logo
Taxpayers' Union Welcomes Judith Collins' Plan To Scrap Diversity Mandates In Public Service

Taxpayers' Union Welcomes Judith Collins' Plan To Scrap Diversity Mandates In Public Service

Scoop13-05-2025
Press Release – Taxpayers' Union
Every New Zealander deserves to know that public servants are hired based on who is best for the job, not on ticking diversity boxes, Taxpayers' Union spokesman James Ross said.
The Taxpayers' Union is today celebrating a significant policy victory following Public Service Minister Judith Collins' announcement that she intends to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements from the Public Service Act. Appointments would be made on the basis of merit, not identity, bringing the focus back to competence and capability.
Taxpayers' Union spokesman James Ross said:
'This is a massive step forward for fairness and efficiency in our public sector. Judith Collins' decision to strip DEI mandates from legislation is a direct win for taxpayers and a return to common sense. Every New Zealander deserves to know that public servants are hired based on who is best for the job, not on ticking diversity boxes.'
'This is the sort of leadership and clarity we need. We look forward to seeing these reforms passed and implemented.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Time v money: Examining the cost of convenience in daily life
Time v money: Examining the cost of convenience in daily life

NZ Herald

timea day ago

  • NZ Herald

Time v money: Examining the cost of convenience in daily life

Whether those timesaving expenses are an insane waste of money or key to maintaining your sanity depends on your perspective. A household with two parents working outside the home would probably argue the cost of a cleaner is an investment that 'saves' hours, allowing them to spend Saturday morning with the kids instead of scrubbing toilets, for example. But perhaps for the house-proud type-A who cleans before the cleaner comes (only to be disappointed by the job they do), it doesn't seem like such a great exchange. A short walk around Auckland's leafy suburbs shows you just how much money gets ploughed into outsourcing jobs. Gardeners, lawn mowers, dog walkers, house cleaners, pool cleaners. But is it all worth it? For the residents of those elite enclaves, the answer to that is likely inconsequential, but for most of us, it's worth weighing up whether we're getting bang for our time-saving buck and the convenience outweighs cost. Not all time-saving expenses are as highfaluting as having someone to sweep the leaves out of the pool, so I'm putting forward some small-scale examples. Saving your credit card details online When you find something drool-worthy online that some inspirationally good-looking influencer is promoting, before you know it, you've 'added to cart' and you're headed for the checkout. If your account or your browser has your credit card details handily stored, you save yourself a few minutes not having to find your wallet and input your card details. But crucially, you've also removed a key opportunity to pause and reassess whether that purchase is worth it. All the research shows credit cards encourage us to spend more – whether that's through removing friction, distancing us from the pain of parting with our money or by lighting up the addictive parts of our brain, the result is the same. Therefore, the time you save by having your credit card details on file can become a very expensive decision (and that's before you incur any interest on those purchases). Contactless payments are generally up to about 2.5% of the purchase price. Photo / Sarah Ivey Contactless payments If I've forgotten my wallet, I will reluctantly tap my phone, but I will curse my forgetfulness, because I resent the transaction fees. Contactless payments are generally up to about 2.5% of the purchase price and yes, a small percentage on a small expense is a small amount. But did you know Kiwis spend an estimated one billion dollars on payWave and credit card surcharges each year – and for what?! If that was genuinely delivering us value, I'd be first to argue it was money well spent. But that billion dollars probably bought us, collectively, 2 billion seconds, because that's all it takes to swipe your card and enter your PIN. Two billion sounds like heaps, but if you want to crunch the numbers, it's the equivalent of each New Zealander 'saving' less the seven minutes per year, which I'd argue is not a good return. If you genuinely can't spare two seconds to swipe your card and input your PIN, I'm worried about you. Pre-cut vegetables Making dinner during 'witching hour' when the kids are whining and ravenous and you're at the end of your tether can be hard work, so anything that makes it quicker has got to be worth it, right? But every time I see the pre-cut, pre-packaged vegetables in the supermarket I can't help but do the maths and conclude it's a waste of money (and a waste of plastic packaging when the vegetable originally came with its own protective skin!) This week my local supermarket had 120g of pre-cut celery for $4 – which works out to $33.33 a kilogram, for something that's not only easy to cut, but mainly water. Likewise, 120g of cut carrots was $4 when an individual carrot was just 33 cents. A piece of pumpkin was $3 a kilo, but 400g of pre-cut pumpkin pieces was $7.50 a kilo, so more than twice the price. If that was whole pumpkin it might be worth the higher price, as that can be tricky to cut, but a chunk of pumpkin isn't that hard to deal with (and a few minutes in the microwave can also make the job easier). It might sound like I'm splitting hairs (and not just pumpkins) but this is just to get you thinking. The point is that every spending plan deserves an audit of what really brings you value. There will be expenses that are worth every cent for the time they save and sanity they preserve, but no doubt there are also things where that delicate time-money balance is out of whack and need rethinking.

'Thriving' Māori Economies Revealed In New Report
'Thriving' Māori Economies Revealed In New Report

Scoop

time2 days ago

  • Scoop

'Thriving' Māori Economies Revealed In New Report

16 July 2025 , Henare te Ua Māori Journalism Intern The Māori economy is "thriving", recent statistics have revealed, but a new report shows Māori businesses do not always measure their success monetarily. According to the prior Te Ōhanga Māori 2023 report, Māori entities grew from contributing $17 billion to New Zealand's GDP in 2018 to $32 billion in 2023, turning a 6.5 percent contribution to GDP into 8.9 percent. The Māori economy asset base has grown from $69 billion in 2018 to $126 billion in 2023 - an increase of 83 percent. Released on Wednesday by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aoteaora, the Amplifying Māori approaches: The transformative potential of Māori economies report from lead author Matthew Scobie (Kāi Tahu) and co-author Tayla Forward (Ngāpuhi), suggests Māori economies revolved around "taonga with labour organised through mahi and reciprocal exchanges based on utu", or repayment. Forward, a researcher in economics and political economy based in Tāmaki Makaurau, said the Māori economy was "big, thriving and active". "But what that captures is sort of different. Are we thinking about Māori businesses that are operating in the usual dominant economic system, or are we talking about something that takes place according to Māori logic? "Considering there's parts of the economy that are taking place on a different logic in the dominant system, that's the Māori economy that we're most interested in unleashing, that's the part that is an expression of mana motuhake Māori." There was not much that separated the Māori economy from the contemporary setting; it was just an umbrella-term used for authorities, businesses, and employers who self-identified as Māori. But it was more than that. While an economy revolved around the production and consumption of goods and services and the supply of money, Māori businesses often built off tikanga, or Māori lore, to help their communities - such as iwi and hapū, and beyond. "We talk a lot in this report about the ways that those pursuing pakihi Māori (Māori business) have to take on these hybrid strategies to strategically navigate the dominant system," Forward said. "Instead of just aiming to increase our share in the dominant system, we take up a demand to change the shape of the dominant system, and those things that currently sit beneath the surface of the dominant system can be unleashed." There were four case studies prominent in the report - each an example of "Māori logic" combined with old and new ways of business, providing perspectives on housing, food sovereignty, trading and iwi authority, respectively. "They strike up against the system, they strike up against pūtea, and the need to sort of go between worlds all the time." Does Māori logic work? A case study by Danielle Webb focused on Kelly Francis' Whenua Warrior charitable trust. In 2017, Francis left her corporate job to grow an edible garden accessible to every New Zealander and feed the community. The not-for-profit organisation used hua parakore (kaupapa Māori framework) and matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) for mahinga kai, community engagement, environmental conservation and preservation. Within two days of Francis' first project under Whenua Warrior, 132 gardens cropped up across South Auckland. "The world is our oyster anyway, so we can do what we should be able to do," Forward said. The report stated Francis viewed waged labour as something that can potentially rob people of time that could be spent nurturing te taiao (the natural world), fundamental to food sovereignty. "We should be able to have particularly Māori responses to decisions about what we're creating together and how we resource each other and the things that we create together, and if that keeps having to be mediated by pūtea, that's not in our control," Forward said. "We have to make all these strategic allowances to navigate towards whatever ends we're trying to pursue with our economic activity. If we want to have this very whenua-oriented and whakapapa-oriented economic ends being served by our economic practices, then we need to engage with the system that generates the constraints." An economy of mana - what is it? The report broke the Māori economy into subsections - economies of mana, tribal economies, and diverse and community economies. "These have created necessary interventions to assert Māori perspectives as valid to national and international audiences," the report said. In simple terms, economic decisions were influenced by "mana-enhancing" interactions between people and the environment. Furthermore, there were two sides to this conversation. How did Māori organise their economies, and what framings of the economy did not align with Māori values? It stemmed from the perspective of measuring wealth by how much passes through one person's hands, rather than how much accumulated, and it allocated resources and undertook activities to generate adequate profits, Forward said. "It doesn't have to be profit-maximising, but you know, you need profits in order to survive otherwise you'll fall apart." Tribal economies: an example of iwi success History was deeply rooted in this topic and specific to iwi and hapū organisations. "Tribal economies move from how things were organised to the institutions that enable or constrain these ways of organising today," the report said. "This includes not just direct breaches of Te Tiriti, or the failure to honour purchase deeds, but the systematic exclusion of Māori from decision-making around how the economy is designed." An example of a tribal economy was Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, which was established under the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 and the Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Act 1996. "Collective settlement assets are managed by Ngāi Tahu Holdings, separately from the bodies that spend and distribute the income earned from those assets, The Office," the lead author wrote. The Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement of $170 million had grown into net assets valued at NZ$1.66 billion. Assets included businesses like Queenstown's Shotover Jet and Fiordland's Hollyford Wilderness Experience. "Typically, any surplus generated by activities from settlement resources is appropriated by the Ngāi Tahu Charitable Trust and distributed to the wider iwi. But these resources only exist because of the intergenerational struggle for the Ngāi Tahu claim and are intended for future generations." In 2024, each of the 18 papatipu rūnanga (authoritative tribal council of a specific tribal area) in Te Wai Pounamu received $574,334 with a total direct distribution since settlement of $17.2 million. Today, the wealthiest iwi contributed to improving the wellbeing of 80,000 tribal members. 'Thriving and diversifying' Diverse and community economies used economic activities, both paid and unpaid, beyond formal market transactions. They included gifting, sharing, volunteering, and caring as legitimate economic actions. Although some challenges had been identified - such as resourcing rangatiratanga, financialisation, no time for kaitiakitanga (guardianship), and balancing obligations. The report also stated it also required pushing beyond limited Crown recognition, and exploring diverse forms of labour, enterprise, transactions, property and finance to achieve diverse and community economies. Forward explained it in terms of the "Matike Mai sphere" - the sphere of influence. "Of course [Māori] are a firm, at large, and empower the rangatiratanga sphere, but I think we see in our in our case studies what the kāwanatanga is doing does strike us, though we resist and though we're in defiance of their idea that they have a sole claim to authority sometimes. "We have to navigate strategically and that's what we take up - a new strategic navigation in which the kāwanatanga diverts us and say no more. That there are things that we can do in the relational sphere between those two spheres to demand a different shape rather than just a greater share."

Council defends three-year rates rise of 55%
Council defends three-year rates rise of 55%

Otago Daily Times

time2 days ago

  • Otago Daily Times

Council defends three-year rates rise of 55%

The West Coast Regional Council is defending its rate rises, and contesting figures put out by Taxpayers' Union showing the council topped the country for rate hikes over the past three years. Council chairman Peter Haddock says the figures are flawed. The West Coast Regional Council's [WCRC] total rates increase this year was in fact 18% — higher than the Taxpayers Union figure of 12%, he said. The council itself previously reported the increase as 12%, but the figure did not include targeted rates and charges for Civil Defence and the new District Plan. But the total rate rise over three years was lower than the Taxpayers' Union figure of 65%, Mr Haddock said. "Our cumulative rate increase was more than 10% less than that ... it was still high at 55% over three years but there are very good reasons why Coast rates have increased," he said. The council had previously started to fail on delivering mandatory work programmes because of cost cutting in previous years, and it was running an unbalanced budget, using mining bond deposits and prudent flood protection reserves held on behalf of ratepayers, to cover operational costs, Mr Haddock said. The cost of administering the new combined district plan had also landed on the council, along with the cost of upgrading flood protection for Westport, Franz Josef and Hokitika. "I know West Coasters are doing it tough, and I know average incomes for many people are considerably less than the rest of the country. But I also know kicking the can along isn't good business practice," Mr Haddock said. The impact of the 18% rate rise on individual ratepayers would vary. "Those with properties with a higher capital value will pay more rates than those with a lower capital value, that is fair." "We will not ... live beyond our means. The government expects us to be financially prudent, and more importantly, so do Coasters. We've worked hard to rebuild council and ensure it is positioned to deliver for the community." The WCRC's job was to create the environment for the community and businesses to thrive, the Chair said. Striking the right balance between development and management of effects was difficult when those effects took a long time to appear or were not fully understood, but the council had to ensure future generations did not have to pay for its mistakes, Mr Haddock said. As the council completed the flood protection schemes, the costs passed on to the community would significantly reduce, he said. - ■LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. - By Lois Williams

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store