The week that was

What a week to have a break from blogging.

First United Future was deregistered because Peter Dunne couldn't muster up 500 people silly enough to pay his membership fees. Then Winston Peters accused the somewhat deflated bouffant of leaking a report into the GCSB’s illegal spying, which is yet to be released to the public. The NZ First leader was careful to make his accusations under parliamentary privilege, but one thing is certain; Dunne's days in parliament are clearly numbered.

Another two prominent right-wingers had their names in the headlines for all the wrong reasons... Former National Minister "Sir" Douglas Graham is facing a sentence more befitting his crimes after the Financial Markets Authority appealed his and another three Lombard Finance directors slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket. After making untrue statements that caused investors to lose $127 million, there's no doubt that the discredited Graham should be stripped of his Knighthood.

Also in the dog box again this week, Act party leader John Banks faces the prospect of being removed from parliament if it's found that he knowingly received political donations from Kim Dotcom and SkyCity that were recorded as anonymous. This could potentially be the undoing of the government who would struggle to pass legislation if Banks is found guilty. With the poll of polls showing a Labour/Greens coalition on the cards, a snap election is something National will be wanting to avoid.

Then there was the release of a report into the Novapay debacle, which pretty much blames the Ministry of Education for the entire mess. It even goes so far as to say they misled Bill English, Hekia Parata and Craig Foss. This seems highly unlikely, with the Ministry keeping the government well informed of the issues with Novapay since they first became apparent. At the end of the day (I hate that saying) it was the government’s decision to Go Live, despite numerous flaws in the system.

The Report of the Ministerial Inquiry into the Novopay Project (PDF) states:

Weaknesses in project governance and leadership allowed the service to go live with a number of significant risks, which the Ministry and its vendors were over-confident of managing.

It's very obvious that if the Minister's responsible had been doing their jobs properly; Novapay wouldn’t have been implemented and our teachers would be getting paid properly. In effect this report has been written to pass the buck onto the Ministry, which is occurring all too regularly as an excuse for Ministerial incompetency.

Then on Saturday at the Green party conference, co-leader Russel Norman got stuck into the Prime Minister saying he was corrosive, divisive and similar to Piggy Muldoon. This caused howls of protest from many right wing pundits who would prefer the public continue to believe Teflon John is all smiles and niceness. Of course anybody who has watched parliament TV or looked closely at National's policy knows Key is anything but nice.

The difference between the two men’s arguments is that Norman's is based in reality, whereas Key's "the devil beast" comments are off the planet. That's why the right wing has been so aghast at the Green's insightful commentary, because what has been leveled at the Prime Minister is by all reasonable accounts correct. Key has been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Also this week, the government and mainstream media have been trying desperately to convince the public that $170 million is the right amount of money to settle historic grievances with Ngāi Tūhoe. However anybody who has read the history books about what happened in Te Urewera might question such a small amount of compensation.

In comparison to the corporate welfare and tax cuts for the rich distributed since 2008, the total treaty settlement’s to date of $1.5 billion seems on the low side. In fact it's a bit of an insult when you consider just how much state repression occurred, which is still having a detrimental impact to this very day.

On a related note, the lack of any proper response by the Race Relations Commissioner, Susan Devoy, to the flagrantly racist cartoons by Al Nisbet shows just how divided New Zealand really is. If such blatant racism doesn't breach the Human Rights Commission's "very high" threshold of inciting racial disharmony, then what will?

Clearly any publication of such prejudiced sentiment will create racial disharmony and should therefore not be tolerated. There should be no "freedom of expression" to publish work that creates racial division within society, and as Morgan Godfery over at Maui Street succinctly points out:

Racism is magnified and normalised when it's presented in the media. In an ideal world the media would be better than that, but not the Malborough Express and the Christchurch Press.

At least the government has now responded with a food in schools programme, even though that response is in my opinion largely inadequate. However after four years of denying the problem of impoverished children exists, at least some progress has been made.

As usual the government has taken one step forward and two steps back, but what else is new?

Hiatus

Regular readers of The Jackal might have noticed that I haven't been blogging over the last couple of days... Don't worry it's nothing permanent.

A couple of week's ago I simply hit a brick wall with my writing, and was finding it difficult. This is more commonly known as writer's block, which has no specific scientific explanation.

However what I think has caused my writer's block is that I've pretty much covered every political topic out there and have started to repeat myself. I'm also a bit demoralized that National is still so high in the polls despite their numerous stuff-ups, which have been well documented by left wing bloggers, if not the mainstream media.

Over the last couple of years, The Jackal has published well over a thousand articles in an attempt to change the political landscape in New Zealand for the better. It appears that my work has really only just begun and after a small holiday to recharge my batteries, I will be back with all guns blazing.

What's The Kiwi Bid?

Another ambulance at the bottom of the cliff

Today, the NZ Herald reported:

The Government's new national suicide prevention plan, announced today, contains a raft of new initiatives, including support for small communities which lose major industries and more support for families of suicide victims.

It aims to reduce the national average of 500 suicides each year, including about 100 youth suicides.

What a load of rubbish! The average number of suicides for five years to 2012 was 543. In 2008, 510 people committed suicide, which increased to 547 in 2012. The suicide rate hasn't been 500 for a very long time and certainly not since John Key became Prime Minster.

People should question such generalized figures when the actual amount of suicides per year is much much higher. The fact that information relating to the current suicide rate hasn't been released indicates that it has reached epidemic proportions. It's likely the suicide rate has exceeded the peak of 577 in 1998 and that recent figures haven't been released because it makes the government look bad.

Mr Key said the number of young people who took their own lives was "far too high - I mean, any number above zero is too high".

He said the issue predominantly affected boys as well as Maori and Pasifika youths.

"So it's critically important that we pour more resources in that area," he said.

"There's been some very tragic examples of copycat suicides. There's been quite big groupings in certain areas, and there are a lot of different complicating factors in this area.

It's not all that hard to understand... If people's lives are difficult, they sometimes choose to commit suicide. When more people's lives are difficult, there are more suicides committed. This is why the suicide rate is a good indication of how well a government is performing, or not performing as the case may be.

When you create high unemployment, cut funding for education, increase the cost of living, increase inequality, make services harder to attain and ensure there’s an underclass that has little hope to achieve a brighter future no matter how hard they work, there's consequences.

"So all I can say is that we care passionately about wanting to make sure that we protect youngsters. We know they're vulnerable."

If Key actually cared about young people, he wouldn't have reduced their ability to earn a proper living wage. Income for 16 to 20 year olds had already decreased before the government reintroduced youth rates, which essentially means young people will earn less and therefore not be able to purchase the basic necessities they require.

National's ageist agenda has ensured that New Zealand will continue to have the worst youth suicide rate in the world.

Hardship is the main contributor to suicide. That's why there are more suicides in rural areas than in urban communities and more suicides within financially struggling families. Under Keys incompetence, inequality has increased the fastest of all OECD countries leading to an increased amount of suicides.

So while the government is ignoring the adverse social and economic conditions they've created, they're grandstanding about an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff that will do little to fix the problem. The government also appears to be trying to keep secret the extent of the problem, which is entirely unacceptable.

The amount of suicide in New Zealand always increases under a National led government and unfortunately nothing has changed in that regard under John Keys failed administration.

Something to do on Wednesday

Failing to improve workplace safety

Earlier this week, an Independent Taskforce released its report into Workplace Health & Safety (PDF) in New Zealand. Although largely another human interest story, it found that:

Each year, around 1 in 10 workers is harmed, with about 200,000 claims being made by people to acc for costs associated with work-related injuries and illnesses.

That's an atrocious record that shows health and safety laws in New Zealand are not adequate. In fact the report states that a lack of proper regulatory oversight is one of the reasons for such an appalling amount of work-related injuries and illnesses.

New Zealand’s health and safety law, and its implementation by the regulator, have failed to deliver the protection from workplace harms that New Zealanders can reasonably expect.

...And the cost to the nation for the governments failure is huge:

Workplace injuries and diseases caused by work-related exposures inflict an enormous emotional toll on individuals and their families. There are also significant economic and social costs to our nation. In 2010 these were estimated to be about $3.5 billion a year – around two percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in today’s terms. This is the figure that MBIE accepts is the most reliable. However, costs have been estimated to be as high as $15 billion a year and $21 billion a year, depending on how the costs are measured and the extent to which indirect costs are included.

Economic cost that are a result of uncaring businesses trying to increase their profit margins.

To improve New Zealand's unsafe workplaces, the Independent Taskforce recommends that new legislation be drawn up and that such legislation extend to acute, chronic and catastrophic harm caused by unsafe business practices. It also recommends that corporate enterprises be prosecuted for their failures that lead to widespread harm.

National of course won't like this aspect of the recommendations, being that it flies in the face of their promotion and expansion of dangerous enterprises like mining, fracking and deep sea oil drilling.

We can therefore expect National to drag its heels over many of these recommendations.