Operatunity Knocks
Women's work pays for Willis's budget of inequity.
All the things that you needed from me
All the things that you wanted for me
All the things that I should've given but I didn't
Oh, darling, make it go away
Just make it go away now
Songwriter: Kate Bush
I’m going to start with something light today, because there isn’t much of that in the second half. It’s dark.
A while back, your fellow reader, my first ever subscriber, Alison, made a comment about attending the opera. We ended up chatting, and she suggested I come along to the next one, so I did this morning at the Hawkins Theatre in Papakura.
Now I’d never been to the opera before, and I’d assumed there would be pretty limited opportunities in Aotearoa for both performers and audience. However, there’s a company called Operatunity that has been touring the country, providing daytime performances in smaller venues, for twenty years.
If you’ve not heard of it, and I suspect some of you will have, here’s a short clip from a few years back:
I thought it was fabulous—incredibly talented performers with familiar modern standards alongside operatic pieces. We even had a sing-along to Hallelujah.
What struck me was the joy of the audience, the songs were of love and romance, and it felt quite moving. A celebration of this fine art created by our kind enjoyed by an audience with the opportunity to share in magic that hitherto might’ve required a journey to Europe, or an expensive ticket in central Auckland or Wellington.
Afterwards, we talked politics with Alison’s friends over lunch. On a crisp May day, the chicken and chorizo soup with garlic ciabatta was perfect, costing less than $20, and most delicious. Thank you, Alison, for a lovely day. 🙂
On the drive home, I listened to the budget.
There were no major surprises with the big-ticket items having already been announced. There were pluses and minuses; some things received less funding, while others received a boost, including some that the government had previously cut.
None of that matters, though. The overs and the unders, no one is going to come away from this feeling like a winner as the government gives with one hand while taking with the other, cancelling funding, and prioritising other initiatives.
There are no major winners, but there are clear losers in this, overshadowing every other announcement by an order of magnitude - namely, the cancellation of the pay equity claims, and changes to make it much harder for those working in underpaid industries to improve their situation in the future.
Women.
That’s who pays for this budget.
The initiatives, business incentives, kickbacks to Big Tobacco, and tax reductions for landlords.
Nicola Willis decided that we couldn’t possibly ask one of the most privileged groups in our society, landlords, to do their part by actually paying their taxes, as they had before this government. She didn’t want to spend less on roads or military upgrades; she didn’t need to. She had a source of money.
Women.
But not just any woman. Some of our lowest-paid women and the men who work in those industries. That’s who has to pick up the bill.
$12.8 billion is the amount that the government is banking on over four years, all of which would otherwise have gone to women to address their pay inequity.
They’re not taking it from the wealthy and the sorted. The coalition has decided that, rather than increasing taxes to fund public services, which polls indicate is the preference of the majority, they will take the money they need from the wages they are not giving to women.
From women and their whanāu. That’s who will be hurt: hard-working, low-paid people and their families.
Doesn’t it make you want to scream?
It’s so completely and utterly unjust that I can scarcely believe it is real, and while I might have written similar sentences over the last eighteen months, in scale this is the worst; it is breathtaking in its wrongness.
A sacrifice must be made, and this government has opted to sacrifice essential workers and women to address the shortfall for years to come.
Nicola Willis declared that this was not an austerity budget - tell that to the families of the hundreds of thousands of women and men working in those sectors.
Taking billions of dollars from the lowest-paid, while also giving billions to those with millions of dollars in assets so that they can pay less tax, is obscene.
I was disgusted by Willis’s fake sincerity, her pleas that she was taking the responsible course of action. But then Chris Hipkins came on, and do you know what he did?
He smashed it again.
Where Willis’s words were hollow, Chippy was bang on just like he was the other day over the Te Pāti Māori suspensions, and just like he was at Waitangi.
Hipkins seems to be making a habit of reading the mood of the country and looking like a leader, so if you see Maiki end the news with some snide remark about Labour or commentators are less than effusive in their praise, I’d take that with a grain of salt.
Don’t believe the hype, folks - this guy is the real deal, and if anyone has the temerity to question whether he has enough X Factor, take a look at the bloke running the country. Even if it were true, it doesn’t seem to be a requirement.
I don’t want someone who can charm the media with more style than substance - I want a leader who speaks from the heart, is authentic, and is bang on saying what needs to be said. Like today:
I struggle to see how Nicola Willis recovers from this, particularly with women.
How grotesquely cynical is it to budget on saving $12.8b by not giving that money to underpaid women? People remember things like that, don’t they? I know I will.
A woman’s work, they say, is never done. What Nicola didn’t say out loud is that those women will have to work more hours to receive what they ought to be paid.
I don’t know what else to say, other than it’s not right. What Nicola Willis, National, ACT, and NZ First have done today to the women of NZ is wrong.
No doubt there will be plenty more to say about the budget in the coming days, but I wanted to share some initial thoughts on the matter. Have a good evening. 🙂
Ngā mihi,
Nick.
Hey everyone, I hadn't intended to open this up, but some paid subscribers are experiencing issues, so I'm going to remove the paywall. I hope folks don't mind.
Music is my refuge. I'll be hiding there for a day or two to let other people's words speak for and to me.
I found today I do not have a bad enough expletive to describe this government. Brooke Van Veldens is not explosive enough to even. May the fleas of a thousand camels infect their rancid armpits.