Bradford Sue: Budget Debate 
Bradford Sue: Budget Debate 
[Volume:654;Page:4150] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 In his Budget address last week Prime Minister John Key spoke of the burden that recession places on unemployed people and their communities. He said: “We owe them every effort to create the opportunity for a new job.” He went on to say: “Protecting the most vulnerable is a priority.” I would like to know—and the previous speaker Annette King asked as well—how that squares with the revelation that as of this Budget the Government is cutting all funding for the Ministry of Social Development’s Enterprising Communities scheme. A few years back Labour disestablished the Community Employment Group which was the last remaining part of the Government that supported capacity building and funding specifically directed to the community economic sector. One of the only remnants of the Community Employment Group’s work has been the Enterprising Communities programme which was aimed at helping the marginalised and vulnerable into work. 
Eighty projects are currently funded. The projects include schemes like Te Whangai Trust in Maramarua. The trust is a member of the Sustainable Business Network and uses paid work schemes to develop local community support for unemployed people in its region. The trust employs 14 people who grow native plants that they sell to local councils and to the Department of Conservation. The trust has excellent social as well as environmental credibility and it is building the basis of a really good economic development programme in the heart of its community. Other examples include the apprenticeship support schemes that are run through the highly respected Mayors Task Force for Jobs a trust employing intellectually impaired people a group building biking and walking tracks in the Waikato Maori tourism projects and a prison fellowship scheme that helps unemployed ex-prisoners find work. 
The economic and fiscal update attached to the Budget gives a range of scenarios for employment and unemployment prospects for New Zealand over the next few years. Options are given that range from best to worst-case scenarios. The most optimistic forecast shows the unemployment rate at 6.5 percent in 2010 at 5.9 percent in 2011 and at 5 percent in 2012. The downside forecast issued at the same time paints a very different picture with predictions of an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent in 2010 of 9.5 percent in 2011 and of 8.3 percent in 2012. Economic forecasting more than ever seems little different from the ancient art of divining omens from animal entrails or the flights of birds but all predictions in the Budget have in common the prediction that the unemployment rate is certainly expected to keep rising sharply over the next couple of years. Then for some reason—and this is where the augury comes in—the assumption is also made that the recession will begin to come to an end at that point and that by 2012 there will definitely be an upturn with a corollary drop in the unemployment rate. 
What this is based on in terms of economic social or political forecasting I have no idea as the evidence coming in from overseas leaves the impression that the recession we are looking at worldwide is one whose bottom has been far from reached and whose end is not in sight. Today General Motors entered bankruptcy. Yesterday I saw news that the state of California once seen as one of the richest places in the world and with a population of 37 million people is planning to cut all cash assistance and a lot of health assistance for the 1.3 million residents currently on welfare. Once the job losses and poverty implications resulting from these two situations alone take effect the compounding effects on the US and subsequently the world economy will be staggering. 
Lately I have not heard much chat from the Government or anyone else about the news last week that payouts to our farmers for milkfat solids have dropped to $4.55 a kilo at the same time as their production costs have continued to increase. If this trend continues in the dairy sector the implications for our economy are dire. In this context it is therefore nothing short of alarming that the Government has seen fit in the Budget to withdraw funding for one of the only schemes available to help organisations to provide jobs to some of our most vulnerable unemployed people while also providing social and environmental assistance to their communities. 
At the same time the Public Service Association estimates that the Government’s Budget reviews of the State sector have already meant about 1470 job losses making a nonsense of National’s pre-election promise to cap rather than to cut. Budget reviews and restructuring amid the mantra of lifting productivity are bound to lead to even more public servants being out of work in the months ahead. Meanwhile we have former Secretary to the Treasury Dr Graham Scott earning a healthy $2000 a day to work from home and advise Mr English where to find more job cuts in the public sector. It is instructive to compare Mr Scott’s rate of pay not only with that of the public servants whose jobs he is doing away with but also with that of all the minimum-wage workers in the private sector who are currently having their hours or even their jobs slashed when already they can barely survive on what they earn. There is a deep irony in the job losses currently impacting on the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Economic Development. These are the very two agencies that should have the task of helping the individuals and the enterprises most affected by the recession. 
On the local government front we also face the situation in Auckland where John Banks has casually remarked that it is likely that 40 percent of the current council workforce or some 2700 workers will be cut as a result of the transition to the super-city. This pronouncement has of course sent all local body workers in our area into a time of extreme insecurity about their futures. 
The Budget contains no commitment at all to employment initiatives apart from the downstream job maintenance and creation impacts of the home insulation scheme which the Green Party certainly acknowledges. Beyond that shining example however little light is on the horizon for those who cannot find work at present or for those who will sadly lose their jobs over the months and years ahead. 
This Budget is sadly lacking in a number of related areas as well. In relation to housing there is no sign of a policy initiative to address the core problems of rental housing costs rising faster than incomes at the same time that homeownership remains out of the reach of as many people as ever. As already announced although the funding for the Housing Innovation Fund has been lifted slightly that has been done at the expense of a total loss of funding for many individual groups and projects in the community housing area including its national organisation Community Housing Aotearoa. We have just heard the Minister of Housing Phil Heatley tell us that the Government will build 550 State houses over the coming year. That is less than half of the number added last year under the previous Government. The Budget is bereft of any initiatives to address the current decline in construction activity and the skill retention problem resulting from construction workers going overseas. More money is being ploughed into income-related rents and accommodation supplements but the Green Party would far rather see this money going into building more State houses faster and into support for community sector social housing initiatives. 
Although more money is going into improving aged-care facilities and increasing respite care which are both badly needed the Green Party also notes the lack of anything extra for children living in poverty. In whichever economic forecasts we look at we see that the unemployment rate will rise and with it the effect on the number of children being raised within our already very mean and lean benefit system. For example nothing has been done to remove the iniquitous and discriminatory in-work payment which provides children whose parents are fortunate enough to be in paid work with more State assistance than those whose parents are not in paid work. How ridiculous to think that some children need less support for food clothing and shelter than others! This Budget reflects the fact that National views our credit rating with Standard and Poor’s as being far more important than the welfare and well-being of low-income New Zealanders and their children. 
Unemployment is somehow being seen as just another economic indicator rather than a reflection of individual suffering and the disenfranchisement is disproportionately reflected in our Maori Pacific Island refugee and migrant communities and among older people young people and those with physical and mental impairments. There is no programme for jobs in this Budget and no vision for jobs. Sitting back and hoping for the best is no answer. It did not work in the 1990s and it will not work now. 
During the week before the Government’s Budget the Green Party released our Green New Deal—the Green Stimulus Package as a first step towards showing an alternative vision about the way that jobs could be maintained and created at the same time as meeting social and environmental needs. We would like to see $3.3 billion spent over the next 3 years on things like energy efficiency public transport protecting waterways building a lot more State houses investing in community sector housing and waste minimisation and putting resources back into building capacity in the community economic sector. This kind of investment would prepare our country for a low-carbon and comparatively low-income future which is what we all have to face up to now.