Economists wary of billion-dollar cost of raising sick leave
27 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
6 minutes to read
NZ Herald
ANALYSIS The Government s decision to double minimum sick leave will cost a billion dollars a year, nearly 1 per cent of the country s annual wage bill, and will be borne by employers, according to bureaucrats estimates.
The increase from a minimum of five to 10 days of annual sick leave, for which a bill was introduced in December, is the second and by far the most expensive of Labour s three main labour-market policy changes promised in the 2020 election.
The extra sick leave is estimated to cost more than the minimum wage increase and the new Matariki holiday combined.
Mayor Phil Goff said he was not aware the council-controlled company was an NZI member. “Watercare’s membership of the NZI is a decision for its chief executive,” a mayoral spokesperson said. The mayor expected all CCO expenditure to align with the council’s priorities and deliver value for money, said the mayor’s office in a statement to
Stuff. NZI has opposed raising the minimum wage and attributed high house prices partly to restrictive planning processes constraining the supply of land – a view not shared by Watercare’s council owner. The pressure on Watercare’s budget began last year when $224 million worth of urgent spending was required to boost Auckland’s drought-hit water supply.
Friday, 15 January 2021, 4:52 pm
The New Zealand Initiative welcomes today’s
announcement of quarantine-free travel to New Zealand from
the Cook Islands.
Initiative Chief Economist Dr Eric
Crampton said, “About 80,000 Cook Islanders live in New
Zealand. Allowing quarantine-free travel from the Covid-free
Cook Islands into New Zealand will let their families come
to see them again. So long as the Cooks and New Zealand
remain Covid-free, we can hope that two-way quarantine-free
travel will soon
follow.”
“Establishing safe travel
corridors between places that are free of Covid, along with
rigorous safety protocols keeping Covid out of those safe
places, is important in moving to normality over the next
In an email to the vice-chancellor that was also sent to all academic staff, Wills demanded answers about the nature of the university s association with the think-tank. “I cannot reconcile the aims and political orientation of this organisation with the values of our University,” he wrote.
Supplied
Auckland University vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater. (File photo) He said that since the email was sent last Wednesday, more than 40 fellow academics had contacted him expressing concern that the university’s association with NZI was “inappropriate”. “NZI has a political agenda. The university should not have a political agenda,” Wills said. “One of the comments someone made to me was surely the university has the capability and independence to run its own research and doesn’t need to be putting money into a partisan-aligned, business-aligned institution for its research.”
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark discusses drug reform.
OPINION: We are living in unprecedented times with a pandemic of global proportions. For many commentators, this is seen as an opportunity to think “outside the box” about the future direction of our society and economy, and our general election seemed as good a place to start as any. Yet it threw up few new ideas, as both major parties played safe and protected their respective electoral territories. If the major parties cannot be relied on to bring big new ideas to the table, who can? The minor parties can make a substantive contribution. For example, under the previous government NZ First promoted the Billion Trees scheme and the Provincial Growth Fund, while the Greens advanced the Climate Change Commission and a series of related environmental and climate initiatives.