Daily Archives: May 25, 2022

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is capping off her trip to Japan by reuniting with a home-stay sister who stayed with her family over three decades ago.

Madoka Watanabe, now 46, visited New Zealand on an exchange student programme when she was about 14, and stayed with Arderns family.

Ardern was 10 at the time and living in the Waikato, and the pair have not seen each other since.

They were reunited at the start of an event at the New Zealand Embassy in Tokyo on Friday.

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Henry Cooke/Stuff/Stuff

Jacinda Ardern with her former homestay sister and her husband.

I grew up to be taller than you, Ardern remarked as they were reunited.

Arderns mother had kept the details of the exchange students through the years, and officials managed to track the sister down ahead of Arderns trip to Tokyo, her second visit to Japan as prime minister.

The prime minister said her parents had insisted that Watanabe and her family be invited back to New Zealand a visit that would not be possible ahead of May 2, when the border reopens to tourists from visa-waiver countries like Japan.

Watanabe replied - through a translator - that she would like to visit.

Supplied

A photo of Watanabe and the Ardern family when she was staying. Ardern is on the left in pink, with father Ross and Laurell and Louisa.

She said her favourite memory of New Zealand was visiting an orchard and eating an apple straight from the tree.

Ardern said the orchard was at the back of their property and they had also tried to get Watanabe to drive a tractor.

Ardern is leaving Japan for New Zealand on Saturday after her first overseas trip since the start of the pandemic. She spent two days in Singapore and full days in Japan.

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Jacinda Ardern reunited with Japanese homestay sister after 32 years ...

New Zealands prime minister Jacinda Ardern says her countrys swift change to gun laws after the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch was a pragmatic response, where we saw something that wasnt right and we acted on it.

The prime minister was speaking as her visit to the United States coincided with the mass killing of 19 children at a school in Uvalde, Texas.

Ardern appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which was filmed shortly after the Uvalde shooting. When I watch from afar and see events such as this today, its not as a politician. I see them just as a mother, an emotional Ardern said. Im so sorry for what has happened here.

Colbert referred to the aftermath of the 15 March 2019 mosque shootings, where 51 people were killed by a white supremacist, saying: Immediately thereafter the New Zealand parliament took action to remove guns from the streets.

He asked: Why New Zealand was able to do that, when we cant so much as pass universal background checks how did New Zealanders get that done?

Ardern said New Zealanders are a very pragmatic people.

We saw something that wasnt right and we acted on it, and I can only speak to that experience, she said.

When we saw something like that happen, everyone said never again, and so it was incumbent on us as politicians to respond to that.

Now, we have legitimate needs for guns in our country, for things like pest control and to protect our biodiversity but you dont need a military-style semi-automatic to do that.

In the wake of the 2019 shooting, New Zealand banned almost all semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. The law change was passed near-unanimously, with a single dissenting vote. Speaking at the time, Ardern said: I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country.

Ardern told Colbert New Zealands current gun control situation was imperfect and there was still work to be done.

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New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern responds to Texas school shooting - The Guardian US

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

A change in government in Australia often foreshadows a change in New Zealand too.

The electoral success of the independent "Teal" candidates is a warning to politicians to take climate change seriously, but the killer issue was inflation.

On the eve of the election, the Roy Morgan economic confidence survey revealed a majority of Australians were pessimistic and expecting inflation.

The Roy Morgan survey for New Zealand shows we are even more pessimistic and have even higher inflationary expectations.

Governments are rarely re-elected when the majority of voters are pessimistic about the economy and inflation.

Last week will prove crucial for the electoral prospects of the Labour/Green Government. It included the release of the Government's Emissions Reduction Plan and Grant Robertson's fourth "Wellbeing Budget".

The Government's climate change response is a hodgepodge of spending. Included in the initiatives are proposals that have nothing to do with the climate, such as a change to NCEA and tertiary education, unemployment insurance, tikanga programmes and so on. The big winner from the $3 billion package is corporate New Zealand.

James Shaw, the minister responsible, was unable to explain why the Climate Change Commission's recommendations have been largely ignored. A headline on a comment piece on the Herald website saying "James Shaw is toast" summed up the environmental movement's reaction.

If the Australian election is a guide, next election a new environmental party will contest for the climate change vote.

The reaction to the Budget was also a disappointment. At a 30-year high, inflation is the number one issue.

As late as March, Jacinda Ardern was on breakfast TV denying that the cost of living is a crisis. Grant Robertson has rejected the Reserve Bank governor's advice that to tame inflation, along with central banks tightening monetary policy, governments must also exercise fiscal restraint.

Although it is clear that inflation is not transitory, Robertson refuses to take the tough decisions needed to combat rising prices. The Finance Minister has proceeded with record spending. He admits his budget will be inflationary.

We have the lunacy of the central bank applying the brakes and the Government the accelerator.

We also have the madness of trying to reduce the effects of inflation by yet more spending.

When the Government announced a "temporary" easing of fuel excise duty and a "temporary" public transport subsidy, this column predicted that it would find both measures difficult to remove. So it has proved. The Budget announced further "temporary" extensions.

No government has been able to end the totally unjustifiable free ferry trips to Waiheke Island for Gold Card holders. Come November, why would the Government be able to take away $27 a week from 2.1 million voters? By then, many mortgagors will be experiencing financial hardship.

The Government is borrowing from the future to increase today's incomes. It is unsustainable.

Treasury's prediction that inflation will exceed the Reserve Bank mandate through to the election raises many questions:

Has Labour abandoned the Policy Targets Agreement whereby the Reserve Bank is required to keep inflation between 1 per cent and 3 per cent?

Will Wednesday's Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Statement will reveal if the bank is following its mandate, or whether it is just trying to moderate inflation?

How credible is Grant Robertson's claim that inflation has peaked?

No union can accept pay rises of less than inflation. And a business that does not pass on costs risks going broke.

Inflation has given the Government record tax revenue. Now inflation will reduce what that revenue can buy. The telephone number Labour has thrown at health will be eaten away by inflation.

Labour is losing economic credibility and National is gaining it. When Christopher Luxon became leader, he could have chosen a rainbow of issues. When the Government was claiming inflation was transitory, the Opposition leader made the smart decision to focus on the cost of living.

The polls now say National is more competent to handle the economy.

Act also rose in the latest poll. Act has put forward a costed alternative Budget, and the party has said where it would reduce government spending.

National has yet to nominate a single government ministry that would not be missed. In Australia, the unwillingness of both the Liberals and Labor to take tough decisions saw both parties' primary vote fall. There is a message in that for National.

Parliament is closed this week so Labour can sell the Budget and the Greens their climate response package. Already both have failed to convince a key constituency, their own activists.

There is not a single Labour Party member who bought raffle tickets so a Labour Government could provide temporary income support.

There is not one Green Party member who door-knocked so Green MPs could provide corporate welfare.

Enthusiasm is something the polls cannot measure but it is vital. Enthusiasm motivates volunteers to donate, door-knock, deliver pamphlets, enrol and vote.

A UN job must be looking more and more attractive to Ardern.

- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and former member of the Labour Party.

See the article here:

Richard Prebble: Why Aussie election is bad news for Ardern - New Zealand Herald

It comes after the Prime Minister was forced to defend the Government's one off payment aimed at helping low and middle-income Kiwis earlier in the show.

Last week Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced the 2022 Budget - which included a one-off $350 payment for the roughly 2.1 million Kiwis who earn less than $70,000 a year.

The payment is one of several measures introduced by the Government to try to mitigate high inflation and the ever-increasing cost of living.

But the payment was attacked by the Opposition, which highlighted Treasury advice that warned against the payment and described it as a "poor mechanism for supporting households with a longer-term problem".

The policy is part of the Government's $1 billion response to skyrocketing inflation in the Budget.

It says Treasury "recommended against progressing a broad-based payment, instead recommending investigating a more targeted form of support to lower-income households".

But Ardern defended the policy and its timeline saying it was a short term measure aimed at helping Kiwis struggling with the cost of living crisis.

She acknowledged the $350 payment won't solve everything but said it's designed to "take the hard edges" off.

"We know it is not a solution for everything but it is designed to help Kiwis get through the latter part of the year where we expect inflation to start easing."

The Prime Minister also hit out at the National Party, saying the Government decided to introduce the payment because it won't be inflationary, unlike National's proposed tax cuts.

"The reason we have decided to do something that is targeted and short term is because Treasury also raised their potential for the payment, if it was long term, to have an inflationary impact - to actually make the problem worse. We didn't want to do that either.

"That's why unlike the National Party their proposal gives less to lower and middle-income New Zealanders but also would be inflationary because it is not targeted in [the] short term so that's why we designed this alternative."

The National Party is proposing increasing the tax thresholds resulting in tax cuts. But the policy has been criticised because the richest Kiwis would save thousands a year while most minimum wage workers would only get a few extra dollars a week.

Read more:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Kiwis will likely have to wait until next year for wage growth to exceed inflation - Newshub

Nazanin Tabatabaee/AP

Australia has said so long to ScoMo.

ANALYSIS: Not even two years ago Scott Morrison was riding high on the back of Covid-19. But as the results from the Australian federal election rolled in last night they issued a stark warning for New Zealand Labour: beware the perils of Covid incumbency.

Leading into the poll yesterday, the polls were pointing to a victory for the Australian Labor Party and its leader, Anthony Albanese.

Both leaders were very unpopular, but Morrisons personal popularity had taken a dive in the latest Newspoll, published by The Australian newspaper on Friday. Albanese was tracking at -5% net favourability while Morrison was -13% net.

The reasons given for ScoMos unpopularity are many and varied, including the fact that the centre-right Liberal-National Coalition that he leads have been in Government for nine years across three separate prime ministers.

READ MORE:* Australian election 2022: Anthony Albanese and Labor oust PM Scott Morrison * Asylum seeker boat stopped off Christmas Island as Morrison trumpets border security on election day* Australian election 2022: Democracy sausage under threat as millions vote early

Perhaps in a sign of desperation, Morrison revealed when he went to vote that an asylum seeker boat had been intercepted off Australian waters. Australias hard-nosed border policy has been a political asset for the Coalition for years.

The issues, however, are brutally similar to those being faced by Labour here in New Zealand: post-Covid inflation, supply shortages, high fuel prices and a numbing tiredness in an electorate sick of Covid-19s rules regulations, disruption and privations.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Voters smiled on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her management of the pandemic but has the tide turned?

However, because of the relative size of Australias economy, those pinch points which are being seen in New Zealand are less acute, so far at least. Even the Reserve Bank of Australia, which hiked its official cash rate target to 0.35% is still a way shy of Adrian Orrs cash rate of 1.5%.

Courtesy of Covid, Morrison, as with Jacinda Ardern, became overexposed with an electorate who first saw him as a decisive leader, to one who was increasingly seen as shifty and do-nothing. Voters can be fickle beasts: in the broad scheme of things, Australias management of Covid-19 was not particularly better or worse than New Zealands. Politicians tend to get thanked for jobs well done before people ask: whats next?

Covid-19 threw out the decades-long rules of conventional politics. Lockdown restrictions, massive debt run-ups, wage support and the like may have saved hospital systems from being overrun, but for Morrison, the political bill has come due.

The reality is that Australia's prosperity has been bankrolled by the huge capital formation that took place during the mining investment boom of the 2000s and early 2010s. Iron ore, coking coal and liquefied natural gas exports underwrite state government Budgets and the Australian federal tax take.

This has been the case since John Howards prime ministership, which ended in 2007. Morrison, the ultimate political operator, has done little to improve on this situation.

The only creative policy pitched during this election campaign has been allowing first-time homebuyers to take up to $A50,000 in superannuation out to put towards a home.

Mark Baker/AP

Outgoing Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded defeat overnight.

Australian Labor, the creator of the super system, which is largely controlled by union-controlled industry super funds, is dead against the idea.

For New Zealand, the result victory for Labor and Anthony Albanese is neither particularly good or bad news.

The likely defining aspect of the relationship over the coming years will cover geo-strategic issues: the rules-based international order, managing China's rise and furtive forays into the Pacific, and the war in Ukraine.

The whole campaign has been a doleful affair. After losing in 2019 with loads of ambitious left-wing policies, Labor this time took a small target strategy: the ScoMo lite.

And, at the time this went to print, it looks to have paid off, though the rise of the Greens and Independents in key seats revealed a level of unease with both the major parties.

But it does sound a warning for the Government here. Australia has been more or less well-governed through Covid, as has New Zealand. But with economic storm clouds gathering, a middling Budget and after two years of frenetic Government and relentless media exposure, the public here could be tiring as well.

Read the original:

What the Australian election could be telling Jacinda Ardern - Stuff

Rallies have been held across the country on Monday to put pressure on the Government for better pay for care and support workers - including outside the Prime Minister's Mt Albert office.

Many of the 65,000 workers across the country are earning little over the minimum wage and staff retention and recruitment are getting impossible - especially as Australia beckons with better pay and working conditions.

They chanted and rallied for more pay. Low wages and workforce shortages are pushing many care and support workers to breaking point.

What looked like 100 care workers stood across the road from Jacinda Ardern's office behind a long barrier made out of road cones.

An E t union spokesperson told Newshub the decision for holding the rally outside the Prime Minister's office was because she is the highest decision-maker.

Mental Health support worker Christie Cox said the sector is running on a "baseline of burnout and emotional exhaustion".

Public Service Association's Tracie Palmer said better pay needs to come now.

"We're hearing that people are borrowing money to get petrol in their car, to go to work, we need to pay these people properly."

They're a team of 65,000 looking after some of the highest-needs in the country - those dealing with addiction, old age, mental health, disabilities and patients on palliative care.

They are the worst-paid sector working in health and their pay rates, set by law, are about to expire.

They want a $7 increase per hour, but the Government has offered 70 cents.

"It's shocking, it's not even half of inflation and it's not enough to keep us in the jobs that we love," Cox added.

Many of those who rallied in Wellington today share the same disappointment.

"It just guts me, there is nothing more important than this work," one said.

"The bottom rate is now lower than the living wage, bear in mind many of these workers are part-time, it's largely women," another told Newshub.

There are fears if the pay doesn't increase sufficiently, many will leave the sector or travel abroad. Some employers already have a 20 percent vacancy rate.

"Passion does not pay my bills. I love my job with everything that I have but it doesn't afford me the ability to care for myself," Cox said.

The sector said they're running out of time to keep and recruit staff to look after some of this country's most vulnerable.

Read more:

Care and support workers rally outside Jacinda Ardern's Auckland office in nationwide protest for better pay - Newshub