web analytics

Open mike 14/05/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 14th, 2025 - 50 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

50 comments on “Open mike 14/05/2025 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. SPC 1
    14 May 2025 at 8:32 am

    National fighting like a cornered rat over its betrayal to deliver pay equity, despite its vote for the 2020 legislation* and the promise of Luxon (in the 2023 election debate live on TV) to enact pay equity – all without any indication that it would later

    1.obstruct claims that would be made under it*

    2.then set a higher standard for claims

    3.provide for a delay in meeting claims on affordability grounds

    https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/05/13/national-labour-clash-over-whos-lying-about-pay-equity-changes/

  2. Tiger Mountain 2
    14 May 2025 at 8:47 am

    The link is pretty obvious…unions central organisation not allowed to attend this years budget lock up, which is likely mainly aimed at CTU Economist Craig Renney. All manner of bourgeois economists and media channel lackeys will be welcome.
    https://union.org.nz/unions-barred-from-budget-2025-lock-up/

    • SPC 2.1
      14 May 2025 at 5:27 pm

      The decision was made by Treasury.

      Others have also been excluded. Taxpayers’ Union, Business NZ and the NZ Initiative.

      All partisans – they still allow large accountancy firms in.

      Apparently people with differing opinions are those not fellow professionals. And wait long with academics to play Monday morning quarter-back, rather then be part of the spectacle and commentary.

  5. gsays 5
    14 May 2025 at 10:22 am

    At the mention of unions and organising u was thinking if other uses beyond the usual.

    Butter has hit $9. With a unified approach, one brand could be favoured over the others, causing a rethink.

    Similar, we could boycott clicking on certain stories ( SM ban for teens) forcing media companies to cover others issues- Pay Equity, Survivors of State Abuse.

    Taking the narrative back.

  6. Ad 6
    14 May 2025 at 10:29 am

    The Fabians have the question right on this budget: who is this budget serving?

    If it's serving just the state budget, it amounts to the stage just before a 1990s-scale state privatisation.

    Budgets are presented for the people, from the taxes people pay, for the interests of everyone and the whole country.

    Budgets must not be about the state itself.

  7. joe90 7
    14 May 2025 at 11:08 am

    This is what government is for.

    .

    Expanding on pandemic-era assistance, New Mexico made childcare free for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $124,000 for a family of four. That meant about half of New Mexican children now qualified.

    In one of the poorest states in the nation, where the median household income is half that and childcare costs for two children could take up 80% of a family’s income, the impact was powerful. The state, which had long ranked worst in the nation for child wellbeing, saw its poverty rate begin to fall.

    As the state simultaneously raised wages for childcare workers, and became the first to base its subsidy reimbursement rates on the actual cost of providing such care, early childhood educators were also raised out of poverty. In 2020, 27.4% of childcare providers – often women of color – were living in poverty. By 2024, that number had fallen to 16%.

    During the state’s recent legislative session, lawmakers approved a “historic” increase in funding for education, including early childhood education, that might improve those numbers even further.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/childcare-new-mexico-poverty

    • Karolyn_IS 7.1
      14 May 2025 at 12:15 pm

      Exactly, good child care costs more than usually is paid for it, and it benefits the children, the workers, and society as a whole.

      NZ Green Party today laid out their alternative budget:

      pledging free GP visits and free childcare funded through new taxes and increased borrowing.

      They include a wealth tax, a private jet tax, ending interest deductibility for landlords, restoring the 10 year 'bright-line' test, doubling minerals royalties and changes to ACC levies.

      The plan would see net debt climb from 45 percent of GDP to above 53 percent by the 2028/29 financial year.

      According to the Greens' calculations, the new revenue streams would fund a free public health service providing GP and nursing services, free annual dental check-ups and basic dental care, as well as the restoring free prescriptions.

      On the childcare front, it would give 20 hours free care per week for children from six months until school age, and cap fees at $10 per day for hours above the 20 per week entitlement in the short term, transitioning over time to free provision.

      Come the next election, the NZ Labour Party also needs to be bold with policies to raise income levels, improve public services, and end the way the wealthy are corrupting the system in their favour.

    • gsays 7.2
      14 May 2025 at 12:32 pm

      We have to aim higher than that.

      Government should be for ensuring wages are such that a family can be raised on the equivalent of one income. Either earnt by one adult or shared between two.

      This makes the need for lining private interests in the guise of early child education largely redundant.

      • Karolyn_IS 7.2.1
        14 May 2025 at 12:40 pm

        And how do you prevent the likelihood of the child care being mostly done by women, impacting on their career paths?

        And what about single parents?

        • gsays 7.2.1.1
          14 May 2025 at 12:57 pm

          In anything it's preferable to aim for an ideal.

          In regards yr first question that is answered within the family unit.

          In this ideal I am articulating, there are other family members ie grandparents to help and support.

          • Visubversa 7.2.1.1.1
            14 May 2025 at 1:30 pm

            it is no longer the 1950's. These days grandparents are likely to be still working, may not live in the same town (or even the same country) and this still forces people (mainly women) to sacrifice their wellbeing in order for the State to give tax cuts to landlords.

            • tc 7.2.1.1.1.1
              14 May 2025 at 4:31 pm

              Yes and get further kicked by having a health system that's not there for them when it's needed along with many other gutted institutions.

            • gsays 7.2.1.1.1.2
              14 May 2025 at 5:44 pm

              So, is the answer a bigger subsidy to private providers of early childhood care?

              No wonder pop and nan will have to keep working.

              • weka …
                14 May 2025 at 5:46 pm

                integrating childcare into workplaces is a better pathway.

                People have to keep working because of the housing crisis.

          • weka 7.2.1.1.2
            14 May 2025 at 5:44 pm

            In this ideal I am articulating, there are other family members ie grandparents to help and support.

            better yet, have a wider variety of family structures enabled, but relations and intentional family.

            The biggest problem I see is that neoliberalism destroyed community so much that families often don't live close to each other. The expectation that people should move for work, and that people can't have a job or house for life, undermines families and communities. That's a hard one to fix.

        • weka 7.2.1.2
          14 May 2025 at 5:42 pm

          a solution to that is to pay people to raise their kids. And to change workplaces so that it's easier for women to integrate mothering responsibilities with their work eg being able to breastfeed at work, having a creche. This is how the world would be already if women were designing it.

          • gsays 7.2.1.2.1
            14 May 2025 at 5:49 pm

            "pay people to raise their kids."

            Yep, and provide care to their parents.

            Subcontracting your love doesn't sound like a world designed by women.

            • weka 7.2.1.2.1.1
              14 May 2025 at 6:09 pm

              what do you mean by subcontracting your love?

              If women aren’t supported to have careers, then society loses out, because those careers end up dominated by men.

              • gsays …
                14 May 2025 at 6:32 pm

                Paying people to raise yr kids and not being around when the parents are elderly and need support is sub contracting your love.

                • Karolyn_IS …
                  14 May 2025 at 7:04 pm

                  You seem to be referring to a contemporary, middle class, Western European, nuclear family style parenting.

                  Throughout history and across cultures, this has not always been the case. Very often it has been the role of other members of the kinship group that also takes some responsibility for child rearing. as is the case with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities.

                  I think that has also been true of Māori child rearing practices.

                  Sometimes in the past, women took their babies with them while they were working in the fields.

                  In some cultures, older siblings also do some of the child caring.

                  In low income families, where women have always had to do some paid work, there has also been a role for grandparents and the wider community to do some child care. Plus, across cultures, grandmothers have had a significant role in child care.

                  Our work system puts much more responsibilities on birth parents for doing all the child care.

                  And, of course, people on comfortable incomes can afford to hire nannies, and others to do a lot of their family caring.

                  What you are advocating for would require a whole different work structure.

                  You are also ignoring the child rearing that is done by parents outside work hours. There is an argument for workplaces to provide organised child care for their workers.

                  A woman I know in Denmark had free daycare available when she had her child. The Danish system prides itself on providing a wide range of experiences that will benefit children. These days there's financial aid so that all income groups can have access to the benefits of daycare.

                  • gsays …
                    14 May 2025 at 8:01 pm

                    I was commenting from my lived experience. My mum was at home while Dad was a welder. Mum also nursed my nana to her death.
                    She also worked as a waitress Fridays and Saturdays. They paid off a mortgage while I was still living at home.
                    “What you are advocating for would require a whole different work structure."

                    Yep, that's why I was responding to Joe's comment. Government should be orchestrating affairs so early child care isn't needed. Just like it should sort out housing so $2.4B in accommodation supplement is redundant.

                    • weka …
                      14 May 2025 at 8:08 pm

                      but who would do all the useless jobs? Or the low paying ones?

                    • Karolyn_IS …
                      14 May 2025 at 8:52 pm

                      Early child care would still be needed in a system that values caring. I used to train early child care workers – taught child development & education, while health specialists taught health & child care.

                      These days, there's a significant amount of knowledge about both those topics, and some parents & families are better at child care than others. A good day care organisation has a high ratio of staff to children/infants. And collective child care is beneficial to children. And all that costs.

                      The way paid work is currently organised benefits more men than it does a similar amount of women. It's highly individualistic, and competitive with regards to career progression. Team work, and collective responsibility is valued but not as much as it could be.

                      Also, we have loads of people working long hours, and others who want more work unemployed or under-employed.

                      It should be possible to organise a system where all people have more non-work time, and some people aren't earning obscene amounts of money while others are barely scraping by.

                    • SPC …
                      14 May 2025 at 10:00 pm

                      It should be possible to organise a system

                      Job sharing.

                  • weka …
                    14 May 2025 at 8:01 pm

                    Grandparents and Aunties/Uncles in traditional society were/are part of childrearing. The nuclear family arises with the industrial revolution and splitting up families to provide workers.

                • weka …
                  14 May 2025 at 8:05 pm

                  Paying people to raise yr kids and not being around when the parents are elderly and need support is sub contracting your love.

                  Imo, the only way to change that pattern is to either force women back into the home, or give women the support they need to have agency and make good choices. At the moment we're stuck in no man's land (despite it being a system designed by men).

                  Many women are financially coerced into working instead of caring for their children. Telling them they are subcontracting love by having other people look after their kids while they work to pay the rent and buy food is a losing strategy.

                  I agree with you about the need to return home care to a central position in society, and it's a transition needs to be done with respect and aroha (not least because otherwise people won't be interested).

                  • Karolyn_IS …
                    14 May 2025 at 8:54 pm

                    Weka: "I agree with you about the need to return home care to a central position in society,"

                    I would extend that to community care. It takes a village to raise a child, etc.

  8. SPC 8
    14 May 2025 at 11:38 am

    A question to the Minister of Finance

    Has she made any provision in this, or any future budget years to enact pay parity to nurses, as promised by Luxon in the election debate of 2023?

    • SPC 8.1
      14 May 2025 at 1:16 pm

      In May 2024, New Zealand had over 7,000 physical vape retailers. This includes 1,280 Specialist Vape Retailers (SVRs) and at least 5,760 General Vape Retailers (GVRs). Additionally, there were 146 SVR websites selling vapes.

      Luxon said he supported Hipkins on reducing outlets to 600. 52 minutes.

      Action so far being ……………..

  9. SPC 9
    14 May 2025 at 12:09 pm

    It began with opposing Fair Pay Agreements in an industry sector.

    Then it evolved into opposing full pay equity, by calling that unaffordable.

    There is this

    The Equal Pay Act 1972 makes it clear that equal pay and pay equity are legal requirements. The Act was updated in 2020 to provide a clear pay equity process to test whether female-dominated occupations are free from sex-based undervaluation.

    The pay equity assessment process allows us to look beyond what task someone is doing to understand and properly value their work.

    https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/system/public-service-people/pay-gaps-and-pay-equity

    The Equal Pay Act was amended in 2020 to replace the court-based approach to pay equity claims with an accessible process based on the existing bargaining framework in the Employment Relations Act 2000.

    The Court of Appeal found that the Equal Pay Act required equal pay for men and women doing the same work and equal pay for men and women doing different work deemed to be of the same value.

    Following this decision, forums involving government, business, and unions on pay equity identified that legislative reform to allow for pay equity claims to be jointly resolved outside of court was required. This legislative change makes it easier to file pay equity claims with their employers, rather than having to go through the courts, and will assist employers in addressing those claims.

    https://www.women.govt.nz/women-and-work/pay-equity-and-equal-pay

    The National Party walk back

    What started under National as a clear pay equity regime to redress historically underpaid female-dominated workforces, became a multi-billion dollar grievance industry that departed a very long way from issues of sex-discrimination.

    The Government has now put in place a much more workable pay equity regime. These changes enable the Government to unwind a forecast blow-out in pay equity costs while ensuring New Zealand retains an affordable fair pay equity scheme focused on genuine sex-based discrimination.

    The purpose was to save money and this involved resorting to gaslighting claimants.

    They also mean a lot more money can now be invested in other services Kiwis need, like schools, hospitals, roads and other much needed initiatives.

    Here National is seeking the complicity of voters in the exploitation of women workers.

    https://www.national.org.nz/payequitythefacts

    • SPC 9.1
      14 May 2025 at 12:25 pm

      I should add that the National Party in blocking the Fair Pay Agreements and placing an ability to pay constraint on pay equity is also protecting its business sector supporters.

      This is a reason why we lose workers to Oz.

    • AB 9.2
      14 May 2025 at 2:51 pm

      Then it evolved into opposing full pay equity, by calling that unaffordable…

      Yes, though I think affordability is not the main reason for their opposition. The bigger reason is an opposition to the thinking that lies behind this statement from the Court of Appeal (your quote above):

      The Court of Appeal found that the Equal Pay Act required … equal pay for men and women doing different work deemed to be of the same value.

      This statement from the Court is making an important claim about the nature of value. It's saying that the value of labour is not discovered by finding the equilibrium point on the supply and demand curves within an existing labour market. The Court is pointing vaguely at some notion of value (social, intrinsic, whatever) that is external to the market and is currently ignored by it. National's, and particularly ACT's, business backers are likely to see this as a direct ideological attack on the primacy of markets in our economic life.

  10. Ad 10
    14 May 2025 at 12:58 pm

    A big shoutout to Calder Stewart for their huge investment just north of Milton in an inland port that will take 10,000 heavy trucks off the road each year.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360687846/plans-nzs-largest-inland-port-announced-3b-private-investment

    That means much heavier use of the rail line into Dunedin's Port Chalmers, fewer logistical headaches with much higher volume storage facilities, and a stronger Otago logistical system.

    Didn't seek Fast Track approval, organised their own investors and financing, already got a good first stage well underway, and it's a longstanding local business leading it.

    Will be interesting to see how enthusiastically Fonterra, bulk retail, Kiwirail and the forestry companies get into this.

    • Kay 10.1
      14 May 2025 at 2:37 pm

      Port Otago don't seem very keen. And how long until the trucking lobby are on their case- I mean, taking 10,000 trucks off the road??

      • Scud 10.1.1
        14 May 2025 at 3:57 pm

        On the RNZ website, the Port Otago seem quite keen as they are running out of space for Logs & Containers plus they also need to spend about $100m according to the RNZ article for upgrades for their inland port in Mosgiel.

  11. ianmac 11
    14 May 2025 at 4:20 pm

    What a mess during Question Time today:

    Question 8.

    1. Hon JAN TINETTI to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does she agree with Andrea Vance, who said about the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, “It is a curious feminist moment, isn't it? Six girlbosses – Willis, her hype-squad Judith Collins, Erica Stanford, Louise Upston, Nicola Grigg, and Brooke van Velden – all united in a historic act of economic backhanding other women”; if not, how is unilaterally stopping 33 pay equity claims not a historic act of economic backhanding other women?

    The hoo-ha relates to the several CoC Ministers arguing with the Speaker about the legitimacy of the question. The Speaker said it was legitimate. Oh boy. Maybe the Speaker is paying for the "soft" approach to the Ministers.

    Starts at 2:34pm ( I think) https://videos.parliament.nz/

    • Kat 11.1
      14 May 2025 at 4:47 pm

      The govt are rattled…..they have to be aware they are on the losing end…….

    • Anne 11.2
      14 May 2025 at 8:38 pm

      That was an appalling scene! I thought Brownlee handled it as good as was possible in the circumstances.

      van Velden did not produce that well rehearsed attempt to present herself as the victim of misogyny. My bet is, her speech came from a senior speech writer out of the PM's Office.

      I have been amused at the number of times the word "lies" is being used in relation to the Opposition responses to the Pay Equity Bill. The CoC is working on the principle that if they say the word often enough, people will believe it. What they are actually doing is projecting their own dishonest and deceitful behaviour on to their political opponents – a much used strategy by right-wing parties in particular.

      What staggers me is that they obviously thought they could get away with it.

      Kudos to Andrea Vance for having the cojones to write the article in the first place.