Despite modest economic growth (0.1%), unemployment is still rising, making employers who do have positions available unlikely to take on the sick, the infirm, the inexperienced, and people who can only work hours that will fit around childcare requirements. For the former two categories addressing issues with the public health system would be a better way to reduce numbers on welfare, yet the government seems to be doing the opposite; recently ending free physiotherapy, something that could allow people who have had accidents or injuries to return to work faster.
For single parents it needs to acknowledged that parenting, even when children spend 30 hours a week at school, is a full time job, and payments for single parents should not even be thought of in the same category as welfare. Since 2007 Venezuela has paid women head of households 80 per cent of the legal minimum wage for their work in the home, if a developing country in South America can do this, why not New Zealand?

Legislation making controversial changes to New Zealand’s publicly owned Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has passed its first reading in parliament by a vote of 69 to 53. The new law makes it harder for victims of sexual abuse to get ACC funded counselling, requiring them to be diagnosed with a mental injury first. This proposed change was met with wide spread protest across the country last week. When the was was passed yesterday a 4000-strong petition against the changes was delivered to Parliament and Eliana Darroch, an Auckland woman who is a member of the the End Rape Culture NOW! Collective began a hunger strike protesting the cuts.

We will not tolerate these cuts and will do everything in our power to stop them. The National Party government is to blame for most of these changes. Because of their plans to cost-cut and privatise public services, rape and sexual abuse survivors will have more hurdles to jump through to get the support they need.

The government seems to have made some concession to growing opposition movement, which includes abuse survivors, counsellors, health workers and others. ACC Minister Nick Smith has instructed the board of ACC to report on the changes regarding abuse victims at the end of six months. Psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald told the Dominion Post that this was a start but the new guidelines should be put on hold until after a thorough assessment.
Recently 500 motorcyclists protested in Nelson, under the new law their levys are set to rise 300%. Other changes include ending coverage for suicide and self-harm, stopping compensation for serious criminals and reducing payments made to injured seasonal workers. The government is also looking at opening up the scheme to competition from private insurance companies.

You look around here, people are wearing protective clothing, reflective vests, reflective jackets. We make a big effort to look after ourselves...there’s no recognition of that in the way the levies are applied at the moment

For the majority of the riders it was the first time they had protested against anything. Steve Page, president of the Route 6 Motorcycle Club said he had not given a “fat rat’s bum” about protesting for anything in the past, but the ACC levies were different. Columnist John Minto wrote that while motorcyclists have a higher accident profile, there is no evidence bike riders are more responsible for accidents they find themselves in than are car drivers.;

It’s just that bike riders are much more vulnerable in accidents. In fact there is a case for reducing ACC levies for bikes. They are more efficient with a smaller carbon footprint and we could dramatically reduce the need for more roading if a higher proportion of road users was on two wheels.

According to the Nelson Mail the protesters came from all over the South Island. After riding past Dr Smith’s Stoke headquarters, the bikes did a loop of central Nelson and then headed back to congregate in the minister’s car park. one rider was met with screams of “woo-hoo” after he did a burnout on the concrete near Dr Smith’s carport.
Other proposed changes to ACC have also come under fire, last week hundreds marched around the country against plans that could block access to ACC funded counselling for victims of sexual abuse.

Dr Kim McGregor who did a study of sexual abuse counselling for her PhD and wrote the existing ACC guidelines, addressed the Auckland rally in her capacity as a therapist. According to The Standard she has promised to resign as an ACC registered therapist if these new guidelines are implemented. North Shore psychotherapist Christine Hatcher who was on the Auckland march said she would not take any more ACC-funded clients because it was against her code of ethics “to put survivors of sexual abuse through more trauma than they have already been through”

The government initially had difficulties finding enough votes in parliament required to make the changes, the libertarian ACT party wants legislation to open up ACC to competition from the private sector, and have been negotiating with the National party to get this policy enacted in law. While this was going on however, the Maori Party, which at first opposed the changes, decided to support the required legislation in its first reading. Since then, co leader Tariana Turia has said they will “not rule out” supporting the ACT policy of opening ACC to competition.

New Zealand police are now treating Aisling’s disappearance as an abduction and have appealed for an Asian woman, who was seen walking her dog near the house at the time the toddler went missing, to come forward. However...the woman has not been identified.

It didn’t take long for statements like that to induce an implicitly racist moral panic; “Asians do love little kids,” wrote one poster on the Real Women forums, “when my daughter was living overseas in an Asian country I did notice that they seemed to have a great fascination with small European children”. Last Friday, an Auckland City Council parks officer followed a woman and her daughter around the Domain concerned that the little girl was Aisling. He told The New Zealand Herald “she was Asian with long dark hair and the girl was European.” Police responded to so many incidents like this they actually warned the public not to persecute “Asian women walking down the road”!

No doubt the most appalling part of the media circus was when television psychic Deb Webber got involved. First, TVNZ -the country’s public broadcaster- invited her to appear on morning news programme Breakfast then later that day at a press conference, TVNZ reporter Amy Kelley told police that Ms Webber had given them information about what had happened to the toddler, and demanded to know what they planned to do about it! TVNZ then approached a friend of Aisling’s family to suggest that they have a meeting the self described “metaphysical researcher”. Could it be that TVNZ staff have a strong faith in the paranormal? More likely they are exploiting a tragedy to promote an up coming tour by the star of Sensing Murder, which airs on the same network.

When Auckland bus drivers were at a standstill negotiating with their employer NZ Bus, a company owned by Infratil, they took a creative form of industrial action; doing everything their contracts required, like preforming safety checks on buses and taking the toilet breaks they are entitled too. The company responded to the action, known as a “work-to-rule” by locking out the drivers. Today was the sixth day the drivers were locked out. 80,000 passengers have been affected by buses being taken off the road in New Zealand’s largest city. Public support for the drivers has been high however, possibly because of actions by the drivers such as offering to take children to school for free- an offer the company rejected calling it “mischievous”.

New Zealand Herald columnist Brian Rudman wrote yesterday “Hard as it might be for the bankers to fathom, the 80,000 passengers inconvenienced by the lockout are sympathetic to the drivers, not to those trying to label them troublemakers.” With the public on the side of the drivers, it is unlikely that Infratil could have maintained the lockout, however it seems it was the Auckland Regional Transport Authority who were finally responsible for ending it. ARTA threatened to start cancelling contracts worth over 58.5 million a year to NZ Bus, under the direction of Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee, who today told the New Zealand Herald that the effect of the lockout has spread to harassed parents who had to take time off work to drive children to and from school on the first day of term yesterday.

In an article published in the New Zealand Medical Journal today a number of of senior health professionals call for New Zealand to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to combat “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. Dr Alex Hamilton of the recently formed Climate and Health Group noted that in addition to the harms of inaction, the substantial health benefits of action should be taken into account in decision making. For example a low carbon transport system, utilising walking, cycling and public transport, would reduce road traffic crashes, pedestrian and cyclist deaths and urban air pollution.

A reduction of animal based food products, necessary in a low fossil-fuel society would result in less saturated fat and meat in the average diet, reducing the incidence of cardiovascular disease and bowel cancer, as well as obesity. Improved energy efficiency in residential homes would reduce mortality and morbidity from the extremes of heat and cold. A significant change for a country with one of the highest winter mortality rates in the developed world. The savings in health care costs would reduce the total cost to society from taking strong action to mitigate climate change.

The Public Health Association (PHA) supported the views of the Climate and Health Group. acting National Executive Officer, Keriata Stuart stated in a press release;

Without a reduction in global carbon dioxide levels, we could see an increase in vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever; a greater number of severe storms and floods, which can cause injury and death and trigger infectious disease outbreaks; an increase in illness and death from heat stress during heat waves; and an increase in the risk of infectious disease transmission if greater numbers of environmental refugees move from Asia and the Pacific to New Zealand.

Phreatoicids were surprisingly abundant when present; on Ruapuke Island in Foveaux Strait, for example, densities were estimated at over 200 per square metre. On Stewart Island, phreatoicids were common close to Oban township, as well as the remote Toitoi Flats wetland and other locations. Dense populations were found in several modified habitats, notably in drainage channels downstream of Bayswater Peatland Scenic Reserve near Otautau in Southland, amongst submerged, dead leaves of introduced grasses around road culverts on several roads in Southland, and on Macrocarpa tree roots in one drainage ditch.

Phreatoicids have been described as “ghosts of Gondwana”, unchanged for over 350 million years, phreatoicids date back to the time when the islands that make up New Zealand were part of the great southern land mass known as Gondwana. Phreatocids are also found in South Africa and India which were also part of that landmass. Dr Graham Fenwick, NIWA’s Assistant Regional Manager in Christchurch, stated in a press release that these creatures play a major role in cleansing the region’s groundwater, keeping drinking water naturally pure. Their high abundances prove that they can survive in the face of considerable human changes to the landscape, so long as wetlands, in their various forms, are kept intact.

The Press reports that some central Christchurch retailers are claiming that customers will “abandon the city centre for suburban shopping malls” if the city council goes ahead with a plan to increase tree planting and cycle lanes. The reason? The loss (due to the trees) of 105 parking spaces in Madras and Barbados streets, or “nearly half of the current spaces” this sounds like a lot until you read at the bottom of the article that Christchurch has more than 875 parking spaces per 1000 inner-city employees, more than three times the amount of an average European city.
Central City Business Association chairman Anthony Gough said the plans were bad for the central city; “Car parking is critical to the success of businesses in those areas. It will hurt them pretty badly,” he said. Gough only speaks for a cabal of retailers and property developers however, and he can’t claim to represent the views of the wider community. One stretch of Madras street that will be altered under the plan runs along side the campus of Christchurch Polytechnic. The central city is a place for study as well as shopping, and no doubt many students who commute on bicycles will benefit from a dedicated cycle lane. That same stretch of Madras street is also on the route of a free bus service.

While its dubious that retailers would be negatively effected at all- As Paul de Spa of the Spokes cycling group pointed out “Cars don’t spend money, people do”, a small loss in profits seems like a small price to pay for the social goods of reduced traffic congestion, improved safety for cyclists and pedestrians, and a reduction in carbon emissions that will result from more possibilities for alternative transport. A likely outcome once the council has collected public submissions will be the same plan minus the tree planting, this will keep the car parks, but reduce some of the other benefits of the plan as cars will need to cross cycle lanes to park (less safety) and there will be less incentive to take public transport into the central city.

The decision to leave had been “deeply painful” but she had become disillusioned after missing out on the co-leadership of the party to Metiria Turei on May 30.

Bradfords’ time in parliament spans over a decade. She cited the repeal of section 59 of the crimes act- which gave parents the defence of ‘reasonable force’ when on trial for child abuse, as her greatest achievement. That law change won her praise from child advocacy organisations, and an award from the New Zealand Psychological Association. However, opposition was strong, Bradford received death threats and the religious right successfully organised a (non-binding) referendum on the law, framing it as “anti-smacking” and gaining a majority of votes against the repeal, albeit on a very low turn out.

Those in the organised labour movement will remember a different legacy that Bradford has left the country with. A members bill she put forward resulted in the end of youth pay rates, a discriminatory system where young people could be paid less for doing the same job as older workers. James Sleep, convener for the Youth Union Movement said in a press release;

Over Sue’s long career inside and outside Parliament, she has shown a fierce belief in young New Zealanders. On behalf of young workers I sincerely thank Sue Bradford and look forward to working with her as she continues her advocacy outside of Parliament.

Her replacement in parliament is Aucklander Dave Clendon, a ’sustainable business advisor’ this shows the contradictions in the Green Party, between the advocates for workers and those who support the side of ‘ethical’ and ’sustainable’ business. Sadly, the party appears to be increasingly made up the the latter, and the working class continues to lose representation in the house.