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NZ First's Tracey Martin

NZ First w/ Tracey Martin, rounding up the term: July 15, 2020

NZ First w/ Tracey Martin, rounding up the term: July 15, 2020 NZ First w/ Tracey Martin, rounding up the term: July 15, 2020, 33.45 MB
Wed 15 Jul 2020

This morning Lillian spoke to the Minister for the last time, we started by discussing Todd Muller’s resignation and Judith Collin’s appointment as National Party leader, before touching on some of the things Martin is most proud of during this government term and what she wants to work more on.

 

NZ First's Tracey Martin on recent government announcements: July 8, 2020

NZ First's Tracey Martin on recent government announcements: July 8, 2020 NZ First's Tracey Martin on recent government announcements: July 8, 2020, 32.57 MB
Wed 8 Jul 2020

Lillian speaks to the Minister about two government announcements from yesterday, the first being an extension of temporary working visas, and the second being a hold on incoming flights to the country. They also touched on a tool the Minister has been working on during her time in government. Just for some more information around the visa extensions, given this is not Martin’s portfolio she indicated she may not have all the details. Minister Iain Lees-Galloway announced yesterday that the Government is "making immediate short-term changes to visa settings to support temporary migrants already onshore in New Zealand and their employers, while also ensuring New Zealanders needing work are prioritised".

So this means, 

- Extending all existing employer-assisted temporary work visas for people in New Zealand and whose visas are due to expire before the end of 2020 by six months, benefiting around 16,500 workers

- Shifting the stand down by 6 months to February 2021. So this affects migrant workers who are subject to the 12 month stand-down period and were going to have to leave New Zealand this year will now be able to stay for the duration of the extension, and that affects 600 workers. The stand-down period being the amount of time one has to leave the country before applying to come back and work. The government states that, The stand-down period was introduced in 2017 to prevent lower-skilled, lower-paid foreign workers from becoming well settled in New Zealand without a pathway to residence. Just a note here because of the way in which lower-skilled as a term has negative connotations, the Government is continuing to work on a number of changes, which were announced pre-COVID-19. These changes include a different way to define lower-skilled/lower-paid employment and a new process for employer-assisted work visas expected to be fully in place by mid-2021.

- Finally, the last part of the announcement was ensuring New Zealanders needing work continue to be prioritised.

So back to Tracey Martin, Lillian started by asking her how this will work.

 

EDIT: Minister Iain Lees-Galloway's response 08/07/2020:

“Temporary work visas are there to fill temporary gaps in the labour market and that is clear when people apply for temporary visas. Work to residency is only available for more skilled jobs where there is a longer term skills shortage.

“The extension to visas announced yesterday is to give people breathing space to work out what is best for them. The New Zealand labour market is changing as more New Zealanders lose their jobs and as always, immigration is there to fill the gaps in our labour market. As the gaps close, there may be fewer opportunities for temporary migrant workers.

“We value the contribution our migrant communities make to New Zealand and it’s great that many do become residents and citizens. However, like in most countries around the world, temporary immigration is for temporary work opportunities. That’s a choice people make for themselves.

[on the low-skilled issue] “Last year we introduced changes to the employer assisted temporary work visas that includes introducing the use of pay rates as a proxy for skills. In the vast majority of cases higher skilled roles are paid above the median wage so the median wage is being used to assess the skill level, instead of complicated skills assessments under ANZCO.”

NZ First's Tracey Martin on the difficulties and successes of MMP: July 1, 2020

NZ First's Tracey Martin on the difficulties and successes of MMP: July 1, 2020 NZ First's Tracey Martin on the difficulties and successes of MMP: July 1, 2020, 18.2 MB
Fri 3 Jul 2020

The first part of a longer conversation with NZ First MP Tracey Martin regarding this government term and whether the MMP government has been a success. They discuss major issues that the coalition government has had to respond to and what lessons she will take into a possible next term.

NZ First's Tracey Martin on Oranga Tamariki allegations: July 1, 2020

NZ First's Tracey Martin on Oranga Tamariki allegations: July 1, 2020 NZ First's Tracey Martin on Oranga Tamariki allegations: July 1, 2020, 41.81 MB
Wed 1 Jul 2020

This morning Lillian spoke with Minister Tracey Martin of NZ First. Originally the proposed discussion was around policy and MMP given Martin has pushed back recently on what she says is a narrative in the media that NZ First is blocking certain policy - she’s asked why there’s less discussion on the policy NZ First tries to get through that also gets blocked. This ended up being a useful discussion about how MMP works and Lillian also asked whether the Minister believed this past government term has been successful.

However, this morning Lillian came across a Newsroom article which follows up on their ongoing investigation into Oranga Tamariki, so I put this to the Minister as well. Today we are going to hear that discussion and either tomorrow or Friday you can hear the rest of the MMP discussion and both will be available on podcast through the bFM website. The article by Newsroom addresses a range of claims made by people currently working for Oranga Tamariki as well as former employees. It addresses claims that describe the agency as ‘plagued with bad practice, bullying and incompetence’, the bullying described is often toward people who don’t toe the company line it says. 

For full transparency, the article blurb is copied here:

“Last week Newsroom revealed details around Oranga Tamariki CEO Grainne Moss’ sudden exit from her previous role at Bupa and asked how, within months of receiving a payout, she had managed to secure a top job in the public service. Influential Māori leaders have been calling for her resignation for more than a year, with the heat turned up again this month after the release of the Children’s Commissioner report into the agency’s uplift practices. In the second part of this investigation we talk to current and former staff from Oranga Tamariki who share serious concerns over a culture in the government agency that they say can put tamariki at risk."

Furthermore, in the article it stated, 'in nearly all the conversations they had, the same issues were brought up no matter where in the country the OT staff were from'. Those issues are:

- Qualified social workers being replaced with unqualified youth or care workers

- Social workers being targeted if they complained

- Doubt over the way caseloads are calculated

- Children being misrepresented in documents going before courts

- Only paying lip service to Te Ao Māori  

- Major issues with staffing at youth justice facilities

This is outlined here because there is not much discussion during the interview of the detail of the allegations.

 

EDIT: Update - Melanie Reid of Newsroom responded to the Minister implying this was a personal attack in an interview on Waatea

NZ First w/ Tracey Martin: June 24, 2020

NZ First w/ Tracey Martin: June 24, 2020 NZ First w/ Tracey Martin: June 24, 2020, 27.76 MB
Wed 24 Jun 2020

Minister Tracey Martin joins us again this week and we spoke for a long time again, touching on new entrenched support for the teaching of the health and sexuality curriculum in schools, which basically secures funding for a number of people to go in and do this, to ensure consistency across the curriculum and throughout all schools. We didn’t have the time to play that today, but there are more announcements in the wings so we can try cover that again later perhaps. Today though, we talk about Covid-19 quarantine mishaps and also the delay in the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill. Lillian started by Asking the Minister if the quarantine mishaps could have been avoided. 

[CLIP]

Lillian also asked the Minister when she does think she is going to get this done so it can go ahead, and she’s saying she’s trying to do it as quickly as possible. 

 

NZ First w/ Tracey Martin on systemic racism in crown institutions: June 17, 2020

NZ First w/ Tracey Martin on systemic racism in crown institutions: June 17, 2020 NZ First w/ Tracey Martin on systemic racism in crown institutions: June 17, 2020, 29.36 MB
Wed 17 Jun 2020

Minister for Children Tracey Martin joins us again and discusses with Lillian her position on parallel governance systems following the announcement of a possible Māori Health Authority. As well as this, a recent report by the Children's Commissioner's office has highlighted again the traumatic process that occurs during the uplifting of a child by Oranga Tamariki, a process that disproportionately affects Māori. 

NZ First: May 27, 2020

NZ First: May 27, 2020 NZ First: May 27, 2020, 24.31 MB
Wed 27 May 2020

We have NZ First back on the show this week, but Fletcher Tabuteau was unavailable, Mark Patterson was keen to speak with us though. He is the party’s agricultural and primary industry spokesperson and touches on biosecurity too. We spoke about governmental reviews following the Covid-19 crisis, the Budget announcements and the latest poll numbers, but Lillian started by asking whether he had much to do in his responsibilities with keeping our imports and exports moving early on in the Covid-19 lockdown.

NZ First: April 15, 2020

NZ First: April 15, 2020 NZ First: April 15, 2020, 20.84 MB
Wed 15 Apr 2020

Fletcher is back with us on a Wednesday, Lillian spoke to Fletcher this morning about the Treasury’s modelling of unemployment figures announced yesterday, how to best support workers at this time and what he expected to hear during the epidemic response committee meeting.

NZ First: April 9, 2020

NZ First: April 9, 2020 NZ First: April 9, 2020, 18.69 MB
Thu 9 Apr 2020

We have Deputy Leader of NZ First Fletcher Tabuteau with us today. Normally we have this chat on a Wednesday but we haven’t been able to lock that in for quite a while. There’ll be time for a proper catch up at some point but he pandemic kei te haere - we are in the middle of a pandemic so that's where we start.

NZ First: August 28, 2019

NZ First: August 28, 2019 NZ First: August 28, 2019, 22.22 MB
Wed 28 Aug 2019

Fletcher Tabuteau, deputy leader of the NZ First party joins Lillian Hanly today to discuss the Commerce Commission’s fuel price report and the Infrastructure Commission being spearheaded by Infrastructure minister Shane Jones. Firstly though Lillian asks for NZ First’s response to the National Party’s economic discussion document.