Labour’s Deputy Leader shares her insights on the state of the country and the Party’s changing fortunes as the festive season approaches.
Despite the on-going challenges many Pasifika families face at the moment, Labour Party Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni is hopeful that the holiday season can bring some festive cheer.
“I hope that our Pasifika community get to just relax and to enjoy each other, to do what we do at this time of year,” she says
“To go to our churches, to fellowship with our families and our friends and to spend time at the beach and doing the great things that we love with our aiga.”
Labour’s spokesperson for Social Development, Child Poverty Reduction and Pacific Peoples, Sepuloni says it’s been a tough year for many families.
“It is certainly the cost of living. It’s that ability to just be able to live with dignity, to be able to pay for the roof over the head, to be able to put food on the table, to have enough to contribute to the church activities and to family responsibilities without having that constant fear and concern that there won’t be enough,” Sepuloni says.
“We (Pacific people) are experiencing the highest unemployment rate as often happens when the economy goes bad. I think it’s at around 9.2% at the moment.
“And that puts pressure on not just the individual but the whole family and so that is front of mind when I think about our Pasifika community.”
Sepuloni’s comments come after Labour’s annual conference in Dunedin recently, where Party leaders and guest speakers spoke effusively to the members buoyed by a recent political poll which put them neck and neck with the National Party.
That poll had Labour four points up and National down by the same margin with the Greens and Maori Party making big gains. While the coalition government parties would still hold the treasury benches according to that poll, Sepuloni says it has allowed the Party to unify behind its current course.
“I mean off the back of a great conference then we also had excellent polling, which makes it seem all worthwhile to be honest,” Sepuloni says.
“Everyone has been working quite hard over the course of the last year in what have been difficult circumstances. I mean, it’s hard, day after day after day, to wake up to, and to stand up to a policy agenda of a government that you absolutely disagree with.
“And so, you know, by the end of this year, I think there are a whole lot of tired people out there. However, the polls are in our favor, so that makes it feel like we are on track and things can look brighter for us at the next election.”
But while it’s a good poll result, Sepuloni admits the coalition government’s performance in its first year in power has played a part in the Labour’s revival. The government is having to deal with the effects of an economic recession by cutting public sector spending and pushing through new laws to spark economic activity. However, despite implementing tax cuts when they got into power, many are still struggling and businesses continue to fold.
“Certainly there is discontent with the Government and the policy agenda, whether it be the Treaty Principles Bill, whether it be some of the decisions they made, like, to give $2.9 billion worth of cuts to landlords or a $216 million tax break to the tobacco industry. There is a lot of discontent with their policies, but also people are doing it tough,” Sepuloni says.
“You know, the sense I get is that morale is really low across the country. I can look at particular groups and probably make my own decisions as to why.
“If you look at the public sector, they’ve lost over 6000 staff there and plus, now being pushed to do more with less people. And so there’s a loss of morale there.”
Sepuloni says the health sector is particularly under strain as is the construction sector which impacts many Pasifika workers.
“I’ve had to visit health facilities and hospitals recently for different reasons, and nurses and doctors are telling me how difficult it is. They are short staffed, but they’re not allowed to hire anyone else. So that’s putting pressure on them,” she says.
“And then you’ve got all of these people in the building and construction industry who have such a high level of uncertainty because so many building projects aren’t going ahead. And so we’ve lost 13,000 jobs in that space.
“So morale is low, unemployment is high for us as a Pacific community, and it’s only going to get higher. So I’m really worried about that.”
Sepuloni says, Labour has spent this last year meeting with communities and getting a sense of what policies they should take to the next election.
“Well, we said that the first year after the election would be our year to get out there and listen.
“There have been no big policy announcements from us because first, we need to be engaging with the people on the ground to find out what those policies should look like.”
