The EPMU have released a short film on youtube explaining the recession and their response to it. It features Brian Easton, Gareth Morgan, Pete Conway and EPMU Secretary Andrew Little.
[lprent: The biggest nut around is yourself – please read the policy and the about. It is funded by me, and not by some pathetic wingnut pretending to be a wharfie ]
Gimme a break. This is just propaganda from a right wing union to talk workers into accepting they’ll be paying for this crisis. The union bureaucracy featured in this video are no friend of the workers. Why should workers pay for a crisis they didnt make.
Good point Ray. If Little and Conway believed their own propaganda that capitalism is sweet and its just the financiers that ran amok, they would be saying let the financial speculators pay for the crisis, we are not paying for any of it.
They would condemn the Labour government for signing up to a deposit guarantee that bails out shonky finance ripoff merchants.
That would be tough for Little who is now Labour Party Pres.
They would attack Key as a financier whose former failed employer Merryl Lynch has been bought up by BOA which itself has to bailed out. Instead of guaranteeing the toxic assets (greedy bets) of the financiers they would nationalise their good assets and use them to create jobs for all who get sacked.
But of course if they were to do that the financiers would be revealed to be the same people that own all the big corporations and run the state that is busy taking our taxes and future labour as bailout packages. To upset the financiers would be to rock the whole capitalist shebang.
The EPMU half-assed apologies for the system and not an explanation of the crisis but a joke cover up of its real causes in declining profitability that is built into the system. It proves that they are up the system and their only use to the bosses is to keep workers quiet.
Time to wake up.
Rave, I disagree with pretty much every point you’ve made in that comment, but I congratulate you for making your argument without resorting to tribal partisanship.
I think I follow the feeling in your comment, Rave, but I’d have to say it is a little loose re assets and their merits/values etc..
As I’ve said here before just as labor produces goods & services then the role of capitalism is to produce capital.
What has happened is that capitalism and capitalistic resources have not (in the main) produced capital—they have created credit and taken fees/charges from its very high leverage. Repeat: credit is NOT capital.
Correct, those “toxic assets” are problematic. And because they do not value out in ‘mark-to-market’ — hey I didna invent this market makeover stuff 😉 — or accepted modern business means. Hence, putting the show back on the road requires either they are bought up (independently by govt..?) – that is to say another funding source, or they are ‘bought’ over time by perpetrators.
We both know which choice has been made. And yes, for better or for worse.
You might care too ponder what kind of banking minds aligned themselves to ‘off-balance sheet’ accounting. Does it make them incompetent or criminal. Or both.
And, praise be, how would punishment of offenders with nationalization make our world better..?
The trouble with blogs is that the nutters can move in and make comments that can kill good discussions. Wharfie and Ray are obviously trying to do this. Are they the same person?
These films are really good. It would help us all if we could concentrate on the messages. For me the messages are:
1. These are extraordinary times.
2. Workers are not to blame. Wall Street and the Bankers who leveraged to the extreme equity in ordinary homes should be blamed.
3. Consumption is going down. It is not a bad thing. Climate change and global warming and environmental devastation ought to require us to consume less. One less plasma TV will mean less transportation and money but will also mean that the current economic system will suffer.
4. Why should workers suffer? They do not share in the profits earned by their employers when times are good but they are expected to suffer when times are bad through no fault of theirs.
5. A 9 day working fortnight sounds great. Most workers cannot and should not suffer a 10% wage cut, some employers may fold if they have to pay for the extra day. The logical solution is for the proposed tax cuts to be cancelled and for central government to pay for the 10th day. I am holding my breath. It will hurt the wealthy but they are the most able to handle these current circumstances.
Maybe Karl Marx was right?
[lprent: Wharfie is d4j. Ray prefers to not use his usual psuedonym.]
You can believe all the Andrew Little rhetoric/garbage/tokenism all you like, but where was the EMPU when Air New Zealand was shafting its engineers, oh thats right it was helping Rob Fyfe force them to take a pay cut. Or where was the EMPU when Fisher & Paykel shut up shop? The EMPU/Andrew Little/Labour are no friend of workers.
You’re right mickey, workers should not pay for this crisis.
You appear to be under the misapprehension that a union’s national secretary is like a superhero who can ‘save’ workers from any calamity. Anyone who’s actually organised knows that’s not true. You can only take workers as far as they’re willing to go and to the extent that is possible under the current system where bosses own the means of production and have ultimate managerial prerogative.
You sound like another of those ‘glorious defeat’ idiots Irishbill wrote about the other day.
Mr little says “a lot of employers are getting workers to panic”???. Wake up idiot – now is not time to come across all militant and thuggish, companies do not have the usual fat to accomodate unions demands. This guy is the new Labour president – I think you were better off with the fat snoop.
What a great video. The collective message is that we are all in for tough times. And Andrew Little was a small part of this. Gareth Morgan is certainly not a Left winger and I understood
his message straight and clear. It should not be assumed that the “workers” should be the first to pay. (Although the USA tends to use the poor and disadvantaged as canon fodder.)
It would be interesting to get a critque from Rod Oram.
Wake up Mike the world has moved on. The market has failed.
Employers who can’t keep workers in jobs and pay them decently should go broke. Instead workers are expected to cut their pay and mortgage their future pay and taxes to bail out corrupt banks and failing icons like F&P.
The market has failed. Its not the best way to allocate scarce resources, unless its into the pockets of the rich. Obama is stuck in the old way of propping up the market in the name of a ‘new deal
see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517
According to Chossudovsky he’s shifting public spending from the poor to the rich even more than Bush. A massive con job.
The market has failed and needs to be replaced by social ownership to meet the needs of the people, for the people by the people.
If workers are expected to take pay cuts and bail out bosses, then they should demand to decide who gets bailed out and that it will only happen if this public investment becomes public ownership.
This means that scarce resources would become publicly owned and democratically planned.
The CTU should be saying that to defend jobs we have to take the most important industries and services into public ownership and put them under the control of working people not corrupt banksters raking in multimillion bonuses sitting on boards who are only interested in maximising profits.
Socialists say “We WON’T pay for their crisis”. We didn’t cause it, and where workers are threatened with redundancies, we point to the examples of factory occupations in Chicago, Waterford and Buenos Aires as an alternative to capitalist greed and mass unemployment.
The new film from the EPMU differs in tone. Whilst it puts forward some valuable economic information and gives rank and file workers a voice to raise their fears, it also sees the Union’s role as softening the effects of the Depression in partnership with employers, rather than fighting them militantly for every job. SA presents the film and welcomes readers to post their take on the EPMU’s line.
Crunch Time. For workers, for bosses and for union bureaucrats.
Is this the same Andrew Little, card-carrying member of the Labour Party and supreme double dipper, who was praised….not! by Chris Trotter in his most recent column?
Cracks in the ricketty walls of the socialist mud house appear to be widening. All under the eagle eye of the supreme leader Fill Goff.
Ah, the joys of being opposition.
[lprent: You are a obnoxious little illiterate. The presidential position is either unpaid or pays bugger all. Now what about that National MP in Mangakiekie who is double dipping on both my taxes and my rates. From what I’ve heard he doesn’t do much around the council these days.]
You call that opposition?
[lprent: I seem to remember the Nats getting 22% in an actual poll (election) in 2002 – do you call that being an opposition?. Why don’t you jerk-off elsewhere if all you can raise are troll lines.
This appears to be a troll campaign. I’m going to delete comments of this form that have no other content]
“I seem to remember the Nats getting 22% in an actual poll (election) in 2002”
Oh give Phil Goff time. I’m sure 22% is achievable.
Gee the mood round here needs lifting
[lprent: it was 20.9% for National in the 2002 election. After that they dropped. It wasn’t until Brash stirred up the racial bigots in the Owera I screech (a proud moment for the right) that they started to rise in the polls.
We tend to get annoyed when troll wankers start jerking off their poorer qualities around here. If you cannot argue a point then don’t come here. Seeing your ‘point’ mindlessly scattered by multiple people around multiple posts without actual brainwork being involved gets me seriously pissed off, and I act accordingly. ]
excellent work, well done whoever’s responsible for it.
if only our msm could be trusted to produce such informative and honest commentary.
come to think of it – if only NZers were encouraged to understand this before the election. if only our msm weren’t so keen to downplay the gravity of the situation during the election, so as not to discourage voters from speculating on sketchy long-shot promises.
Iprent: There are some “opposing views” which are thought provoking. The abusive ones like from Tawa (gives Tawa a bad name) are useless. I support your reactions! Rid us of the buggers.
This is NOT a recession. It is a major debt-deflationary crisis caused by grossly irresponsible or fraudulent lending by the global finance system. Until the massive excess debt bubble is unwound or reset, credit will remain hard to find, and the economy will continue to unravel. No matter how sound your business or financial history, banks find it almost impossible to lend when assets are still FALLING in value, which in turn causes the assets to fall further in value.
Unemployment will peak around 20-30% and will remain stubbornly high for very long time, maybe 10 -20 years (the Japanese have remain mired in this same trap almost 20 years so I can point to precendent). Many of the rest of us will be underemployed, and our take home pays will fall. The two reasons why this crisis has yet to hit us hard here in New Zealand are simple.
One until very recently our employment capacity was so highly extended that in the last few months much of the fall has been masked by cuts in overtime, 4 day weeks, dropping secondary jobs and using up accumulated annual leave. But as the crisis deepens in the next few weeks, the job loss snowball (665 in the last week alone) will become obvious to all.
The second reason is of course, that our banks are still solvent and thanks to Michael Cullen our public sector debt is extremely low, which will give us a little breathing space and a temporary reprieve … but this National govt has no ideas and no ability to respond.
“thanks to Michael Cullen our public sector debt is extremely low, which will give us a little breathing space and a temporary reprieve but this National govt has no ideas and no ability to respond.”
Yes he did well to retire as much debt as he did – this good work should however be balanced against the poor decisions (in hindsight) in relation to NZ rail, AIA and Air NZ.
The social democratics of various hues, pink, green, beige, etc need to study their Marx so they understand what is happening to them before it is too late.
For the cruisers hung up on the evils of neoliberalism there is David Harvey’s brief history of neo-liberalism
For the stayers who always worried that globalisation might be more than meets the eye there is his lecture series on globalisation
For months I couldn’t make up my mind if we were going to get deflation due to unwinding excess debt, or inflation due to Central Banks printing money in response to the crisis. Turns out that the credit grinch bubble popper will trump the RB printing pump everytime. It’s like trying to keep a hot-air balloon aloft by turning up the gas heater, when the top of the canopy has been ripped in half.
I highly, highly recommend this article. Steven Keen predicted all this on sound theoretical grounds years ago.
The article even starts with a quote from Charlie (and has his picture)… so there must be something in it for you to like.
Redlogix
Keen’s paper is quite readable and explains the neo-Keynesian position well. Yet what’s missing is the other quote from Marx which you didnt see along the lines of how come capitalism allows a bunch of parasites to expand credit many times beyond the money supply, the capacity of the state to print money, and the underlying sum of the value of commodities produced by a given country, so while the Chinese and Japanese buy a large chunk of the debt, it is only official debt (fiat credit), not the crazy bank credit Keen talks about, and cannot prevent the crunch happening.
Sure Marx hated the finance parasites, but he explained why they existed. Not as aberrations to the normal equilibrium of capitalism but the product of the internal contradictions of capitalism. Credit is expanded (and not regulated because the state is run by those with an interest in credit expansion) because the productive circuit is incapable of taking up the surplus capital since it cannot realise a profit on money invested in production.
This, when the rate of exploitation (roughly the ratio of profits to wages) despite neo-liberalism, globalisation, privatisation of state assets, increasing productivity (rate of exploitation), cannot be increased fast enough to return a profit over total investment. The result is a crisis of overproduction of money capital and commodities. Solution is to devalue all commodities including labour-power until investment in the productive circuit does produce a profit.
Therefore according to this logic, the finance sector becomes detached from the productive sector at a specific point when profits fall to a certain level, so that the surplus capital then spins off into excessive credit creation to attempt to realise profits in the sphere of exchange rather than production. The credit bubble then produces the credit crunch as the fictitious value of those assets collapses back towards their actual price of production. So its not a monetary crisis or even a credit crisis in reality but a capitalist crisis because the credit crunch is a symptom of the failure to extract enough value to valorise the capital invested in the productive circuit.
Such a crisis is always deflationary because the values of wages and other commodities, along with all the fictitious capital speculating in asset value, collapse downwards to reach that point where the surviving big banks (guess which) buy up the surviving corporations (guess which) and start re-investing in cheap labour and cut price productive assets, new technology comes on line, and away we go on another merry go round.
And this leaves out the whole impact of crisis and restructuring on those who pay for it – the working class. That’s why a third quote from Marx is useful. Somewhere he said that capitalism never falls down by itself. It can suffer massive crises, prove that the market fails, but if it has the capacity to fool most workers or repress them then it will stagger on. Only the activity of a politically conscious working class can end capitalism. Capital is not self-equilibrating, or ultimately self-destructive, but it does produce its own gravediggers.
I’ve read Keen why don’t you have a look at Brendan Cooney’s youtube vids I cite above, they are great fun. Take a look at the political economy of Superman, and the Matrix.
Interesting..As to the following:— So its not a monetary crisis or even a credit crisis in reality but a capitalist crisis because the credit crunch is a symptom of the failure to extract enough value to valorise the capital invested in the productive circuit.
I am not sure what you mean with that term “valorise”, but I have a question pertaining to constructive solutions.. That is, to what extent would the suggested undervaluing of capitalism’s productive sector be capable of implementing revaluation/s in taking up part or all of the so-called credit surpluses.
What tools – financial, wage, salary, compensation – would be appropriate in so doing. Given how clearly the worker/laborer be no worse off..
Armchair radicals like Trotter and “Ray” can attack the EPMU and Andrew Little all they like, they don’t have to make decisions in the real world. It’s easy to criticise from a position of ignorance and irrelevance.
The fact is the EPMU gets the highest pay rises of any union and takes the lead in the whole movement’s campaigns to defend workers’ rights. If you want to accuse them of selling out to the boss class then you should at least get some facts to support your argument rather than trotting out cliches from two decades ago.
Redlogix and Rave: I am always impressed from an Economically uneducated point of view at the competence with which you put your thinkings.
Does the point about capital outstipping production, (“so that the surplus capital then spins off into excessive credit creation to attempt to realise profits in the sphere of exchange rather than production.”) lead to those who blame the workers for not being productive enough? Hence the old arguments about how we/they have to be more productive in order to increase the wages in order to match Australia. All the workers/employers fault of course.
Easton and Morgan, two of the leading econmists/commentators in New Zealand offering constructive advice on the way forward. This is pro-worker without being anti-employer and yet another example of the positive approach adopted by Little/EMPU. As awkward as this video is, it’s an important insight into the strategy the EPMU are considering for the next few years: one that’ll ensure growth on the otherside is sustainable.
Redlogix, thanks for your email – I’m sorry I’ve not replied, I’ve been a bit distracted. I apreciate your response however.
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Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
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Excellent video. Obviously targeted at union delegates. Should be compulsory for some poorly educated employers as well.
As this place is a union funded blog [deleted]
[lprent: The biggest nut around is yourself – please read the policy and the about. It is funded by me, and not by some pathetic wingnut pretending to be a wharfie ]
A union funded blog? Will someone ban this crackpot?
You ban me then I call in my mates at the Teamsters Union to sort you out. Don’t piss me off boyo.
[lprent: ‘Teamsters’ ? Dad, have you been watching too many gangster movies? Besides aren’t you banned? ]
Gimme a break. This is just propaganda from a right wing union to talk workers into accepting they’ll be paying for this crisis. The union bureaucracy featured in this video are no friend of the workers. Why should workers pay for a crisis they didnt make.
I’ve got three questions for you Ray.
– What makes you say the EPMU is a right-wing union other than the talking points you’ve picked up from the sectarians in Unite?
– What possible motivation would the EPMU have in talking workers into accepting they’ll be paying for this crisis?
– With reference to the above, have you even watched this video?
I’d be interested in your responses, that is if you’re honest enough to back up your statements with facts.
Hey .. Ray and Wharfie,
have a look at this ..
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/what-next.html
Good point Ray. If Little and Conway believed their own propaganda that capitalism is sweet and its just the financiers that ran amok, they would be saying let the financial speculators pay for the crisis, we are not paying for any of it.
They would condemn the Labour government for signing up to a deposit guarantee that bails out shonky finance ripoff merchants.
That would be tough for Little who is now Labour Party Pres.
They would attack Key as a financier whose former failed employer Merryl Lynch has been bought up by BOA which itself has to bailed out. Instead of guaranteeing the toxic assets (greedy bets) of the financiers they would nationalise their good assets and use them to create jobs for all who get sacked.
But of course if they were to do that the financiers would be revealed to be the same people that own all the big corporations and run the state that is busy taking our taxes and future labour as bailout packages. To upset the financiers would be to rock the whole capitalist shebang.
The EPMU half-assed apologies for the system and not an explanation of the crisis but a joke cover up of its real causes in declining profitability that is built into the system. It proves that they are up the system and their only use to the bosses is to keep workers quiet.
Time to wake up.
Rave, I disagree with pretty much every point you’ve made in that comment, but I congratulate you for making your argument without resorting to tribal partisanship.
I think I follow the feeling in your comment, Rave, but I’d have to say it is a little loose re assets and their merits/values etc..
As I’ve said here before just as labor produces goods & services then the role of capitalism is to produce capital.
What has happened is that capitalism and capitalistic resources have not (in the main) produced capital—they have created credit and taken fees/charges from its very high leverage. Repeat: credit is NOT capital.
Correct, those “toxic assets” are problematic. And because they do not value out in ‘mark-to-market’ — hey I didna invent this market makeover stuff 😉 — or accepted modern business means. Hence, putting the show back on the road requires either they are bought up (independently by govt..?) – that is to say another funding source, or they are ‘bought’ over time by perpetrators.
We both know which choice has been made. And yes, for better or for worse.
You might care too ponder what kind of banking minds aligned themselves to ‘off-balance sheet’ accounting. Does it make them incompetent or criminal. Or both.
And, praise be, how would punishment of offenders with nationalization make our world better..?
The trouble with blogs is that the nutters can move in and make comments that can kill good discussions. Wharfie and Ray are obviously trying to do this. Are they the same person?
These films are really good. It would help us all if we could concentrate on the messages. For me the messages are:
1. These are extraordinary times.
2. Workers are not to blame. Wall Street and the Bankers who leveraged to the extreme equity in ordinary homes should be blamed.
3. Consumption is going down. It is not a bad thing. Climate change and global warming and environmental devastation ought to require us to consume less. One less plasma TV will mean less transportation and money but will also mean that the current economic system will suffer.
4. Why should workers suffer? They do not share in the profits earned by their employers when times are good but they are expected to suffer when times are bad through no fault of theirs.
5. A 9 day working fortnight sounds great. Most workers cannot and should not suffer a 10% wage cut, some employers may fold if they have to pay for the extra day. The logical solution is for the proposed tax cuts to be cancelled and for central government to pay for the 10th day. I am holding my breath. It will hurt the wealthy but they are the most able to handle these current circumstances.
Maybe Karl Marx was right?
[lprent: Wharfie is d4j. Ray prefers to not use his usual psuedonym.]
You can believe all the Andrew Little rhetoric/garbage/tokenism all you like, but where was the EMPU when Air New Zealand was shafting its engineers, oh thats right it was helping Rob Fyfe force them to take a pay cut. Or where was the EMPU when Fisher & Paykel shut up shop? The EMPU/Andrew Little/Labour are no friend of workers.
You’re right mickey, workers should not pay for this crisis.
You appear to be under the misapprehension that a union’s national secretary is like a superhero who can ‘save’ workers from any calamity. Anyone who’s actually organised knows that’s not true. You can only take workers as far as they’re willing to go and to the extent that is possible under the current system where bosses own the means of production and have ultimate managerial prerogative.
You sound like another of those ‘glorious defeat’ idiots Irishbill wrote about the other day.
Mr little says “a lot of employers are getting workers to panic”???. Wake up idiot – now is not time to come across all militant and thuggish, companies do not have the usual fat to accomodate unions demands. This guy is the new Labour president – I think you were better off with the fat snoop.
Employers suddenly bleat during recessions and depressions. All of a sudden want the state to bail them out. Look at the US car companies.
I’m just waiting for the property developers to do it here..
What a great video. The collective message is that we are all in for tough times. And Andrew Little was a small part of this. Gareth Morgan is certainly not a Left winger and I understood
his message straight and clear. It should not be assumed that the “workers” should be the first to pay. (Although the USA tends to use the poor and disadvantaged as canon fodder.)
It would be interesting to get a critque from Rod Oram.
Wake up Mike the world has moved on. The market has failed.
Employers who can’t keep workers in jobs and pay them decently should go broke. Instead workers are expected to cut their pay and mortgage their future pay and taxes to bail out corrupt banks and failing icons like F&P.
The market has failed. Its not the best way to allocate scarce resources, unless its into the pockets of the rich. Obama is stuck in the old way of propping up the market in the name of a ‘new deal
see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517
According to Chossudovsky he’s shifting public spending from the poor to the rich even more than Bush. A massive con job.
The market has failed and needs to be replaced by social ownership to meet the needs of the people, for the people by the people.
If workers are expected to take pay cuts and bail out bosses, then they should demand to decide who gets bailed out and that it will only happen if this public investment becomes public ownership.
This means that scarce resources would become publicly owned and democratically planned.
The CTU should be saying that to defend jobs we have to take the most important industries and services into public ownership and put them under the control of working people not corrupt banksters raking in multimillion bonuses sitting on boards who are only interested in maximising profits.
Socialists say “We WON’T pay for their crisis”. We didn’t cause it, and where workers are threatened with redundancies, we point to the examples of factory occupations in Chicago, Waterford and Buenos Aires as an alternative to capitalist greed and mass unemployment.
The new film from the EPMU differs in tone. Whilst it puts forward some valuable economic information and gives rank and file workers a voice to raise their fears, it also sees the Union’s role as softening the effects of the Depression in partnership with employers, rather than fighting them militantly for every job. SA presents the film and welcomes readers to post their take on the EPMU’s line.
Crunch Time. For workers, for bosses and for union bureaucrats.
(an alternative film on how to fight redundancies here)
http://socialistaotearoa.blogspot.com/2009/03/crunch-time-film-on-crisis-by-epmu.html
Jesus that shite almost makes Al Gore’s efforts believable – back to china with you my friend
I have e-mailed Rod Oram and invited his comment on the video, as a man whose opinion/assessment is respected. We will see.
now is not time to come across all militant
Grow up Mike. We haven’t had militant for decades. It’s 123 years since Haymarket. Be careful what you wish for.
Is this the same Andrew Little, card-carrying member of the Labour Party and supreme double dipper, who was praised….not! by Chris Trotter in his most recent column?
Cracks in the ricketty walls of the socialist mud house appear to be widening. All under the eagle eye of the supreme leader Fill Goff.
Ah, the joys of being opposition.
[lprent: You are a obnoxious little illiterate. The presidential position is either unpaid or pays bugger all. Now what about that National MP in Mangakiekie who is double dipping on both my taxes and my rates. From what I’ve heard he doesn’t do much around the council these days.]
“Ah, the joys of being opposition.”
Latest Roy Morgan Poll: National 56% Labour 26%
You call that opposition?
[lprent: I seem to remember the Nats getting 22% in an actual poll (election) in 2002 – do you call that being an opposition?. Why don’t you jerk-off elsewhere if all you can raise are troll lines.
This appears to be a troll campaign. I’m going to delete comments of this form that have no other content]
“I seem to remember the Nats getting 22% in an actual poll (election) in 2002”
Oh give Phil Goff time. I’m sure 22% is achievable.
Gee the mood round here needs lifting
[lprent: it was 20.9% for National in the 2002 election. After that they dropped. It wasn’t until Brash stirred up the racial bigots in the Owera I screech (a proud moment for the right) that they started to rise in the polls.
We tend to get annoyed when troll wankers start jerking off their poorer qualities around here. If you cannot argue a point then don’t come here. Seeing your ‘point’ mindlessly scattered by multiple people around multiple posts without actual brainwork being involved gets me seriously pissed off, and I act accordingly. ]
excellent work, well done whoever’s responsible for it.
if only our msm could be trusted to produce such informative and honest commentary.
come to think of it – if only NZers were encouraged to understand this before the election. if only our msm weren’t so keen to downplay the gravity of the situation during the election, so as not to discourage voters from speculating on sketchy long-shot promises.
So it’s the MSM’s fault that Labour lost the election now is it ?
Iprent: There are some “opposing views” which are thought provoking. The abusive ones like from Tawa (gives Tawa a bad name) are useless. I support your reactions! Rid us of the buggers.
Excellent video’s.
This is NOT a recession. It is a major debt-deflationary crisis caused by grossly irresponsible or fraudulent lending by the global finance system. Until the massive excess debt bubble is unwound or reset, credit will remain hard to find, and the economy will continue to unravel. No matter how sound your business or financial history, banks find it almost impossible to lend when assets are still FALLING in value, which in turn causes the assets to fall further in value.
Unemployment will peak around 20-30% and will remain stubbornly high for very long time, maybe 10 -20 years (the Japanese have remain mired in this same trap almost 20 years so I can point to precendent). Many of the rest of us will be underemployed, and our take home pays will fall. The two reasons why this crisis has yet to hit us hard here in New Zealand are simple.
One until very recently our employment capacity was so highly extended that in the last few months much of the fall has been masked by cuts in overtime, 4 day weeks, dropping secondary jobs and using up accumulated annual leave. But as the crisis deepens in the next few weeks, the job loss snowball (665 in the last week alone) will become obvious to all.
The second reason is of course, that our banks are still solvent and thanks to Michael Cullen our public sector debt is extremely low, which will give us a little breathing space and a temporary reprieve … but this National govt has no ideas and no ability to respond.
“thanks to Michael Cullen our public sector debt is extremely low, which will give us a little breathing space and a temporary reprieve but this National govt has no ideas and no ability to respond.”
Yes he did well to retire as much debt as he did – this good work should however be balanced against the poor decisions (in hindsight) in relation to NZ rail, AIA and Air NZ.
In todays Herald John Roughan explains why he thinks there are no problems. Everything will be dandy. Funny how different are the assessments. For me the above video is chillingly credible as is Redlogix logic. Roughan’s:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10560366
F*&king H^ll, I’d really like to know what colour the sky is on his planet.
Explaining what exactly?
The social democratics of various hues, pink, green, beige, etc need to study their Marx so they understand what is happening to them before it is too late.
For the cruisers hung up on the evils of neoliberalism there is David Harvey’s brief history of neo-liberalism
For the stayers who always worried that globalisation might be more than meets the eye there is his lecture series on globalisation
For the high performance types who passed High School algebra there is the most recent series on Marx’s Capital starting here
http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/marxs-capital-class-01/
Or there is the Brendan Cooney’s cool low key webcam series starting with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBciA1y-2mQ
Rave,
For months I couldn’t make up my mind if we were going to get deflation due to unwinding excess debt, or inflation due to Central Banks printing money in response to the crisis. Turns out that the credit grinch bubble popper will trump the RB printing pump everytime. It’s like trying to keep a hot-air balloon aloft by turning up the gas heater, when the top of the canopy has been ripped in half.
I highly, highly recommend this article. Steven Keen predicted all this on sound theoretical grounds years ago.
The article even starts with a quote from Charlie (and has his picture)… so there must be something in it for you to like.
Redlogix
Keen’s paper is quite readable and explains the neo-Keynesian position well. Yet what’s missing is the other quote from Marx which you didnt see along the lines of how come capitalism allows a bunch of parasites to expand credit many times beyond the money supply, the capacity of the state to print money, and the underlying sum of the value of commodities produced by a given country, so while the Chinese and Japanese buy a large chunk of the debt, it is only official debt (fiat credit), not the crazy bank credit Keen talks about, and cannot prevent the crunch happening.
Sure Marx hated the finance parasites, but he explained why they existed. Not as aberrations to the normal equilibrium of capitalism but the product of the internal contradictions of capitalism. Credit is expanded (and not regulated because the state is run by those with an interest in credit expansion) because the productive circuit is incapable of taking up the surplus capital since it cannot realise a profit on money invested in production.
This, when the rate of exploitation (roughly the ratio of profits to wages) despite neo-liberalism, globalisation, privatisation of state assets, increasing productivity (rate of exploitation), cannot be increased fast enough to return a profit over total investment. The result is a crisis of overproduction of money capital and commodities. Solution is to devalue all commodities including labour-power until investment in the productive circuit does produce a profit.
Therefore according to this logic, the finance sector becomes detached from the productive sector at a specific point when profits fall to a certain level, so that the surplus capital then spins off into excessive credit creation to attempt to realise profits in the sphere of exchange rather than production. The credit bubble then produces the credit crunch as the fictitious value of those assets collapses back towards their actual price of production. So its not a monetary crisis or even a credit crisis in reality but a capitalist crisis because the credit crunch is a symptom of the failure to extract enough value to valorise the capital invested in the productive circuit.
Such a crisis is always deflationary because the values of wages and other commodities, along with all the fictitious capital speculating in asset value, collapse downwards to reach that point where the surviving big banks (guess which) buy up the surviving corporations (guess which) and start re-investing in cheap labour and cut price productive assets, new technology comes on line, and away we go on another merry go round.
And this leaves out the whole impact of crisis and restructuring on those who pay for it – the working class. That’s why a third quote from Marx is useful. Somewhere he said that capitalism never falls down by itself. It can suffer massive crises, prove that the market fails, but if it has the capacity to fool most workers or repress them then it will stagger on. Only the activity of a politically conscious working class can end capitalism. Capital is not self-equilibrating, or ultimately self-destructive, but it does produce its own gravediggers.
I’ve read Keen why don’t you have a look at Brendan Cooney’s youtube vids I cite above, they are great fun. Take a look at the political economy of Superman, and the Matrix.
rave,
Given what is happening right before our eyes, your line of reasoning in your very good post above, is dammed hard to argue with.
I’ve read Keen why don’t you have a look at Brendan Cooney’s youtube vids I cite above, they are great fun.
Yes I intend to, but later when I’m using a proper ADSL connection, and not this oversold crap 3G Nodafone connection.
Interesting..As to the following:—
So its not a monetary crisis or even a credit crisis in reality but a capitalist crisis because the credit crunch is a symptom of the failure to extract enough value to valorise the capital invested in the productive circuit.
I am not sure what you mean with that term “valorise”, but I have a question pertaining to constructive solutions.. That is, to what extent would the suggested undervaluing of capitalism’s productive sector be capable of implementing revaluation/s in taking up part or all of the so-called credit surpluses.
What tools – financial, wage, salary, compensation – would be appropriate in so doing. Given how clearly the worker/laborer be no worse off..
Look forward to your views on this..
Armchair radicals like Trotter and “Ray” can attack the EPMU and Andrew Little all they like, they don’t have to make decisions in the real world. It’s easy to criticise from a position of ignorance and irrelevance.
The fact is the EPMU gets the highest pay rises of any union and takes the lead in the whole movement’s campaigns to defend workers’ rights. If you want to accuse them of selling out to the boss class then you should at least get some facts to support your argument rather than trotting out cliches from two decades ago.
Redlogix and Rave: I am always impressed from an Economically uneducated point of view at the competence with which you put your thinkings.
Does the point about capital outstipping production, (“so that the surplus capital then spins off into excessive credit creation to attempt to realise profits in the sphere of exchange rather than production.”) lead to those who blame the workers for not being productive enough? Hence the old arguments about how we/they have to be more productive in order to increase the wages in order to match Australia. All the workers/employers fault of course.
[deleted]
[lprent: GL – you are currently banned. Putting you into the anti-spam as you don’t offer anything and appear to ignore warnings]
Easton and Morgan, two of the leading econmists/commentators in New Zealand offering constructive advice on the way forward. This is pro-worker without being anti-employer and yet another example of the positive approach adopted by Little/EMPU. As awkward as this video is, it’s an important insight into the strategy the EPMU are considering for the next few years: one that’ll ensure growth on the otherside is sustainable.
Redlogix, thanks for your email – I’m sorry I’ve not replied, I’ve been a bit distracted. I apreciate your response however.