The remaining refugees and asylum seekers of the Lombrom Naval Base insist that their new locations in Lorengau closer to community areas will be unsafe, and refuse to leave.

During this crisis, the Turnbull government has become visibly irritated at Ardern's offer to accept 150 men from the centre. Such indignation was going to be hard to avoid.

The New Zealand Labour Party had been accused by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for undue interference regarding the dual citizenship of Barnaby Joyce.

Egg had to be promptly cleared off her face once Ardern formed government.

Given Australian coolness to the NZ refugee offer, Ardern has taken a different tack: approach the Papua New Guinean government for an independent arrangement, cutting out the intransigent middle man.

Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, was far from impressed, adopting a threatening pose.

New Zealand, he promised, 'would have to think about their relationship with Australia and what impact it would have'. 'They'd have to think that through, and we'd have to think that through.'

Dutton was so unimpressed as to directly question the judgment of New Zealand's prime minister.

The offer, for instance, to supply up to $3 million to the PNG government to assist the refugees was 'a waste of money in my judgment, I mean give that money to another environment somewhere, to Indonesia, for example'.

Having berated Ardern's choices and suggestions, Dutton then did what Australian politicians in the past have done to their New Zealand colleagues: insist upon ample gratitude.

'We', exclaimed Dutton, 'have stopped vessels on their way across the Torres Strait planning to track their way down the east coast of Australia to New Zealand.'

This had taken 'many hundreds of millions of dollars into a defence effort to stop those vessels ... We do that frankly without any financial assistance from New Zealand.'

Australian papers and media outlets have also been mobilised to undermine New Zealand refugee policy.

Classified material had supposedly found its way to Brisbane's Courier Mail, registering 'chatter' from people smugglers pointing the finger to New Zealand as a richer target.

Suddenly, it seems, Australia's Border Protection Force had gotten busier, intercepting four vessels, carrying 164 people destined for New Zealand — another reason for Auckland (sic) to be respectful. Continue reading

Sources

• Eureka Street article by Dr Binoy Kampmark, a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
• Image: Newshub

In New Zealand the average salary for the CEO of a top 50 listed company is $1.68 million and the average salary for a CEO of a charity is just over $220,000.

Some analysts suggest the average CEO salary in the broader not-for-profit sector is as low as $100,000.

The level of remuneration afforded to leaders engaged in profit-generating enterprise is justified based on the value they create for shareholders or owners.

But if you were to suggest that the CEO of a successful charity gets paid, say $4 million - the amount earned by the Fletcher Building CEO in 2015 - there would be an immediate outcry.

Before you laugh at me for being naïve and idealistic about giving millions of dollars to a charity boss, if this were a charity with a bold and innovative strategy to end homelessness in New Zealand, with proper monitoring and measurement of successful outcomes, don't you think $4 million would be a fair price to pay?

Imagine if you could get Rod Drury to step away from Xero for a few years to run this, or Joan Withers. Whoever. {Insert your own favourite businessperson here}.

The point is that we could potentially turn some of these intractable problems around if we could capture the interest and attention of some of our highly networked and successful entrepreneurs with a decent salary.

But we don't. It seems we have one rule for what's acceptable for not-for-profits, and another for commercial enterprise.

In a 2017 review of the not-for-profit sector by JBWere the authors say, despite growing interest in and appreciation of the critical role of the sector in New Zealand "It is still true that the sector is only reimbursed for its successes, not rewarded."

I want to talk about the senselessness of this double standard but first - why does it matter now? Continue reading

• Emma Espiner (Twitter: @emmawehipeihana) comments on social issues, health, and politics.

In light of this, the prospect of travelling into the heart of the Ureweras and staying with this group of people was somewhat daunting.

The powhiri on arrival was a very intense cultural experience, but immediately the warmth and hospitality of the Tuhoe was evident. This was of course such a stark contrast to the way in which they were portrayed in the media.

How powerful perspective, and prejudice, can be. They welcomed our group with a deep respect for us as people, as well as an evident respect for their own people, their ancestors and the significance and sacredness of their place (in Ruatahuna of the Ureweras).

I was struck by the immediate sense of trust and communality, and the incredible generosity with which they introduced themselves and their surroundings. This respect, hospitality and generosity characterised the meals they hosted, the stories they shared, and everything they did for us and with us during our stay.

I was also struck by the deep spirituality they shared with us and expressed in different ways throughout our time with them.

This spirituality was strongly linked in with their surrounding environment, and their encompassing cultural story and identity, but above all it seemed to communicate a sense of interconnectedness, and in doing so drew us into that dynamic reality of interconnection.

There are different churches and faith traditions in the area, but this spirituality transcended individual religious institutions, and the people of the different denominations supported each other in honouring and upholding the various components of their community and cultural identity with dignity and, again, deep respect. Continue reading

• Daniel Kleinsman is a lawyer and a Marist seminarian in Auckland.
• Photo credit: The Wireless.

Dean is 26, and stressed by an economy that just does not add up for any but a tiny proportion of 20-somethings.

They have student loans to pay off.

Houses are beyond their reach.

They face low wages, high unemployment and a casualised labour market.

And they believe that when they get old, there will be no such thing as NZ Super.

All the basic building blocks of a prosperous, stable money life have been stripped from them by the political policies of the generation that was the last to benefit from free education, cheap housing, standard work contracts, and the certainty of NZ Super.

But for all its social media savvy, the 20-somethings are a generation that does not seem to have a voice.

It may have found one in Dean, whose Ruth, Roger and Me published by BWB Texts has just gone on sale.

It's the story of where the bleak moneyscape the twenty-somethings face came from.

It is also a personal journey in which Dean, who will present the book at the Wanaka Festival of Colour this weekend speaking alongside outspoken economist Shamubeel Eaqub, seeks to understand how the neo-liberal policies of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson tore away the old economic certainties.

In their place have risen "disconnection" and "discomfort", Dean says.

His generation feels disconnected from society, and told that the discomfort of their stressful, competitive lives is necessary to have a competitive economy, though Dean doubts some of the assertions the young are asked to swallow.

Take student loans. They are celebrated as having opened up education to more people, but Dean writes: "A significant proportion of the growth in tertiary education over the last twenty years has come in areas that were once uncredentialised, or for which the skills were learnt on the job with the costs paid by the employer, rather than borne by the student-employee." Continue reading

• Rob Stock in Stuff

Rob Stock is a Fairfax Media reporter specialising in money matters and anything else he finds interesting.

But it's also necessary.

As the baby boomers age, our population will become disproportionately elderly, with a dependency ratio of about 2.6 people aged between 15 and 64 for every person aged 65 and over in 2036, and 2.31 in 2061.

This "pig-in-the-python", as it's been evocatively described [pdf] by the Royal Society, will pass - but a productive workforce and more young people will certainly help it along.

The generation gap is considerably less marked amongst the Pasifika and Maori populations (which also have higher fertility rates), which means it's even more important to tackle issues like unemployment, poverty and obesity in which they're over-represented.

But with fewer women having children, the fertility rate is currently 2.0, only just above the "replacement level" necessary for the population to replace itself in the long-term without migration.

By 2030 it's predicted to eclipse five million, and so much of that growth is dependent on migration from other countries.

That change is already visible in Auckland, where half a million people were born overseas, and is expected to continue as migration encourages migration: people are more likely to move to places where they know others and where their culture is established.

The most rapid growth has been in the city's Asian population, with one in four Aucklanders of Asian ethnicity.

That's predicted to be one in three by 2021.

Dr Andrew Butcher, director of research at the Asia New Zealand Foundation, points out that statistic encompasses "multiple languages, beliefs, cultures, cuisines and all the rest".

"This isn't a homogenous group of people, and it's not a discrete entity of people, either," he says. "There are increasing numbers of Asians who are multi-ethnic … so there's this great diversity." Continue reading

Sources

• The Wireless
• Image: Found Directory

Some of these changes are small and understandable - we are becoming a much smaller world, after all, with everyone being constantly connected.

Some are nonsensical, such as the image of Santa looking ready for a blizzard in the middle of our summer, or teachers accepting school work with Americanised spelling because that's often what autocorrect defaults to.

Others, such as the increasing "celebration" of Halloween, are pointless and should be wholly discouraged.

Halloween always reminds me of the scene in ET where Elliott takes the titular alien out trick-or-treating, and his friend recognises Yoda from Star Wars.

It's parents taking kids out, an entire community getting involved and doing something communal.

All I've ever seen here in Hamilton is kids trying to skive free lollies from the neighbours with their parents' approval - and it annoys me.

I realise my image is skewed by my love of the very media I mentioned in the first paragraph, and I know Halloween originated with the Celts.

But now it has become this homogenised excuse to dress up and bug people for candy.

In a city where you are accosted for free stuff in the CBD all the time, it doesn't look great to be instilling that mindset in a new generation.

In fact, it goes against the incredibly important lesson we all teach our kids about not taking lollies from strangers.

Here we see people actively encouraging it.

I've watched as kids are sent out to harvest treats, and I think it's wrong.

In a city where high fences and privacy are highly prized, what will allowing kids to scab lollies end up doing to the communities we have here? Continue reading

Source

• Paul Barlow in Stuff

Paul Barlow is a writer and Film & Stage Crew member based in Waikato.

Until yesterday the Catholic Enquiry Centre's virtual home was catholicenquiry.org.nz however from around 1:15pm yesterday the New Zealand Catholic Enquiry Centre can be reached at www.catholicenquiry.nz.

"It's a positive way to brand the Centre", Catholic Enquiry Centre Director, Fr Allan Jones SM told CathNews.

"When you think about it, we're clearly not a .co.nz, nor a .net.nz, and while from among the choices the .org.nz was the best fit for us, we're really not an organisation either", he said.

"We're simply the Catholic Enquiry Centre in New Zealand and so www.catholicenquiry.nz is the best fit."

At 1pm Tuesday 30 September, the New Zealand Domain Name Commission (DNC) made third-level domain names optional, giving New Zealanders the choice to either register .co.nz, .org.nz, .net.nz or simply register .nz at the second-level.

Many other countries have already made this change.

Those in New Zealand with existing names have until 1pm, 30 March 2015 to stake a claim on their .nz equivalent.

In cases where several groups want the same .nz domain, the DNC has established mediation process. If mediation is unsuccessful it could mean the .nz second-level domain remains unallocated.

Fr John Murphy of Church Resources, who manages a number of domains for various Church organisations, told CathNews that The Catholic Enquiry Centre's application was actually very straight-forward.

"The Centre pre-registered early and didn't have any other competition for the name."

"They've also actually been pretty smart and have both spellings "inquiry" and "enquiry" for the Centre", he said.

Launched 53 years ago, the Catholic Enquiry Centre is modernising its communications, reaching out to new New Zealanders, beyond the Church walls and in ways modern society uses.

"Our television and internet advertising is very successful", Fr Jones said.

"Getting the .nz domain name just makes sense".

Recipe for prosperity: take flat land, skilled farmers, fertiliser and cows.

Add cheap water. Fold in new tech­nology, lashings of debt and permissive environmental rules.

Voila! In a decade or two you have a thriving district with next-to-no unemployment, a rising population and a rate of economic growth almost twice the national average.

The district is Ashburton, sandwiched between two great braided alpine rivers, the Rakaia and the Rangitata, and serviced by a town bristling with farm accountants and consultants, agricultural-machinery and irrigation-equipment suppliers, and soon to be graced with a smart new art gallery and state-of-the-art sports centre.

The scorched greys and browns evoked by Bill Sutton in his famous Canterbury landscapes have been washed away by water delivered from the 66km Rangitata Diversion Race - an enormous canal built during the 30s Depression and sold by the Crown to local farmers in 1990 for $1 - and distributed through myriad irrigation schemes to 64,000ha of farmland.

Sutton would scarcely recognise this land, now cultivated to a vivid green and populated by giant centre-pivot irrigators that creep slowly across broad paddocks, watering the grass that feeds the cows that produce the milk that makes the region rich. Continue reading.

Source: The Listener

Image: John Cowpland

I wonder if a harmless nomenclature like the "Blues" explains the relative lack of success enjoyed by Kirwan's men.

I have been trying to think of a suitably violent animal to suggest to Sir John but all suitable names seem used up.

The violence that the codes of both games tolerates both on and off the fields is frankly appalling.

Spear tackling which I understand is illegal in rugby can lead to permanently disabling injuries.

No one seemed too concerned apart from Brian O'Driscoll when All Black Tama Umanga spear-tackled the Irishman in 2005 thereby ensuring he could no longer play in the Lion's tour of the country that year.

Umanga branded O'Driscoll as a "sook" in his biography and berated the media for criticising his violent action. The two men were reconciled some four years later.

There has been more than one incident this year of spectator or player attacks on referees.

A minority of rugby and league players seem to have few qualms about beating up their partners.

And apparently the All Blacks have iconic value for all New Zealanders.

The odd visit to Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland does not disguise the fact that players are committed to a violent game. Continue reading.

Whether the poor also get poorer is another matter.

What would the taxi driver who took me across Beijing last year in a Toyota tricked out with three smartphones have said?

Not so long ago, he was driving a three-wheeled, pedal-powered rickshaw.

It's more a case of the poor getting richer too - but without political intervention, they'll never catch the rich.

In the English-speaking world particularly, still reeling from the global financial crisis and growing tired of a managerial elite whose salaries appear unstoppably stratospheric, Piketty's new, best-selling doorstop of a book - Capital in the Twenty-First Century - is altering the debate about wealth, income and the future of capitalism and is set to be Harvard University Press's all-time best-seller.

Piketty has reframed the discussion by combining, for the first time, data sources spanning more than three centuries to prove that those with accumulated wealth are almost guaranteed always to become richer than those who work for a living.

The distinction between wealth and income is important.

Although excessively high incomes for chief executives is a live political issue, and Piketty would tax them at a rate as high as 80%, the bigger issue is the inter-generational impact of wealth accumulation.

He proposes taxing such wealth at a rate of 0.1-0.5% for fortunes of less than €1 million ($1.6 million), 1% for fortunes from €1-5 million, 2% for €5-10 million and from 5-10% for fortunes in the hundreds of billions of euros.

Critics note that if he's calling $1.6 million a fortune, then Piketty is putting many of the developed world's homeowners in the same boat as the "one per cent" global elite.

However, most of the attacks on his findings focus on the proposed solutions rather than the quality of the research that animates his conclusions. Continue reading.

Source: The Listener

Image: Emmanuelle Marchadour/AP in The Guardian

This is the uncomfortable underpinning of the Police Minister's proposed register for the close monitoring of sex offenders in the community.

Anne Tolley has, however, struck the right balance in, first, piloting the monitoring system with about 300 convicted child abusers and, second, keeping the names secret.

Offenders against children present by far the greatest reoffending risk.

Other sex offenders judged likely to reoffend could be added when the system has been thoroughly tested.

The secrecy question is more problematic.

Parents want to know if a convicted paedophile lives nearby.

Expatriate New Zealander and broadcaster Derryn Hinch, twice jailed for breaching Australian child sex offenders' suppression orders, makes a strong argument for parent power.

The proposal, for officials to identify paedophiles to members of the public only on a "need to know" basis, may be too limited.

For instance, people in a workplace would probably not be told a new colleague is an offender - but what about the office family picnic or offer to babysit the kids? Continue reading.

Source: The Listener

Image: kirontv.info

Even as New Zealand's income gaps have yawned open in recent decades, public concern about that inequality has fallen.

Egalitarianism used to be one of New Zealand's touchstones, a term that conveyed a kind of pride in being a country with relatively small income gaps.

Even among the politically active, the word has little purchase now.

I was in Westport recently to promote my book Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis and talk about New Zealand's growing income gaps.

I also met Georgina Lomax-Sawyers, a 16-year-old former youth MP. What did the word ‘egalitarian' mean to her, I asked.

"I know about it, I recognise the word," she said. "But I don't associate anything with it."

Others said the same thing. And so I began to ask myself: have the values New Zealand used to pride itself on, which make up that word, vanished - or do they carry on in a new form?

Most people know that, on some level, the rich have pulled away from the poor, but here's some figures that that show how that gap has grown over the last 30 years.

The typical person in the lowest 10 per cent of the country has seen almost no increase in their after-tax income once you adjust for inflation: it has gone from about $10,000 in the mid-1980s to $11,000 in 2011.

The story for someone in the middle of the country is little better: an increase in after-tax income from $25,000 to $30,000.

In contrast, the after-tax income of someone in the top 10 per cent has doubled, from around $50,000 to $100,000.

And the income of the typical person in the top 1 per cent (pre-tax, this time) has skyrocketed, from $150,000 a year to around $300,000 a year. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: risk.net

Not necessarily your life, nor the life of someone you know or love. Just a life: Joe Bloggs, Jane Doe, the guy from the bus, the high school friend you don't speak to any more.

Think of a figure, round it to the nearest hundred thousand, put a dollar sign in front, and we're done.

With a simple, arbitrary sum that quantifies, to your mind, the existence of another human, you've reached your own personal ‘value of life'.

It sounds callous, but this is essentially how government agencies have determined what you're worth for more than two decades now.

The Value of Statistical Life (VoSL) was developed by the Ministry of Transport in 1991 as a way to measure the country's loss of life in dollars.

The figure was initially set at $2 million, and was based on the findings of a survey that asked approximately 600 people what they would be willing to pay for various improvements in road safety.

From this, a value was determined to represent what an average person would be willing to pay to reduce the risk of death in road accidents.

In crude terms, the state had estimated it would be $235,000 better off for every person that didn't die. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: TVNZ

Missionary Gina Colvin, in a blog on a major Mormon website, also took shots at her own Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints and the way Americans see the world.

She said New Zealand was a secular and morally liberal nation.

This didn't mean we were "going to hell in a hand-basket", she said.

"Few people will bat an eye-lid at gay marriage, many will swear like troopers, wine-drinking is an important cultural institution, and pre-marital cohabitation is the norm," she said.

Colvin, who is a Kiwi but is in Utah teaching missionaries, said they shouldn't freak out because she would rather be with a "group of cursing, wine-swilling, gay-loving, cohabiting New Zealanders than any other people in the world - because, in my decades of experience, New Zealand has a habit of producing the real deal".

She said American missionaries should get used to the fact that New Zealanders did not live in "McMansions".

"On the contrary, that modest bungalow that doesn't sport a 'rest-room' for every bedroom in the house and a basement the size of a football field probably cost more than your McMansion - even with the exchange rate," she said.

"New Zealand is an expensive place to live - period!"

Colvin said missionaries should eat the food they are served in homes and be grateful.

"Food doesn't come in bucket-sized portions for the price of small change."

"It's expensive - so eat that meal that has been prepared for you by that large humble Mormon family in their three-bedroom bungalow - because it represents more than food, it also represents sacrifice."

And after the meal help clean up.

Learn some Maori, she added. Continue reading

Sources

• Stuff
• Image: LDS Church Temples

The conference of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant Workers heard that fishing crew are particularly susceptible to exploitation by certain ship owners, brokers and recruitment agencies because of a background of poverty, inexperience and a degree of naivety amongst some migrant workers.

"Crew on fishing vessels permanently based on the high seas are unlikely to report abuse, injury or death or otherwise seek help for their own protection" said Father Giacomo Martino, a consultor to the council.

"Fishermen often have to surrender identity documentation to their master so mobility in port is restricted; their isolation is further compounded by the difficulty or lack of communication with family whilst at sea due to the lack of access to mobile or satellite phones."

Father Martino, a former port chaplain and former Italian national director of the global seafarers' charity Apostleship of the Sea, said a further factor contributing to the vulnerability of these people is the irregularity of their salary, together with a lack of transparency, and the fact that often the workers are paid literally with a share of the catch, which encourages them to work excessive hours.

He lamented the lack of significant progress since the publication in 2001 of Ships, Slaves and Competition, by Peter Morris. This report stated that 10-15 per cent of global seafarers work in conditions of modern slavery.

He said he hoped the Maritime Labour Convention, which comes into force in August this year, will establish minimum standards regarding social security, conditions of employment and welfare conditions on board.

Father Martino said the crew of fishing vessels based on the high seas are "like ghosts touching our cities daily, emerging from ships for the procedure of signing in, or for a quick phone call home, to disappear immediately inside the metal sheets like cockroaches struck by light; always strangers in every port."

Source:

Independent Catholic News

Image: Safety4Sea

In his CathBlog Michael Visontay points out that over 150 years ago, under the leadership of Bishop Pompallier, a printing press was established in Russell, New Zealand. The Church "embraced new media with a zeal and passion that breathed new life into a whole culture, and transformed the lives of thousands of people".

• Read Michael Visontay's blog.
• Image:Bay of Islands Attractions

Michael Visontay is editor in chief of CathNews Australia.

Millenarian cults are social movements common throughout history. They proclaim for devoted believers the destructive end of one era and the dramatic coming of another more perfect world.

These movements flourish during periods of social, economic and political chaos. Visions of the Nazi new world order or the Marxist classless society are particularly tragic examples of millenarian movements.

Less well-known are the past and present "cargo cult" movements in Melanesia (i.e. Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu), in the South Pacific. They also are millenarian movements. It is claimed that specified ritual actions and bizarre practices will suddenly and spectacularly bring their adherents a life of bountiful material goods (called locally "cargo") under messianic leadership. Trust the leaders. Ancestors will come from the skies in planes and boats carrying all kinds of Western goods. The "cargo" message of the messianic leaders is: repudiate the past by dramatically destroying crops and houses as the pre-condition for the coming of the "new heaven" of prosperity. Then sit and wait for the ancestors. When the rituals fail there is great despondency, but new leaders emerge claiming that their predecessors did not have the "right rituals". So the cycle of destruction and hollow promises of impressive prosperity begin all over again.

Surely, readers will say, this cannot apply to New Zealand. After all, we are reasonable people. Think again. We have our own modern millenarian cargo cults, especially at election times. For example, the way in which healthcare reforms have been promoted in quite recent times by politicians at election times have sadly followed the "cargo cult" pattern.

Think back to the 1980s. Proposed healthcare reforms were presented in a populist style. People were enthusiastically assured that the "cargo" of better choice, more efficiency, and updated services would arrive. But there were preconditions. Previous political leaders and the wisdom of the founders of our universal healthcare had to be demonised. Politicians promised that if hospitals were conducted as businesses they would be more efficient and profitable at the same time. That is, healthcare had to be measured in money terms. So, for example, locally elected boards had to be destroyed with lightning speed.

You know the results. We voted for the "reforms". The neo-liberal reforms were introduced into the national healthcare system with incredible speed. The consequences? The promised "heaven" never materialised. Chaos in our much-loved health system intensified.

So in the 1990s local control had to be reintroduced, while the lives of thousands of people had been negatively and needlessly affected by the ideologically led reforms. In England, also, today neo-liberal "cargo-cult reform" continues to follow "reform" with breath-taking speed. In the National Health Service since the mid-1980s there has been some significant form of organizational disruption almost annually, due to policy decisions emanating from Whitehall, with the latest dramatic proposed re-structuring in 2010. Each so-called reform promises "heaven-on-earth" to citizens in the healthcare services. Present structures are speedily destroyed, previous politicians are condemned for having foolish policies. The result - rarely is there any improvement in services. In fact, chaos intensifies. The pattern is the same in Australia.

What is the lesson? Beware of politicians who promise immediate and dramatic benefits if they are elected. Beware of politicians who simplistically condemn anything good done by their opposition parties.

There is a German saying that "the wise person has a long ear and a short tongue." How true! Look for the politician who is prepared to listen, respects the dignity of human life. Do not trust the politician who offers dramatically quick benefits and has no regard for true human values of the past and the necessity of sound planning and sustained hard work. Jesus Christ so wisely warned: "Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits…I repeat, you will be able to tell them by their fruits" (Matt 7:15-16, 20).

_________________

Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm, an anthropologist, is the author of Violence, Society, and the Church which further discusses the above theme.

• Image: Society of Mary NZ