Her $550 weekly pay cheque - after tax,
KiwiSaver, union fees, and $20 tucked away for Christmas - is practically gone
before it's in her hand.
A $70 accommodation
supplement from Work and Income helps - but it still won't cover the
bills. She has to reapply for it every three months, which is insulting, She
works bloody and has to take time off work to go to the WINZ office to do that.
And it won't feed her two boys, who are at university. They each pay board of
$140 a week, which helps put food on the table and keeps the lights on.
They
couldn't afford to pay more, because they're struggling students. If they
wanted to move out and do their own thing, she just couldn't afford to stay there
anymore.
So what's Joanna left
with? Not enough to pay for parking, of $25 a week, at the mall where she
works. She kept getting tickets because she wasn’t paying for parking … so she
has been riding a bike to work.
She sits tight, keeps to a
strict budget, and doesn't ask the landlord to fix anything for fear the rent
will increase. But what if the car breaks down? Joanna has asked Work and
Income for help before, and the response is a firm "no". They
just say, 'You're on good money, your wage is good'
Another, a single mother,
earns $800 a week. Then you deduct $500 for rent and $300 for childcare.
She is a nurse; she has got a degree and training. It's not just people who you
might automatically think of.
Rentals are so expense. If
people can’t get a State house they have to go for a private rental … you can't
find anything under about $350, and that will be a crappy little studio.
Average rental in Auckland (January 2017) $528, North Shore between $505 -
$693; Rodney between $442 - $553; South Auckland between $449 - $607; West
Auckland $451 - $579; Mangere 3 bedrm $495 and 4 bedrm $550 - $700.
There is no official ‘poverty line’ in New Zealand as
there is in other countries and no formal agreement about exactly how to
measure poverty.
There is general consensus however, that the strongest
indicator of poverty is your level of income. There is also some consensus that
an income level set at 60% of median household disposable income after
housing costs is a reasonable level of income to protect people from
the worst effects of poverty.
The current minimum wage is $16.75 x 35 hours per week equals $586 per week. Deduct tax at 17% which is $99.62 leaving a net pay of $486.38. Work & Income rates 28hrs a week as full time work. The lowest average rent for South Auckland mentioned above is $449.00, leaving you $37.38 to live on.
Ask yourself – how would I get by if I had to provide for myself and family out of this income? This is the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of people in New Zealand.
Some groups are more likely
than others to be in poverty: Beneficiaries, children, Māori and Pacific
peoples, and sole parents are more likely to experience poverty than other
groups. There is a growing group of older people.
The super was calculated on
the assumption that you would be mortgage free and own your own home by the
time you qualified for superannuation. The single rate nets you about $371 a
week. How is that looking after you have paid your rent of $449?
What does poverty mean for
people: Being in poverty means experiencing hunger and food insecurity, poor
health outcomes, reduced life expectancy, debt, and unaffordable or bad
housing.
There is not enough
help available when you really need it
Benefits are not enough to live on with
dignity – this is the real issue.
The resources of organisations providing
emergency assistance are stretched.
The benefit system is complex and people are
often not made aware of their entitlements.
Housing assistance is
inadequate.
With the best budgeting skills there still isn’t
enough to pay the bills
Because people in poverty
must survive on very low incomes, they are adept at budgeting and making ends
meet.
Contrary to the popular
myth, people in poverty don’t spend all their money on alcohol, smokes and
gambling.
Inadequate income is the
real issue affecting the ability of people in poverty to manage their finances.
Debt can be a problem for
some low-income people, but debt is often linked to tragic circumstances.
Debt and problems managing
money isn’t just an issue for people in poverty.
Living on a benefit is not a
‘lifestyle choice’. Nor is living on a benefit a good ‘lifestyle’.
Few women receiving a
benefit are unmarried teenage mums.
Most sole parents stay on benefits for a short period. and usually only while their child is young.
There is some benefit fraud, but most debt to Work and Income is the
result of negotiated ‘recoverable assistance’ loans or ‘Innocent Overpayment
Debt’.
Getting a job doesn’t solve the poverty problem
Getting a job doesn’t solve the poverty problem
Employment alone does not solve poverty.
Most beneficiaries want to
work. International research does not support the assumption that beneficiaries
lack a work ethic and are content with the beneficiary ‘life-style’.
Obtaining work in itself
does not guarantee that poverty will be alleviated. Many jobs are ‘precarious’
or insecure and don’t pay as well (or offer the same security) as a full-time,
permanent job.
There are good reasons why
not all beneficiaries should get a job right now: health problems, disabilities
and childcare responsibilities all present major barriers to work.
Making life hell on a benefit does
not reduce poverty
Most people are on benefits
only for a short time.
There is no evidence that
cutting benefits reduces dependency.
An argument for
back-to-work policies is that it is good for children to see their parents
working but research has shown negative outcomes for older children when
parents are pushed back to work.
It is poverty, not dependency
that is the problem.
Economic growth alone does not solve poverty
Economic growth alone will
not necessarily address poverty and inequality.
The gap between the rich
and the poor is large and shows little sign of declining.
There are more people in
poverty now than there were in the 1980s.
Income disparities between
Māori, Pacific peoples and Pakeha remain high.
The
rise in inequality in this country between the mid-80s to the late 90s
was the biggest in the developed world. Three decades on, the legacies of
tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for the poor and jobs lost to technology
and globalisation are having an impact.
The
most recent figures, from the Ministry of Social Development's 2016 Household Income Report, show the highest-earning 10 per cent of Kiwis used to
make five to six times more than the lowest 10 per cent. Now, their income is 9
times higher.
The
twin factors of low incomes and housing unaffordability mean more Kiwis are
struggling.
A
high level of inequality can mean the population is less socially connected.
People begin to live very different lives. They lose that sense of other
people's lives, they lose that sense of empathy for each other so trust
declines. Society is less cohesive.
It
also creates an uneven playing field; the children of less privileged parents
are not as likely to succeed
Child poverty is a reality in New Zealand and its costing
us dearly.
As
much as $10billion of public money is required every year to deal with the
negative consequences of child poverty. Independent research has shown that
three quarters of that cost is avoidable.
Children
living in income poverty develop more pressing health needs. Children who are
maltreated are more likely to have poor mental health into the future and also
more likely to be involved in the justice system. This extra burden on the
justice system alone costs $2billion every year.
No child should experience severe
and persistent poverty, least of all in a land of relative abundance.
There is no simple solution to
address the causes and consequences of child poverty -- solutions need to
address a range of factors. Poverty is the result of a breakdown in a number of
facets in a fragile ecosystem of community wellbeing.
The
Children’s Commissioner notes a
significant and durable reduction in child poverty is possible, but will take
time and money. It requires political vision, courage and determination. Above
all, it means making children our priority and making effective use of the best
available evidence.
The first step is to adopt a strategic framework for addressing child poverty
issues and ensuring accountability for outcomes; then
· enact of legislation requiring the measurement of child poverty
· enact of legislation requiring the measurement of child poverty
· set
short-term and long-term poverty-reduction targets
·
establish
various child poverty-reduction indicators
·
monitor
and report on results.
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