Byron Clark

So the commentators are all towing the Labour Party line that "a vote for the Workers Party (or RAM or Alliance) is a vote for National" first the The CWG, then Steve from The Standard and now Matt McCarton has joined in:

"There will be a temptation for these [staunch left] voters to give their party vote to openly left-wing parties, such as RAM (Residents Action Movement), the Workers Party and the Alliance (my old party). The combined party vote of these left-wing parties will be less than 2 per cent. That will mean all their party votes they get will be allocated proportionately to other parties that make it into parliament.
Interestingly, that means that half of the staunch left vote will be added to National. If these left-wingers instead gave their party vote to the Greens it would give them another two MPs they wouldn't otherwise get.

It is true that if a large percentage of the party vote goes to parties that don't cross the 5% threshold the remaining seats would be divided up between the parties that did, however there will be no remaining seats this election, Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne and almost every Maori Party MP are likely to cause an overhang, meaning there will be extra seats in parliament, so no seats will be given to parties that didn't win them. Hear that? there is no way voting Workers Party will give more seats to National

( more voting myths )

According to Labours tax cut calculator the tax cuts that come in today will give me a grand total of...
one dollar a week. Maybe I'll it save up for a few months and buy a block of cheese.

The below is a slightly edited version of the speech I gave at the Workers Party Christchurch election campaign launch. I've added hyperlinks to sources and/or more information.

Good evening everyone and thank you for coming along to the Workers Party's election campaign launch. I'm going to be talking about that problem with the 'mainstream' parties, and I'm going to talk mainly about Labour and National. When I began thinking about this talk I was going to talk about Labour and then National or National and then Labour, but then I realised it would be easier to talk about them both at the same time, because the two parties, which not exactly the same, are fundamentally similar. This is not even a particularly controversial statement to make, early this year broadcaster John Campbell compared choosing between Labour and National to choosing between Coke and Pepsi.

( read on )

I can't remember if it was Pepsi or Coke that used that marketing slogan, but anyway...





Remember there are other options on the menu, especially with the The Workers Party about to register for list votes.

The man yelling "You destroyed the left" is former Alliance co-leader Len Richards, now a Labour party member. The Man he hit was Workers Party member and Unite organiser Jared Philips. This shows what happens when you start looking at the Labour party as a "lesser evil" or some kind of pro-worker party, its only a matter of time till you find yourself defending attacks on civil libertys and assulting protesters.

I haven't been paying much attention to the new budget, but I'm annoyed at the cutting of the corporate tax rate from 33% to 30%- and it needs to be noted that there was no tax cut for the poor. Bryce Edwards has pointed out that this is the first corporate tax cut since Roger Douglas was finance minister, and lists some other important budget related things. In addition Mia has pointed out that 16 years after the fact, Nationals benefit cuts (which cut benefits to bellow-subsistance levels) have not been reversed.

I'm still waiting for the media to give this budget an amusing nickname, if they don't, perhaps the blogosphere should do it.

I don't follow the internal spats of the Labour Party nor I do I read blogs by Labour party members, but I today I stubbled accross this post from a Young Labour member who seems to have became disallusioned with the organisation:

"I will not be involved in Young Labour any longer as I personally feel that there is a certain clique who will not let go of their power and everyone else is just their puppets, I refuse to be a puppet and a hypocrite. It is also for these reasons I am currently trying to remain unactive within the party whilst I consider if the Labour Party is where I want to belong."

I expect this person will join the Young Nationals (if he joins another party) since Labour doesn't really have an ideology anymore I feel that Young Labour/National is just something people who want careers as politicions join, after fliping a coin to choose.

One anonymous commenter left this, I wonder who it is because they seem to be on the ball:
"Get a job in a factory. You'll be paid Labour's minimum wage per hour. Because of this you will be working most weekends as you will need the extra money to survive. All this work makes you sick, but you return to work before you are well as the sick days are low.
The cost of living keeps going up, the supermarket keeps getting more expensive, the rent keeps climbing, the cost of driving to work almost makes it not worth showing up but public transport is inefficient and not that much cheaper.
Few months down the road the employer changes the working conditions. The contract expires next year and its illegal to go on strike. You challenge your union to break the law, but the union secretary is wanting to become a Labour MP so the union dismisses calls for strikes out of hand. So the overtime rates (which were pretty pathetic anyway) are now gone and you are working for minimum wage in your weekends as well.

After you have experienced this start look around the different political organisations..."

I don't read This Listener much anymore, every other week the feature article is about house prices, yet every now and again there is some excellent journalism, like this article by Matt Nippert;

The tax money collected for your retirement is being used by fund managers, acting on behalf of the government, to profit from the war in Iraq, nuclear-weapon production and the building of the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Among the places our pension money is being invested:

Shares in eight out of the 10 largest defence and armaments companies, including the infamous Halliburton, the largest contractor for the US Army in Iraq and builder of the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. In total, investments in defence firms amount to more than $100 million.

Many of these investments in companies that make nuclear weapons- such as the most ironicly named missile ever, the "MX Peacekeeper" could even be illegal under the countries nuclear free legislation

Duty minister Jim Anderton speaking this morning on Iraq: "It is hard to see how an additional 20,000-25,000 troops are going to be capable of making any real difference and this has an eerie Vietnam revisited element to it. One wonders whether the lessons I would have expected to be learnt from that fiasco have been learnt in any way at all. It is literally years since Mr Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and announced the war was over. I don't know whether he remembers that"

And Foreign Minister Winston Peters speaking this afternoon on Iraq, "Peters says his ministerial colleague's attack on President Bush was ill-informed and regrettable. He says Anderton is entitled to his own thoughts on world events, but his comments do not reflect the government's views"

Bryce Edwards makes some good comments on this: "Anderton's comments were relatively mild and probably in line with majority opinion, and so it's informative to see Clark and Peters' reactions. Even though Anderton had been specifically asked to make a comment as Duty Minister during the holiday period, Helen Clark later said that he was speaking on behalf of his own party rather than the Government. Peters went further to say his comments were 'ill-informed and regrettable'. This is clearly a government that is divided on the issue, but led by those determined not to have the US criticised for Iraq."

Ruth Dyson (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment) stated in parliament earlier this month "In the last 7 years our Government has reduced unemployment benefit numbers from around 160,000 to under 40,000 ... The current high labour force participation rate of nearly 68.5 percent, and the low unemployment rate of 3.8 percent, are clear indicators of our success."

Doesn't take much so see that something doesn't quite add up here, 1 in 4 New Zealand workers are unaccounted for, I wonder what the government has done with them.

Anyway, heres what Ruth has planned for you if you lose your job: "From September next year a number of new requirements will be placed on people who are receiving financial support from the Government. Those applying for the unemployment benefit will be required to undertake a specific work or training-related activity or activities in the period between their first contact with Work and Income for assistance and their benefit commencing. They will be required to look for and accept any offer of suitable work during that time. This will mean that Work and Income will be able to direct a person to a work-related activity immediately, and not have to wait until after the benefit has commenced."

Oh joy...

Readers my also be interested in Mia's epic adventure through the decaying ruins of New Zealands welfare state

I think people on the left should read the business press, I was first exposed to this idea years ago by Noam Chomsky, much of his information came from the business press. This idea applys world over, want to get an idea of the gap between rich and poor in New Zealand? take a look at the National Business Reviews annual "Rich List" which shows the rich get richer, then combine that information with the kind I mentioned last week that shows the poor, if not actually getting poorer, are at best stagnating on the same low incomes for decades.

Former Labour/ACT MP Richard Prebble has written a new book called "Out of the Red," a comrade emailed some quotes from this book which are quite telling:

"Starbucks proclaims that its single greatest asset and competitive advantage is its staff. By contrast , Enron treated its staff so badly that
managers were required to fire the bottom 10 per cent of workers every year
-whether they'd performed badly or well. Their respective cultures led
precisely to the outcomes we are familiar with."

To see how true this is, dig up the old Radio New Zealand interview with New Zealand Starbucks CEO Vicci Salmon and Matt McCarton from the SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign, in this interview Salmon opposes refering to Starbucks staff as "workers" and prefers to call them "partners" and talk up the "staff beverage" perk. This kind of coporate hegemony has led to Starbucks workers on a few cents above minimum wage (prior to the SuperSizeMyPay campagin anyway) thinking of themselves as privliged and almost seeing themselves as part of what Lenin called the Labour aristocracy, making them less likely to join unions and giving them a false sense of company pride. Compare this to the attitude of a worker whos ass is always on the line, in Prebbles example an Enron worker, or prehaps think of a temp worker in a factory relocating to China, which do you think the ruling class prefers?

Its important for workers to fight back, weather the boss sees you as an easily replaceable cog in the capitalsit machine, or as a "partner," "highly valued team member" or "great asset" workers are exploited weather the boss calls them workers or not.

"What's scary in New Zealand is that it hasn't got better under Labour. There are more people in employment, but it's low-paid employment."

That quote is from Gerard Cotterell, one of the sociologists involved in a study that found "the median family income, after adjusting for inflation and family size, was just over $37,000 a year in 1981 - and was still just over $37,000 in 2001.
In the same period, the proportion of working women rose from 47 per cent to 61 per cent.
The increase in women was offset by a 20 per cent drop in male fulltime employment, as men moved into self-employment and part-time work and on to benefits.
Families on middle and low incomes have ended up merely holding their own, while high-income families are better off."

Of course, certain people have been pointing out the plight of working people under the "Labour" government for some time- again, and again, and again. But now that even the Herald isn't ignoring this fact, you have to wonder, how much longer are people going to put up with this crap?

Recently Finance Minister Michael Cullen had this to say on the subject of wage increases: "We cannot afford large wage and salary increases across the board."

This morning The Press printed this article stating; "Schoolchildren in Christchurch's poorest suburbs are turning up for lessons in toe-numbingly cold weather without adequate footwear and clothing." Christchurch city missioner Michael Gorman said cold-weather snaps were hard for low-income families to plan for, especially when money woes were compounded by high power bills.
"If you haven't got the income in the first place, no matter how much budgeting advice you get, it won't make a difference," he said.

I think we should get Michael Cullen and reserve bank governer Alan Bollard on a New Zealand wide tour of low decile primary schools to tell the kids, sorry, we know you can't afford the basic necessities of life, but no pay rises for your parents this year.

Michael Cullen got an 8% pay rise this year, brining his salary from $226,700 to $245,000 the difference is enough for about 600 pairs of shoes, I'm not offering that as a solution, but it puts things in perspective.