Standing in solidarity
REPORT: TIM SCOTT / PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON
Protesters gathered in the Octagon by the hundreds at the weekend to stand in solidarity with the transgender community.
Saturday's rally was organised by the Dunedin branch of the International Socialist Organisation Aotearoa, in collaboration with other groups.
Dunedin branch committee member and protest co-organiser Oscar Bartle said hundreds of people attended.
"The turnout was a lot higher than expected, which was really cool. I think people have really had enough and are ready to stand up and fight back."
The mood was "really inspirational", he said.
The rally was organised in response to New Zealand First's introduction of a member's Bill to define the terms "woman" and "man" in law.
The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill announced last month proposed to define "woman" as "an adult human biological female" and "man" as "an adult human biological male", in the Legislation Act 2019.
Member's Bills are usually only debated in the House if selected at random from the ballot.
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The Spinoff
2 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Ruth Richardson's state honour is a slap in the face for the poor
The architect of 1991's 'mother of all budgets', who was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King's Birthday honours this week, did immense damage to the country's poorest and most vulnerable, writes Max Rashbrooke. In the early 1990s, two Porirua preschoolers burned to death when their state house was set alight by a candle their family had begun using after the power was cut off. They had been forced to this extremity by a National government that, obsessed by 'market forces', had decided to remove their housing subsidy and require them to pay market rents instead. This sharp rise in costs had left them unable to pay their power bill; hence the candle. Labour MP Graham Kelly caused an uproar in parliament when he attributed these deaths to National's policies – but even allowing for imponderable factors, like whether a candle falls over or not, he was in the broadest sense right. Policies that target the poor always have consequences in the end. And no one targeted the poor harder than Ruth Richardson, who on Monday was made a Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit. Alongside the market-rent reforms, Richardson is most notorious for the 1991 'mother of all budgets', which cut the benefits of some of the poorest and most vulnerable New Zealanders by up to one-quarter. In a move familiar throughout history, she decided that the burden of tackling New Zealand's (admittedly severe) budget deficit was to fall disproportionately on the poor, rather than those better able to bear it. The result was immediate: a doubling of the number of those living in the most extreme poverty – that is, on less than 40% of the typical income – from 4% in 1990 to 8% two years later. Most policies are much slower to show their effects; Richardson is among a select few who can claim to have doubled poverty overnight. The effects of this stark rise, quite apart from the pain and misery inflicted on families, have spread right throughout New Zealand. Food banks used to be virtually unknown in this country; in the 1990s they became commonplace. Unable to afford to heat their homes, or indeed pay the rent, multiple families began living under one roof, enduring the cold or huddling together for warmth. Mould and damp proliferated. Diseases like rheumatic fever, long since eliminated in other developed nations, flourished in these conditions, wrecking childhoods and ending lives prematurely. A sharp uptick in the hospitalisations of children for medical conditions – from 50 per 1,000 to 70 per 1,000 – began in 1992, just after Richardson's budget. While she was not, of course, the sole author of these misfortunes, she undoubtedly wrote much of the script. Child poverty leaves scars that later affluence never really erases. Children born into hardship have, in adulthood, twice the rate of heart conditions of those born into wealth. They also have far lower reading scores and educational results. Quite apart from being devastating in their own right, these deficits create colossal financial costs: the annual bill from child poverty in this country is estimated at anywhere between $12 billion and $21 billion. This is particularly ironic because Richardson's legacy on the right is one of financial rectitude: she is seen, in particular, as the author of the 1994 Fiscal Responsibility Act, which aimed to improve the transparency and long-term management of the government's accounts. But not only is this relatively small beer compared to the appalling damage poverty inflicts on people's lives, the long-term economic costs of increased hardship are an example of massive financial irresponsibility. Not that Richardson has ever been able to acknowledge as much. Interviewed by the academic Andrew Dean a decade ago, she denied her policies had resulted in any wider harm: 'Over time, was there a social cost? No, there was a social benefit.' That, then, is the person the New Zealand state decided to honour this week: someone who not only did immense damage to the country's poorest but is also quite disconnected from the realities of that harm. The puzzle is less – as some commentators suggested – that it took so long for her to be recognised, but rather that she has been recognised at all. Maybe, though, we should not be surprised. Over in the UK, a similar strategy of slashing government budgets and benefit payments took place under the Conservatives between 2010 and 2024. This austerity cut access to the social services on which ordinary people rely, reduced ambulance services, and sparked poverty-related 'deaths of despair'. All up, it is conservatively estimated by researchers to have caused 190,000 preventable deaths. The man most responsible for this social devastation, former chancellor George Osborne, nonetheless occupies a gilded position in British life, having moved smoothly into editing the Evening Standard newspaper and pontificating on global politics. Inflicting misery on the poor is, in short, socially acceptable as long as it is clothed in the classic establishment rhetoric of taking 'difficult' choices, 'balancing' the books and fiscal 'responsibility'. The poor may be, as the Christians say, always with us, but that does not guarantee that their lives will ever be accorded the proper respect.
The Spinoff
18 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Echo Chamber: The trouble with taking David Seymour at his word
If the Act Party leader misspoke in a forest and no one was around to hear it, would it still make a sound? Echo Chamber is The Spinoff's dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus. A long weekend stumbled into a short week back in the House, where a Mad Hatter call of 'change places!' has seen NZ First and the Act Party swap sides at the tea party. Over the weekend, some 642km north, NZ First leader Winston Peters' reins of power as deputy prime minister were handed over to Act leader David Seymour, who celebrated the occasion in typical low-key style: with an Auckland brunch for fans of David Seymour to pay their respects to David Seymour. Peters, sat in the south end of the chamber, now rests in a no man's land two seats away from Te Pāti Māori, where co-leader Rawiri Waititi shot glances to his koro from up north throughout the session. Meanwhile Seymour, at the prime minister's side, whispered sweet nothings into Christopher Luxon's ear then flipped through documents throughout the circus, with three full glasses of water at his side. Before Tuesday's question time began, Te Pāti Māori's Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke called for the House to acknowledge the 30-year anniversary of Waikato Tainui's raupatu settlement, with which only one party leader took issue. If we celebrated every single successful Treaty settlement, Peters argued, we'd be losing valuable time almost every day of the week. Labour MP Peeni Henare's unimpressed voice floated through the chamber: 'Wooooow ….' Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was first up on oral questions, and once the prime minister agreed that yes, he did stand by all of his government's statements, she went in for her kill: the funding, or lack thereof, for the government's increased KiwiSaver contributions, an alleged hole in Budget 2025 that the party has been quite happy to claim responsibility for discovering. Luxon shot down Swarbrick's claims the government had failed to budget for its own employer contributions to KiwiSaver, saying the bill would be footed through baselines. And the prime minister also didn't accept claptrap from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, nosily asking how many families had received the $250 Family Boost rebate promised last March. 'I don't have the numbers in front of me,' Luxon said, before being cut off by Labour's Willow-Jean Prime: 'Do you have them at all?' The minister for resources, Shane Jones, had spent the first 30 minutes of question time spurting his favourite slogans – 'mining!', 'fossil fuels!', 'heavy metal!' – at random, even when no one was talking about mining, fossil fuels or heavy metals. Finally, his NZ First colleague Tanya Unkovich offered him some patsies, so he could relish in the noble art of drilling a well into gas fields like those in Taranaki, and having the Crown take a 10-15% stake from these projects. 'Gas is short,' Jones started – 'not from you!' an opposition voice called – then 'talk is cheap'. The country's natural gas resources have been in decline, he declared, thanks to a 'foolish and dangerous … fateful decision of 2018 ' to ban oil exploration (Jones was indeed a minister for that Labour-led government at the time). Labour MP Kieran McAnulty, a star student of the school of standing orders, raised a point of order: that was clearly a political statement, he told the speaker, and shouldn't have been allowed. Well, I disagree with you, Gerry Brownlee replied – how could a government campaign against something and not be able to talk about it? Proving his respect for Brownlee's rulings and never-ending wish for unity among the parties, Jones began his next answer: 'Decisions riddled with woke ideology from the past government …' and the House erupted in laughter, clearly tired of such performative acclaim. Labour MP Duncan Webb was allowed to pose a question to a member of parliament rather than a minister, asking National backbencher and chair of the finance and expenditure committee Cameron Brewer why the submission window for the Regulatory Standards Bill was only open for four weeks, when the bill had a six-month reporting deadline. Parliament's left bloc has gone hard on campaigning against said bill, an Act Party classic hit, with claims that it's more controversial and damaging to Treaty obligations than the recently deceased Treaty principles bill. Mr Speaker, Brewer explained, the minister for regulation (aka Seymour) has already written to me to explain that he had 'misspoken' when the bill had its first reading on May 23. You may remember Seymour moved for the bill to be reported to the House on December 23, 'when he in fact meant to say September 23!' He'd take the minister at his word, Brewer said, as groans rippled through the House. So, Webb continued, would the committee chair bend to Seymour's demands, or follow the usual parliamentary process which asks that select committees be given six months to report back to the House? Brewer quoted former clerk David McGee's Parliamentary Practice: 'it is not uncommon for bills referred to select committee for four months to have a submissions period of four weeks'. Seymour, clearly tired of having his name and work thrown around with such indifference, rose for a point of order. When he failed to argue that there was no decision of the House to even be disregarded in this case, Seymour continued to argue with the speaker from his seat, annoying a voice on the opposition side: 'Just because you're deputy now!' Eventually, Brownlee was happy with Brewer's assertion that Seymour 'clearly misspoke', and McGee's guidance was enough to 'end the matter'. The faces of the opposition looked like they would be doing anything but, and maybe that's the trouble with taking Seymour at his word: nothing he says will ever be good enough for at least half of the entire 54th New Zealand parliament. Once question time had wrapped up, Seymour headed to Brewer's bench, perhaps passing along some further notes and corrections to misquotes. A tiny question time blip, a long weekend to celebrate his ascension to 2IC and now in the UK to take part in an Oxford Union debate on stolen land, the Act Party leader's cup still runneth over, even as his three water glasses remained untouched.
RNZ News
21 hours ago
- RNZ News
Labour buoyed by latest showing in RNZ / Reid Research poll
Labour leader Chris Hipkins is taking heart from the party's showing in the new RNZ/ Reid Research poll. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi It's "encouraging" but there's still 18 months of hard work ahead to regain the Treasury benches, Labour leader Chris Hipkins says. He believes the increases in the party support and for him as preferred prime minister are part of a trend that has shown growing support for the party since the 2023 election. Parliament's left bloc would have enough support to govern, according to the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll . The poll was taken in the seven days following the release of the Budget and in the wake of the $12.8 billion pay equity changes - which RNZ's polling also shows attracting more opposition than support . National with 38 seats loses three seats since the previous poll in March while ACT at eight seats loses four. New Zealand First gains two to have 11 seats in the new poll but it's not enough to save the coalition. It would have a total of 57 seats which is below the threshold to govern. Labour gains two seats from RNZ's last poll and is predicted to have 42, according to these results. The Greens gain two to have 14 and Te Pāti Māori gains one to have seven seats. That's 63 seats compared to the coalition's 57. Hipkins said it was "an encouraging poll result" and it showed people were disappointed with the government and the Budget. "I don't think anybody expected them to be cutting pay equity in order to make the Budget balance so I think people are expressing some dissatisfaction with that. "We've still got 18 months to go and we know in the Labour party we're going to have to work hard in that time," he told Morning Report. All of the polls were showing that Labour was rebuilding support since the last general election and it was making good progress. Hipkins was pressed on the lack of Labour policies released so far, however, he countered that the party had outlined its priorities - jobs, health and homes - and detailed policies would be released closer to the election. "We'll get a tax policy out this year. There'll be some other policies as well ... A lot of that does have to wait until you know what you're in a position to deliver on. A lot can change in 18 months." No fiscal plan could be released when the government still had another Budget to deliver prior to the 2026 Budget, he said. Hipkins said he had not changed his opinion that it was "highly unikely" Labour would work with NZ First post-election although he was not completely ruling it out. NZ First's "persecution of minorities" and "backward views on climate change" made them an unappealing coalition partner. Hipkins believed some of the ideas around tax in the Greens' alternative Budget could be looked at. However, "the scale of change the Greens are proposing to do in a rapid period of time would make that very challenging". As for Te Pāti Māori, Hipkins said closer to the election Labour would set out those parties it believed it could operate with and those it would struggle to work with. When it comes to preferred Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon's lost support since the last RNZ / Reid Research poll, down 3.1 percent. He's on 18.8 percent, below Hipkins who's up 2.3 points from March, and on 23.2 percent support. NZ First leader Winston Peters at 8.9 percent (up 1 point) recorded his highest result since 2017. Chlöe Swarbrick in fourth was at 6.9 percent (up 0.8) - a personal best and just ahead of ACT's David Seymour on 6.4 percent (down 0.4). Earlier, Luxon was dismissive of the poll results. "Look, I mean, I don't recognise the numbers. There's lots of different polls and frankly I'm just not going to comment or focus on the polls. Frankly what we're focused on is we were elected in '23 and people get to decide again in 2026. "We've done a good job, and that's why we've got to focus on the economy, law and order, and health and education." He said New Zealanders had "responded really positively" to the government's Budget, and saw the economy turning a corner. Seymour said the numbers would continue to "bounce around" but it was still a tough time for New Zealanders - and the numbers were not a reflection on the Budget. It was possible the pay equity changes were changing some voters' minds, he said, "but I also think doing what is right is what is politically popular in the long term, and even if I'm wrong about that, good policy is worth it anyway". "The fact that ACT is close to where it was on election night 18 months into a government with 18 months to go is a good foundation. We have to prove ourselves on election night, and we've got lots of time to do that." Peters refused to comment on whether his coalition partners were suffering from the handling of the pay equity changes. The next 18 months leading up to the election would show the "critical need for stability", he said, and having ruled out working with Hipkins he was "comfortable and confident in our prospects" because the Greens and Te Pāti Māori in government would be "a nightmare". Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick Photo: RNZ Swarbrick said New Zealanders wanted a sense of hope. "Things are feeling pretty bloody bleak. You know, we've got 191 New Zealanders leaving every single day, three quarters of them between the ages of 18 to 45, it's not a recipe for a flourishing country. "We had dozens and dozens of folks turn out to talk to us about our Green budget and the sense of hope that they feel that they need - the kind of building blocks that we can have for a fairer society." Te Pāti Māori's co-leader Rawiri Waititi said the poll numbers showed the party's policies and rhetoric around the government's actions were appealing to new supporters. "The kind of anti-Māori, anti-wāhine, anti-woman, anti-worker, anti-climate, anti-rainbow, anti-woke type agenda that this government is pushing at the moment also is not appealing to the people who are trying to find a place to put their political support and trying to support those who fiercely advocate for them." Explore the full results with RNZ's interactive charts .
