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  The Government’s social spending promises for this month’s budget are more Band-Aid than cure because they don’t tackle tough structural problems like taxation, Peter Malcolm, spokesman for the income equality project Closing the Gap, said today. Earlier this month, the governm

The government continues to ignore inequality in New Zealand, this week shamefully defeating three bills designed to help those at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, says equality advocacy group Closing the Gap. The Healthy Homes Bill was intended to ensure that every rental h

“Inequality is the biggest problem facing New Zealand at the present time” says Peter Malcolm National Secretary of Closing the Gap. It underlies many of our social ills, poverty, lack of trust, an economy that could do much better, and a poor uptake of the responsibilities required f

In the last 12 months we have had two stories in the news about promising professional rugby players whose careers have been disrupted or curtailed due to childhood illnesses associated with poverty in New Zealand: Robbie Fruean (Crusaders) and Buxton Popoali’I (Highlanders). Sa

Disenfranchised During the Labour leader election campaigns we regularly heard about the ‘800,000 voters who didn’t vote’. That Labour’s job was not to appeal to the disenchanted in National or to steal voters from its natural allies, the Green Party, but to inspire those who felt dis

When the Treasury persuaded Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson to back their respective neo-liberal ‘briefings to incoming government’ reports, they included the ideas that education and health should be run like businesses. Education Since 1984 NZ education has deteriorated. Each neo-