CTU economist Peter Harris agrees: "The net effect of the slump and the recovery of the past 12 months is that 19,000 full-time jobs have gone, to be replaced by 30,000 part-time jobs."

Source _ Statistics from Statistics NZ, The Dominion 7 May 1999 "Unemployment drops sharply". The Daily News 7 May 1999 "Drop in jobless attributed to part-timers"; New Zealand Herald 7 May 1999 "Economists do not take data as gospel" ; press release from the Green Party "Young people hit hard in the job market" by Rod Donald

Source New Zealand Herald 5 May 1999 "Jobs going for NZ at Olympics"

Source _ The Dominion 5 May 1999 "Delay in report on Maori `unfortunate'"

Since the appointment, several media reports have highlighted Stone's transformation from a street kid with a string of convictions and a bleak future ... to an important Ngai Tahu business leader. Christchurch Mayor Garry Moore, who has worked closely with Stone while a SCOPE advisor himself, sees the appointment as an inspired choice. Moore: "The very innovative techniques that equipped Wally to survive on the wrong side of the tracks are perhaps now those that enable him to be brilliant on the other..."

Source _ The Dominion 11 May 1999 "Strangers smile that turned life around" by Val Aldridge

Source New Zealand Herald 24 April 1999 "Family first source of childcare survey"

WINZ is required by law to recover debts and it does this, as most companies do, by sending one and if necessary a second letter asking for repayment. If unanswered, a phone call is made, followed by a third and fourth more strongly worded letters. The last resort for non-repayment is that WINZ has the power to deduct the payment directly from the person's wages, bank account or, if they are dead, their estate. WINZ does not apply interest or penalties to money it is owed.

Source The Dominion 28 April 1999 ""Department owed $753 million"

Under the Coalition Government, the number of apprenticeships in Australia has almost doubled to 220,000 young people. Its new target of 530,000 people (over the next four years) reveals the extent of the government's ambition.

Source _ Sydney Morning Herald 8 May 1999 "Jobs lifeline for 500,000" by Tom Allard

No localities in the Nelson electorate have high levels of deprivation, only 8% of the population are in localities ranked among the 20% most deprived. The Nelson electorate ranks 47th among 61 electorates for poverty.

( Electorate statistics compiled by Judy Reinken, and based on 1996 Census).

Source _ Judy Reinken, statistics based on 1996 Census of Population and Dwellings

In the early 1990s, the American Management Association conducted studies of firms which had engaged seriously in downsizing. The AMA found that repeated downsizings produce "lower profits and declining worker productivity..." Another study by the Wyatt Companies found that "less than half the companies achieved their expense reduction goals; fewer than one-third increased their profitability and less than one third increased their productivity..."

Source Eileen Applebaun and Rosemary Batt in "The New American Workplace" (pub 1993 by Cornell University Press)

Sennett: "It became clear to many business leaders by the mid-1990s that only in the highly paid fantasy life of consultants can a large organisation define a new business plan, trim staff and `re-engineer' itself to suit, then steam forward to realise the new design.

"Many, even most, re-engineering efforts fail largely because institutions become dysfunctional during the people-squeezing process: the morale and motivation of workers drop sharply in the various plays of downsizing. Surviving workers wait for the next blow of the axe rather than exulting in competitive victory over those who are fired...

"Institutional changes, instead of following the path of the guided arrow, head in different and often conflicting directions: business plans are discarded and revised; expected benefits turn out to be ephemeral; the organisation loses direction, a profitable operating unit is suddenly sold, for example, yet a few years later the parent company tries to get back the business in which it knew how to make money before it sought to reinvent itself..."

Sennett: "While the disruption may not be justifiable in terms of productivity, the short-term returns to stockholders provide a strong incentive to the powers of chaos disguised by that seemingly reassuring word `re-engineering'. Perfectly viable businesses are gutted or abandoned, capable employees are set adrift rather than rewarded, simply because the organisation must prove to the market that it is capable of change..."

Source _ "The Corrosion of Character" by Richard Sennett (pub 1998 by W.W.Norton and Company)

Even today many of us avoid the word job, preferring more upscale terms like occupation or career to describe what we do for 40-plus hours each week. Yet the older meaning of these words also reveals something about the nature of work.

Occupation originally meant to seize or capture. (It is still used in this sense when, for instance, we speak of the German occupation of France during World War II.) What an apt description of how jobs take over our lives, subjecting us to the demands of outside rulers. The original meaning of career fits well with the role we play in the speeded-up global economic rat race. In the 19th century, career meant "racing course" or "rapid and unrestrained" activity.

In searching for ways to put meaning back into our work, we might want to revive the term vocation (from the Latin for "voice" or "calling"). Today, however, "having a vocation" or "answering a calling" usually means embarking upon a religious lifean unfortunate narrowing of the concept.

We all deserve to be involved in work to which we have been called by our passions and beliefs. Following a vocation can lead to a professionliterally, a "public declaration" of what we believe and who we are. A profession is what our work should be, but so rarely is ...

Source _ The Utne Reader Jan/Feb 1999 "Breaking the Job Lock " by Andrew Kimbrell, available also at www.utne.com

Source The Dominion 8 May 1999 "Productivity the key, says Greenspan"; New Zealand Herald 8 May 1999 "Grenspan warns US of growing inflation threat"

Source The Dominion 28 April 1999 "Chaos, Aids, Asia crisis boost poverty, says bank"

The campaign for a tax on currency speculation is based on the work of James Tobin, a Nobel laureate in economics based at Yale University. Its purpose is to discourage volatile short-term trading and the destabilizing effect this has on national currencies. The proposal is similar to the Financial Transactions Tax which local economist John Lepper originally suggested to the Alliance Party as an alternative to GST.

Speculative transactions under the Tobin proposal would be taxed at a tiny percent of volume (0.1%-0.5%), once per transaction. Non-speculative transactions would be exempt, (currently about 10-15% of the daily volume). The tax would discourage the most volatile overnight or short-term currency trades, while leaving longer-term investments barely effected. Dangerous currency volatility would therefore be reduced, and national macroeconomic autonomy restored. Economic studies on the Tobin proposals predict that billions in revenue, potentially as much as $300 - $600 billion per year, could be generated by the tax.

Source _ Toes97 Tobin Tax Network email conference; and www.tobintax.org

VOICE: BRUCE JESSON 1945--1999
"The idea that the New Zealand transformation is irreversible is linked to the idea of globalisation. There is this widespread impression that New Zealand is too small a country to resist the power of global finance, and that the nation state is redundant anyway. It would be pointless for New Zealand to assert itself as a nation. We just have to accept the inevitable.

"The idea doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Most of what has occurred in New Zealand has not been inevitable at all but has been a matter of choice. The monetarist policies, the privatisation of state assets, the extremes of deregulation, the commercialisation of the state; New Zealand governments chose to do these things with no outside pressure.

"The impression has been created that the state not just in New Zealand but throughout the world has been undermined by the global marketplace. and that the role of the nation has declined as a result. This cannot be entirely true, however, because in some respects the power of the state has increased, even in New Zealand.

"We are actually experiencing a contradictory development. For instance, vast numbers of people are dependent on the state for their income, and the state tries to use this circumstance to control their behaviour.

"It hasn't been the state as such that has withered so much as the state in its benign and humane role. With it has disappeared much of the cohesion and vitality of our society, something that occurred with surprisingly little resistance.

"For we New Zealanders the challenge is to define the nature of our nation in the context of an increasingly unstable global marketplace. Put simply, the challenge facing New Zealand is to redefine the role of the nation in the modern global economy.

"This is not an all-or-nothing exercise requiring a choice between a global approach or some parody of fortress New Zealand. Rather, nation-building is about creating a cohesive society that can act internationally with some sense of purpose. It is about striking a balance between the national and the global and deciding what out goals in that relationship should be.

"In the first instance, the problem appears to be an economic one: how do we restore the productive economy? And there are in fact a number of practical economic measures that can be suggested. At the same time, however, the answers to our economic problems are not always economic but are often cultural and social.

"One of our main economic problems is that whatever happens globally has a direct impact on our local economy; there are no barriers or sources of resistance. Overcoming this requires the building of a sense of national identity through institutions such as the media and the education system by a government that is not content for the nation to passively accept its fate..."

Bruce Jesson, (edited) from "Only Their Purpose is Mad" published 1999 by Dunmore Press.