I thought it might be interesting to (attempt to) measure the success of our new Labour government's 100 day plan. Of course, it's never as simple as it might sound :-)
100 days from when?
- Final election results were confirmed on Oct 6th
- Coalition agreement announced on Oct 19th
- Government officially sworn in on Oct 26th
In the interests of fairness, we should probable use the 26th as the starting point. That would make 100 days conclude on February 3rd. (next Saturday)
So that's the when taken care of. Which brings us to the "What".
Much of the detail of Labour's election policy pertaining to deliverables in the first 100 days has been quietly swept aside and replaced with a much less prescriptive 100 day plan. For instance, Labour's workplace relations policy has the following commitments for the first 100 days - only two of which are now referenced in their 100 day plan.
Within the first 100 days in Government, Labour will:
• Restore fairness rights for employees by replacing National’s 90 day ‘fire at will’ law with a fast, fair, and simple system.
• Introduce 26 weeks paid parental leave to ensure that families are provided with vital support at a crucial stage in their children’s lives.
• Restore reinstatement as the primary remedy when a worker has been unjustifiably dismissed.
• Restore the right to rest and meal breaks at work.
• Restore protections for vulnerable workers in cases where the sale or transfer of business is contemplated, or where outsourcing of jobs is proposed.
• Ensure that New Zealand employment law applies to everyone working in New Zealand, including foreign workers working for foreign companies.
• Increase the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour and base future increases on the real cost of living for people on low incomes. This includes working towards a minimum wage equal to two-thirds of the average wage as economic conditions allow.
• Remove the discrimination that prevents film and television workers bargaining collectively.
• Restore unions’ right to initiate collective bargaining in advance of employers.
• Restore the duty on parties who are in collective bargaining, including those in multi-employer collective bargaining, to reach an agreement once bargaining has been initiated unless there is a genuine reason not to.
• Restore the right for new workers to be employed on the same terms and conditions as provided by an existing collective agreement covering their workplace.
• Remove the ability for employers to deduct pay from workers taking low level protest action during an industrial dispute.
• Protect the human right to belong to a union by restoring the right for people to be visited by union representatives at their workplace to ensure their legal and collective rights are maintained and adhered to.
• Ensure elected union workplace representatives are given reasonable time within the workplace or work unit to carry out their representative role.
• Increase protection against discrimination based on union membership and strengthen the integrity of collective bargaining by tightening the rules on employers automatically passing on terms and conditions to non-union workers.
• Ensure new workers have all necessary information and access to unions at the commencement of their employment.
• Implement the changes to the Equal Pay Act as set out in the report from the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles to give all women in female-dominated workforces access to collective bargaining and court processes to settle their claims.
• Ensure all workers in the core public service are paid at least the Living Wage and begin work with organisations that have regular and ongoing service contracts with the core public service to ensure they are Living Wage employers. We envisage the lowest-paid workers such as cleaners, catering staff and security guards will make significant moves towards the Living Wage during the first term of Government.
• Require all state agencies to only contract with organisations that comply with good employer practices, have a history of adhering to employment legislation, and respect the right of their workers to join a union and bargain collectively.
• Commence the establishment of appropriate governmental assistance to provide support to employers and unions that wish to work together to implement high performance engagement systems designed to lift productivity through worker participation in decision-making.
• Reform the current Productivity Commission so that it has a focus on wage growth and addresses explicitly the development of appropriate high engagement-high performance measures and behaviours in New Zealand workplaces and industries.
• Begin expanding and enhancing skill development and industry training programs to support the growth of high performance workplaces, higher wages and a Just Transition for workers who need new skills to adapt to the changing nature of work.
So, Labour are now asking us to measure them on the success of less than 5% of their election promises (in this particular portfolio's case at least).
In the interest of brevity (irony alert - I know!) let's go along with this...
So, the promised deliverables were:
- Make the first year of tertiary education or training fees free from January 1, 2018.
- Increase student allowances and living cost loans by $50 a week from January 1, 2018.
- Pass the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill, requiring all rentals to be warm and dry
- Ban overseas speculators from buying existing houses
- Issue an instruction to Housing New Zealand to stop the state house sell-off
- Begin work to establish the Affordable Housing Authority and begin the KiwiBuild programme
- Legislate to pass the Families Package, including the Winter Fuel Payment, Best Start and increases to Paid Parental Leave, to take effect from 1 July 2018
- Set up a Ministerial Inquiry in order to fix our mental health crisis
- Introduce legislation to make medicinal cannabis available for people with terminal illnesses or in chronic pain
- Resume contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to help safeguard the provision of universal superannuation at age 65
- Introduce legislation to set a child poverty reduction target and to change the Public Finance Act so the Budget reports progress on reducing child poverty
- Increase the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour, to take effect from 1 April 2018, and introduce legislation to improve fairness in the workplace.
- Establish the Tax Working Group
- Establish the Pike River Recovery Agency and assign a responsible Minister
- Set up an inquiry into the abuse of children in state care
- Hold a Clean Waters Summit on cleaning up our rivers and lakes
- Set the zero carbon emissions goal and begin setting up the independent Climate Commission
I have bolded the initiatives that I am aware have been successfully implemented. I have italicised the ones that were attempted and encountered issues preventing their delivery.
Currently the results are showing 6/17 (on the "cut down" list of deliverables) with about 90% time elapsed.
Can anyone help by pointing out any other deliverables that I've missed?