Ok, Friday night and it has been a bleak budget. A chance for you to exercise your creative cells and play, “Name that Budget”. My colleague Brendon Burns has christened it the Donut Budget, we also have the Budget of Broken Promises. What is your best effort? Give us a catchy name, and a sentence to explain, and the best one gets a Bellamys Chocolate Fish.
My effort for staters : The Decaf Latte Budget: It was meant to stimulate the economy and protect jobs, but instead it has all the effect of coffee in a sachet.
Posted in Budget. |
Budget documents are actually quite difficult to navigate around. My experience working in government was that as we generally knew what was coming in the Budget and what to look for it was ok. But it is hard if you are in opposition, the media or an interest group. The government directs you where they want you to go, and does not make a song and dance about where they don’t want you looking.
An example, yesterday there were some in the research and tertiary education community who celebrated some increased funding for the Marsden Fund and HRC and some new PM Science Scholarships. Goodo, important stuff. But hidden within the documents are cuts to Centres of Research Excellence, the Encouraging and Supporting Innovation Fund, Enterprise Scholarships, and the biggie, a $55 million cut to the funding that would have given pay increases to university staff to help retain them in New Zealand.
Closer to home here in Wellington it seems that funding for the War Memorial Park in Buckle St has been cut, with perhaps a modest allocation to tidy up the vacant site. Not a word from the Arts Minister about that yesterday.
So, that is how Labour MPs and many interest groups will be spending their long weekend. Trawling through the documents looking for the forgotten gems. Wish me luck.
Posted in Budget and Wellington. |
My colleague Maryan Street has just moved the following motion in Parliament, and it has been supported by all parties.
That the New Zealand Parliament note the anniversary on 27 May 2009 of the detention under house arrest of Nobel Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, deplore her continued detention on political grounds and seek her immediate and unconditional release, together with the release of approximately 2100 additional political prisoners being detained in Burma by the military junta.
Barack Obama has made the same call. Her continued detention is a blight on democracy. We are taking a stand here in NZ. I spoke at a Wellington rally last week organised by the CTU against her detention, along with representatives of both the National and Green parties. We also have a Parliamentary support group on Burma that is looking at ways we can provide support to the campaign to have her released. You can find more information about the global campaign here.
Posted in Foreign Affairs, Democracy and International. |
Before we get immersed in the Budget, the Post-Budget anlaysis and the realisation of the impact of the Budget, I wanted to note that this coming weekend will mark the end of Jeanette Fitzsimons time as Co-Leader of the Greens. I think all New Zealanders with a concern for their country and their planet should be sad to see her go, and grateful for her contribution.
Its hard to not make a post like this sound saccharine, but I do genuinely admire Jeanette. In the election campaign last year I was asked by a young girl which politician from another party I admired the most and why. I had no hesitation in naming Jeanette because I have always felt that she spoke for what she truly believed and that she really lived the ‘brand’ of Green politics. This does not mean I agreed with everything she said or all the policies of the Greens, but I totally understood where she was coming from and why she said it.
Many of the issues that she has championed going back to her time in the Values Party are now mainstream issues. It was very insightful in Michael Cullen’s parting remarks both inside Parliament and out that he singled out the issue on which his thinking had moved most over the years was the importance of incorporating sustainability into all our future- economically and socially.
I got to know Jeanette the best when we worked on the response to the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. This was an example of how a government can respond to a Royal Commission. We had differing views, but we went through every recommendation and worked out how it could be implemented. It was a very intense negotiation. I learned a huge amount from Jeanette, and she never waivered from her principled stance. Unfortunately the 2002 election came along and some of our work got stymied by the political stunts that go with elections. I knew Jeanette was uncomfortable with some of how that played out, but the work we did still stood the test of time.
Meteria and Sue B are both talented, intelligent advocates, and whoever is elected co-leader will no doubt lead the Greens well. But it is a hard act to follow. The shoes they are filling are big and green, principled, friendly and genuine. Jeanette, I am sure we will still hear from you in your remaining time as an MP, but in the meantime, I want to say thank you for being a leader.
Posted in Greens. |
Today’s issue of Trans-Tasman includes an interesting snippet from a BERL report comparing our government consumption spending with other OECD nations.
According to the report we are in the mainstream of expenditure at 18.8%, more than Australia (17.7%), but less than Canada (19.3%) or the UK (21.2%). But the really interesting fact is that the average for the 30 years to 2007 was 18.5%. As Trans-Tasman itself notes, so much for a huge disproportionate growth in bureaucracy under Labour.
The truth is that in Labour’s time in office we re-built services that were undermined by National in the 90s. The percentage of people working in the public sector as a part of the total workforce has actually declined since the 1990s. National’s claims are nothing but spin to justify the widespread cuts to the public service. In the end we all suffer with these policies as it takes years to re-build the services New Zealanders need and deserve.
Posted in Trans Tasman and Public Servants. |
