Mana | Movement of the People

Eliminating Poverty – Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, Otara | Internet MANA

A campaign to Eliminate Poverty, Feed the Kids, build more houses, and create thousands of new jobs, was outlined by Internet MANA at a public meeting in Otara this evening.

When MANA and the Internet Party first sat down to talk together, one of the very first platforms we agreed on was the need to build a future of hope and social justice for all.

Making sure that every child was ready and able to learn because they were being well fed, that every family had a decent home to live in, and that there were jobs available on a decent wage for all those ready and able to work.

A BACKGROUND TO RISING POVERTY

The reality is we are in a crisis of increasing inequality that has pushed child poverty to record levels, a crisis that demands our full attention and commitment.

More than a quarter of a million children are living in poverty in Aotearoa, and 100,000 of them are going to school hungry every day.

Child poverty is costing us an estimated $8 billion a year – in health costs as we deal with rising Third World diseases in Aotearoa, in justice system costs as young people disengage, and in lost skills and productivity as potential goes untapped.

30,000 New Zealand families are now officially listed as homeless – living in cars, cowsheds, cockroach-infested caravans, and jammed into garages or three or four families per house. Home ownership is now completely out of the reach of these and tens of thousands of other families.

Unemployment has continued to rise with fewer jobs available now than in 2008, wages have continued to fall to the point where 40% of children who live in poverty have parents in paid work, and three out of four New Zealanders now earn less than the average wage.

The free market policies introduced by Labour and ramped up by National, have given us nothing more than 30 years of lost assets, high unemployment, falling real wages, and rocketing levels of homelessness.

In fact, never before in the history of this country, has so much poverty been imposed on so many people over such a short time, as under the current National-ACT-United Future-Māori Party government.

Māori and Pacific whanau continue to be the hardest hit of all.

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND A FUTURE WITH HOPE

That’s why Internet MANA has committed to a range of policies which aim to eliminate poverty through simple and direct action – feeding the kids, a programme to build 10,000 new state houses a year, and a right to work programme that will get everyone back to work.

MANA leader Hone Harawira said his Feed the Kids bill would provide a comprehensive food-in-schools programme in low decile schools throughout the country. He also said that the bill was already live in Parliament and with the support of a number of other parties “was ready to be passed into legislation at the first sitting of Parliament after the election”

Internet Party leader Laila Harre told the meeting that Internet MANA was also ready to announce a plan to create 100,000 new jobs, and pledged that anyone ready and willing to work would get a job under the Right To Work job creation programme.

MANA leader Hone Harawira said that many of the new jobs would come in New Zealand’s biggest state house building programme in 50 years.

Social justice and a future with hope are like full employment – they shouldn’t be dreams. We must commit to making them our daily reality. That is what Internet MANA is offering.

FEED THE KIDS

Comprehensive food-in-schools programmes are well-established in countries around the world. There is a wealth of research outlining the health and education benefits of feeding the kids at school.

Any teacher will tell you that kids who come to school without a proper breakfast are more likely to be disruptive, disconnected from study, and less likely to learn.

Any principal will tell you that they would rather have their teachers focusing on teaching than disciplining unruly students, or as is often the case, running down the road to buy their kids something to eat because they know a child that is fed is a child that is ready to learn.

Children from low-decile communities often come to school without having had a proper breakfast for the simple reason that their parents simply don’t have enough money to pay for everything they need (40% of children who live in poverty have parents in paid work).

Those kids are also likely to suffer from greater health problems, and will be more susceptible to picking up habits like stealing food, bullying and lying, which will stigmatise them throughout their young lives and carry over into their adult years.

Indeed kids themselves have identified hunger as their number one issue and food in schools as the solution.

An estimated 100,000 kids go to school hungry every day in Aotearoa, and programmes like KickStart and KidsCan only feed about 20% of them, leaving about 80,000 kids not catered for – literally. Much more needs to be done.

Over the last 2 years, MANA has helped to build a strong coalition of groups to support its Feed the Kids policy. This calls for the introduction of government-funded breakfast and lunch programmes in all decile 1-4 schools.

The success of that coalition, the Community Campaign for Food in Schools, which includes more than 30 health, education, children’s rights and poverty groups, churches, Māori organisations, and unions, was evidenced in a TVNZ poll last year showing that 70% of New Zealanders support a government-funded food in schools programme.

The Feed the Kids initiative was also the only policy issue in the top 10 news stories of 2013.

FEED THE KIDS is Internet MANA’s number one priority.

HOUSING

Housing has been a hot topic this election, but the so-called “affordable housing” policies of other parties don’t connect with those who can hardly afford to rent, let alone buy, a warm dry home.

National has pushed low-income earners out of state housing into the private rental market, leaving tens of thousands of families homeless and others living in cramped, over-priced damp and draughty houses, unable to afford power and food each week.

Home ownership remains a distant dream for these families. Most policies on offer are designed around the assumption of average wages. Only 1 in 4 actually earns this much or more.

Internet MANA will provide quality rent / rent-to-buy homes for low-income families. We will tackle house inflation to make it easier for first home buyers to purchase a home. The biggest state house building programme in fifty years will flow through to lower private sector rents and directly affect house price inflation.

Internet MANA will:

1. Make it a duty of government to abolish homelessness, to ensure that every family is housed in secure, safe, and affordable accommodation;
2. Reinstate Housing New Zealand as the sole manager of all state housing;
3. Renovate or replace existing state houses;
4. Launch Building Houses, Building Pride to build 30,000 new state houses in the next parliamentary term for low income families to rent or rent-to-buy;
5. Fix rentals at 25% of income for tenants in state, local government, community and iwi social housing, and develop a rent control system for the private sector;
6. Introduce a warrant of fitness for all rental housing, including in the private sector;
7. Provide low-interest loans for Māori first home buyers and those wanting to build on Māori land to lift the level of Māori home ownership;
8. Partner with Kiwibank to provide low-interest Home Ownership loans to low and middle income individuals and families taking advantage of the lower cost of borrowing for the government than for individuals;
9. Impose a capital gains tax on property speculators to keep prices down;
10. Prevent the sale of existing homes to non-New Zealand residents.

RIGHT TO WORK

Internet MANA is committing to the goal of full employment to ensure every family has at least one working income-earner and young people are in work, education or training. People want jobs. People feel they are contributing to their family’s success when they work. They contribute to the success of our wider society when they are doing so. And the more that people are working, the less the country has to spend on welfare, crime and ill health.

High youth unemployment is a national scandal. There can be no more important task for society than making sure young people are connected to meaningful work or education.

We have confronted the reality of unemployment, particularly for young people, and found workable solutions to create new jobs that fill social and environmental as well as economic needs and goals.

We will make the goal of full employment a priority for government spending.

The Right to Work includes:

1. A job guarantee for young people, including solo parents; workers of all ages who have been unemployed for more than a year or live in communities with a high rate of unemployment; and students over the summer break.
2. The provision of fulltime and part time jobs, depending on the circumstances of the worker, for up to 18 months in a range of community-based community economic and social development, and environmental enhancement work. The potential of these programmes to become a sustainable source of local employment in social and community enterprise will be actively supported. These will include, for example:
3. Environmental Improvement to enhance conservation, environment, land management and water quality practices, and waste management;
4. Community Service to help in the maintenance and upgrade of local schools, hospitals, marae, old people’s homes and kaumatua and kuia flats, community gardens, sports clubs and grounds, and community recreational and arts facilities;
5. Digital development to develop digital communities including ICT support and the development of digital tools for community organisations; and support for community, home and school based digital education and training. This is a chance for “digital natives” to build their own skills and to transfer their skills to others.
6. Renovation of existing state houses and the Building Houses, Building Pride programme. This will provide thousands of apprenticeships and jobs in the housing industry – carpentry, cabinetmaking, carpet-laying, electrical work, plumbing, gib-stopping, painting and wallpapering, roofing, and associated trades;

Internet MANA will also reform government procurement processes to give local producers and service providers a leading edge in providing services and products to government.

Our broader economic development approach, including trade policy, will prioritise the processing of NZ resources in NZ to keep work and jobs here at home.

FUNDING THE FUTURE

Funding any policy is dependent on a party’s priorities.

1. Should we spend money on trying to get a seat on the UN Security Council … or on ensuring every child in our own country is well fed and ready to learn?
2. Was the $100 million we have already lost on the America’s Cup a worthwhile investment … or should we have spent it building homes for the homeless?
3. Was the bailout of $1.7 billion for South Canterbury Finance shareholders a worthwhile expenditure of taxpayer funds … when we could have used that money to get our people back to work in their communities, and building a new digital future for us all?

To fund our proposals requires us to be innovative, to be bold, and to be willing to restructure our tax arrangements to ensure the tax burden is shared more evenly and more money is available to address areas of critical need.

Therefore we will immediately:

1. Raise the marginal tax rate – for high income earners
2. Introduce a robust capital gains tax
3. Replace the Emissions Trading Scheme with a carbon tax with compensation for low income households
4. Redirect some of the ACC reserves

Then we will undertake a fundamental review of our tax system with the aim of ensuring it is broad and genuinely progressive. We will engage experts and consult communities on the best way to do this, including consideration of:

1. A financial transactions tax on the repatriated profits of multinationals, currency speculation and other financial movements
2. Abolishing GST or removing it from some products and services

• The reintroduction of death duties for large estates

1. A Universal Basic Income as a fairer and more efficient alternative to welfare benefits
2. Returning ACC to a pay-as-you go model and redirecting further reserves to health and social programmes

OUR CHALLENGE

Eliminating Poverty is a major challenge. It is not one that we take lightly, but it is a challenge that we take up with pride, because we have built our policy not around managing dependency, but around challenging ourselves and our people to lift ourselves out of that dependency, and setting it aside once and for all.