A huge shake-up for the New Zealand political landscape.

Executive director of the New Zealand Maori Council, Matthew Tukaki believes our 2020 election has presented a once in a generation opportunity for the government to make transformational change. Is our new Labour government able to take a transformational leap and introduce a Basic Income for all New Zealand citizens?

2020 AGM Report
On 12 October we held the BINZ AGM by Zoom. A new experience brought to us by the consequences of Covid-19 lockdown and the new communicating skills learnt.
Meeting by Zoom did have the advantage of avoiding travel and enabling people to attend from their living room. 
It was encouraging to have several new people present. There were a few hic cups with microphone issues but we got there.i 
Our Officer's for 2020/2021 are Acting Chair: Gaylene Middleton, Secretary: Andrew Casey, Treasurer: Meleissa Selwyn, Committee: Te Rangikaheke, Bella Moke, Iain Middleton, Karl Matthys and Martin Hohmann-Marriot. Martin is new to our committee and from Dunedin where there has been in the local Basic Income Advocacy group for a long time. Our BINZ committee has moved away from having a formal President, preferring a revolving system of taking turns among ourselves. A Chairperson is a facilitator, rather than a figurehead. It is good to have a committee utilising individual strengths.
Unfortunately, Caroline Teti did not  manage to join us as we had Zoom and time difference issues. Matthew Pottinger from TOP did join us and outlined the TOP UBI Policy. He presented a link to an interesting graphic which is reproduced in this newsletter.
Jessie Golem a recipient in the Ontario Basic Income Pilot sent us a video of her experience. Jessie was passionate in her advocacy of BI. A link to this video is also in the newsletter.
 

Acting Chair Report 2020 BINZ AGM
It is difficult to think back to pre Covid-19 Days. This 2020 AGM is later than normal because of the Lock-down period and we seemed to go into a holding pattern. But we have all learnt the new skill of Zoom and webinars. And so we had our first AGM by Zoom with speakers joining us from Christchurch and Kenya.  We have been able to listen to BI talks from Guy Standing located in Geneva and directed through organisations in the UK or other country. There have also been international online BI meetings. Tough for us here in NZ, we need to be up in the early hours usually 2.30am. If lucky 6am.
But returning to 2019, Bella, Meleissa, Iain and I travelled to Hyderabad, India for the 19th World Basic Income Congress 22-25 August. We met fellow New Zealander and BI advocate Peter Brake there. This was a superb experience meeting up with Guy and Frances again and making new friends and connections. Bella and Meleissa performed a stunning Pokarekare Ana with Poi on the BI catwalk and I read out our NZ BI statement:
In NZ we would like to have a good society where people are guided by empathy. We would like a BI so that all, most especially the least have the freedom to decide the direction of their lives. "Poverty is not a lack of character but a lack of cash."
We were delighted that we could all meet up again close by in Brisbane, Australia 28-30 September this year. But Covid cancelled that and we must wait until 2022 to just fly across the Tasman and not the 20 plus hours to the Northern Hemisphere.
2020 began well with our BINZ committee attending a Kotare Trust Workshop 21-22 February- A fractured, Inadequate Welfare System. Sue Bradford our friend and mentor and advocate for BI from the 1990's gave us her very valued time to talk around and explore BI issues relevant to NZ.
But a month later Covid-19 enveloped the world.
We devoted our April 2020 BINZ newsletter to issues around the Pandemic and how BI would be advantageous in a new economic environment. It was very affirming to receive an email from Guy saying "Well Done". Iain Middleton developed a page on our website "Pandemics & Covid-19" to promote Basic Income. Independently, Action Station hosted a BI petition started by Anna Dean "Coronavirus: Emergency universal basic income for everyone." To date this petition has 10,332 signatures.
BINZ also published a statement on Scoop 24 March outlining our position on the relevance of BI to NZ and the economic effects of Covid-19.
Karl Matthys has kept us up to date with BI and Pandemic articles with his role as an Administrator of our Face Book page. In Hyderabad, in 2019, we received some very positive comments from people from various countries that our BINZ Face Book postings were of value and informative.
Andrew Casey as Secretary is keeping our meeting minutes record and committee Zoom meetings have become a good platform for regular discussion and planning.
Meleissa Selwyn is taking up the reins of Treasurer. Our committee members Bella Moke and Te Rangikaheke complete our small band. We have continued with links to the Dunedin BI advocates and Wendy Kelling and Martin Hohmann-Marriott have joined us by Zoom.
It was encouraging that in the first months of the Pandemic, BI received mention in the media. Dr Siouxsie Wiles said: "If we ever needed proof that a universal basic income was a good idea and tax cuts a bad idea, I think we've found it."
Bernard Hickey, Newsroom editor speaking on TV 1's Breakfast on the 27 March, said "It is a complete rebuild of the economy that is required - a change in the way we do everything - and that is going to take some massive government intervention - particularly with people's incomes. A universal basic income - where every person is paid up to a certain amount per week unconditionally - is "the simplest, fastest, cleanest, fairest way to do it."
Internationally, Guy Standing has been speaking at many forums about the application of BI to address economic issues. But the impetus in NZ has slowed.
It was disappointing to hear both Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins give an uncompromising NO to BI when questioned during the Stuff debate in Christchurch.
We did a simple survey of Political parties and their stance on Basic Income. Results are incomplete and published in our September newsletter. There are a number of different proposals: Green Party- Universal Child Benefit/Guaranteed Minimum Income, Social Credit-Adequate Living Income, Advance NZ-National Dividend. TOP's proposal is for a Universal Basic Income (Matthew Pottinger TOP UBI spokesperson spoke after our AGM).
It is my thought that the context of "why a BI" is not yet fully understood in NZ. At a BI forum last week (6am NZ time) the convenor made the observation that 'BI is to be seen in the context of the Commons not the Market.'
I think this aspect is to be explored in the NZ context with reference to the Treaty of Waitangi.
BINZ looks forward to another year of BI advocacy in NZ.

The Poverty Trap and how a Basic Income removes this trap
This is a graph developed by The Opportunities Party.
The Horizontal axis is: effort to earn in hours (hours worked).
The Vertical axis is: incentive to earn in $'s (hourly rate after tax).
This graph uses the minimum hourly rate of $18.90. When a person works and if they are taxed at a flat rate of 33% the money taken home after tax is $12.66 per hour. This is the horizonal blue line on the graph. 
The UBI proposed by TOP is $250 per week unconditional after tax, the equivalent of $6.25 per hour. So, if you add $6.25 to $12.66 the after-tax total is $18.91 per hour.
With the present Welfare system, you are permitted to earn $90 total per week before your jobseeker support is abated. This is just 4.7 hours work per week. After this, the jobseeker support is abated at 70 cents for every dollar you earn. This is equivalent to paying an additional 70% tax on top of the tax you are already paying bringing the effective tax rate up to 80.5%. This results in a great chasm in the Benefit payment received as illustrated by the grey line. If you work more hours and go into the next tax bracket the effective rate increases to 17.5% plus 70% or 87.5% effective tax. When your jobseeker support is fully abated your effective tax rate falls to the normal tax rate. 
These very high effective tax rates create a major disincentive to work. Because accommodation supplements are also abated, there is little or no benefit to work. This is a poverty trap. There is no chasm with a UBI and flat tax of 33%. Everyone that works will receive a worthwhile compensation for their work.
The green line illustrates the chasm that the proposed Green Party Welfare policy will create.
The Labour Party has proposed increasing the abatement threshold to $160 but this will just shift the chasm to the right. It will still be there.

Video: Jessie Golem speaking on her 'lived' experience of receiving a Basic Income and the experiences of others.

The cancellation of the Basic Income had tragic consequences for many. The video prepared by Jessie is passionate and compelling.

The Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project was a pilot project to provide basic income to 4,000 people in Ontario, Canada. The pilot project aimed to give a fixed income for three years to people with low or no incomes. Participants of the project were randomly selected among residents of the regions aged 18-64. In addition to the 4,000 participants, a comparison group was selected, who would not receive the basic income. However, they would still be asked questions on various issues including their health, work situation and housing. This was to allow researchers to compare the effects of those receiving basic income with those not receiving it 10 months after the Liberal administration started distributing payments, the early cancellation of the project was announced (in August 2018) by the Progressive Conservative government.
Although the project finished early, there was still much discussion and analysis of the benefits and challenges of the pilot. The researchers identified four themes from these interviews: "1) a desire among participants to work and be financially independent, 2) traditional welfare payments are extremely low and do not cover basic necessities, while basic income is higher and does cover these necessities, 3) beyond the basic differences in benefit amount, the conditional nature of traditional welfare programs has significant repercussions for recipients, and 4) basic income has facilitated long-term financial planning." 
Participants reported that their nutrition improved, stress levels lowered, relationships improved and could escape from living in sub-standard housing.
The unconditional nature of the scheme also had significant advantages, especially when compared with the Ontario Works welfare program or the Ontario Disability Support Program. With the basic income, bureaucratic confusion was removed, the intrusive nature of means testing was no longer present, the ability to keep earned income helped maintain the incentive to work and financial planning became possible. 

Jessie's video can be seen on our Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/BasicIncomeNZ/

Jessie's Photographs:

https://www.jessiegolem.com/humans-of-basic-income/8izfvscbzkefgcj89ndkcw5v6pqab8