McJobs Government Sentences Kiwi Kids To A Dead End Future.

This week the Prime Minister John Key (also Minister for Tourism) confirmed that the government is to pour $1 million into the '100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games'. It was also announced that Tourism New Zealand had obtained the naming rights sponsorship deal on the event.

Further cutbacks on Tertiary Education
In the last few days it's been announced that $1 million in redundancy payments to Otago Polytechnic staff pushed the institution to its worst financial result in 5 years. Meanwhile, three Government-funded tertiary student scholarships (Step Up, Bonded Merit and Top Achiever doctoral schemes) have been axed to save $98 million.

I think we're beginning to see where the future of New Zealand's youth will be headed: the low paid service sector industry, tourism and prison management.

Now the Maritime Union has spoken out in a press release against the NZ government's plan to facilitate McDonalds' expansion of its trading base by 'helping' the company to recruit 7,000 people over the next 5 years:

"The Maritime Union says the National Government's plan to act as a compulsory recruitment agency for McDonalds fast food chain is a travesty.

One time truck stop waitress and Minister for Social Developlment Paula Bennett has described an agreement between WINZ and McDonalds that will provide up to 7000 unemployed workers for the fast-food chain's growth plans over the next five years.

Maritime Union General Secretary Trevor Hanson says the scheme has two beneficiaries - a Government with a failing jobs policy, and a global corporation that will suck profits out of New Zealand.

He says the scheme is condemning working class young people to a dead end future.

Low wage, casualized trap
"The fact is that for most people, working in these jobs is not a career path, it is a low-wage, casualized trap." He says he is interested how many children of National Party MP's are being sent off to develop their careers as burger makers.

Mr Hanson says that claims that such "McJobs" will provide a career path are similar to the burgers. "They always look good in the ads but when you eat them they never live up to the promises."

Mr Hanson says that thousands of skilled jobs in manufacturing are being demolished, and freezes in funding for polytech places will keep young people out of training. He says young New Zealanders should have the opportunity to work in areas like the maritime industry or the fishing industry for decent wages.

"Yet what we see is underpaid and often exploited overseas crews working in New Zealand waters while local people are shovelled towards the dole or the chip fryer."

Social divison, inequality and erosion of family life
Mr Hanson says the current scenario is that New Zealand is going to have a massive low-wage sector that would breed enormous social divisions and problems. He says secure, wellpaid jobs have long been under attack in New Zealand, as profits ballooned but workers saw their incomes shrink.

"Under the current Government we are only seeing two areas of employment growth, prison staff and fast food, if this is a success I'd like to see what a failure looks like."

Mr Hanson says the toll of casual jobs, multiple jobs, irregular hours and shift work in a "24 hour society" was causing massive social inequality and disruption to family and community life, leading to stress, health issues, crime and family breakdown."

McHospitals
In October of last year health chiefs called for southern health boards to cut ties with fast food companies such as McDonalds to fight a dramatic rise in obesity. Otago DHB public health group manager Pip Stewart criticised " the health sector's willingness to form links with fast food outlets when it should walk away, as it does with tobacco and alcohol companies.

Sponsorship from the likes of McDonald's would contradict promoting good nutrition and physical activity, needed to reverse the rise in obesity." See McHospitals

230,000 kids live in unacceptable poverty
22% Kiwi kids live in unacceptable poverty - that's 230, 000 youngsters according to a report prepared for Barnados and Cindy Kiro the Children's Commissioner. Cutting back on training and investment and condemning 7,000 young people to low paid futures in the prison service and fast food joints makes for a pretty dismal future. What a pity the 'New Zealand Lifeback Promise' only extends to tourists.

Wouldn't it be better to use some of the massive profits that companies like McDonalds make and put it toward building a better future for all of New Zealand's young people - use it to fund education, training courses and apprenticeships. Why condemn another generation to a minimum wage subsistence where the only bright thing will be the golden arches on every high street.


For today's posts see: latest posts

Adventure Tourism Industry Safety

The death of 6 high schools students and their teacher on an outward bound course resulted in the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoors Centre being ordered to pay a $40,000 fine and $440,000 in reparations.

The tragic deaths stunned the nation when the school party drowned in a rapidly flooding gorge after warnings of heavy rain weren't acted upon.

Following the court case the Department of Labour urged the adventure tourism industry to look critically at its health and safety systems in light of the Mangatepopo canyon trekking tragedy. A lot should've been learned, but has it?

A lot has already been written about the tragedy on the net so I won't go over it again, I'll just point interested readers towards an excellent thread by Steve Howe on Backpacker blogs, from which the following snippet was taken

"We Americans and our media tend to point fingers hard and fast after adventure fatalities, but Kiwis apparently follow the opposite philosophy to an almost surreal extreme. The prevailing New Zealand attitude seems to be that adventure requires risk, adventurers shouldn’t be coddled, the OPC is very professional, and no one could have predicted what happened. And I’d like to believe that, but it just doesn’t wash.

We’re not talking about adventure or adventurers here, we’re talking about high school students contracted to a commercial guide service for adventure training. When you combine risky pursuits, young guides, novice clients, and business volume, the standards have to be higher than ‘everyone knew the risk’ simply because everyone doesn’t. And that’s particularly true of canyoneering, which combines fun but risky activities like rappels, pool jumps, and whitewater swimming with sexy scenery and aerobic ease – the perfect combination for marketable adventure.

But canyons are also very committing. IMHO, slick pouroffs, whitewater currents, undercut boulders, logjams, rockfalls, flash floods, and difficulty of retreat make them generally unsuited to volume guiding or team-building exercises. And the New Zealand version of ‘canyoning’ differs greatly from American-style ‘canyoneering.’ Canyoning often involves precision pool leaps from high cliffs, or necky whitewater swims above the brink of waterfalls, risks that American outfitters would never incorporate into their operating plan.

I’m a firm believer that sudden accidents rarely happen suddenly. With a little forethought and a few case histories under your belt, you can often see accident situations setting up hours, days, even weeks in advance. I’m not interested in doing a long distance Bill Frist/Terry Schiavo diagnosis here. Lessons will indeed be learned from the investigations now underway. But I suspect those lessons were already in plentiful supply. And as evidence, I offer the following recent canyoneering incidents, each with a brief outline, news links, and perhaps a few details that never made it into the media. The similarities are obvious. The gist? Hike safe mate"
Read on http://www.backpacker.com/blogs/126

If all else fails I guess there's always the 'New Zealand Life Back Promise’ to fall back on?

Zion Wildlife Gardens Closed by MAF

MAF has closed Zion Wildlife Gardens - the animal reserve at which keeper Dalu Mncube was mauled to death by a rare white tiger on Wednesday.

The Department of Labour has served two health and safety improvement notices on the park, one requiring the park to meet MAF standards for animal enclosures and the other requiring safety measures to protect staff where segregation from animals isn't possible.

Too little too late
The park was already under investigation at the time of Mr Mncube's death why weren't these notices issued as soon as inspectors reasonably believed that there were breaches of Health and Safety regulations - why did it take an avoidable fatality to spur them into action?

There had already been two close calls in the last year. Weren't those sufficient reasons to take enforcement action?


The full text of the MAF / Dept of Labour statement on the closure appears below:

MAF Biosecurity New Zealand and Department of Labour Statement – Zion Wildlife Gardens

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) has today enacted powers under the Biosecurity Act 1993 and temporarily closed the Zion Wildlife Gardens near Whangarei to the public in the wake of this week’s death of a keeper at the park.

The park will be closed until MAF is satisfied that it is able to consistently comply with the animal welfare and enclosure requirements for zoos and wildlife parks. At this point in time, MAF is ensuring that the welfare of the animals is not compromised and the park is being well managed. There is no intention to euthanase any of the animals.

The Department of Labour has also served two Improvement Notices on the park and the Department will be working with the park to ensure compliance with the notices.

The first notice requires the park to meet MAF standards for animal enclosures. The second requires the park to institute interim safety measures to protect staff where segregation from animals is not possible.

Improvement notices require a workplace to improve its health and safety so people are not put at risk of harm. More information is available at:

• http://dol.govt.nz/publications/research/keeping%2Dwork%2Dsafe/keeping-work-safe_03.asp

The management of Zion Wildlife Gardens is fully co-operating with the measures.

By way of background, zoos and wildlife parks in New Zealand are subject to legal requirements set out in the Containment Facilities Standard for Zoo Animals. This document is available on the MAF Biosecurity New Zealand website:

• http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/border/transitional-facilities/animals/154-03-04.htm

MAF was well through a scheduled review of the zoo standard at the time of this week’s incident. This review includes the guidelines for close animal contact and ‘encounters’ but was not prompted by any specific event. As part of the standard review, MAF is working closely with New Zealand’s zoo industry and international experts in the field. The zoo standard review will be informed by the outcomes of any MAF or Department of Labour investigations."

Rare White Tiger Kills Keeper, Destroyed

There are only 120 white tigers left in the world and none in the wild, there was one less today.

Dalu Mncube, a South African keeper at Zion Wildlife Gardens Whangarei, entered the white tiger enclosure this morning and was mauled to death in front of a group of horrified French and British tourists.

Zoo staff were unable to free the keeper in time and he died in the enclosure, the tiger was destroyed soon after.

This was the third mauling incident at the park in the last year.

In a cruel twist of fate Mr Mncube bravely prised apart the mouth of the same tiger in February when it savaged Demetri Price.

Demetri Price, a senior zoo-keeper, laughed off the attack at the time, saying he had "no worry at all" about the zoo's safety.

"The danger involved in this kind of work ... is all relative," he told NZ television. "The way we go about this kind of work, generally you are pretty damn safe," he said.

In another incident in July 2008 Lisa Baxter, a Scottish teenager who worked at the park, was bitten by a white lion called Timba after putting her hands through a hole in the fence. She was left with permanent scarring to both her hands:

(she) knew that if she screamed it would wake the rest of the pack and she would be killed, so she quietly worked to free her hands from the piercing bite of 18 month old Timba, the lion. Lisa, of Gullane, East Lothian, said: "I was stroking Timba's nose when he just grabbed my hand. His teeth were razorsharp and went straight through my skin." Later she added, "My hands were so swollen, I thought they were going to explode."

The park was later criticised after Mr Busch failed to tell the Dept of Labour about the attack.

Care and Safety Standards Had Slipped
The park had been made famous by the TV series 'Lion Man'. According to the 'Australian' the Lion Man TV series "followed the work of Craig Busch, who was dismissed from the park controlled by his mother last year.

On Tuesday, Busch claimed in a court hearing over his dismissal that animal care and safety standards had slipped at the park since the breakdown of his relationship with his mother.

"I became very concerned with animal welfare issues," he said.

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry documents released to Television New Zealand last year expressed concerns over animals kept in crowded, unsanitary conditions.

Inspectors were at one stage so concerned by conditions at Zion Wildlife Gardens they considered having 40 lions and tigers put down."

--------

"Things started really coming apart after they got the last tape off from the third [television] series," Mr Busch said at an Employment Relations Authority hearing yesterday.

"After that, they stopped staff from working with me, they wouldn't let me discuss anything with them about the park. I became very concerned with animal welfare issues."

A Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry investigation expressed concern that animals were kept in crowded, insanitary conditions.

Mr Busch's lawyer Daniel Erickson today refuted reports that an ERA hearing was under way at the park at the time of today's attack. Mr Erickson acknowledged that one of the issues raised at the authority by Mr Busch yesterday was safety."

It seems that no lessons were learned from the two recent near misses and this incident is going to raise serious questions about workplace health safety provisions and practices at the zoo. Why exactly weren't more stringent precautions being taken with a tiger that had already attacked a human?

At present the park is closed and legal proceedings may well follow.

It's an absolute tragedy that both a man and a rare tiger have lost their lives in what may well have been a totally preventable, if not foreseeable, incident. Wildlife parks should be about conservation, not treating wild animals like circus performers, leading cubs around on leashes and getting into enclosures with dangerous top predators. Enough of it - either return the park to a genuine conservation facility or close it down and re-home the 'side-shows' to facilities that know how to treat them properly.

What right has a conservation organisation got to shoot an animal for doing what comes naturally?

Note:

A big cat mauling also occurred at Wellington Zoo in January 2006, when an unlocked door allowed 2 lions to get into an enclosure whilst the keeper, Bob Bennett, was setting out food. He too was mauled in front of shocked visitors and spent three days in hospital following the 20 minute attack