Robson-on-Politics May 9 2007

Tragic week-end of violence

Whatever progress we have made as a society over recent years, and there is much to celebrate in record-high job creation, significant increased investment in health and education and wide extensions of workers' rights from an extra week's paid annual holidays, paid parental leave and higher and higher minimum wages, it is clear from the weekend of violence that we have still so much to do in the areas of reducing crime and protecting the victims of crime, tackling the often-related problems that flow from alcohol and other drug mis-use and the need as a society to invest a lot more in effective early intervention than we have been prepared to.

At present these issues are largely being tackled piecemeal. Co-ordinated action across central and local government and with community organisations is necessary to even begin to make significant progress.

Wellington Progressives met on Monday

Like members in Auckland and Christchurch, the overwhelming view is that there is much more that needs to be done in housing, in education, health, turning the tide against alcohol and other drug abuse and in early intervention.

Jim Anderton, who has represented an independent-of-Labour progressive viewpoint in Parliament since 1989, continues to make a positive difference - as reflected in his announcement last Friday of funding for rural communities hurt by adverse natural events.

http://www.progressive.org.nz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2689

Interesting ideas on how we can utilise new technologies to quite quickly build up good-quality housing stock at affordable prices, and how we might gather greater interest in the campaign to turn the tide against the biggest drug problems of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis misuse, are on members' minds.

Progressives across the country are conferring with Jim Anderton on how best to campaign for progressive ideas at cabinet and in Parliament and preparing the ground for an effective progressive intervention in the 2008 election.

Parliament agrees to end loophole that had protected child-beaters

It has been a very important past seven days in Parliament - with an overwhelming majority supporting Green M.P. Sue Bradford's Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill going forward into law.

The measure, supported (I think) by 118 of the 121 Members of Parliament, will remove a loophole in the law behind which none of our children were safe in law from violence.

Only the very extreme right-wing parties of the fundamentalist sort oppose this law change which will bring New Zealand into line with United Nations' guidelines which have long been best practice in many parts of the world.

The Labour-Green-Maori Party-Progressive bloc stayed staunch on the side of closing the loop-hole in spite of all of the negative campaigning of the far-right and in the end that strategy worked to split National and ACT against each other. At the end of the day, National chose to join the Parliamentary majority against ACT.

Progressives must continue to set the agenda

The LPG, the Labour-Progressive-Green bloc, hopefully with Maori Party support, must continue to outline a programme in 2008 that goes further than National is prepared to deliver: On economic development, on jobs training and public education, on social justice and environmental and conservation enhancement.

It has always been the case that the leadership of this country has come from the Left, and now is no exception.

In New Zealand, the Right has always followed the Left in terms of policy, although of course with a lag.

The Left's job is to introduce progressive change, reform that makes life better and richer for most people - as in the 1890s, and in the 1930s, and against since 1999.

To eventually win power, the Right has to convince the electorate that it will maintain the gains, not reverse them. Mr John Key seems to understand that, although I doubt that his senior colleagues who were in power in the wasted 1990s decade really do.

We have to progressively extend the gains, to offer greater freedoms and more liberty and further steps to social justice and opportunity, so the Right is continually having to run just to keep up.

http://www.progressive.org.nz/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=157

Socialists, Solidarity and Greens take big hit in Scotland

The election in Scotland was fascinating because all of the main players identified themselves as Left of centre - Scottish Nationalist Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Socialist Party of Scotland, the Greens, the Seniors Party and Solidarity.

In the out-going Parliament, these parties held a massive 108 seats in the 129-seat Parliament. After the election in the week-end, combined centre-Left and Left had 111 seats. But the distribution of seats within the Left changed completely as the socialist and green parties got swamped by the rising Scottish Nationalists which want the country to leave the United Kingdom.

One fear I have is that the left-of-Labour could be vulnerable in New Zealand too. If NZ First and United Future again in the run-up to Election 2008 refuse to be up-front to voters about whether they prefer a National or Labour-led government, instead opting for the weasel words of "we'll support the biggest party", that could push Green and Progressive voters toward Labour.

It is a strategy which poses an obvious and rather big problem not only for the Greens and Progressive, but for the entire centre-Left. My own personal view is that when it comes to core policy, United Future and NZ First will choose National over Labour the minute they have the power to actually do so - they didn't emerge in the last election with that power, or in 2002, or in 1999, and we have to ensure they don't in 2008 or else a National government could be imposed on an unsuspecting public courtesy of United Future and NZ First seats in Parliament.

An issue which split Scottish Socialist and Labour

In the last Parliament here, the vast majority of the Labour Party took a "hands-off" or so-called liberal attitude to prostitution law reform, which the Progressive Party took a party line against.

It was an issue which also split the Scottish Socialists (SSP) from the Tony Blair-led Labour Party and I thought I would link to the Scottish website's policy on the issue as it is something that will have to be revisited in New Zealand sometime in the future.

"The SSP is unequivocal in its condemnation of prostitution as a legitimate activity. We see it as sexual abuse perpetrated, primarily on the vulnerable, in exchange for payment. 95% of women working in street prostitution are addicted to Class A drugs, the average age of entry into prostitution in the UK is 14 and women engaged in prostitution are overwhelmingly likely to be survivors of child abuse.

"...Various strategies have been suggested to try to make the industry less exploitative and safer. State-operated brothels operate in Turkey, compelling women to have their sexual health policed; legalisation has been tried in the Netherlands with a corresponding rise in illegal commercial sexual activity including a rise in child prostitution and sex trafficking, a phenomenon which is also seen in New South Wales which has completely decriminalised the industry meaning that women do not even have basic health and safety regulations to fall back on. All of these strategies fail ultimately because they conceive of prostitution as work rather than abuse in exchange for payment.

"Sweden has taken another approach. It, like the SSP, recognises prostitution as abuse. It provides support for women seeking to escape the industry while fining men who pay women to perform sex acts. It has all but eradicated sex trafficking, the most insidious form of prostitution – leaving the traffickers to find softer targets with more profits to be made, while street prostitution is down by 80%. Critics of Sweden’s approach suggest that it has driven the industry underground – off the streets and into flats and small covertly run brothels, which to some extent is true. However women now have nothing to fear coming forward to receive health or legal support through their activity as all of the risk has now shifted to the users of prostitutes. The SSP strategy on prostitution is three pronged. It seeks repeal on all punitive measures against those who sell sexual services, in conjunction with legislation which would criminalise the purchasers of sexual services; specialist targeted support for those wishing to exit prostitution; And a mass education programme aimed at users of the prostitution industry."

http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/stories/pros_briefing.html

ENDS

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