We have a population policy, does anyone else?

Our population policy has been released at last. Having been involved with its development through the complicated Green policy-making process, I’m pretty proud of it.

The best thing about it, I think, is that it comes from an ecological footprint perspective, and it makes very clear that the most immediate threat to our planet is consumption in the “developed” world, rather than conception in the “under-developed” world. This isn’t to say that we don’t have to worry hugely about how many people there are and will be in the world, especially as regards food production and distribution, but from the point of view of climate change, almost all of that threatening carbon is being emitted either by, or for, us, the privileged.

Other things I really like about the policy – we have recognised the research that shows that education and choices for women are the key to a replacement or below replacement birthrate, and also that parents and would-be parents are the best people to make decisions about how many children they will have. Somehow, according to TV3 News, National has equated that to a China “one child” policy, but I really don’t know how. I look forward to reading their press release.

I like too that we are looking far enough ahead to recognize that there might be quite a few kiwis heading for home as times and climates get tougher, and that we need to save space for them, but also for wilderness, mountains, clean rivers and unpolluted oceans.

I’m sure there will be plenty of people from other parties that have put a population policy in the “too hard” basket, who will find plenty of nits to pick, but I challenge them to read the policy themselves, then come up with a better and more respectful one.

Ansell confirms secret agenda

Remember John Ansell? Yes, the man who designed the 2005 National Party billboards. Well, after a falling out with National (and then with ACT), Ansell has become a blogger.

He has an interesting theory that National’s 2008 billboards are deliberately bland.

Far better instead to be inoffensive and keep all sensible policies invisible. It’s called sleepwalking to victory, and the Nats are rather good at it.

Did I read that right John: “…keep all sensible policies invisible” !!!

Now, Ansell is no ordinary blogger – he has worked closely with senior National Party MPs and strategists, he knows how the National Party works. He’s an inside man, and here he is, confirming the secret agenda many of us suspected from the Bill English do what it takes tape and the earlier recordings of English (sell Kiwibank, “eventually”) and Lockwood Smith (do things in government “that may not be policy right now”).

Incidentally, Ansell has nothing but praise for the Green billboards:

Six words. Bang. That’s impact.

As I once told Dr Brian Edwards on radio in defence of the Iwi/Kiwi billboard, a billboard is not an essay.

Your market is hurtling towards your medium at 100k. (Or 180k in some cases, Brian.) You’ve got about three seconds to woo them and win them.

And the Greens do that. They stand for something. Loudly and proudly. Their ads are big and bold and brave.

But he is far from complimentary about some of National’s efforts:

You see, I don’t know about you, but to me these signs, when arranged so neatly in rows, do not look like pluses.

They look like crosses.

Grave mistake

A field of uniform white crosses arranged neatly in rows does not equal something positive in my experience. It equals only one thing.

Death.

Will wages drop under National?

Much has been made of the “we would love to see wages drop” comment attributed to John Key.

Misquote, slip of the tongue, or is it the secret National Party employment relations agenda that Key inadvertently revealed to a reporter, as Tane suggests, when addressing a business audience?

Well, let’s look at the National Party policy:

Introduce a 90-day trial period for new employees by agreement between the employer and the employee, for businesses with fewer than 20 staff. During the trial period, either party may terminate the employment relationship for performance, without a personal grievance claim being brought.

Okay, so a small employer will be able to threaten to fire a worker in the first 90 days of employment if he or she joins a union, and the employee will have no personal grievance redress. That policy will have the practical effect of making it almost impossible to unionise small workplaces, with the consequent effect that the wage bargaining power of workers in small business is weakened. A sure recipe for ensuring wages remain low, if not drop.

Restore workers’ rights to bargain collectively without having to belong to a union.

Now this one’s even more worrying in terms of wage levels. This will mean that employers can play off a group of workers in their workplace who are un-unionised against those who are unionised, reach a low-wage settlement with the un-unionised group, and then tell the union the same settlement is available to them on a “take it or leave it” basis, and if they don’t take it lock them out until they do. It will seriously diminish the ability of workers to bargain collectively, and therefore see wages remain low, or even drop.

And there is no mention in the National Party’s policy of continuing even the modest increases in the minimum wage that have occurred over the last 9 years of Labour-led Governments.

So it seems to me that, whatever you make of John Key’s “wages drop” comment, if you want a low wage economy, then a Party Vote for the National Party is the way to go!

Contrast this with Green Party Policy that will see the minimum wage increased to $15 an hour and then tagged to 66% of the average wage, will facilitate multi-employer collective bargaining, and will address freeloading from non-union labour by imposing a bargaining fee of 90% of the relevant union membership fee. The Greens stand for moving to a high wage economy – National will clearly move in the opposite direction.

The minimum wage

Yesterday Steve Pierson at The Standard posted on a rather disturbing comment by National Party MP John Hayes at an election meeting:

A member of the audience asked ‘John, can you please guarantee this audience that a National govt would continue to consistently raise the minimum wage – at least to cover inflation – which the Labour-led govt has done for the past 9 years, in order to support our lowest paid workers?’ According to the report, Hayes tried to avoid the question and waffled about MMP but the questioner insisted on yes/no direct answer. Hayes then snapped ‘No, we believe in tax cuts, not the minimum wage’.

Now that’s a pretty scary response for the thousands of workers who are on the minimum wage at the current princely sum of $12 an hour, and whose gain from National’s (and Labour’s) tax cuts will be minimal. So I went and checked the National Party’s employment relations policy, and there is nothing there at all about the minimum wage at all. So there is every prospect under a National-led government that there will be a repeat of the notorious nil increases in the minimum wage that saw the standard of living of low-income workers seriously eroded in the 1990s.

Even under Labour, unions have had to engage in an intensive lobbying exercise every year to get the meagre increases in the minimum wage that have occurred over the last 9 years. And Labour don’t seem to be proposing anything more than continuing modest increases in the minimum wage.

The Green Party, by contrast, would increase the minimum wage immediately to $15 an hour, and ensure wage security by legislating to ensure there are annual increases that do not permit it to fall below 66% of the average wage.

So for the thousands of New Zealanders on low wages, the answer seems obvious – Party Vote Green!