Midday Report Essentials for Thursday 15 May 2025
In today's episode, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden has refused to have regular meetings with the Council of Trade Unions and has ruled out undoing the Pay Equity Changes, Labour is defending not condemning a newspaper column about pay equity which used the c-word in reference to female ministers, a new report has revealed New Zealand has the highest suicide rate for children out of the world's wealthy countries, at a rate of almost three times higher than the average, the C-Word has taken up a lot of attention in the last 24 hours after the workplace relations minister Brooke van Velden enunciated in Parliaments debating chamber, and a year on from the New Caledonia deadly riots the country faces deep division over the territory's political future.
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Teachers strike outside Parliament on Wednesday. Photo: JOHN GERRITSEN / RNZ The government is revising its pay offer for secondary teachers, following a nationwide strike, but the union would need to compromise too, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche said. Thousands of members of the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) walked off the job to protest their pay talks , forcing the closure of many secondary schools. Teachers on picket lines told RNZ the government's offer of a one percent pay rise every year for three years was "despicable, insulting and terrible". The Public Service Commission, which was overseeing the government's side of the pay talks, had been at pains to note that teachers in the first 10 years of their career get annual pay rises of about 13 percent a year as they progress up the pay scale. But teachers said most of them were at the top of the scale and the one percent increases would be all they received. Roche told RNZ in a statement: "This was always going to be a difficult bargaining round - the strike is evidence of that. Now that has happened, we have to find a way forward - we owe that to the students, parents and teachers." "Our initial offer clearly hasn't hit the mark, and we are doing work on a revised offer." He said the union's claim was not realistic. "The PPTA's current set of claims would cost taxpayers $1.7 billion over four years. That's equivalent to an extra $67,000 for every full-time secondary teacher. It's unaffordable, unreasonable and unrealistic. Sir Brian Roche is the Public Service Commissioner. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone "Bargaining is about compromise and to date, and somewhat regrettably, the PPTA has refused to offer any real compromise on these claims. The government is committed to working with the PPTA to get a resolution." Education Minister, Erica Stanford, said the union should have called today's strike off because it had agreed to further talks. But PPTA president Chris Abercrombie said: "The government knew it had an opportunity yesterday to make a reasonable offer to us which could have encouraged us to reconsider our action. Unfortunately, no such offer was forthcoming." Meanwhile, on picket lines, teachers said they were frustrated that they had to strike to try to force a better offer from the government. Wellington teacher Catharine de Montalk said she and her colleagues would be losing money if they accepted the offer. "I don't particularly want to be here. I feel like since my career started 20 years ago that I've been doing this every single pay round and it does get tired, it does get old but one percent is actually the lowest... it is an insult," she said. A teacher outside Parliament during the strike. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen Outside Parliament, maths teacher Jennifer Crisp said the government's offer was not reasonable. "We think that's entirely incorrect. It's not a reasonable offer in this economy. Not when MPs have been given more than double that," she said. In Christchurch, teacher Richard Allen said the government's offer was never going to fly. "The knew that that wasn't going to be acceptable right from the start and so it's a shame that it's come to this. To be fair we all want to teach so give us something more reasonable that we can work towards," he said. Several Wellington commuters said they supported the striking teachers. Christian Shaw said the picket at Wellington Railway Station prompted him to do some online research which showed politicians were getting much better annual pay rises than what teachers were being offered. "They're willing to line their own pockets, more than happy, year after year, but they don't want to give our teachers, our nurses... they just cut pay equity which is so important to so many people and they're just taking the absolute piss," he said. His mate Jack Dyer said teachers were not paid enough - and he'd know, having abandoned the profession because of the pay rates for new teachers. "I studied to become a teacher. I got my diploma of teaching for secondary schools and the starting rate there is just atrocious. Like after four years of study, a bachelor's and a diploma, you're coming out and making less than the median wage in Wellington, which is just bizarre," he said. Meanwhile, primary school teachers, support staff and principals belonging to the Educational Institute, Te Riu Roa, were holding stop-work meetings this week and next to discuss their pay talks. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
