Child poverty report in New Zealand prompts strong reaction

from Yahoo News New Zealand

A new report issued by New Zealand government finds that 230,000 are effected by poverty. This story profiles the reaction.

The report, A Fair Go For Children -- Actions to Address Child Poverty in New Zealand , proposed remedies including extra support for benefit dependent and low-income families, reform to the benefit system, and expansion of health, housing and education services.

Unicef NZ domestic advocacy adviser Barbara Lambourn said while child poverty rates were down from a high in the 1990s, they were still too high, and worse than developed countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, France and Nordic countries.

Ms Lambourn said it was irrelevant whether children were born into poverty or beneficiary dependent families.

"I don't think that's an issue and it certainly shouldn't affect any child," she told NZPA.

"Every child born has the right to a decent existence whether they are beneficiaries or not. It should not impact on the child's potential."

Ms Lambourn said the United Kingdom had made in-roads in addressing child poverty, as had France and Nordic countries, and there was no reason why New Zealand couldn't close the gap.

"It's in the state's interest to look after their potential citizens, otherwise they're looking after them at the end of the system.

"Because poverty, as we know, is incredibly damaging for children in terms of what the state is then going to have to look at in healthcare, loss of potential, lower learning outcomes..."

Save the Children NZ executive director John Bowis said the Government needed to take action.

He said many children were still paying the price of the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

"During that time child poverty and economic inequality rose in New Zealand more than in any other OECD country," he said.

Mr Bowis said steps taken by the Government to reduce child poverty were recognised.

"However, there is a considerable way to go.

"It is not acceptable that 230,00 children, or one in five children in this country, were last year living in households with incomes below 60 percent of the medium income after taking housing costs into account."

He said allowing children to live in poverty contravened a United Nations convention signed by New Zealand in 1993 regarding children's rights and the government's responsibilities to ensure them.

Unions also responded to the findings, saying they highlighted the need for adequate minimum wage levels and access to free or low cost early childhood education.

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Homeless numbers in inner city Auckland on rise

from the New Zealand Herald

The number of homeless people found in inner city Auckland is now at 91. The highest since this annual count started. - Kale

By Simon Collins

A team of social workers and volunteers found 74 men, seven women, and 10 whose gender couldn't be determined, sleeping in doorways, under bridges and in rough shelters around the city. A further 604 people were in the Airedale St night shelter, other hostels for the homeless and boarding houses within the 3km radius.

The latest count, on the night of Sunday, June 22, compares with only 65 rough sleepers and 69 in other short-term accommodation last year. But that survey did not cover boarding houses.

The leader of Auckland City Mission's crisis care team, Wilf Holt, said the increase might be because the counting team was becoming better skilled, with a fulltime outreach worker for the past year who had learned where to find people.

"Or it could be due to the general cost of living and the living situations people are finding themselves in and difficulties in finding suitable accommodation," he said.

As in all three previous counts, most of the rough sleepers were Maori or Pacific people - 61 per cent in 2004, 58 per cent in 2005, 52 per cent last year and 56 per cent in the latest count.

But they have become gradually older. Those over 40 have grown from under 30 per cent - of those whose age could be determined in the first two counts - to 47 per cent last year and 58 per cent this year.

Mr Holt said this was partly because older people were easier to find, so their number had grown as the skills of the finders had improved.

"There is a huge fluidity ... of the young ones - one day they're there, the next day they're gone," he said.

"The older guys are pretty consistent. They are a little bit more visible, and let's face it, at 41 to 50 if you are not well set in a career by that stage it's very hard to get into one."

He said state and community agencies were now working more closely together to help homeless people into housing. The Auckland District Health Board has stationed mental health workers in the former Methodist Mission in Airedale St, now known as Lifewise, and the city council has helped to fund the City Mission's outreach worker.

In the past month Housing New Zealand has introduced what Mr Holt called "taster tenancies" of up to three months to ease homeless people into state houses or flats, cutting the risk of taking on potentially difficult people.

Rough sleepers:

2004 - 64
2005 - 81
2007 - 65
2008 - 91

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Tax credits lift 50,000 children out of poverty

from the New Zealand Herald

By Simon Collins

About 50,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in the past three years, thanks largely to higher family tax credits.

The number of children living in homes with equivalent incomes per person below 60 per cent of the national average, after allowing for housing costs, has dropped from 288,000 in 2004 to 235,000 last year, or from 28 per cent to 22 per cent of all children.

The reduction of about a fifth was mainly because of the Working for Families package, which phased in higher tax credits, accommodation subsidies and childcare subsidies during those three years.

But the figures - the first official measure of the effect of Working for Families - have already been outdated by skyrocketing prices of food and petrol since last year.

The Government acknowledged this yesterday by doubling the maximum food hardship grants from $450 to $900 a year for families with one or two children, and from $550 to $1100 for families with three or more children.

Budgeting services spokeswoman Raewyn Fox said the increase was long overdue. "I'm forever hearing from budget advisers that people have reached their limit and that they are being redirected to budgeting services to negotiate with foodbanks."

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The manager of Auckland social services for the Salvation Army, Gerry Walker, said the move would especially help beneficiaries, who missed out on the controversial $60-a-week "in-work tax credit" under Working for Families. "The focus up till now under Working for Families has been on those in employment," he said.

"The reality is that people on benefits, and I include superannuitants in that, have lagged behind, and I see this as a step in the right direction to rectify that."

The poverty figures, in a report by the Ministry of Social Development, show that even working families have not done as well as might have been expected out of a buoyant economy over the past three years.

Employment rose from 64 per cent to 66 per cent of all people aged 15 and over.

But after-tax average wages only barely kept pace with prices, and there has been a surprising jump in the number of couples where one partner now stays home to look after children.

As measured by the number of children affected in families where at least one parent works fulltime, the once-dominant pattern of one fulltime worker and one stay-home parent declined steadily from 54 per cent in 1982 to just 30 per cent in 2004 - but has jumped back to 37 per cent last year.

The report suggests this may be related to a recent rise in the birth rate. But economist Susan St John said the boost to family incomes from Working for Families had probably also allowed more couples to drop back to one income.

The increase in stay-home parents has had the ironic effect of helping to slightly reduce the real median equivalent income per person of two-parent families with children, after adjusting for inflation, from $26,100 per person in 2004 to $25,700 last year.

Real median incomes barely changed at all over the past three years for both single people and couples without children, because of flat real wages.

In contrast, sole parents with children have done well out of Working for Families, gaining from all the general tax credits and also lifting their employment rate from 48 per cent to 61 per cent over the three-year period to gain the in-work tax credit.

As a result, their median real incomes rose by 10 per cent, from $14,300 to $15,700.

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Peters announces $2 billion Pacific aid programme

from the National Business Review, New Zealand

Foreign Minister Winston Peters says New Zealanders have a "clear expectation" that Pacific Island nations will take up the development challenge and do the work needed to lift their citizens out of poverty.

He announced today a Pacific Development Strategy that will deliver $2 billion in aid over eight years.

"This allows us to make a sustainable impact on improving health and education in the Pacific, to address infrastructure gaps and promote economic growth and to improve governance and leadership," he said.

"No one is saying this is going to be easy, nor that New Zealand has all the answers. The challenge is immense, complex and, most of all, long term."

Mr Peters said there was a need to encourage policies and practices which fostered growth and better standards of living.

"It also means preventing corruption, poor governance and conflict which erode development gains."

Mr Peters said economic growth around the region was failing to keep up with population growth.

In some cases, government decision-making was weak in addressing problems and modern practices were not followed.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Child poverty reaching 'crisis levels' in NZ

from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

By New Zealand correspondent Kerri Ritchie

Doctors in New Zealand say the level of child neglect has hit crisis point with a new report claiming 185,000 children are living in poverty.

The report was released by the Child Poverty Action Group, an independent charity, which believes one in five New Zealand children are living in poverty.

The report states that between 2000 and 2004 the number of children facing hardship jumped by a third to 26 per cent.

Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Auckland, Dr Innes Asher, says it is a crisis.

"We now have double the rates of admissions to hospital for children with preventable diseases compared to the 1980s," Dr Asher said.

"It's a shocking situation."

Dr Asher says children are not a priority in New Zealand and their basic needs are often ignored.

Hunger, weight loss in poverty action

from the Otago Daily Times

By MARK PRICE

A CUP of oats and water for breakfast; a cup of rice and lentils for tea; and virtually nothing in between. That is the diet a Dunedin man committed himself to while living for a month on just $1.49 a day.

At the beginning of February, Jolyon White set (34) out to live for a month like the 1.2 billion people in the world who subsist at, or below, the poverty line.

Three weeks down the track, he is hungry all the time, has lost weight and is lacking in energy. But he has survived after a fashion.

From the shanty he has constructed from rubbish in the town belt, Mr White said he had 80c left from the New Zealand equivalent of $US30 at the start of the month. He had started out with the possessions he thought a person who had lived in poverty all their lives would have a cooking pot, a tarpaulin, three blankets and the clothes he was wearing.

Mr White said he was not a ‘‘left-leaning hippie’’, but a middle-class conservative, a qualified electrician and a climbing instructor who usually lived a ‘‘normal life’’, complete with email and cellphone.

He wanted to remind New Zealanders of the eight goals set for the year 2015 by a United Nations summit of world leaders in 2000.

‘‘The first of the eight goals is to halve the number of people living on a dollar a day or less.’’

His day consisted of collecting water, cooking on a methylated spirits stove he fashioned from discarded food cans and wandering to relieve boredom.

He washed in the fountain in the Octagon or at the Speight’s tap in Rattray St, kept an eye out for wild plum, apple and pear trees, collected useful rubbish and had just acquired a rotten mattress.

At the start of the month, he scavenged food from supermarket rubbish skips, but found their supply of fresh bread, fresh salads, yoghurt and camembert cheese negated the point of the exercise.

For the first few nights, he tried to sleep in alleyways around Great King St, but found he was too often disturbed by drunks, so moved to a secluded part of the town belt where the only night noises were snuffling hedgehogs.

Rain last Friday turned his camp cold and soggy, reminding him how hard it could be to live exposed to the elements.

Mr White believed NZ’s clean water and lack of disease and civil war made living in poverty here easier than in many other countries. He had rejected all help, but friends checked on him twice a week. To mark the end of the month’s poverty, Mr White planned to join friends at a restaurant for a glass of wine and real fruit ice cream.

Swapping a Porsche for poverty

from the New Zealand Herald

It was another typical grey, rainy morning as I crawled through traffic to work. Ahead was a day filled with endless meetings and email overload. You know the one, where you wonder exactly why you're happy passing your life away with the monotony of windscreen wipers in the rain.

For years I'd toyed with the idea of charity work in a foreign country and, recently single, I had few ties to stop me from making a real change. A quick check on the internet and I found GVN (Global Volunteer Network) based in New Zealand placing volunteers from all around the world in a variety of projects. Their programmes ranged from setting turtles free in Costa Rica to helping the environment in Alaska. I chose to challenge myself with a month in the orphanages of Nepal. The opportunity to travel to such a beautiful country and at the same time do work with children who had no loving family was too much to ignore.

The application was quick and simple and in a matter of weeks I'd secured a place with eight other volunteers from around the world. My employer, advertising agency Publicis Mojo, agreed to a sabbatical and the next thing I knew I was on the plane to Kathmandu, swapping my Porsche for poverty. It was going to be a memorable lesson in grounding myself and getting life into perspective.

The first week of "cultural immersion" was designed to minimise the shock of the challenging physical and emotional conditions. It involved language lessons, how to behave and the minefield of local customs we would need to negotiate as we lived with the Nepalese. It was also an amazing experience bonding with the other volunteers. Our ages ranged from early twenties to fifties, with backgrounds as diverse as a pizza delivery boy, a business owner, doctors, an art student and advertising executive. Here we were all equal. We all shared a common goal - to make a difference for the orphans who we'd be caring for, and have fun doing it.

We bonded quickly in the classroom as we were taught the rudimentary facts of Nepalese life. My language skills were barely more than the basic pleasantries, but I felt prepared for what lay ahead.

We spent a few days and (uncomfortable) nights out of the classroom, billeted with local families in a nearby hillside village, giving us a chance to experience the hardships first-hand. None of the houses had running water. Cooking was carried out on a fire on a hard mud floor. The food was basic but never varied: rice, lentils and curried spinach - always eaten squatting on the floor with your right hand, not cutlery - every day, twice a day, day after day after day. The toilets, well, let's not talk about them.

Our few days passed quickly as we mastered our new rudimentary lifestyle, waking at 5am to bells welcoming the spirits of the day and the cold shower at the village tap. Now assessed as ready for the challenges ahead, we were placed in different orphanages, dependent upon their needs. Knowledge of advertising was of course completely useless here, so I was placed where they just needed a guy who could handle the different temperaments of nine boys aged 4-16. It was hardly the romantic vision of a hillside orphanage with smiling kids and carefree spirits I had imagined. No, I was given a run-down building in the slums of Kathmandu. No running water in the house (unless you counted the dripping down the walls) and two small bedrooms with no heating.

It was going to be testing. I reminded myself, however, that unlike the boys, I would be leaving in four weeks. I decided to give it my all and threw myself into it.

My role was to be mother, father, big brother and resident doctor rolled into one. I worked from 7.30am to 6pm, six days a week, handing out medicine, getting the boys dressed, fed and then walking them to school. Through the day I washed their clothes by hand at the cold tap outside the house with just a bar of soap, valiantly tried to sew clothes that were falling apart and helped with homework.

The days were never dull and it was a far cry from a typical day at the office. I woke every day energised and full of life, strode to work with a sparkle in my eye, greeting everyone I met with a big smile and 'Namaste' (hello). Simple pleasures, like watching these kids who had virtually nothing smile and shout excitedly as they flew their little plastic bags on pieces of string tied together on the rubble outside the house, filled my eyes with tears.

So happy with so little and living day to day without the love and support of a family was truly touching. When they greeted me every morning their little faces lit up and my heart melted.

Now that was job satisfaction.

There wasn't a day that passed when I didn't wake up smiling and feeling in love with life. The conditions were hard, but the rewards were unbelievable and when it was time to leave many tears were shed, but I felt enriched and humbled by what I had been taught.

Love your family, cherish your friends and never forget that for many life is a daily struggle faced without emotional or monetary support. I hope I'll never complain about bad traffic, poor food or not having that latest gadget again.

Poverty is top health destroyer

from Stuff

Sick children are the product of poverty, and doctors can only treat what the whole community needs to help prevent, says Palmerston North paediatrician Jeff Brown.

Yesterdays' release by the national Paediatric Society of a report into children's health in New Zealand shows high rates of childhood skin infections, bronchiolitis, exposure to smoking and abuse.

"A lot of these are preventable things, and those in deprived households are the ones suffering."

Parents smoking around their children has been blamed for 500 babies under 2 being admitted to hospital each year, 15,000 episodes of childhood asthma, 27,000 GP visits and 1500 glue ear operations.

"In decile one and two schools, over 60 percent of Year 10 students live with parents who smoke.

"That's partly a health issue, but it's also a poverty issue. It's hard to kick the habit if you don't have a job or are subject to inter-generational abuse. You need to be supported to quit and be in a position, emotionally, to be able to."

Dr Brown said there had been huge success in reducing the impact of things that could be prevented with targeted awareness and vaccines - sudden infant death syndrome, road accidents and meningococcal disease.

"But the message is, if you are a child living in poverty, you suffer more."

Dr Brown said MidCentral Health was playing somewhere in the middle of the field with its community paediatric team linking up with other organisations to find and help children most at risk of preventable illness and injury.

Researcher seeks view on poverty

from Stuff

Is a weekly trip to McDonald's a big treat or do you eat at your favourite French restaurant and sip champagne on a regular basis?
A Massey researcher wants to find out what New Zealanders' perceptions of poverty really are in an era when cheap consumer goods abound and yet social agencies and commentators report a growing gap between the rich and poor.

Auckland-based doctoral student Sheryl Bourke is seeking participants from a range of backgrounds and income brackets to share their views on poverty.

She was inspired to tackle the topic because of the hardship she witnessed through her husband's work with an emergency housing agency in south Auckland.

She intends to ask participants what circumstances they think a person would be in to be considered poor in New Zealand, how much poverty is in their community and what they think causes poverty.

She'll ask them to respond to visual images and general perceptions about poverty, as well as discuss general ideas about poverty regarding access to nutritious food, power, phone, clothing, transport, doctors, dentists, holidays and recreation.

"There's been a lot of public debate recently about poverty and I'm interested in the range of public views, opinions and ideas about poverty and how these relate to government policy," she says.

While most people agree that a family living in a garage is an example of extreme poverty, she's interested to explore common understandings about basic living standards and how well these expectations are met in reality.

She hopes her study will provide clues about how New Zealanders view poverty at a time when consumer goods are more accessible to low-income families through lenient hire purchase arrangements while the price of basic food items such as milk has increased.

New Zealand: no quick fixes for South Pacific unrest, violence, growing poverty

from The International Herald Triubune

WELLINGTON, New Zealand: Political unrest, violence and pockets of absolute poverty are major features of the South Pacific landscape and there are "no quick fixes" for these problems, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters warned Tuesday.

Political unrest and violence "remain significant features of the Pacific landscape," Peters said in the Netherlands as the annual summit of South Pacific leaders opened in Tonga. There was a coup in Fiji and riots in both Solomon Islands and Tonga last year.

Internal volatility, land conflicts, population pressures, and ethnic tensions are driving down living standards, he told the Netherlands Institute of International Relations in The Hague.

"In parts of the Pacific, pockets of absolute poverty are growing. The socio-economic indicators of some Melanesian countries are almost on a par with those of sub-Saharan Africa," he said.

New Zealand is deeply concerned by the behavior of the military regime in Fiji that ousted the democratic government in a coup last December, he said.

"It has created a climate of fear, repressing freedom of expression and other basic human rights," Peters said.

While coup leader and interim prime minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama "claims to be working toward a return to democracy in early 2009, we have seen no evidence thus far that would support this claim," he said.

In recent years New Zealand had been providing security to parts of the region as a number of Pacific nations teetered on the brink of civil war and anarchy.

Armed forces have been deployed to restore peace and stability in Timor Leste, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, and the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea.

"The nature of the current political, economic and security challenges in the Pacific means that there are no quick fixes," Peters said.

Collaboration with regional partners, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, and China was central to New Zealand's Pacific diplomacy.

Peters said New Zealand also welcomes the growing involvement of the European Union in "an increasingly unstable part of the world."

Kiwis To Take A Stand In UN Fight Against Poverty

from Scoop

Kiwis to Take a Stand in UN Fight Against Poverty

New Zealanders will join millions around the world in a massive United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC) event on October 17 to Stand Up & Speak Out against poverty.

Lunchtime events are being held in Auckland's Myers Park, Wellington's Civic Square, and Christchurch's City Mall, allowing ordinary New Zealanders to remind our leaders to honour international efforts to eradicate poverty.

The campaign supports the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight time-bound targets to which world leaders committed themselves. When achieved, they would end extreme poverty worldwide by 2015.

The goals are: 1) eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; 2) achieving universal primary education; 3) promoting gender equality and empowering women; 4) reducing child mortality; 5) improving maternal health; 6) combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; 7) ensuring environmental sustainability and 8) developing a global partnership for development.

The Art of Living Foundation, an international humanitarian organisation with a presence in 145 countries, has put its support behind the UNMC's campaign.

Last year, 23 million people around the world took part in a 2-minute Stand Up & Speak Out pledge of support for the MDGs this year, we intend to break that record.

Glenn D'Souza, national president of the Art Of Living Foundation, says Kiwis have a strong sense of social justice, and support change. "These goals are ambitious, but why not put our energy behind achieving them? It only takes a small amount of energy per person, and the belief that it is possible. Yet the potential impact is huge."

"It starts with telling our leaders what values and principles we want them to bring to their decision-making on our behalf. If they use these values, they create an environment that supports the process of change."

There is a growing awareness in New Zealand and around the world that it is possible to bring about significant improvement in the fortunes of those who are less advantaged than us, he says. "But our leaders must be held accountable for making decisions on our behalf that will bring about a better standard of living for the 1.1 billion people in the world who live on less than $1 per day and whose voices are not heard."

ENDS

BACKGROUND AND INTERNATIONAL QUOTES

The October 17 event is a follow-up to an alliance finalised in May 2007 between the Art of Living and UNMC under which His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the Art of Living, has pledged his commitment to support UNMC's initiatives to realise the Millennium Development Goals.

In his message exhorting people to join the campaign to eradicate poverty, Sri Sri said, "All the nations of the world have come together and have set up eight Millennium Development Goals, and it will remain just a dream if you don't stand up and participate. We all have to join together to eradicate poverty, to bring primary education, health, hygiene, care for the environment and make this world a more beautiful place to be in."

STAND UP events will be held all over the world, from the busiest square in the world, New York's Times Square to the smallest school in the tsunami-struck Ache province in Indonesia. Richa Chopra, head of the Art of Living International Centre, Bangalore, India, is globally coordinating the event. The events will be in different forms such as simple public gatherings, music concerts, group dances, rallies, carnivals and street theatres. "We are also looking to have the STAND UP pledge included in routine schedules of the day such as sporting events, film shows, etc apart from engaging schools, colleges, universities, and companies to hold pledge-taking events in their premises," Dr Chopra added.

In all STAND UP events, participants will stand up for two minutes and take a pledge to defeat extreme poverty. Minar Pimple, Deputy Director, Asia, UNMC said: "The idea behind the STAND UP campaign is to remind world leaders of their promise of achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and urge them to show the necessary political will. The participants will stand up and urge the rich countries to keep their promises, provide better and more aid, cancel debt and promote fair trade. They will urge the poorer countries to make it their first responsibility to save the lives of the poorest citizens and achieve real transparency and accountability in how resources are deployed and spent."

Dev Nadkarni: Nauru claws its way back from poverty

from The New Zealand Herald

Tomorrow, 4000 voters will elect a government for the world's smallest island republic, Nauru. No country has seen a more rapid reversal of its fortunes than the tiny Pacific Island state in Micronesia.

Until the early 1990s it rubbed shoulders with the United States, Japan and Germany, matching their per capita incomes. Its population of about 10,000 was among the wealthiest in the world. But in less than a decade it found itself on the verge of ruin and today is almost completely dependent on foreign aid to pay its bills.

Nauru's legendary wealth came from its rich phosphate deposits - formed by bird droppings over centuries - that have been mined since the early 1900s. The mining companies - mainly from New Zealand, Australia and Britain - paid Nauru royalties for the phosphate they shipped out.

Well aware that it was a non-renewable and finite resource, the state set up the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust in 1968 to manage the ballooning fund and make good investments on behalf of its people.

But mismanagement, political interference and vested interests saw the investments turn bad when the country most needed them. The phosphate earnings began dwindling in the 1990s and by the turn of the century mining had all but ground to a halt.

The island has no other natural resource and much of its land is useless because of indiscriminate mining. Seeking compensation for ecological degradation, Nauru took the New Zealand, British and Australian Governments to the International Court of Justice at The Hague in the early 1990s. The claim was settled out of court with the three nations contributing to the payout.

Shortly after, Nauru tried to emulate the success of offshore financial centres in the Western Hemisphere. But these plans came unstuck as such centres came under increased scrutiny over allegations of international money-laundering.

Nauru happened to be one of the four Pacific Island states banned by United States banks in 1999.

Nauru is completely dependent on imports. Until recently it even imported drinking water. It now has reverse-osmosis and desalination plants but their operations are curtailed by the severe shortage of electricity, which in turn is because of low fuel reserves on the island, where all the generators are diesel-powered.

Power is rationed and its distribution is rotated around the island in blocks of six hours. This, however, is a vast improvement over previous years when the whole island went without power and water for days at a stretch.

Last December, Japan granted Nauru the equivalent of $1.2 million to help it pay its fuel bills, which made up half its total budget. With aid from the European Union, it is setting up alternative energy generating systems.

On the international front, Nauru has vacillated between supporting Taiwan and China, now having cast its lot with Taiwan, which is a major aid donor and helped it buy a passenger jet last year.

Nauru's recent political history has been turbulent, with governments lasting only a few months - sometimes only weeks - because of intense political manoeuvrings. The incumbent Government, headed by President Ludwig Scotty, has proved an exception, having lasted its full term of three years.

Mr Scotty and his supporters were voted to power in October 2004 on a popular anti-corruption and anti-mismanagement plank. Previous regimes had brought the island state to the verge of bankruptcy, with an Australian think tank even suggesting early that year that Nauru should relinquish its independence and join Australia, which runs a refugee-processing centre on Nauru where asylum-seekers and refugees who land on Australian shores are sent pending processing by immigration.

Soon after it was elected, the Scotty Government embarked on an elaborate reforms programme based on a 20-year sustainable development strategy.

Despite widespread consultations with people on the island the programme is far from complete.

Its successful completion in the next few months is Mr Scotty's main plank for seeking re-election.

An elected parliamentary standing committee on constitutional review is guiding the reforms process and a review of the 39-year-old constitution. The people of Nauru demanded the review having realised there were not the necessary safeguards to prevent mismanagement and non-accountability by elected representatives.

Finance and Trade Minister David Adeang says the Government needs the support of two-thirds of the people to push the reforms to completion. Many of the candidates contesting this election are from the standing committee. And several politicians who have been accused of mismanaging the trust fund and giving themselves high salaries and perks are seeking re-election as well.

Despite the mining industry's halt in the early 2000s, phosphate still calls the shots in Nauru.

The reforms promise better management of what remains of the trust fund - which is thought to have shrunk to about $69 million - and a greater rate of return for the people.

Last year, an Australian company found that there were considerable secondary phosphate deposits on the island - enough to be mined for two or three decades. It invested about $6.9 million to set up a mining operation but ran into some trouble with allegations of its equipment having been sabotaged by what the Government identifies as its political opposition. The operation, however, did export some shiploads, one of them to India.

There is some speculation on the island on why the elections were brought forward by a couple of months. The payment of Ronwan, which is the interest on the trust fund's investments that is paid to the people, is due soon.

Observers say the Government has played on the people's insecurity as regards this payout.

The general perception is that the continuation of the Scotty Government will ensure payment on time.

Polls in Nauru are a family affair because many people on the island are part of extended families and have relative overseas.

"They're making family visits while campaigning and some are gifting money, as is quite normal," one resident says.

"I know one family received $2000 - after a candidate failed to answer a question." Eighty candidates will vie for the 18-member House this Saturday, when a Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat team will monitor the polling.

It is not known if it will take cognisance of the rather unusual pre-poll campaigning tactics.

* Dev Nadkarni, based in Auckland, is editor of news website islandsbusiness. com

Companies urged to address poverty

from The New Zealand Herald

Poverty in the Asia-Pacific region will directly threaten companies in Australia, according to a report by the Allen Consulting Group.

The report said global poverty was a direct threat to the prosperity of a range of Australian businesses through the loss of potential markets, damage to foreign affiliates and a greater risk of regional instability.

It urged Australian companies to do more to fight poverty in the Asia-Pacific and deepen their understanding of how they source materials and services.
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The report was commissioned by ANZ Bank, Grey Global Group, IAG, Pfizer and Visy Industries, who have formed the Business for Poverty Relief Alliance which is being facilitated by World Vision.

The alliance aims to have Australian companies put the issues of development, aid and poverty relief on their agenda.

The report found that corporate Australia was generally supportive of social investment, but few companies were tackling poverty in their closest export markets.

If poverty levels were not reduced, markets in the region would not develop as quickly, constraining the growth of companies in Australia.

The report said businesses could develop safe, affordable products for the poor and adhere strictly to human and labour rights policies along their supply chain.

Businesses should also provide "best practice" working conditions for workers in overseas operations and invest in research and development, infrastructure and technology in those countries.

The report said corporate Australia was largely ignorant of the UN Millennium Development Goals, a blueprint for governments, corporates and individuals to halve world poverty by 2015.

Leading the way on poor child welfare

from The Gisbourne Herald

by Nicola Brennan

NEW Zealand has been placed at the bottom of a list of 25 developed countries for keeping its children safe, and in the bottom third when it comes to many child welfare indicators — something seen at its worst on many counts in this district.

A joint Unicef/Innocenti Research Centre report, released yesterday, rates New Zealand last out of 25 OECD nations in its child safety record, with poorer countries like Poland and Hungary receiving better rankings.

The Government is defending itself against the report, saying it draws on 2001 data and that things have changed since then.

The report has left child advocate groups irritated, with calls for the Government to do more.

Child Poverty Action Group health spokeswoman Dr Nikki Turner told NZPA there was a very well-established link between high levels of inequality and poor child health.

The health consequences of exposure to poverty in childhood included infectious diseases such as meningococcal B, respiratory diseases, serious skin diseases and obesity.

A growing youth obesity problem has been highlighted by Gisborne health workers time and time again.

The rate of obesity in Tairawhiti is 27 percent — significantly higher than the national average — and with the majority of the district’s population aged under 19 (33 percent according to Census 2006 figures), a growing number of young people are presenting with the problem.

Gisborne Hospital staff have seen an increasing number of young people developing Type 2 diabetes as a result.

New Zealand was ranked 25th out of 25 in the number of children who die from accident and injury, a situation mirrored in Gisborne.

This region has had one of the highest rates of children injured in cycle accidents in the country over the past four years, with one death and several serious injuries for children aged 11 to 14 last year alone.

Gisborne has the third highest youth suicide rate in the country.

The district also has a high rate of teenage pregnancy, another dimension the report ranked New Zealand poorly on (second from the bottom for births by women aged 15 to 19).

Out of 689 births at Gisborne Hospital in 2004/05, 80 (12 percent) were by mums aged 14 to 19; 58 (73 percent) of those were Maori mums.

A 2001 assessment of health needs in the Tairawhiti District Health Board region showed the teenage fertility rate in Tairawhiti was nearly double the national norm.

The report ranks New Zealand 16th in terms of general well-being of children, something Gisborne’s public health group manager Tom Scott has highlighted as a major problem in Tairawhiti.

In a report to the hospital’s advisory committee last October, Mr Scott said child poverty was clearly apparent here, with some children unable to afford school trips and much-needed resources.

Children continued to turn up to school without lunch and parents were unable to afford glasses for their children or to treat head lice and sores because of the cost of a doctor’s visit and/or medications.

Gisborne has been given high priority by the Government in the past because of the poverty rate here, with 10 of the district’s schools being selected for the first phase of its fruit in schools programme.

The school communities were ranked as some of the poorest in the country.

Focus on `underclass' as Key lays out differences

from Stuff

VERNON SMALL - The Dominion Post

National Party leader John Key will call for policies to tackle a growing underclass in society that has "lost hope" when he delivers his first main speech of the year in Burnside, Christchurch, tomorrow.

"A major theme will be tackling the growing emergence of an economic underclass," Mr Key said yesterday.

"I think it's a very important issue which affects all New Zealanders, either directly or indirectly."

Party strategists said some solutions would be included in the lunchtime speech but it would also set out a work programme for the party to develop policy in what have traditionally been areas of Labour Party strength.

It would show that National did not see the state as the only answer, but also saw a role for the private sector and voluntary organisations.

Most of his speech is likely to cover his concerns about the interrelated problems of long-term welfare dependency, crime, illiteracy, poor parenting, drugs, malnutrition and social exclusion.

Mr Key, who grew up in a state house in Christchurch suburb Bryndwr, clearly wants to link the neighbouring suburb of Burnside with National's strain of "compassionate conservatism" while further distancing himself from the "wedge" politics that had characterised former leader Don Brash's scene-setting speeches at Orewa.

The speech follows Mr Key's revamp late last year of National's policies on nuclear ships, race relations, welfare and climate change to make them more appealing to urban liberals and women, where National has been heavily out-polled by Labour.

A large contingent of National MPs is expected to attend the speech, which is seen by the party as a way to put a more modern face on National, mirroring its younger leadership team.

It would not put the heavy emphasis on individual responsibility that might be expected from a National leader, one strategist said, but would stress ways the Government and the community could help lift people out of the underclass.

The issue was illustrated by news of three "no-go" streets in Hamilton, where gang violence has prompted New Zealand Post to suspend mail deliveries, and concerns that Los Angeles-type gangs are marking out blocks of streets in South Auckland which they try to control.

Party faithful will provide the audience for the lunchtime speech, at a more media-friendly time than the traditional early-evening speech to Orewa Rotary.

Christchurch was chosen in part to distance Mr Key from the legacy of Dr Brash's addresses at Orewa, particularly his 2004 speech on race.

NZ First leader Winston Peters has taken over the vacant speaking slot at Orewa.

Mr Key's speech will be followed by a three-day National caucus retreat in Gisborne, expected to focus on constitutional issues such as the role of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foreshore and seabed law - including whether to back to the select committee stage the Maori Party's bill repealing Labour's controversial law - and a revised position on the abolition of the Maori seats.

Finance spokesman Bill English is expected to give an economic overview.

Labour will hold its three-day caucus retreat in a fortnight at the prime minister's Wellington residence, Premier House.

Parliament begins sitting for the year on February 13.