In the context of yesterday’s teachers strike, Judith Collins claimed that teachers with ten years of experience “can” (not “do”) earn $147,000 a year. In reality though, teachers have to pay their mortgage/rent and put food on the table with their actual earnings, not with an aspirational figure.
Moreover, Cabinet Ministers earning $396,000 a year (plus a myriad of valuable perks and subsidies) are hardly in a position to decry others getting fair pay for the work they do, and for the value they give back to society. (Every backbench MP is paid $20,000 a year more than Collins’ theoretical example.) The people who teach our children day in, year out are being offered a net pay cut – 1% a year for the next three years – at a time when inflation is currently running at just below 3%, and rising.
Finally, the accusation that the PPTA walked out prematurely – after six days of formal negotiation – ignores the fact that months of engagement preceded these talks, and plainly, the Ministry was not willing to budge from its inflammatory position. There’s no point in coming back from the picket lines to talk, when the government is dead-set against compromise. That inflexible mindset is what the strike action has aimed to change. The government, which dearly wants to distract public attention away from its wider failings, is probably welcoming this stoush.
Housing for some
A year ago this month, the coalition government launched its new policy on emergency housing, which – traditionally – has been the last resort for people with nowhere else to go. The new guidelines made access to emergency housing more difficult to get, and harder to keep. As a result over the past year, city footpaths and shop doorways have been seeing a sharp influx of homeless people. On the Spinoff, Joel McManus has written a solid backgrounder on the issues involved.
Yet in a sideshow of extravagance last week.. Defence Minister Judith Collins opened a huge $250 million building at Ohakea Air Base that will house the Air Force’s four Poseidon P-8A surveillance aircraft. Good to know that this fleet of hugely expensive aircraft (the original price tag for the basics was $2.34 billion before upgrades and add-ons) will be housed in a state-of-the-art 20,000 square metre building, in between the times they fly off around the Pacific looking for Chinese submarines that may (or may not) be out there. Priority: spend a quarter of a billion dollars on lavish housing for four aeroplanes, while cutting the ability of Kainga Ora to build housing for the tens of thousands of New Zealanders in need of a roof over their heads. Go figure.
Ferries follies
More revealing numbers surfaced last week about the cost of cancelling the iRex Cook Strait ferries. The total payments to South Korea’s Hyundai Mipo shipyard amount to $222 million, which is the initial deposit plus the $144 million penalty imposed for breaking the contract. Reportedly, an additional $449 million has been spent on the portside infrastructure, and on the project management expenses that have included the cost of negotiating the exit.
The government has made it clear that it intends to scale back the renewal of the portside infrastructure. Much of that work will simply be kicked down the road. As a result, taxpayers/travellers/firms will have to cope for years to come with rundown and already inadequate terminal facilities. The smaller ferries now being purchased will also provide a less reliable, less comfortable service during the sort of adverse weather that led to the ferry cancellations last week.
There will also be a significant delay until those inferior ferries are delivered. As yet, there has been no official estimate of the economic cost of deferring the arrival of new ferries from 2026 (when the iRex ferries were due to enter service) until 2029, which is the earliest estimated arrival time of the replacement vessels. How many hundreds of millions will be lost via this avoidable delay? The government isn’t asking, or telling.
As yet, we don’t know which shipyard will be contracted to build the new ferries. If, at year’s end, this proves to be Hyundai Mipo, one can only conclude that the $144 million breakage fee was a concession, as part of a package deal. To put that another way….if the lucky bidder turns out to be Hyundai Mipo, will that decision have been based on merit, or will it be the by-product of yet another cost cutting exercise, and a condition imposed by the South Koreans for halving the breakage fee from its original ballpark estimate of circa $300 million. This fiasco is being played out on our main domestic trade and tourism link.
Footnote: As indicated above, Defence spending occurs in a silo that’s largely exempted from the government’s austerity measures. Despite the absence of any credible foreign threat to this country – apart from US tariffs – the coalition government will be spending $12 billion of taxpayer money on armaments and weapons delivery systems over the next few years. This irrational diversion of the nation’s resources has become so normalised that it is easy to overlook just how much New Zealand society could be transformed if a fraction of that money was spent on the actual needs here at home.
Consider for example, that $144 million iRex ferries contract breakage fee alone. How could that amount of money have been spent more usefully? Here are a few options, estimated on the basis of the averaged-out labour costs.
Registered nurses
(Reg nurse pay rates $74,000 to $153,000 pa. Average of these figs = $113,500 p.a.)
Divide $144m by $113,500 = You could pay 1,269 nurses for a year merely from the breakage fee for the ferries contract.
OR
Support workers (“help people with health problems or disabilities to do daily tasks, such as housework, and be as independent as possible.”)
(Per hour rates only given: $24 to $28 /hour = $49,920 to $58,240 p.a. Average of these = $54,080 p.a.)
Divide $144m by $54,080 = you could pay 2,663 support workers for a year
OR
Teacher aides
(Per hour rates : $28 to $35 /hour = $58,240 to $72,800 p.a. Average of these = $65,520 p.a.)
Divide $144m by $65,520 = you could pay 2,198 teacher aides for a year
OR
Early childhood teachers
EC teacher $49,000 to $78,000 p.a. Average = $63,500 p.a.)
Divide $144m by $63,500 = you could pay 2,268 Early Childhood teachers for a year.
These are the kind of options not being taken. Billions are being wasted on (a) the shonky ferries replacement(b) Defence procurements to combat phantom enemies and (c) that $3 billion tax handout to landlords. Social services are being starved in order to make these follies possible.
Thomas the Rhymer
And now, a poem about bargaining, and the costs to be paid. In the 1970s, many people became aware of the medieval tale of Thomas the Rhymer through the hit song of the same name by the British folk group, Steeleye Span. Around the same time, I ran across this reading of the poem – in ye olde English – by Ian Stewart. It brings out the inherent musicality of the old language. This is a poem to be said, not read. More to the point, Stewart brings to life the otherworldly nature of the encounter between True Thomas, and the sad, seductive Queen of fair Elfland.
In the video, the olde 78rpm recording is a reminder of how incredibly fast those ancient brittle discs would spin around on the turntable: