The G8 Summit follows a meeting of the EU Council summit, also in Cologne. Besides German proposals for a European charter of human rights, the EU leaders have been trying to decide on an "employment pact".

Martin Walker of The Guardian reports that now the controversial German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine known in the press as Red Oskar has resigned from office, the measures within the "employment pact" have changed considerably.

Walker: "When Lafontaine was finance minister, the pact might have meant shorter working weeks, EU-wide public works projects and the kind of Keynesian policies that worry central bankers. But now that Red Oskar is gone, Britain has managed to get this recast as an employment and economic reform pact, with deregulated labour markets and greater job flexibility. The dream of leftwing Europe is fast turning into the reality of a Blairite Third Way..."

But, like the "employment pact" of the recent EU Summit ... the rhetoric looks likely to fall very short of delivering real results. Our Media Watch reports that Gordon Brown has not had much support in his proposals from British PM Tony Blair. There is also Italian, German and Japanese opposition to "generous" debt-relief proposals.

The initial G8 promises were to cancel $25 billion of these uncollectable debts. The proposals from this weekend's G8 meeting in Cologne are expected to raise this to $50 or $70 billion. But none of this will go beyond that which is already not being repaid.

The Jubilee 2000 campaign: "The G8 are still offering debt relief which is cost-free (because the debt would never be paid anyway). Such cost-free cancellation is also benefit-free. The G8 offer will make no inroads into the debt payments which currently displace spending on human development. Debt "sustainability" will continue to be defined as the level of debt service that the poorest countries can be forced to pay....

"For more than 20 years now, debt reduction has proceeded in small incremental steps, from "Toronto" terms to "London" terms, "Naples" terms, "Lyon" terms to the latest HIPC initiative. Just as these "pigeon-steps" made little progress in dealing with this problem, so it appears that "Cologne" terms will not provide an exit from unpayable debts for the poorest countries.

"The Cologne proposals for debt relief will send few new children to school, produce very few new hospitals and provide little hope of economic recovery for the most impoverished, highly indebted nations and their people. We will be no closer to the goal agreed upon by the G8 governments of halving the number of people living in absolute poverty by the year 2015..."

The Jubilee 2000 campaign website is at http://www.j2000usa.org.

Source _ Official summit website at www.g8cologne.de; The Guardian Weekly 6 June 1999 "Cologne summit ducks the big issues" by Martin Walker; Letter of Jubilee 2000 campaign to G-7 finance ministers 10 June 1999 from the Toes97 internet conference.

Maharey : "The report confirms all our worst fears about the scheme. It fails to provide any long-term benefit for the unemployed. It fails to provide any real jobs, while at the same time the community is left to shoulder the burden of keeping people busy..."

Source _ Press statement from Steve Maharey 14 June 1999 "Community wage will be abandoned: Labour"

The changes are due to come into effect on 1 October 1999 when the Corporate Office of the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) and the Social Policy Agency become the stand alone Ministry of Social Policy.

The restructuring follows on from last October's creation of WINZ from the Income Support Service and the NZ Employment Service. This was followed in January 1999 with the integration of the Community Funding Agency with the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Service to form the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Agency. This, in turn, will become the Department of Child, Youth and Whanau Services in October this year.

Approximately 85% of these jobs will be filled by staff transferring into the new Ministry of Social Policy. The remaining staff will go through "a reassignment process". Margaret Bazley expects that "a small number" of positions will become redundant as a result of the new structure. The number of positions will become clearer once the reassignment process has been completed.

Source press statements from Margaret Bazley 11 June 1999 "DSW Structure Of New Ministry Confirmed."

The forum argued that the concept of "community governance" needs to be "re-invented" in New Zealand to become more flexible than at present, and to create an environment which is "...characterised by high levels of trust and mutual confidence between the government and the community."

The Canterbury view: " Better outcomes are needed. There are too many individuals and groups facing an increasing struggle to cope with the pressures of day to day living. There are important areas in which inadequate progress is being made to achieve environmental sustainability and, while there have been obvious successes, some are expressing increasing concerns about our performance in terms of creating wealth to be shared by members of the community..."

"Taking the Canterbury Communities into the New Millennium" is a discussion paper written by Christchurch City Manager Mike Richardson, and others, and used as the basis of the forum discussions. It draws on the work of Professor Michael Clarke of the University of Birmingham, who was one of the main keynote speakers at the Canterbury forum. Copies of this paper can be obtained from the Christchurch City Council email jude.pani@ccc.govt.nz.

Source _ Jobs Letter editor vivian Hutchinson attended this conference as a speaker; "Taking the Canterbury Communities into the New Millennium The Role of Local Government" May 1999 by Mike Richardson, and other Canterbury local authority CEOs.

A confidential paper called "The Vision: A Single Work-Focussed Gateway" proposes instead that claimants make a single application for all their benefits and receive one cheque in return. Two American-based companies will begin pilot tests of the new system in November.

Source _ The Times, quoted in The Week 8 May 1999 "Welfare Privatisation"