Posts Tagged ‘government’

Key announces amended version of super city

The Government has backed an Auckland 'super city' council and says it should be in place in time for next year's local body elections. ... Rather than having six local councils, there will be between 20 and 30 community boards. These will not be able to raise revenue or appoint staff. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Local democracy was identified by many, including myself, as the major problem of the Royal Commission report. However, I don't see this is best the solution. I disliked community boards from start, waste of time, not many actually attends, and its power cannot change much for the community. I prefer the parliamentary electorate style, each community elects its own member to the Auckland Council, the member manage local issues and represent that at the higher level.

Anyway, the difference in government recommendation[pdf] is, community boards will gain extra power, such as :

• advocate for their local community and have input into the Auckland Council’s plans
• develop local operational policies for local issues, for example dog control, liquor licensing and graffiti control
• influence the Auckland Council by petitioning for extra services that their community wants. Services would be paid for through a targeted rate for the local area, a local rate rise or a change in priorities. The local boards will not have the power to set rates, so any rate rise would have to be agreed by the Auckland Council.

Can you imagine 30 sets of dog control and and operational policies? Anyone who still thinks the change will save their rate bill should check if the sky in their little world is still blue. Also I did not notice anything in that report mentioning the delivery of council services,  does that mean all people need to travel to Auckland CBD to get their resource consent done?

The grand council will increase overall efficiency but I don't see a way that could reduce overall costs in both Royal Commission and government report.

Also another thing worth noticing:

Nice try. So National.

nine-day fortnight work plan released

In one sentence, Government will pay minimum wage of $12.5for up to 5 hours per day to employees who have taken an extra day off. For rest of the scheme:

• Will be available to businesses with more than 100 employees. There are about 1600 companies which fit this category and they employ 580,000 people.
• Will be available to businesses from March 27, 2009 through until December 31, 2010 - but only for up to a six month period within these dates.
• The government’s contribution will be paid direct to employers to give to the workers it has negotiated a voluntary agreement with to reduce work hours to a nine-day fortnight.
• Will be available to up to 10 employees for each averted redundancy.
• Will apply to employees who have been full-time for the two months preceding going into the scheme.
• Is anticipated to be picked up by between 20,000 and 25,000 workers, making the approximate cost $16 million to $20 million.

Overall I'm pretty happy about it, and I think it will be a way reduce redundancies in big companies. In a recession the most import thing to maintain is not just economic growth, but fundamentally, confidence. If employees are given the promise that they will not be made redundant, it will give them confidence, and they are more likely to spend rather than save for the unforeseeable future.

But I do have a mixed feeling about this. Employees are not responsible for the current economic situation, making them suffer should be the last resort to keep this economic going.  There are long suspicions that some employers are using economic recession as an excuse to carry out restructuring. I think this scheme should only be available for companies who are experiencing losses, not just a reduction of profits.   I can see the same greed which was responsible for the current situation, is still in the market. Companies should just accept a significantly reduced profit for now, rather let the same greed take over, dreaming of the high profits they've experienced in the last few years.

The scheme will only work if employers are welling to join it, but I don't think they are. As a employer,  how much can you save from this? Let's assume a company maximises its opportunity, put 10 employee who receives an average $20 wage and work 8 hours a day in this. So the calculation goes like:

13 x 10 x 20 x 8 = $20,800

For a 100 employees company, that's kind of nothing -  make one employee redundant saves more than this, and that size of businesses don't fail for short of 20,000 dollars.

Or maybe the whole thing is just another publicity stunt from John Key?

The Vision

The government today announced the $500m investment programme on country's infrastructures, including more capial injection on new schools and roads. This will be part of the $9 billion stimulus package.

I have very little knowledge on that $9 billion total package, but today's announcement amused me a little - it may sounds like "new" schools and roads, but in fact most of the them were already planned, and I believe some projects are possibly already on the book. All the government did is to "bring them forward", accelerate the speed.

Now this is bit strange, other countries invest on new things, or improvement of current infrastructure, but we just could not bother to do that - do we really need to bring forward a construction for a bridge so Aucklanders can have a nice holiday without worrying the traffic bottleneck? Or maybe New Zealand is just too small so  there isn't much we can invest on? I'm sure you don't agree with this.

Or even worse, maybe the government is just cutting and pasting some of the planned spendings and relabel it as part of the "package"?

Crisis also means opportunity, an opportunity that could enable us to grow even faster, stronger after the bad times. However, I failed to see how this infrastructure spending plan will help us doing that - where's the investment on new technologies? I don't expect nats to invest on "green stuffs"  , but energy efficient and electrified car/train aren't all about green?

Uncertainty on energy cost was, and still is a huge barrier that have restrained growth in NZ, high and fluctuating  oil prices hurt just about every one bad, and rising demand of electricity requires either more water dam, or an easier and cheaper option of improving what we got now and make it more efficient.

So where's that man with a vision? Sure I cannot find him here.