According to Catriona Ross, of the Wellington People's Resource Centre, a variety of suggestions were put forward at the meeting. These included ending the Winz corporate culture, work-testing, the work-for-the dole scheme, the sanction scheme, as well as improving people's rights to benefit reviews and lifting supplementary assistance grants.

Source Newsroom, 21 January, 2000 "Government to harness benefit advocacy groups expertise _ a press release", and verbal report to The Jobs Letter from Robert Reid; The Daily News 22 January 2000 "A beneficiary by any other name" by NZPA

The Alliance did not succeed in its call to abandon youth rates but the government has promised to hold a review of the minimum wage. Youth Affairs and Associate Labour minister Laila Harré says the review will, among other things, look at dropping the age at which the adult minimum wage rates applies from 20 yrs to 18yrs. Harré: "There is a simple point of principle at stake with the youth minimum wage. No one should be paid less for doing exactly the same work as someone working alongside them doing exactly the same work."

Council of Trade Union president Ross Wilson commends the "modest but very welcome increase." He counters arguments about the impact of the minimum wage rise on jobs by quoting 1999 OECD report which shows that a rise has no significant impact on overall wage levels. A study of French youth rates showed that, over 20 years, youth unemployment rose 18.2% but only 0.3% could be attributed to the French minimum labour standards.

Source The New Zealand Herald, 21 December 1999, "$22 rise betters minimum wage pledge" by Vernon Small, The Dominion, 23 December 1999, Praise and condemnation for rise in minimum wage by Roeland van der Bergh

Minister of Tertiary Education Steve Maharey says he has called for a report on the student loan scheme that will address issues like loan repayments by ex-students and students being able to borrow to pay for compulsory student union membership fees.

Source The Dominion, 23 D December 1999 Students and low paid big winners" by Andrew Laxon, The Daily News, 21 December 1999, Christmas bonus for low-paid workers" by Victoria Main

The Daily News, 13 January, 2000 "Winz on top of processing student loans, says Maharey"; The New Zealand Herald, 13 January, 2000, "Fears of debacle on student loans"; The Dominion, 12 January, 2000 "Green call for guarantee on Winz unheeded"

"I know you would like to think it was a truly horrible meeting, but in fact it wasn't The minister's been very clear about his expectations, and I'm going to be working very hard to ensure that every one of those is met to the letter."
-- Christine Rankin, talking to media after her first meeting with Steve Maharey

"This minister campaigned hard against Winz and its chief executive. Suddenly, when he can not only talk tough but act tough, he goes all weak in the knees."
-- Belinda Vernon, National's social services spokesperson commenting on Steve Maharey

There is no employment select committee.

Source The Dominion, 27, December 1999, Select committees

Minister Steve Maharey has confirmed that an out-of-court settlement has been reached with the manager, who was suing the department for unjustified dismissal. The settlement, reached just before the election, was confidential. But the New Zealand Herald quotes an unconfirmed source putting the settlement at more than $100,000, and included an apology from Christine Rankin.

The Crown Law Office says that it would have had to have been involved if the deal was over Christine Rankin's $50,000 spending limit. However, in another case settled just four days before the general election, a senior Winz manager received a golden handshake worth over $110,000, of which $50,000 was paid in cash and the balance paid as `study leave' after the person had effectively finished working.

Rod Donald agrees. He says that the secret settlement shows that Ms Rankin is out of her depth. Donald: "Either she was wrong to suspend the manager, or handled the suspension badly, or both. In either case, Ms Rankin had made a serious blunder." Donald also says that Maharey should revisit his public endorsement of Rankin after his first meeting with her: "If she was as good as he claims, she would have briefed him about this at their first meeting. That she didn't is outrageous"

Source New Zealand Herald, 14 January, 2000, "Secrecy on cash payout at Winz"; Weekend Herald 15-16 January, 2000, "Rankin has had her time say Greens" by Vernon Small; The Daily News 24 January 2000 "Act wants Maharey to move on Rankin

Winz provides "recoverable" grants to people on low incomes who find themselves with expenses they couldn't have budgeted for. The report says that by providing these loans, rather than non-repayable grants, the people who are most in need eventually become too indebted to Winz to qualify for further loans. Downtown Ministry: "In a perverse but all too real way, the person becomes too poor to help."

Source The New Zealand Herald, 23 December 1999, "Winz condemned for driving poor further into debt", NZPA

The Australians have co-ordinated the change with NZ officials who will have the same rules for new Australians coming here. The stand-down does not apply to families with dependent children or people on government superannuation or disabilities pensions. Over 35,000 NZ'ers moved to Australia last year, while about 12,000 Australians moved here.

Source _ The New Zealand Herald, 24 December 1999, "Dole wait gets longer for those moving to Australia" by Greg Ansley.

Source The Dominion, 4 January 2000, "Iwi ownership needed to hold fishing jobs: Hapi"

Houses at the bottom end of the Auckland market now average $212,000. For a low-income family, saving 20% for a deposit means saving 2.5 times their total annual income. Even a 5% deposit on a $180,000 house leaves the borrower having to make repayments of $1,283/month.

Chris Kingham, a business manager for Apex Financial Services, points out that this is over $15,000/yr which may work for young professionals, but is outside the range of low income earners. He warns that home ownership for low-income people will not be an option in the future. Kingham: "If you're earning $21,000 or less, I would categorically say you're not going to be buying a house in Auckland."

Source The New Zealand Herald, 29 December, 1999, "Home dream out of reach for poor", by Scott Cara

US Federal Reserve Bank chair Alan Greenspan points to job insecurity as a contributing factor to wage stability. Greenspan is referring to workforce surveys that say that Americans are more insecure about their jobs now than they have been in over a decade. Greenspan's view is that when workers feel insecure in their jobs, they don't rock the boat by asking for more money. Their willingness to accept lower wages helps keep inflation in check.

Professors Lawrence Katz from Harvard and Alan Krueger of Princeton say that unemployment is not nearly as low in the US as the official figures suggest. They point out that structural unemployment figures have been dislocated by the fact that 2% of American men are in prison and don't appear in the unemployment statistics. Katz and Krueger say that if these people weren't in prison, many of them would be unemployed.

Katz and Krueger also surmise that wage inflation is being kept in check by the fact that 10% of all new jobs in the US are filled through temp agencies with millions of just-in-time workers waiting in a queue for work.

Source The New Zealand Herald 18 January, 2000, "America's amazing jobs puzzle"

There are few prospects for these redundant workers in the new Hong Kong economy. Yet ironically, there are thousands of job vacancies on offer but these new jobs are for software engineers, information technology specialist and web designers, and are unlikely to be filled by former machinists. The Hong Kong economy looks to be entering a low growth period due to this lack of skilled labour, the continued high unemployment, and the flow-on result of reduced consumer spending.

Source The New Zealand Herald, 18 January, 2000, "New jobless hamper Hong Kong's resurgence" _ Bloomberg

Drawing on Old Testament ideas (Leviticus 25), Jubilee 2000 called for a once-and-for-all loan write-off to the world's poorest countries, to coincide with the new millennium. The proposal caught the public imagination and turned the debt debate from tedious technical discussions into a moral argument about justice between rich and poor.

Last September, Pope John Paul II joined many other anti-debt campaigners to appeal to world leaders to take urgent and decisive action on the debt crisis. The Pope: "Debt relief is urgent and a precondition for the poorest countries to make progress in their fight against poverty. This is something that is now widely recognised, and credit is due to all those who have contributed to this change in direction"

Jubilee 2000 co-ordinator Robert Reid: "New Zealand has an opportunity to take a leading role on the issue of third world debt cancellation, as it has done on international issues such as nuclear weapons, land mines or global warming. The moral argument for debt cancellation has been won with the richest and most powerful countries in the world. The problem now is to ensure that the practical application of this demand provides real relief to the people and countries of the third world "

Pilger: "Not a single example exists where macro-economic, structural reform has alleviated mass poverty. Throughout the developing world, these programmes imposed by the IMF and the World Bank have destroyed jobs and public services, while shaping local economies to the demands of international capital"

Marae elder Bruce Stewart told the City Voice that he was "speechless" when the sisters told him of their decision. Stewart: "Nobody comes up and forgives someone debts. People, when you owe them money, they inch it out to the lastThere is all the story about the Church taking a lot of the Maori land. This was a whole different thing them giving the land back to the Maori."

Videos and other educational resources are available from Caritas, P.O.Box 12-193, Wellington, or the Christian World Service at P.O.Box 22-652, Christchurch.

Aotearoa Jubilee 2000 _ Debt Action Network can be contacted at P.O.Box 50-216, Porirua phone 04-237-9147 email rreid@actirx.gen.nz

Sources City Voice, 22 December, 1999 "Sisters forgive marae's debt"; Guardian Weekly 6-12 January, 2000, "Spark that lit global revolt against poverty" by Charlotte Denny and Larry Elliott ; New Statesman, 10 January, 2000, "Don't be fooled by debt relief; it's just another way of reshaping the third world to the demands of capital" by John Pilger; The Common Good (Christmas 1999) "Jubilee 2000 _ Freedom from Debt" by Robert Reid.