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“An increase of 3.5% in the minimum wage compared with 5.5% increase for politicians is appalling. It is another example of the wealthy looking after themselves and showing no regard for the poor” says Peter Malcolm, National Secretary of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc “And the polit

I have just had a look through SSC’s annual chief executive remuneration tables at 30 June 2014: http://www.ssc.govt.nz/rem-senior-state-sector-staff-to-30june14 As expected and as usual, spectacular salary increases for public sector chiefs, typically of the order 5% to as much

The long-run history of income inequality in Denmark:Top incomes from 1870 to 2010 By A. B. Atkinson, Nuffield College, Oxford and Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and J. E. Søgaard, University of Copenhagen and the Danish Ministry of Finance ‘We use his

Today, the National Government managed to out produce Fonterra in its production of hot air and manure, with their explanations to justify the figures released in the latest (UNICEF) report documenting how little John Key’s administration has done to reduce child poverty (by just 0.40

I see suggestions that the National Party somehow manipulated results to gain their unprecedented win as an extension of “dirty politics”. I have no doubt that there has been a vindictive streak in ministers’ ranks for some time as this was already evident with Paula Bennett’s exposur

“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

The 2014 Household Incomes Report, released yesterday, has been cherry picked by Government and opposition alike to show that the statistics match the story they have been telling. The Government uses a comparison with 2 years ago and shows things are improving. The opposition uses a

Why is it when New Zealand has a supposed rock star economy that the poor continue to take the rap? For thirty years employers have driven their workers ever harder for the same or similar pay. They have claimed that the productivity increase has been due to technological advances yet

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

The neo-liberal culture of greed has become so ingrained in New Zealand society that left of centre politicians fear to suggest policies that would reduce the wealth or income gap between our richest and poorest citizens or, heaven forbid, ease the hardship of our poorest children for