Sean Walters writes about a proposed change to contractor recruitment by the Government :
Recruitment agencies will no longer make margin on Contractors. Instead, a set fee (based on one of two job families) will be invoiced on start date. This will be for a maximum of 12 months, and pro rata’d for anything less.
Recruitment agencies will however be able to charge a (no doubt miniscule) payrolling fee, and this will continue after 12 months providing they continue to payroll the contactor
Temp to perm fees (or as they call them “Conversion fees”) will cease to exist in any meaningful way
Recruitment agencies are to propose their best rate for this up-front contractor fee without collusion with any other agencies
Recruitment agencies, warned of this change on the 5th August, have until the 2nd September to fundamentally turn their revenue model on its head, pick a competitive fee without knowing what the market is doing, and write a presentation on how they don’t mistreat refugees throughout the hiring process.
Now I have sympathy for the industry that one month is far too short a time to implement such a massive change.
But as a taxpayer I am all in favour of this change. A huge amount of taxpayer money goes to contractor recruitment companies, even when they don’t do the recruitment.
It seems that many government agencies are not set up to “employ” contractors directly. So any contractors have to be contracted through and paid through a recruitment company.
What this means is that the recruitment company gets paid around $20,000 to invoice the Government and pay the contractor, even when the Government agency found the contractor themselves. They get paid the same for a contractor that the agency recruits as they do for one the recruitment company recruits.
It’s fair enough to pay a fair whack to a recruitment company when they have invested in having a pool of contractors on their books. But to pay them the same amount for what is simply a purely administrative function – pay them and invoice us, is wasteful.
In this edition of Taxpayer Talk, the focus is on education. With literacy and numeracy standards falling dramatically across the country, long-time educator Alwyn Poole has just finished some extensive research to find which are our most successful schools academically. Using the percentage of students leaving school with University Entrance grades, the results may surprise and shock you. How come a Decile 1 school in South Auckland can produce better results than many far more affluent schools? Why do Catholic schools produce such good results? Does the Ministry of Education really care about falling academic standards?
Then on the Political Panel, former MP and Cabinet Minister Maurice Williamson and Taxpayer Union co-founder David Farrar talk about Parliament as a place to work, and is bullying in 2022 really just a stern talking to in 1992? And host Peter Williams responds to some of your correspondence received at [email protected]
Personally I think this makes her seem relatable. Just because she is PM doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy herself at a party and dancing and singing and drinking at parties is what normal people do.
And on the policy side she is taking her country from decades of neutrality into joining NATO – have to like that.
It was reasonable to use a firearm in self-defence
It was reasonable to fire four shots
It’s been 22 years since the shooting and the reality remains the same. If you don’t want to be shot by the Police, don’t advance on them with a baseball bat.
Labour’s Māori Development Minister, Willie Jackson, infamously said on Q&A recently that the nature of our democracy has changed. He’s backed it up in a New Zealand Herald opinion piece declaring, “We live in a new democracy”, while stating that politicians questioning the changes are engaging in “racist dog-whistles”.
So it is racist to defend our current democracy!
When did we, as a country, decide that the Treaty trumps democracy? We haven’t.
The idea of equal suffrage – equal voting rights, regardless of gender, class and ethnicity – has been a pillar of our democracy for decades. Remember Kate Sheppard? All New Zealanders should have an equal say in who governs them; an equal say in appointing the people that make the decisions that affects their lives.
Equally fundamental to our system is the ability to throw poor performers out at the next election – that is the bedrock accountability in our democracy. But not under this Bill. Ngai Tahu’s representatives could never be thrown out.
We are heading towards a Fiji Style Great Council of Chiefs type rule.
If we as a country no longer think that equal voting rights apply at one level of government, pressure will build for change in national elections.
I can’t think of a more divisive agenda for any government to run.
The Maori Party are very open that they want Parliament to not have equality of suffrage, but instead to be 50/50 based on race. At least they are honest about it. We don’t know what Labour is planning as they won’t tell us.
In the absence of any comments from the Prime Minister on the topic, New Zealanders can rightly conclude it is the agenda of the Labour Party to change our democracy away from equal voting rights and accountability to one that points to two classes of citizens.
If Jacinda Ardern and her government Ministers no longer think that Kiwis should have equal voting rights, then they should make the case and ask New Zealanders whether they agree.
A referendum would be a good idea, in preference to this altering democracy by stealth.
I have spent the last month acquiring and processing significant data on the leavers of every high school in New Zealand – with great help from the good people at Education Counts. This is far more important than the cohort data (by Year level) that comes out in February.
Last week on Kiwiblog I highlighted the top school in each decile in NZ. Many of these are breaking the link we are told exists that means that schools just can’t succeed with some kids. This week I am contrasting them to the bottom school in each Decile.
I have chosen not to name the bottom schools – not for the adults involved but through consideration for the attending children.
The comparison for schools in each decile is by University Entrance achievement (schools with 75 or more students) and retention.
All measure are for LEAVERS across year levels.
Top: Decile 10: Diocesan School for Girls
UE at 96.6% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 2.7%.
Bottom Decile 10: Anonymous – relatively new – $50m+ build/development
UE at 39.8% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 15.8%.
Top Decile 9: Woodford House
UE at 96.2% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 3.8%.
Bottom Decile 9: Anonymous
UE at 30.8% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 24%.
Top Decile 8. St Peter’s College (Epsom)
UE at 89.8% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 3.3%.
Bottom Decile 8: Anonymous
UE at 28% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 29.3%
Top Decile 7: Marist College (Auckland)
UE at 89.4% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 0.9%.
Bottom Decile 7: Anonymous
UE at 12.2% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 34.4%
Top Decile 6: St Catherine’s (Kilbirnie)
UE at 73.7% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 0.0%.
Bottom Decile 6: Anonymous
UE at 13.6% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 40.9%.
Top Decile 5: Manukura (Palmerston North)
UE at 76.5% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 17.3%.
Bottom Decile 5: Anonymous
Three schools with UE at 0.0% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 25+%
Top Decile 4: Selwyn College (Auckland)
UE at 70.5% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 9.6%.
Bottom Decile 4: Anonymous
Two schools with UE at 0.0% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 30%
Top Decile 3: Zayed College for Girls (very closely followed by Auckland Girls Grammar)
UE at 70% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 0.0%.
Bottom Decile 3: Anonymous
Two schools with UE at 0.0% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 50%
Top Decile 2: St Paul’s College (Ponsonby)
UE at 84.1% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 4.5%.
Bottom Decile 2: Anonymous
Two schools on 1.4% (including the high school I attended) and one with UE at 0.0% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 40+%
Top Decile 1: McAuley High School (Otahuhu)
UE at 65.8% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo – 3.9%.
Bottom Decile 1: Anonymous
One school with UE at 1.7% for leavers and two on 0.0% (all Northland). Leaving before 17yo – 50%
These gaps are astonishing and inexcusable. They cause incalculable harm. The key systemic takeaways:
Socio-economics is not determinant of school outcomes – we need to bury that excuse.
Ethnicity is not determinant of school outcomes – we need to bury that excuse also. It is about clear vision and aspiration, quality leadership (including engaging parents), quality teachers, a world class programming. NZ cannot afford this pattern to continue and to be frank, Hipkins and Ministry have shown no interest in changing things – let alone the Teachers Council and Unions. They do not care for the children – they are about mediocrity, power and control.
Until this is transformed there will be minimal intergenerational wealth change. On average someone with a degree earns $1.3m more over a learning lifetime. There are, of course, exceptions.
The information is of high value educationally and has taken a considerable amount of time and expertise. I can make it available for use within a school (under copyright) or professional organisation at a relatively small price. For personal use happy to supply on a donation basis. Please email me for details: [email protected]
I worked for some pretty unpopular Labour leaders and I can tell you that is a very bad sign. David Shearer never went into net negative off memory, I think Andrew Little may have dropped once for one poll into net negative, and David Cunliffe was quite frequently in the negatives.
This is absolutely not the case. Not only did every Labour Opposition Leader pre-Ardern have net negatives for favourability, they were not a statistically insignificant -1%, but were heavily underwater.
Curia polling 2009 – 2017
Phil Goff started off positive until April 2009 and then went seriously underwater. He hit the depths of -45% in mid 2011.
David Shearer also started off positive and stayed above 0% until July 2012. He hit a low of -28% in July 2013 but had recovered to -10% when he was rolled.
David Cunliffe never got positive and his nadir was an unimaginable -52% after he lost the 2014 election but declared he wanted to stay on.
And far from Andrew Little only once dipping below 0%, he only once dipped above 0%. Little stayed positive until only March 2015 and he spent two years underwater and also ended up on -28%.
The hundreds of thousands of people listening to Nine to Noon will have been totally misled by that statement.
This may surprise many, but I actually like Trevor Mallard, our new Ambassador to Ireland. Like does not mean approve of everything he says or does, but we have had a friendly relationship for over 15 years. That revelation is probably enough to get me booted out of National, and possibly vice-versa for Trevor.
I first started to have interactions with Trevor when he was a frontbench Minister in the Clark Government and I was a new blogger. I was surprised to get e-mails from him pointing out minor errors in a post etc. I was bemused that the No 4 or 5 Minister in the Government had enough spare time to be reading Kiwiblog.
Since then over almost 20 years we have had a friendly relationship with semi-regular texts, calls and e-mails on issues of shared interest such as Standing Orders and the like. We’ve had conversations which rely on trust in each other to not repeat them, and speaking purely for myself I’ve never had a bad encounter with Trevor.
Now this is not to say I have agreed with all or even most of what he has done I had been outraged, along with many others, from time to time and have even let off the odd curse. Most people in National probably feel towards Trevor, what people in Labour felt towards Murray McCully.
I agree with what Audrey Young once wrote about him as Speaker – there were parts he was excellent at, and parts where his temper and dislike of certain MPs meant he was not. But on issues of making Parliament run better, I do think he made many improvements and would have liked to have seen him Chair the latest Standing Orders review.
So I do wish him well for the posting to Ireland, and hope the new Speaker manages a less antagonistic relationship with the Opposition and Opposition leaders.
The near fatal attack on Salman Rushdie was not an isolated incident. Extremists in their intolerance of what they see as blasphemy have done the following:
Murder of the Japanese translator of the Satanic Verses
Shooting of the Norwegian publisher
Attempted burning of the Turkish translator (37 others killed in the attempt)
Attempted bombing of Rushdie in 1989
The irony is that I can almost guarantee you that none of those people have ever read the book they wish to kill for. In fact even the Ayatollah Khomeini admitted he had never read it when he issued the fatwa on Rushdie.
Point of Order highlights a press statement from MPI about how it turns out singing waiata help seedings to grow.
This is a mammoth scientific discovery. I expect the Government has of course had this independently peer reviewed. It seems singing means they grow so fast they can be cropped in weeks rather than months.
However, one community leader who did wish to comment was Te Hau Āwhiowhio ō Otangarei Trust chief executive Martin Kaipo, who is also a former high-ranking Black Power member.
Kaipo said there was a place for harsher sentences such as those imposed under the Three Strikes law.
“If you look at the repetitive offenders, they need to be held accountable … you’ve got to look at the type of offending.”
Giving them repeated short sentences is not accountability. It is just creating more victims.
Readers may recall that the Government spent $336,000 on the opening ceremony for Transmission Gully – an outrageous amount of money. A reader sent in an OIA asking for details of the spending, and the breakdown is below.
The He Waka Eke Noa Charitable Trust got paid $221,000 for planning and organising for a two hour opening ceremoney.
Even if you were charging $100 an hour for staff involved that is 2,200 staff hours to organise a two hour event.
The approval rating for Jacinda Ardern’s government has plunged to its lowest level since her election victory, as New Zealand’s economy struggles to recover from her harsh pandemic restrictions. …
New Zealand’s current inflation rate of 7.3 per cent is the highest in more than 30 years.
And while the price of real estate has fallen, rising mortgage interest rates have kept many new buyers out of the market.
This week’s opinion poll also found that nearly half of those questioned believed the economy would worsen over the next year, as cost of living prices continued to rise.
The downbeat view follows a period of draconian Covid restrictions imposed by the government, including an international travel ban that isolated New Zealand from the rest of the world.
And our Covid death rate is now much the same as Australia’s.
When our kids were younger, I served a couple of terms on the board at our local primary school and never, during that six years, did it enter my mind that some of my fellow board members might be ex-prisoners.
I’m pretty sure none of them were but there could’ve been because we’re finding out today that if someone has served a prison sentence of less than two years they can put themselves up for election to a school board of trustees.
We’re finding out about it because it’s election time for school boards around the country and someone by the name of Philip Arps has put his hat in the ring to be a board member at Te Aratai College in Christchurch, which is being described today as one of Christchurch’s most multi-cultural schools.
If his name rings a bell, that’s because he’s the white supremacist who used to run the insulation company which charged a certain amount per metre for insulation, which was a hate symbol popular with white supremacists.
Back in 2016, he delivered a pig’s head to the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch and, more recently, he’s had connections with the anti-vaccine mandate movement.
But he’s probably best known for sending the video of the March 15 Christchurch mosque shooting to 30 people, and asking a friend to modify it by adding cross-hairs and a “kill count”.
Arps is a repugnant neo-nazi and human being.
That appalling, sickening behaviour earned him six months in prison.
But because he was sentenced to less than two years he is fully entitled to run in school board elections. Which is what he’s currently doing. In fact, anyone who has served a prison sentence of less than two years can.
So, in light of Arps trying to get elected to the Te Aratai College board, there are calls today for the rules to be changed because they provide no safeguard at all against parents with extremist views ending up on school boards.
I’m against there being some sort of body that vets candidates for school boards and decides they are suitable. I trust parents to make the right decision.
So I think letting someone stand for school board elections if they’ve served a prison sentence of fewer than two years is going to be fine in most cases – but much more transparency is needed.
That’s why I think that if there’s going to be any change to the rules, it shouldn’t be along the lines of banning ex-prisoners from school boards – but we should be requiring these people to be completely open and transparent from the outset about their past.
And I think the best way of doing that would be to require candidates to include their convictions in the blurb they write that goes out to the parents when it’s time to do the voting.
This seems a worthwhile idea – transparency is a good thing.
But why stop at school boards? Why not require disclosure of criminal convictions for local and central government candidates also?
Good democracy and government truly relies on a well informed electorate.
I was very recently in a place of business and someone was telling a small audience that would should never forget Ardern’s/Bloomfield’s/Labour’s success with Covid. The were pretty much re-stating Robertson’s; “The best health response is also the best economic response.”
I have always been one who thinks that you need to back up an opinion and was interested that no one in the room knew the current overall stats.
How many kiwis know that:
– We are now 49th in the world for the most cases in a country (as a small – remote nation I found this astounding).
– We are now 47th in the world for cases per million (we have just pushed ahead of the UK – another little dance?)
– We are now 128th in the world for deaths per million and on the way to being above the world average (Australia now has a lower rate). This is being “achieved” with a high vaccination rate and a less harmful strain that the early ones.
I am not making this up: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
My questions are: – Where has the opposition been (i.e. Chris Bishop) through all of this? – Have we been buying and applying the best treatments – e.g. the mono-clonal antibody? – Have we protected the vulnerable with nuanced approaches – of just the old kiwi one size fits all approach?
We have smashed our education system (my most direct concern) and caused incalculable health (mental and physical), economic, social (in all forms) harm.
The opposition are calling for an inquiry into the economic approach. Surely EVERYTHING should be examined – including the lack of rigorous questions from the opposition (while taking into account the crushing of the oversight committee).
A reader received this e-mail from their local medical centre. They encourage people to e-mail the Health Minister and local MP over the increased fees:
Kia Ora
We are very sorry that we have had to increase our patient fees and can understand the frustration and anger that this may cause our patients. (The updated fee schedule will be available on our website from the 15th of August.)
Why has this happened?
This increase is as a direct result of the government imposing a significant real terms cut in funding from our services with effect 1 July 2022.
As of 31 March 2022, national inflation rises were running at 6.9%. Additionally, general practice has experienced a range of further cost pressures which has meant our total costs have risen by over 10% compared to this time last year. The government has imposed a funding increase of just 3%. Our national representative body has been having further discussions with government officials but, to date, they are being ignored. General practice has no right or contractual means to negotiate our funding, despite what you might have heard the Minister of Health stating in the media.
We want to treat our staff fairly. Our nurses and GPs have continued providing core services as well as providing our essential COVID response over the past two years. Yet the government funds our staff at a much lower level than equivalent doctors and nurses doing the same level of work in government-run hospital settings.
We think this is unfair. We also think it is important that we can retain essential staff to be able to continue providing essential services for you. We are well aware that our staff could choose to go and work overseas for a much higher salary – and they could do so tomorrow.
What if I can’t afford the increased fees?
Most importantly, you should not avoid seeking medical help when needed. If you have any problems paying or the fees put you off from seeing a doctor when you need one – please talk to us about it. For medical emergencies, you always have the right to attend and be seen at the Emergency Department at our local hospital – and there is no charge for this service.
What can I do to help?
Firstly, thank you for asking and for allowing us to explain this no-win situation we have found ourselves in. We hope we can reverse the government’s decision and reduce our fees again.
Your understanding and offer of support is important to us, and you can definitely help if you wish to. This can be done very simply by e-mailing or writing to our local MP and the Minister of Health to express your concern at the government’s decision to reduce funding for essential family doctor services.
Below, we have suggested a possible message. You are of course welcome to create your own message of support.
Thank you The Practice Team
Suggested e-mail to: Hon Andrew Little, Minister of Health [email protected]
Kia ora I am writing to express my anger at the real-terms funding cut imposed on my essential family doctor service from 1 July 2022.
This is not the action I expect from my government when this essential service is already struggling to recruit and retain staff in the face of historic underfunding.
I understand that the nurses in my family doctor service are already funded at a level which is well below that of their colleagues in the government’s own hospital-based service. I note that if I attend the Emergency Department at my local hospital, the service is free of charge.
I urge you to reverse this funding cut and address the significant crisis which is happening right now before we have no doctors or nurses left to serve in my community. I would be grateful for an individual reply to confirm what action you will be taking to avert this crisis which is happening on your watch.
Ngā mihi [your name] ___________________________________________________________________________ If writing, letter can be addressed to:
Hon Andrew Little Minister of Health Freepost Parliament Private Bag 18 888 Parliament Buildings Wellington 6160
Lindsay Mitchell draws attention to the increasingly relaxed approach to beneficiaries Lindsay Mitchell: No better time to be a beneficiary. What we are moving towards is a sort of universal basic income system (UBI) by stealth. Our current social benefit system is based on need. A needs-based social benefit is fine if people apply it and use it responsibly in the manner it was intended, but that doesn’t always happen. What we have now is a paid alternative to work that gives little or no incentive to getting a job. But what to do about it? Most people who are on benefits do need the money. The situation becomes worse the closer the benefit comes to the living wage. Two solutions – at opposite ends of the spectrum – are to substantially reduce / get rid of all benefits or make them universal. We will never achieve the first so are we are left with the second? Instead of introducing it in a haphazard way by stealth, should we look at a rationally designed UBI scheme?
The problem is that UBI are expensive and thus electorally difficult to sell. Treasury modelled a UBI of $300 weekly for 16+ year-olds in 2010. They estimated the cost (net of existing benefits) and calculated the flat tax rate required to raise this additional amount to be 48.6%. They then modelled (in addition) abolishing Working For Families and replacing this with a weekly $86 payment for 0-15 year-olds which pushed the flat tax rate up to 50%. https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2018-07/oia-20180164.pdf
You can see the problem if you plot the ‘proposed’ tax rate plus UBI against the current tax rates. It looks like this:
It is immediately obvious that taxpayers earning more than $50,000 per year are worse off – some significantly so. I estimated (based on Treasury’s 2010 figures) that there is a transfer of $10 billion from tax payers to non-tax payers.
Where does the money go? The Treasury scheme does not appear to be any more generous to those on benefits. Some money is going to people who are working but earning less than $50,000 per year but they may well be receiving benefits anyway. The rest must be going to people who are currently neither earning income nor on a benefit. What if we excluded people who are currently not working but do not qualify for a benefit? Ah – but then the basic income would not be universal.
The Treasury analysis asked the question – what tax rate would be needed to provide a universal basic income. They concluded that a universal basic income was unaffordable. But was that the right question? What we are trying to do is address the perverse incentives presented by the current benefit and income tax regime – trying to find a welfare safety net that does not take away the incentive to work. Ideally the system should be tax neutral (not system neutral as the Treasury model aims to be) and that replaces the current benefits, rather than expanding them.
The Treasury analysis was correct that if we have a UBI, we don’t need a progressive tax system – they are two ways of achieving a similar goal. Currently we have a progressive tax system such that lower incomes – and the first $50,000 or so of higher incomes – are taxed at a lower rate. You can approximate the tax payable under our progressive scheme by a flat tax of 32.9% and a tax rebate of $7,600 as shown below.
To make this tax neutral you would have to weight the incomes by the number of people at each income level – I haven’t done this but something like these figures can be made tax neutral. However, $7,600 per year is not going to cut the mustard as an UBI. What say we tweak the figures a little? So what I tried was a flat tax of 39% – the new top rate – and a UBI of $18,000 which is the benefit rate paid to married pensioners, You get the following picture.
This is definitely not tax neutral, but it could be ‘tax minus benefits’ neutral if the entitlement to benefits is also considered. Currently most low-income earners get some form of additional assistance. Looking at the figure, it seems that a flat tax plus a tax rebate or some form of UBI could replace the current regime of a progressive tax plus benefits.
Currently benefits are only available to a subset of the population. The Treasury model makes the UBI available to everyone, greatly increasing the cost which is why it is not feasible. Two possibilities are to introduce the UBI but at a much lower rate or to drop the ‘universal’ bit and limit the availability of the UBI to those who qualify for benefits currently – or are in employment. The former would be a hard sell – it would be seen as taking money away from people who need it and giving it to people who don’t.
The second option could largely be achieved by leaving the benefits system as it is, but allowing beneficiaries to work at the maximum tax rate. The latter is similar to what happens in effect now with the Government Superannuation. Since superannuation is taxable income, it puts the recipients into the higher tax brackets – so all income is effectively taxed at a high rate. Currently about half the benefit is clawed back by treating the income as secondary. If it were all taxed at the maximum rate, the entire superannuation would be clawed back in full for incomes over about $120,000.
But if that works for superannuation, why not apply the same rules to other benefits. In other words, allow the benefit recipient to return to work but on a high tax rate. Problem solved.
