Tonight I tried to move our arcane systems around trade forward a notch. I introduced a member’s bill to prohibit the importation of products made from slave labour. You wouldn’t think the government felt so concerned by it that they needed to reject it but that’s what they did.
We seem to be able to prohibit products made from prison labour from getting into NZ but we can’t seem to do it around the fruits of slave labour.
In the end, things are changing. Old economic orders have crumbled and we need to devise new ones. Raising the flag for ethical trade isn’t such a big ask is it? Certainly 17,000 Kiwi consumers represented by Geoff White and Trade Aid supported a petition to Parliament for just this kind of law. In a few years, ethical trade will be the name of the game and we won’t be trading if we can’t demonstrate some standards.
I’m all in favour of free trade, but it doesn’t happen in a moral vacuum. Trade has to be at the right price – a fair price, an ethical price, not just any price.
Foreign Affairs and Trade officials told the select committee which finally considered the petition earlier this year, just how hard it would be to get a form of words which could be enforced, as well as a mechanism to do it. Well, we did it and do it for products made from prison labour. It seems to me that what we are missing is the political will. My bill was lost 58 votes (Lab/Greens/Maori/Prog/United) to 63 (Nats/Act).
You can be sure that if we never do anything, nothing will be done. Damn shame.
Maryan if you cared about more than scoring political points you would have passed this bill in 9 years of Government.
Maybe National have the same reasons Labour did for not passing legislation.
By the way I am against slave labour but I guess the problem is , what is slave labour.
Working for a dollar a day?
Or working involuntarily for a dollar a day.
You talk of fair prices ,ethical prices.
Unfortunately these are personal opinions.
We sit here with our middle class welfare system , where even the poor can afford to be over weight but because we think a dollar a day is slave labour , we stop trade and those people go hungry.
I agree we need to help these people but we have to be careful we dont harm them in the process by well intentioned legislation that salves our consciences but harms them
Maryan, excellent idea with this Bill. We obviously can do little but make a symbolic difference, but if the US can pass such a law, you would think we would be able to do so! Can you try again with a similar Bill some other time?
All the go-gooders seem to get all hissy when they see people working for $1 a day. But so often they forget that the ’slave labour’ is actually good employment for some people in some of the countries we are dealing with.
I have some exp dealing with a company in China who we commented that the wages and conditions were not what we would have expected.
We were taken to their villages and met with their families and spoke to the people concerned.
The $1 a day (or what ever it was) were some of the higher incomes the villages were getting. It allowed them to live (relativity) well, put food on the table and educate their children.
Had we taken our business away the factory would have closed and killed the village – doing huge amounts of harm to a lot of very nice hard working people.
You mention moral vacuum’s – perhaps you need to look at the full morality and impact of your act and the damage it could cause – by judfing the conditions and pay on NZ standards and not the standards of the countries and regions that it is happening.
And again as Mark said – If it was workable – why did labour (who voted for your bill) de nothing about this in the 9 years they were in power? (I’d like to know a answer to that if you would be so kind)
Charity begins at home. Let’s start by outlawing slave labour in New Zealand.
Decent New Zealand is sick of crippling taxation, taxation that is almost entirely spent on welfare to and incarceration for the beneficiaries and the criminals that comprise the Labour electorate.
Decent Kiwis are unpaid for a full half of the working week – because that half is taken in tax. Why should we slave to support the indolent and the criminal?
Maryan said, “I’m all in favour of free trade, but it doesn’t happen in a moral vacuum. Trade has to be at the right price – a fair price, an ethical price, not just any price.”
Maryan, your above statement is a contradiction; you don’t believe in free trade at all, you believe in regulated trade. You must – if you really care, which I expect you do – pay attention to the unintended consequences of this legislation. If you are successful, and people are forbidden to buy products manufactured by so-called ’slave labour’, do you think the people that you’ve had thrown out of work will think it a great idea? This is the idea that would have prevented the industrial revolution, & wealth improvements in all that have engaged in ’sweat shops’ at some stage. You cannot short-cut this, we are fortunate that our forebears went through it long ago; before that there was starvation in the western world. Leave them free to improve their lot, give them a chance. I have no problem with ‘fair trade’ but stopping those workers outside of that regime from working is not fair at all.
Mark M: slavery is well defined in international law, the ban on slavery being pretty much the foundation of that entire system. The accepted international definition, as used in the 1926 Slavery Convention and subsequently is that slavery is “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised”. That definition was used in the bill. It is not about poor pay – it is about people purporting to own people, whether as chattel slaves or as debt slaves.
But its oh so typical of the right to try and muddy the waters around this issue.
Simon: slavery – actual slavery, not your Libertarian hyperbole – is already illegal in New Zealand – see s98 of the Crimes Act.
Hooligan: “free trade” is the most regulated trade of all. Go read some of those treaties around free trade agreements; you’ll see that they’re full of regulations specifying what countries are and aren’t allowed to prohibit, and on what grounds.
In this case, there is a clear exemption in Article XX of the GATT allowing imports to be prohibited (where it does not constitute a disguised trade barrier) for the protection of public morals, human life, or human health (oh, or if they’re made in a prison). Goods made by slave labour arguably fall under all three. The US has had a ban on goods produced by slave labour since the 1930’s, and it has never been challenged. Likely because slavery is so unambiguously illegal that anyone doing so, anyone saying “your ban on goods produced by slave labour is hurting my business” would be dragged into the nearest court and jailed for a very long time.
mjwkiwi: Standing Orders mean the bill (or one substantially similar to it) can’t come up again this year. And realistically, there’s not much point in trying again this term. But the fact that all parties other than National and ACT voted for it to at least go to committee suggests the odds are good next term, no matter who is in government.
How about working involuntarily for $12.50/hour, 40hours/week?
The only reason we have people working 40+ hour weeks is because a few people want to be richer than anyone else and not have to work at all. We (NZ) could probably fully support ourselves working about 4 hours per day each.
And you get benefits from those taxes probably at a far better rate of return than what you would get if you weren’t paying those taxes. Oh, and get off the grass with exaggeration – nobody in NZ pays half their income in taxes. It’s around 30% for all people.
Ah yes, the usual cry of the delusional “think of how bad off they will be if we don’t exploit them!!!”. Think of it this way though, how much better off would they be if they were paid an equivalent wage to what’s paid in NZ.
At the end of the day nothing can be provided for less than cost price and yet that is what the capitalists expect.
Idiot, I agree so-called “free trade” agreements have regulation in them. Just because politicians and most businessmen can’t see the contradiction doesn’t mean I have to mis-define the term as well. FREE TRADE means trade, value for value, mutural consent, unimpedded by regulators, busy-bodies, second handers. If you want to buy something from me, you and me agree to the exchange or we don’t – that’s Free Trade. Now if I want to buy from you, and someone else comes along and uses the law to set the price, or the quality, or the trading terms; then that is not Free Trade, simple!
And you get benefits from those taxes probably at a far better rate of return than what you would get if you weren’t paying those taxes.
The tax take in New Zealand, which should be used for the collective benefit, isn’t.
Almost the entirety goes on supporting the lifestyle choices of the Labour electorate – from paying their welfare benefits, to the costs of processing them through the justice system, to paying for their incaceration.
Oh, and get off the grass with exaggeration – nobody in NZ pays half their income in taxes. It’s around 30% for all people.
39% top tax rate + 12.5% GST + Local taxes exceeds 50%.
Good on you Maryan, we need to keep ethical trade issues firmly in the minds of people!!!
To those people who think $1 an hour as an acceptable wage … is that the sort of wage you would see as acceptable for you, your family or friends to be earning. Or rather, perhaps in the Kiwi context – would you want to be paid $5 an hour.
I wonder why you folk would read a Labour blog at all – your comments seem to me to be your own form of political point scoring.
@ Giarne, If you think that $1 an hour in the backwaters of China is the equivalent of $5 in NZ then you really have lived a sheltered life.
You should travel there and see for your self. It is a beautiful country and beautiful people.
Point scoring? Not at all, I’m just concerned for people that are ‘helped’ whether they want that help or not. I’m concerned for people that are the unintended wreckage as a result of someone else’s’ guilt trip, point scoring, ideological blindness, ill-informed economic theories, and compulsive do-gooding. Take a breath, take a closer look, and find out what the alternative view is; lives are too important to simply do what feels right.
@ Simon
“39% + 12.5% = nearly 50%” is a complete lie. You have to be earning over $700 million a year to be taxed at 39%, it’s a PRGORESSIVE tax system. So in New Zealand you can still earn more than $10 million a year without being taxed much more than 30%. And you only get taxed GST on the money that you actually spend on goods and services, which I take it isn’t the entirety of your income (especially you in particular, given your libertarian beliefs and the fact that poor libertarians just don’t exist).
Secondly, the majority of taxes is actually spent on healthcare, not beneficiaries. Might pay to keep in mind that without the benefit and all the state services provided from taxes, our current Prime Minister and Paula Bennet may never have made it into parliament.
D-Low says: “poor libertarians just don’t exist” Geez which ones have you met? I’ve met one rich one, perhaps 30 middle income, maybe 10 broke ones, and most of the rest are either nurses, teachers, doctors, road workers, a couple of factory engineers, a sales rep, a supermarket worker, a pre-school teacher or two, a number of musicians, a number of artists, a martial arts instructor, a couple of cafe owners (funny, most of them would fit the profile of a labour supporter, actually they’ve come from all political persuasions, from the Greens right through to Act and everything in between). Not so many $$ rich ones eh? Libertarians are pro capitalist in a broader sense; capitalism is not just pro business but pro freedom, pro trade, pro tolerance, pro rule of law, pro property rights, pro-self ownership (including the mind and body). Bit bigger than just money eh?
Thanks for your comments – good to have some response to my first posting! Praps those who think I was simply out to score political points would like to have a look at my Hansard and see what I actually said. It might help. I will post the introduction and rebuttal speeches on RedAlert proper asap. It’s not up on Hansard yet for me to post a link in these comments.
For the practised cynics who ask why Labour didn’t do …..(fill in the gap) when we were in office for 9 years, I say life goes on, thinking doesn’t stop, new policies develop, I haven’t had this portfolio before and am thinking hard about where it needs to go next…e temea, e temea, e temea.
Some people seem to mix up slavery with low pay. Some even confuse slavery with what people in NZ get paid. Check out the definition of slavery which is common to the international agreements – it’s about ownership, not people working hard to scratch out a living somewhere.
And what about ethics then? You’d think having ethics was a bad thing!
maryon, asking why labour did nothing in its 9 years in power in regard to this is not being cynical – its a fair question.
You say “You can be sure that if we never do anything, nothing will be done. Damn shame” – well you had your chance and did nothing – so I say shame on you guys.
We have a new government – they were handed the country’s books in a terrible state in a worldwide recession.
Perhaps they are concentrating on the items that will benefit the majority of Kiwis and get the country out of this mess better than a lot of others.
Ms Street, if you are going to accuse National of supporting slavery merely on the basis that they didn’t support your bill (they claim poor wording which is a reasonable point of view) then you should expect to have have your cynical use of the issue to score cheap points pointed out to you.
9 yrs of doing nothing on this issue and then all of sudden such concern and such ill will shown to anyone with a slghtly different view on how to approach this issue.
My word I cannot believe National voted against this bill. Voting FOR slavery – their aristocratic roots are shining through quite clearly.
How unbelievable!
As for those saying “why didn’t Labour do this in government?” that possibly is a fair question, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t bother with private member’s bills now. One could make the same argument against every possible private member’s bill Labour come up with – which would be silly.
@ Hooligan
Sorry for the late reply. I guess we define being poor differently. You define it merely as being rich and give nurses, artists and self-employed people as examples. I define it as struggling to provide the necessities of life, bread on the table for your family, power to heat your house etc. Your examples are all of well-educated people who have more often than not began life in a (comparatively) very privileged environment and have never known the bone-chilling cold of uninsulated houses or the hunger of one barely-nutritious meal a day.
But this is completely irrelevant to this thread, and your rebuttal of my claim that poor libertarians don’t exist doesn’t actually refute the point of my post, which was that Simon grossly overstated the impact of taxation on his life.
Sorry, define it merely as NOT being rich. Wish you could edit posts.
D-Low I can only say that a violation of a person’s right to be free of force to any degree is unacceptable and this means any level of taxation is unacceptable. I earn the money, not anybody else, and that means it is not for anyone else to take a portion that I do not voluntarily give. How much the person has and what you decide they need is irrelevant.
For those who are interested in what I actually said in the very brief debate around this bill, here at last is the link to the Hansard (verbatim record of proceedings in Parliament) -
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Debates/Debates/a/7/a/49HansD_20090729_00001196-Customs-and-Excise-Prohibition-of-Imports.htm