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.   Dr Siouxsie Wiles

Commenting on the Covid-19 pandemic:

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/13-03-2020/covid-19-is-now-officially-a-pandemic-heres-what-you-need-to-do-about-it/

In this newsletter:  Message from Gaylene Middleton, BINZ acting Chair/

Action you can take/ The definition of Basic Income/ Basic Income Earth Network Hyderabad 2019 gathering/ Sue Bradford: "Let's get serious/ BINZ Press Release....

What We’re Up To

Tena Koutou, greetings, supporters and friends of Te Utu Tika Hei Oranga I Aotearoa, Basic Income New Zealand.

We have a beautiful Te Reo phrase for Basic Income New Zealand. Te Utu Tika Hei Oranga I Aotearoa – the price of citizenship in New Zealand, what does it mean to be a citizen, how can we be good citizens of our land of Aotearoa?

What have we, your BINZ committee, been doing since suddenly thrust into this new global landscape? When people are locked down for their health, a global response to the pandemic, a close down of economies is inevitable with looming uncertainty. Events have been happening quickly, tumbling over each other. People and families in already difficult circumstances have more difficulties to surmount. The wind down of Air New Zealand, the disruption to Forestry and Horticulture industry, and the demise of iconic NZ publications were a shock and have toppled many skilled people into precarity. With a finely balanced but inherently unstable economy, more collapses might be expected.

We saw very quickly that Basic Income (BI) was an option for a new approach to New Zealand’s economy, helping to solve the problems of personal hardship, economic collapse, and future recovery.

We continued regularly posting articles on our Facebook page with the focus on articles about BI and the role BI could play in dealing with the economic consequences of a global pandemic.

We developed a dedicated page on our website www.basicincomenz.net on “Pandemics and the need for Basic Income” which is regularly updated.

We are supportive of other initiatives to promote BI in New Zealand. Three petitions have been launched. If you have not yet signed, links to the petitions can be found on our Pandemics page: https://www.basicincomenz.net/pandemics

Speaking on TV 1’s Breakfast on the 27 March, Newsroom editor Bernard Hickey 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.”

A Basic Income, a modest regular payment with no behavioural conditions that is received by every citizen of our country, brings a feeling of security knowing that the necessities for living can be purchased. The payment of a modest Basic Income does not prevent the payment of additional supplements to cover the special needs of disability and illness.

There are also other important reasons for a Basic Income. They are ethical and moral. As well as an effective means to combat poverty and inequality Basic Income is a matter of social justice. Human rights must be manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society.

This is citizenship which Te Utu Tika Hei Oranga I Aotearoa, our organisation’s Te Reo name enshrines.

In our island nation, we must consider the long history and understanding of our tangata whenua, the first people of our land, Aotearoa, and we have the understanding of the Commons brought by European culture.

From the traditions of Maori society, we have the understandings of Rangatiratanga and Kaitiakitanga. Rangatiratanga is about self-determination, control and decision making. It is being able to make choices, big and small, about things that matter to us. It is having the control to shape the direction and conditions of our life. These are fundamental to ‘a good life’. Kaitiakitanga is the concept of caring, nurturing, connecting and safeguarding the natural world based on understanding the connectivity and relationships with the natural world.

From the idea of the Commons, our European strand, we have the Magna Carta 1215 and the Charter of the Forest 1217. Though documents from the beginning of the thirteenth century, they remain relevant today. These ancient charters are ‘not about preserving a primitive, idealised state of nature. It is about a way of living as an individual in society, about ‘commoning’ as a collaborative and collective activity in the commons and about the rights of commoners to use and manage common resources.’(Guy Standing, Plunder of the Commons 2019 Ch 1 page 2)

Te Tiriti o Waitangi, our nation’s founding document is a binding of Maori and Pakeha threads. Together our Maori and European heritage interlock adding richness to understanding Basic Income.

Looking back through history, the Great Depression of the 1930’s was a cataclysmic global event which propelled new systems of social justice. In 1942 William Beverage in the UK wrote a report which established the National Health Service (NHS), and President Franklin Roosevelt in the USA introduced the New Deal of the 1930s. In New Zealand, the Labour Government’s 1938 Social Security Act brought in our Welfare System. With this Covid 19 Pandemic we stand on another brink. New Zealand’s Welfare System is no longer suitable. With stand down periods, low benefit rates, punitive sanctions, extortionate abatement rates, and the interference of welfare conditions into personal relationships; it needs a complete overhaul.

Can we make another social change? A Basic Income gives us greater control over our individual life and the lives of our families and communities. Guy Standing, co-founder of Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), says in his recent book, published in March 2020, on the eve of our present global lockdown: “Moving towards a basic income as a right to subsistence, a right to a home and a right to work will be part of the renewal of the Enlightenment values of equality, liberty and solidarity.” Battling Eight Giants Basic Income Now (Inequality, Insecurity, Debt, Stress, Precarity, Automation, Populism, Extinction) 2020 p.85.

Gaylene Middleton, acting Chair, Basic Income New Zealand.

The Global Covid 19 Pandemic and the Action you can take to support a Basic Income for the recovery period and beyond:

*Read the “Pandemics and the need for Basic Income” page on the BINZ website and then write in your own words to your MP stressing the need for a Basic Income as you see it.

*Sign the petitions.

Contact information for MP’s, detailed information and petition links can be found on our “Pandemics and the need for Basic Income” page on our website basicincomenz.net.

Use Basic Income, not Universal Basic Income.

We ask people to refer to a Basic Income rather than a Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a UBI is often perceived as a system where all people will receive exactly the same small amount with no exceptions, regardless of need, and with no supplementary payments for those with special needs. This would lead to income reductions and hardship for those with special needs. A fair Basic Income allows supplementary payments to be paid as or when necessary to those with special needs.

At the 19th BIEN World Congress in Hyderabad, India 2019, before the Congress dinner there was a fun BI catwalk where Congress participants donned Indian dress, the sari for women or dhoti for men. On the catwalk turn each representative gave a short rendition of BI hopes for their own country. To represent Aotearoa Bella Moke, Meleissa Selwyn wore Maori themed dress and Gaylene Middleton wore a sari. Bella and Meleissa used poi and sang our beautiful Pokarekare Ana and Gaylene read our BI hope for New Zealand.“In New Zealand BINZ would like to create a good society where people have empathy. A BI provides a basic platform floor for the least in society to have the freedom to decide the direction of their lives for themselves Poverty is not lack of character but lack of money.”

Basic Income and Covid-19: Let’s get serious

Sue Bradford  April 2, 2020

The recessionary implications of the spread of Covid-19 have become clearer by the day, with economists now talking of unemployment rates of up to 15%. That may well be an underestimate aimed at calming the market – and the huge numbers of us currently or potentially affected.

A corollary interest in the potential of a Basic Income has suddenly leapt to the political forefront in a way not seen before in this country.

Basic Income (BI), sometimes known as Universal Basic income (UBI), is an idea that’s been kicking around the public sphere in New Zealand for some three decades. As an unemployed workers’ rights activist in the 1990s I was part of a national network advocating for UBI, but our efforts did not go far. Through the 2000s campaigns for a BI/UBI pretty much disappeared altogether until Gareth Morgan started pushing his Big Kahuna model in 2010, followed by the emergence of a new national advocacy network Basic income New Zealand (BINZ) in 2015.

How the world has changed. The covid-19 crisis has put BI on the national agenda in a way that’s never happened here before, and it’s a good time to be thinking about it.

We are suddenly seeing some of the longheld assumptions of capitalism being stood on their head. There is, for example, an overnight recognition that perennially lowpaid cleaners, drivers, supermarket staff and care workers are perhaps more valuable to us in our real lives than stockbrokers, marketers and endless layers of management.

There is also a fast-growing awareness that unemployment is likely to skyrocket to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Suddenly a lot of people who have never dreamed they would be out of a job are coming to realise that life on the dole, now known as ‘Jobseeker Support’, may not be quite the cushy little number they’d assumed from the comfort of a steady place in the economy.

There is also a dawning realisation that if you happen to have a partner who is still in a paid job the chances of getting any welfare at all are dim, apart from limited supplemental addons for things like housing costs.

Without warning, the fact of being in a relationship becomes a burden. If partnered, once you’re in the maw of the welfare system you are no longer seen as an individual. The dignity of holding a job and earning your own income mean nothing as you become part of a unit whose income and assets are measured jointly down to the finest granulated detail to determine what the state may or may not offer for your survival.

So–what is Basic Income?

The global Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) defines BI as ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.’

Key features of a genuine BI include that it is paid regularly and in an ongoing way. It is not a one off or short term payment. It is paid in cash, so recipients can use it as they choose, without the state or other body exerting control over how it is spent. BI is offered on an individual basis, regardless of relationship status and is paid to everyone without means testing. There are no reciprocal obligations.

The closest thing we have to a BI here is NZ superannuation, paid to all who meet the citizenship/residency criteria. It is offered regardless of other income and assets and payments are taxed.

We used to have another kind of BI, too. From 1938 until 1991 the Family Benefit was often the only income which mothers received in their own right, to spend on necessities for them and their children. For many years it was capitalised by many low and middle income people for the deposit which enabled the purchase of their first home. The Labour Government introduced the complex Working for Families scheme in 2004 which to this day still incorporates structural discrimination against those families where parents are not in sufficient paid work to qualify for the full payment.

Last week it was reported that Finance Minister Grant Robertson was considering ‘a universal basic income for all New Zealanders, saying it ‘was on the table.’ ). This was a stunning development. Those of us who advocate for BI are waiting with bated breath to see what exactly he and his Cabinet might do.

Two days later Newsroom editor Bernard Hickey said that the Government should look at extending the NZ superannuation scheme to everyone, and that a UBI is the ‘simplest, fastest, cleanest, fairest way’ to help rebuild the economy.

It was therefore disappointing to see Max Rashbrooke, well known for his writing on inequality and the need for ‘democratic renewal’, coming out the next day panning the idea of implementing a BI as part of the response to the covid crisis.

One of his arguments seems to be that a BI doesn’t allow for reciprocity, that is, people should not receive a payment unless they are doing something particular in return – a paternalistic approach to welfare which goes back centuries.

Another is that the country can’t afford it. Yet we know this government has already taken massive steps towards a return to Keynesian social democracy in response to the crisis, borrowing billions in a bid to proof New Zealand and its people against the recession to come.

There is also a big difference between the gross and net costs of a BI. Savings can be made through measures such as implementing a far more progressive income tax and introducing other forms of wealth tax like inheritance and capital gains. Current superannuation and most welfare payments would be subsumed into the BI system. Much would be saved by changing Work & Income functions to a focus on employment support rather than on administering the hopelessly complex and punitive system currently in operation.

Nor does Max take into account the other side of the coin, the huge but unquantifiable benefits that would come from implementing an ongoing national BI scheme. All the unpaid work in home, community and marae would finally find at last a minimum financial underpinning. Creativity in all its forms would flower. The informal economy which sustains so many people in the margins would become more viable, with the transition to taxpaying self employment and small business far more feasible.

One of the main reasons I persist in talking about ‘Basic Income’ rather than ‘Universal Basic Income’ is that even if a form of BI is introduced, such as the one Bernard Hickey proposes, we would still need other supplementary assistance for children, disability costs and housing. As soon as there is variation like this it is no longer universal.

There are fish hooks with any BI scheme and I hope that if the Government is seriously considering implementation, they are taking these into account and not rushing into something designed to fit existing prejudices against beneficiaries or some ill thought-through model which simply won’t work.

Some of the key elements an Aotearoa New Zealand Basic Income should include are that it is:
• Set at a level which allows people to live with dignity.
• Universal in respect to relationship status – adults receive payment in their own right.
• Not subject to work testing, stand downs or any of the other sanctions embedded in the existing welfare system.
• Well-run and non-judgemental, with a minimum of bureaucracy.
• Designed to include addons for accommodation, children and disability.
• Regular and reliable, providing a sense of steady security.
• Sustainable in the long term, enduring past the current time of crisis.
• Unashamedly redistributive in purpose and practice.
• Set alongside a major government commitment to the maintenance and creation of decent, useful paid work and to easy access to quality education and training. And remember – a BI would get rid of the need for the student loan scheme overnight.
This is a big ask, but we live in unprecedented times.

If people would like to find out more about Basic Income, or would like to support current calls for its implementation, a few resources include:
Basic Income Earth Network website
Basic Income New Zealand
Sue Bradford ‘Here be dragons: Navigating a left approach to Basic Income in Aotearoa New Zealand’  – article in Counterfutures v.6, pp 9-35.
Petition of Anna Dean for ‘Coronavirus: Emergency universal basic income for everyone’ 

Sue Bradford is a community-based educator, writer and activist, and former Green MP

Basic Income New Zealand (BINZ) Press Release

New Zealand is in complete lockdown. A Basic Income is a clear necessity now for everyone. "We have been watching developments knowing Basic Income is a very possible solution." says Iain Middleton, spokesperson for Basic Income New Zealand (BINZ). "We support the Action Station petition: Coronavirus Universal Income for Everyone. We were delighted to hear Dr Siouxsie Wiles, Auckland University microbiologist and media science commentator express support for a Basic Income during a Radio NZ Morning Report interview on 16 March, and Bernard Hickey, a financial journalist talking on Afternoons with Jessie Mulligan on19 March support Basic Income payments until the growing financial crisis precipitated by Covid 19 ends."

Dr Guy Standing a keynote speaker at the 2016 NZ Labour Party's Future of Work Conference is among 500 academic and public figure signatories to an Open letter to governments of all continents requesting them to enact an emergency Basic Income. The Covid 19 virus is undermining the foundations of the global economy. As this global pandemic cannot be dealt with by normal public health measures, a global economic collapse requires more than traditional welfare policies. Basic Income is such a measure.

The world's entire economic system relies on continual motion and right now, here in NZ, and in the whole world, the economy is grinding to a halt. Iain Middleton says "There must be drastic intervention now by the government to ensure that people have enough money to buy food and pay other essential costs. A Basic Income will achieve this."

BINZ prefers to use the phrase "Basic Income", rather than "Universal Basic Income", as the word "universal" implies identical payments for all without exceptions. While a Basic Income is a modest regular and identical payment for all, with no means testing or behavioural tests, paid to every citizen and permanent resident of our country, a Basic Income does not prevent additional supplementary payments for those with special needs due to disability and illness. In this time of crisis, a Basic Income, can be delivered efficiently without the bureaucratic administrative costs of targeted assistance.

There are other important reasons for Basic Income. As well as an effective means to combat poverty and inequality, Basic Income is a matter of social justice. Human rights must be manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society.

BINZ would like to see a Basic Income implemented as the present Welfare system is vastly inadequate at this time. The Welfare System, which began in the mid-1930's, is no longer suitable. Low benefit rates, punitive sanctions, extortionate abatement rates, the interference of welfare conditions into personal relationships, all need a complete overhaul.

Basic Income brings security, self-determination and control over decision making. It allows individuals to make choices, big and small, about things that matter to them. It is having the control to shape the direction and conditions of our own lives.