MIL Email Publisher (NZ)

The government’s decision to sanction Israeli cabinet ministers is a cynical diversionary gesture, according to the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.

New Zealand has joined the UK, Australia, Canada, and Norway in banning the entry of Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

PSNA Co-Chair, Maher Nazzal, says the just announced move is simply to placate New Zealanders angry at the government’s complicity with the mass killing of Palestinians and deliberate starvation of Occupied Gaza.

“The New Zealand government statement was quite explicit that the sanctions were ‘not designed to sanction the wider Israeli government’ of which Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are ministers.”

“The New Zealand government's official statement is laying the blame for Israeli barbarity on just two ministers.  Our government is pretending that they alone are responsible for the military violence in the Gaza Strip, and Israel's annexation of Palestinian land, expanding settlements, and forced displacement.”

“All these war crimes are supported and stated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.  These measures are all being carried out by the Israeli government.  These two ministers are quite rabid, but they are not just freelancers or ‘bad apples’.”

“Netanyahu himself is wanted for trial on war crimes charges, so why does he escape the travel ban?”

 Nazzal says Ben-Gvir and Smotrich would never plan to come to New Zealand anyway.

“The last time such an individual visited in 2006 the Auckland District Court issued a warrant for his arrest to face war crime charges.” (That was Israeli General Moshe Ya’alon – the ‘Butcher of Qana’.  The warrant was quashed by the then Attorney-General Michael Cullen)

 “Even if the government sanctioned the entire Israeli cabinet, it would be meaningless.”

“Israel has made Gaza hell on earth for Palestinians, and is making it worse by the hour.  We should be cutting trade ties – including military technology, which might be finding its way to Israel, or sending up satellites from Mahia used by Israel to spy on Gaza.

“New Zealand has bilateral agreements with Israel over science and movie-making.  They should stop.”

“The government needs to ban Israeli soldiers coming here for genocide holidays, instead of Winston Peters going out of his way to welcome them.”

“And it goes without saying that the Israeli ambassador should be booted out.”

Nazzal says the forced starvation in Gaza has reached a crisis point.

“The choice for the international community is stark.  Let tens of thousands starve to death in the next few weeks, or impose a no-fly zone over Gaza and provide military protection for UNRWA aid convoys.”

“In that context, by limiting the travel options for two Israeli politicians our government feels like it’s conveying a message of  “Look busy – New Zealanders are angry, we must be seen to be doing something, but really,  we don’t care.”

Maher Nazzal

Co-Chair PSNA

New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi Secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges has taken the pay equity fight to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The ILO is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards.

“I spoke about the recent pay equity changes at the ILO to highlight that Christopher Luxon’s Government has abandoned what was world-leading pay equity legislation,” said Ansell-Bridges.

“It was important to inform the 187 member states that despite not being signalled in the last election, reforms to severely undermine the legislation were passed under urgency without any consultation with workers or their unions.

“Overnight this world-leading system was gutted and what remained in its place is a series of roadblocks, impossible thresholds and obstacle courses masquerading as pay equity.

“180,000 workers, mostly women, many of whom are some of the most vulnerable and lowest paid workers in New Zealand, had their claims cancelled and years of work thrown away.

“Our response to massive undervaluation of pay in female-dominated industries must be how do we fix this, not how do we shirk these costs, having benefited so long from underpaying women.

“We could once be proud on the world stage for making progress towards correcting this blatant sexism – it is shameful that we now have a government that has such low regard for the right to be free from gender discrimination.

“I assured the conference that the union movement in Aotearoa New Zealand will continue to push for a genuine pay equity system and will not rest until women’s work is properly valued and workers everywhere are paid equitably regardless of their gender,” said Ansell-Bridges.

Source: World Vision

Rangatahi across New Zealand are gearing up to tackle a range of unique tasks for the World Vision 40 Hour Challenge this weekend (13-15 June). 

The nation’s largest youth fundraising event kicks off this weekend and is encouraging participants to go offline for 40 hours to raise funds for hungry children in Solomon Islands. 
  

A rite of passage for young New Zealanders, the World Vision 40 Hour Challenge, gives rangatahi a platform to champion important causes and raise funds for those in need, while putting themselves to the test with a unique or difficult challenge. 

There is no shortage of creativity in the challenges that will be undertaken for 40 hours this weekend, including:  

• Living in a cramped dinghy  

• Speaking only Shakespearian English  

• Making 400 paper cranes 

• Cooking 500 meals 

• Running 100 kilometres  

• Kayaking 40kms 

• Going fully off-grid tramping 

• Completing 40 acts of kindness 

• Planting thousands of trees 

This year ’s World Vision 40 Hour Challenge is calling on youth to give up technology and go “offline for 40 Hours” to unplug, disconnect, and get together with their fri

Source: Choose Clean Water – Tom Kay

A select committee report released today demonstrates Coalition parties support law changes that would prevent local government from being able to control pollution even when it is causing serious harm, say freshwater campaigners.

“The damage these changes would cause must not be underestimated. This is not only an attack on the health of our environment but also democracy as the proposals seek to give greater power to polluting industries and write local government out of regulating harmful pollution of freshwater,” says Choose Clean Water spokesperson Tom Kay. 

“It beggars belief when you consider that the National-led Government came to power claiming to be champions of localism – they’ve thrown that out the window completely.”

For freshwater, two parts of the Environment Select Committee report are most significant; the proposals on Section 70 of the Resource Management Act and changes to farm plans, including more Ministerial control.

Currently, Section 70 says that councils cannot allow pollution that would cause “significant adverse effects on aquatic life” as a permitted activity. This means regional councils cannot allow for potentially polluting activities to happen without them going through a consenting process to assess whether they can avoid, remedy, or mitigate their impacts, even where an environment they want to operate in might already be polluted.

The Coalition parties support doing away with this and allowing polluting activities to go ahead, as long as the place those activities are occurring is already polluted and as long as there will be some reduction in that pollution over time. 

“But it doesn’t make sense. It is laughable that the report suggests you could grant a consent for an activity to add pollution to a place or continue polluting it now as long as it reduces its pollution by a bit, later. Why would we say ‘We’ll make a waterbody really sick now so we can nurse it back to health over decades’!? Make it make sense.” 

Even with standards for these permitted activities, campaigners regional councils will struggle to ensure they are sufficient to reduce or avoid “significant adverse effects on aquatic life” and will face significant lobbying to minimise any standards.

“This opens the door to more and worse pollution. Pollution that harms aquatic life inevitably has an impact on human lives, either directly due to illness or through impacts on livelihoods or taking away the things with love about the places we live in.”

The Coalition parties in the select committee also support changes that would bypass regional councils' role in controlling pollution through farm plans.

Farm plans have been a largely unsuccessful attempt to reduce the impact of farming on the country’s freshwater over the last decade or more. In regions where they have been used, like Canterbury, they have been found to be unable to stop the degradation of communities’ waterways and drinking water sources. 

“Not only is the value of farm plans in controlling pollution highly questionable,” says Kay, “the Select Committee’s proposal is to give Government the ability to support farm plans written and audited by polluting industries rather than regional councils, and to allow the Minister for the Environment to make the decision on which industry groups can play this role. This keeps regional councils at arms length from attempts to control pollution through farm plans, effectively writing them out as regulator.”

“This Government has demonstrated it has close and inappropriate relationships with some industry bodies. Having a Minister be responsible for such a decision opens the door to undue influence and allows for industry to capture the whole process around farm plans. We’re watching it happen now. This proposal effectively writes local government out of their regulatory role of controlling pollution.”

“It has never been clearer that the National-led Government is working for the polluters and not for the public. Our communities will pay for this through the impact on our quality of life, our drinking water sources, our opportunities to swim or fish, our pride in our beautiful environment, and our ability to be involved in local decision making.” 

The outcomes for tamariki and rangatahi Māori and their whānau in the Oranga Tamariki system report, found that tamariki and rangatahi Māori and their whānau are still over-represented and drastically let down within the system.

The first report on the performance of the Oranga Tamariki system for Māori was published today by Aroturuki Tamariki the Independent Children’s Monitor. State Care survivor and advocate, Ihorangi Reweti Peters, who grew up in the Oranga Tamariki system, says this report shines a light on the performance of the Oranga Tamariki system and that Māori tamariki and rangatahi are still being failed by the very system that is supposed to be caring for them.

“The Independent Children’s Monitor found that Oranga Tamariki and NZ Police have strategies in place to address inequality and over-representation but there are barriers to making progress. It is crucial that both Oranga Tamariki and the New Zealand Police invest in adequate partnerships with Iwi, Māori and community initiatives that support tamariki and rangatahi Māori that are in care of Oranga Tamariki and with care experience,” Mr Reweti Peters says.

“These partnerships need to be increased so that our whānau, tamariki and rangatahi Māori have a safe and reliable organisation to raise concerns with. Oranga Tamariki is known to have multiple partnerships, sometimes these partnerships are not the best.

“The report also found that Oranga Tamariki is not always taking action to respond to reports of concern at the earliest opportunity. They found that almost half of the reports of concerns, resulted in a decision to take no further action. The reporting period 2023/24 showed that 52% of the reports of concerns received by Oranga Tamariki were for tamariki and rangatahi who identified as Māori.

“Early intervention is key to responding to reports of concern and supporting these whānau and making sure that our tamariki and rangatahi Māori remain out of Oranga Tamariki care. Ngā Maata Waka and Oranga Tamariki were working in partnership to provide community-led initiatives that responds to reports of concern. This successful initiative no longer operates due to a lack of funding and the roll-out of a new National Contact Centre localised response.

“This initiative was crucial for Māori whānau as it was a by Māori for Māori approach – where tamariki, rangatahi and whānau can engage in the ways that they want to respond to the report of concern. If this service is not reinstated our whānau will continue to fall through the cracks and not receive the right support that they are entitled too.“I welcome the report today by the Independent Children’s Monitor and I hope that Oranga Tamariki, in the interim, will improve the outcomes for tamariki and rangatahi Māori. However, Oranga Tamariki is still in no place to care for some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most vulnerable children and young people. I echo the calls from survivors, academics and whānau, that Oranga Tamariki needs to be dismantled and Iwi, Hāpū and Whānau need to take over the provisions of caring for our tamariki and rangatahi,” says Mr Reweti Peters.

In the first of a new annual report series – Outcomes for tamariki and rangatahi Māori and their whānau in the oranga tamariki system – Aroturuki Tamariki | Independent Children’s Monitor found tamariki (children) and rangatahi (young people) Māori and their whānau are over-represented in the oranga tamariki system and the system is letting them down. While Oranga Tamariki has a pivotal role, the system includes NZ Police and the Ministries of Health, Education and Social Development.

Most tamariki and rangatahi Māori have no involvement in the oranga tamariki system. But when they do, there are increasing levels of over-representation – almost 50 percent of reports of concern made to Oranga Tamariki are about tamariki and rangatahi Māori, they make up two-thirds of those in care, and more than three quarters of those in youth justice custody.

Aroturuki Tamariki Chief Executive Arran Jones says the report is a story of consequence – of needs not addressed by a system that is not always able to work together to get the right support in place at the right time. “The needs of tamariki and rangatahi then multiply as they escalate through the system,” Mr Jones said.

Data shows 92 percent of rangatahi referred to a youth justice family group conference in 2023/24 had concerns raised about their safety and wellbeing when they were younger.

“Tamariki and rangatahi come to the attention of Oranga Tamariki because someone has raised concerns about alleged abuse, or their wellbeing. This is the moment to get the right services and supports in place so tamariki and rangatahi don’t escalate through the system,” says Mr Jones

Escalation through the system can eventually mean involvement with the Police – and Police data shows a difference in the severity of proceedings against tamariki and rangatahi Māori in 2023/24:

tamariki Māori aged 10–13 are less likely to be referred to alternative action or given a warning and more likely to be prosecuted or referred to a youth justice FGC than others
rangatahi Māori aged 14–17 are less likely to get a warning or be referred to alternative action and more likely to be prosecuted than others.

The outcomes for tamariki and rangatahi Māori currently involved with the oranga tamariki system are less positive than those for Māori with no involvement. In 2022, tamariki and rangatahi Māori:

in care or custody, achieved education qualifications at almost half the rate of Māori with no involvement
in the oranga tamariki system, were significantly more likely to be hospitalised for self-harm than those with no involvement
in care, used mental health and addiction services at nearly five times the rate of Māori with no involvement. Rangatahi Māori in youth justice custody used these at 15 times the rate – 60 percent of rangatahi Māori in youth justice custody used mental health and addiction services. Considering 92 percent of these rangatahi had reports of concern made about their safety and wellbeing when they were younger, this is no surprise.

“The outcomes for young Māori adults, aged 27–30, who were involved in the oranga tamariki system as children are sobering. The data paints a stark picture of the consequence of the oranga tamariki system not doing more to help. Māori adults who had been in the system as children are less likely to be employed, less likely to have a driver licence, more likely to be on a benefit, more likely to be in emergency housing, and more likely to be hospitalised for self-harm than Māori who had no involvement. Mortality rates are double or triple those of Māori with no involvement in the oranga tamariki system for vehicle accidents and for self-harm (including suicide),” says Mr Jones.

The report also identifies the importance of breaking the cycle. For Māori parents (aged 27–30 years) who had previously been in care themselves, 68 percent have children involved with Oranga Tamariki in some way and one in eight have had one or more children in care at some point.

“This report highlights initiatives and ways of working that provide a pathway ahead for all government agencies. Working with tamariki and rangatahi alongside their whānau, building trusted long-term relationships, looking outside of organisational silos to understand their wider needs and providing services across government and community agencies. To paraphrase one of the providers we heard from, this is where the magic happens,” says Mr Jones.

The initiatives highlighted in the report include a statutory youth justice delegation from Oranga Tamariki to Whakapai Hauora by Rangitāne o Manawatū. Whakapai Hauora provides wraparound support to rangatahi Māori who have offended, reporting only one referral proceeding to a court order. Some rangatahi who have completed programmes have returned as mentors and one rangatahi is now employed by the retailer he offended against.

In Auckland, Kotahi te Whakaaro, brings together government and non-government organisations. It works alongside whānau to support tamariki and rangatahi who have offended, to prevent further offending. They look across housing, schooling, health and financial challenges and put supports in place. We heard about significant reductions in reoffending, with one rangatahi telling us “I think stealing is just an idiot move now”.

In Porirua, Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira has built a strong relationship with Oranga Tamariki. They reported that a combination of early intervention initiatives for whānau who come to the attention of Oranga Tamariki has resulted in a 21 percent reduction in renotifications (reports of concern) – to the lowest rate in Porirua in four years.

“Before tamariki and rangatahi come to the attention of Oranga Tamariki they will have been seen by education and health staff and the parents may be known to social housing and welfare. It should not take offending, or an incident of abuse or neglect to get the support that was always needed,” says Mr Jones.

For this report, we looked at the performance under the Oranga Tamariki Act – this Act places specific obligations on Police and Oranga Tamariki. It is clear there are opportunities to do better and this report highlights some of those.

“Data shows that tamariki and rangatahi Māori in the system today have similar hopes and aspirations for their future as those not in system. As one rangatahi we met with told us they’d ‘just like to grow up successful and, if I find the right person, to give my kids what I couldn’t have’,” Mr Jones said.

Read the report on our website https://aroturuki.govt.nz/reports/outcomes-23-24

Aroturuki Tamariki – the Independent Children’s Monitor checks that organisations supporting and working with tamariki, rangatahi and their whānau, are meeting their needs, delivering services effectively, and improving outcomes. We monitor compliance with the Oranga Tamariki Act and the associated regulations, including the National Care Standards. We also look at how the wider system (such as early intervention) is supporting tamariki and rangatahi under the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System Act. Aroturuki Tamariki works closely with its partners in the oversight system, Mana Mokopuna – Children and Young People’s Commission, and the Office of the Ombudsman.

On the eve of a major Board of Inquiry that will assess if a large-scale rubbish incinerator proposed for Te Awamutu can go ahead, the Zero Waste Network and allies are launching a new petition to keep the country incinerator-free.

“We want central government to ban new waste incinerators at a national level because of the serious human health, climate and air pollution impacts. The proposal in Te Awamutu would emit toxins like dioxin and heavy metals which are likely to result in premature deaths, infertility, increased rates of cancer and birth defects. There is no safe level of exposure to dioxin,” said Sue Coutts, spokesperson for the Network.

“We know that burning carbon-intensive wastes like plastics emit more greenhouse gases and pollutants than coal. The Te Awamutu proposal was cited by the EPA as having global climate implications.”

“Right now, small communities, often in provincial or rural areas, are being targeted by these incinerator companies. These communities are bearing the burden of stopping these toxic projects. This is why central government leadership is so important.”

“Environment Minister Penny Simmonds rightly called in the Te Awamutu proposal for consideration by a Board of Inquiry. This will allow a more thorough assessment of impacts than had it been considered at local government level. However, this process does not stop other projects from coming forward.”

“To get a sense of the aggressiveness of the industry, there were three projects that sought to be included under the Fast Track Approvals regime: this Te Awamutu project, one in Tolaga Bay on the East Cape, and a very large incinerator in Waimate. Only one of those projects, in Waimate, was ultimately included in the legislation's initial listing, but is now unable to proceed because the land deal fell apart.”

“For the past five years, the Zero Waste Network and our allies have successfully resisted new incinerators on the front lines. We are now taking the fight to Parliament to deliver a lasting solution. Let's keep Aotearoa incinerator free!”