It was great to see on the victory dias on Sunday, acknowledgement of all those in the All Blacks side who had contributed in some way on or off the field, including the temporarily disabled – Aaron Cruden on crutches; those players unable to physically take part in the contest at all – Dan Carter; and those excluded from the team before the tournament started, but called up later, including the one who kicked the winning goal – Stephen Donald.

It would be great to see a similar attitude in our society – recognising the value of all, regardless of their immediate – or apparent – ability to play the game. And it reflects some of the principles and values promoted through our Social Justice 2011  focus ‘On a level playing field: Fair play and the common good’ – equality, teamwork, participation and inclusion.

As we in New Zealand turn our attention to a contest of a different sort on 26 November, some of those principles are also reflected in the New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ election statement on Securing the Common Good: Whakamaua te tikanga pai o te katoa.

‘Participation in the democratic process is important,’ they say. ‘It is vital that you vote.’ Elections are not about considering what will be ‘better for me’, but what will be ‘better for us’. ‘Do political policy options enhance our life together as a community; do they protect the vulnerable; and will they work for the common good of all?’ say the Bishops

For consideration of some of the issues, and to help pose curly questions to political leaders and candidates, check out some of these links:

On welfare changes: The Caritas Guide to the Welfare Debate is available to help people discuss, debate and respond to issues in the 2011 welfare debate.

On aid and development: New Zealand Aid & Development Dialogues with the Global Poverty Project have created an election scorecard you can use to see how well candidates measure up against key principles of good development practice (aid that helps the most needy, aid that builds partnerships, aid that is professional and accountable, and aid that is given transparently). They’ll also be posing the questions to sitting members, with the results on their website here.

Disarmament: Some key questions developed by the joint campaigns on land mines and cluster bombs that you can put to politicians on disarmament are available  here.

While the election may not generate as much edge-of-the-seat excitement as the RWC final – it does matter more – and for longer. Or does it?

We’d welcome any feedback on this site. Add a comment, or email me direct at martin@caritas.org.nz.

Martin de Jong is Communications and International Advocacy Coordinator for Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

La grande finale: France v New Zealand – Martin de Jong

No – the title doesn’t represent any bias towards the no 2 team. But second-time around, can France pull something out of the blue, and beat the New Zealand All Blacks? Some would say it would take a miracle. But we all know that with the French – anything can happen. So I’m not going to lay down any bets on the sporting front.

When these two met in pool play, I noted on the rankings and in our blog, that New Zealand narrowly beat the French on our social equality indicators. Though France scored well on income and gender equality, New Zealand came up strong on lower military spending, and the global peace and transparency indices.

So to look a bit further for the final, we had a quick look at the OECD’s Society at a Glance – OECD Social Indicators that came out in April of this year. Interesting stuff. Among other things, it confirmed France’s lower income equality; and showed that France has a lower relative poverty rate than New Zealand. In France, 7.2% of the population live on less than half of the median household income (‘the equivalised median household income’ if you want the full technical term). New Zealand was just under the OECD average at 11% of the population living on less than half of the median.

More interesting was the fact that for New Zealand relative poverty increased by an average 2.5% a year from the mid 1980s to the late 2000s, whereas France had a slight average decline.

But for a country that has the motto ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ – it seems France dips out in modern times on the latter quality. The OECD rated France lowest for ‘fraternity’: in the month prior to its survey only 31% of French had volunteered time, donated money or helped a stranger, against an OECD average of 39%. (I don’t know what the New Zealand figure was – but I’m sure it was better than the French – just like our rugby).

Viva la France! But may the All Blacks win.

Martin de Jong is Communications and International Advocacy Coordinator for Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

Grand final: New Zealand v France – Christopher Nimmo

And so it comes down to this – with what seems like a whole country poised on a knife edge. I know that in Wellington tonight there’ll be Vietnamese Foreign Ministry officials cheering on the All Blacks, and my mother will be in hiding whenever it looks like the French are about to score.

It’s fitting that the two finalists should be from Pool A – easily the fairest group in the competition, even if Japan didn’t make it. Neither nation has any glaring weaknesses on our fairness indicators; New Zealand just edges out France overall on the basis of the Peace and Transparency indicators, but France seems to have an advantage on income and gender equality, as well as Overseas Development Assistance, which are the key issues for me.

Income inequality is a real problem in New Zealand – not a problem on the same level as Namibia, but a problem nonetheless. Inequality in New Zealand has increased rapidly since the 1970s (PDF) while France has remained relatively stable. Why does it matter so much? Because inequalities reproduce themselves. The less well-off in a modern society are more likely to suffer from preventable health problems, die early, eat poorly and experience mental illness than their wealthier compatriots. Their children tend to have fewer educational and employment opportunities.

As we’ve seen recently, they are also likely to suffer to a greater extent in natural disasters.

France could certainly do better in income equality, but they are nevertheless a long way ahead of us. This may be a result of having a trade union movement that is still able and prepared to make a noise about perceived injustices. In New Zealand unions lost much of their power in the 1980s and 1990s, and the New Zealand public seems to have lost its protesting spirit at the same time.

On the gender front, choosing between France and New Zealand is essentially entirely subjective. The UN’s gender equality measure is, in fact, an exception. French women make up a smaller proportion of their parliament than Kiwi women, and while there are significant gender wage differences in both countries, it seems that New Zealand probably takes the lead here as well. Indeed, it’s been a good year for the gender gap debate in New Zealand, with Catherine Delahunty sparking debate earlier in the year with a proposal to make it easier for people to find out whether there is a wage gap in their place of employment, and the women’s median hourly earnings rising.

My gut feeling is that France deserve to win this one – but there’s no way I’d actually be able to bring myself to support them tonight. What I’m sure of is that if New Zealand pull it off our Happy Planet Index is going to go through the roof.

Chris Nimmo is a student at Victoria University and the New Zealand School of Music, as well as lead researcher for this project.

Last week Wales and Australia both lost to fairer nations – this week the contest is much tighter, just as it’s likely to be on the field.

Australia edges out Wales in the crucial income inequality stake, at least on paper, but neither nation’s figure is very impressive. Wales’ income inequality is quite misleading, however, as its statistics are shackled to those of the UK – in fact, inequality in Wales is less than that of the UK as a whole. On the other hand, the median wage in Australia is very high, perhaps because of the strong union movement, so the countries are probably fairly evenly matched in income inequality.

One factor which comes into play more in Australia than in Wales is geographical inequality. Although wages might not vary to the extent of the Australian landscape, there is a difference of A$20,000 in average full-time wages between people living in the Australian Capital Territory and those in Tasmania. This is not, however, quite so vast as the divide between indigenous and other Australians. An average full-time wage is pretty irrelevant in areas where there are simply no jobs, let alone full-time jobs. The regional divide in Australia is quite similar to that in the UK – Wales are the Tasmania of the United Kingdom.

One similarity between the two nations that particularly interests me from a development perspective is the importance of mining to both economies. Much of Australia’s present wealth is based on mining – miners are Australia’s highest-earning workers. In Wales, coalmining provided an important income source until the mid-20^th century. The economy went downhill, however, when the coal ran out – Australia will definitely need to be careful.

One area where Wales is clearly ahead of Australia is in Overseas Development Assistance, where Australia’s vast wealth does not seem to have compelled it into generosity, with a piddly 0.32% of Gross National Income spent on overseas aid. It’s possible that Wales might not be quite so generous if it were an independent nation, but if Wales gave the same amount per person as the rest of the United Kingdom, it would be giving around 0.72% of its GNI… the only nation in the Rugby World Cup to actually live up to the promise of 0.7% of GNI!

And so I’ll be rooting for Wales in this one – at least providing they don’t start doing Warburtons on a regular basis.

Chris Nimmo is a student at Victoria University and the New Zealand School of Music, as well as lead researcher for this project.

For all of you who are still moaning at Wales vs. France. Wales may seem to be a fairer team on the field but when we look at the stats of equality, Wales gets knocked out like Kevin Mealamu and Tana Umaga clearing Brian O’Driscoll out of the ruck.

France is ranked no.5 on equality, while Wales is ranked 9^th. In most countries rugby union is only played by the richer classes and soccer is more working class. Even though rugby is the national sport in Wales, it still has an effect. What does that mean? It means the gap between the rugby players and the football players is much smaller. No wonder Wales kicked like the pass of a Japanese hooker.

France also ranked No. 2 on gender inequality and No. 3 on happy planet which means they had a whole penny to enjoy, not a Halfpenny. Neither team is very innocent when it comes to military spending, but yet again France salutes its hands and smashes the ball right out of the line-out and into their hands. Wales only managed to break the line and get some points on the board because Wales is a more peaceful country, has a less corrupt government and something that deserves a try, they are great at working with aid.

Wales lost. Get over it. If Wales were the great team we’ve been raving about then they would have been able to play without Sam Warburton. Yes it damaged their scrum and line-out, but wasn’t it Mike Phillips who was the magic man?

Wales had at least 3 scoring opportunities in the game to take the lead but they Sonny Billed them like they were Quade Cooper. So if you look at the facts again you’ll see a much different score. Instead of France skimming up a close encounter with a 14 man squad, they get away with a comfortable victory and a well deserved spot in the final.

France won and I cheered.

Go All Blacks!

Guest blog: Lakan Beech is a Year 8 student at Thorndon School and a rugby fan. He attends Mass at Te Kainga Catholic Marae. 

16 October (Auckland)

New Zealand’s overall ranking of 5 puts us ahead of Australia on 8, a fact which has been immensely satisfying to New Zealand readers of this blog, especially as the mounting All Black injury list makes the outcome of Sunday’s semi-final less certain than many would like.

However, looking at the breakdown, New Zealand’s overall higher score has been achieved primarily through lower military spending, higher aid spending and a high peace ranking.

In fact Australia leads New Zealand in overall income equality, gender equality and narrowly edges ahead also on the Happy Planet Index.  None of which is likely to come as a surprise to New Zealanders who constantly eye migration across the Tasman as potentially the quickest path to increase their own personal living standards.

Rhetoric concerning the gap between New Zealand and Australian incomes has become a familiar part of the local political landscape. Very different social legislation, especially concerning the ability of the poorest workers to bargain collectively, ensures that New Zealanders continue to be locked into a low-wage economy.

(My own family travelled the other way – we came to New Zealand from Australia looking for work in the aftermath of the 1975 constitutional crisis, in which government budgets were frozen and my father found himself without a job.)  As an Australian living in New Zealand, I find myself uncomfortable with Australia’s lower ranking on our table, given the overall better income equality indicators for Australia.

Both Australia and New Zealand however share a shameful history in regard to indigenous peoples.  We were also two of only four countries in the world to vote against the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, though both have since expressed formal support for it.

As the United Nations 2009 report State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP_web.pdf explains clearly, indigenous people consistently lag behind non-indigenous populations in most indicators of wellbeing. The report quotes a study that applied the UNDP human development index to indigenous populations.  In 2001, New Zealand was ranked 20^th overall in the Index, but the position of New Zealand Māori was ranked at seventy-third.  The situation was far worse in Australia, where the country’s overall ranking was third, but the position of Australia’s indigenous people was one-hundred and third.

In the end the indigenous issues are one of the reasons why I am proud to call myself Pākehā.  Australia has no similar equivalent where the white population has adopted the indigenous language name for themselves.  My extended whānau back in Australia have not even begun to question the role our ancestors played in separating indigenous people from their land.  And no indigenous cultural symbols are used in any form in the Australian rugby team’s identity.

We’re a somewhat divided family – my mother has an Aussie rugby shirt hanging next to her TV, while my sons are proudly – even aggressively – dressed in black.  But even if I can’t ultimately bear to watch the game on Sunday night, at the very least I will be there as the All Blacks perform Ka Mate, the Ngāti Toa haka which has become a symbol of Māori warrior spirit.  And I will be looking for the day that the Wallabies are ready and able to respond with an Aboriginal chant.

Lisa Beech is Advocacy & Research Coordinator for Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

On the numbers, there’s little dispute over who’s favourite to win on social equality here. France’s number 6 place on our rankings (just below NZ) is earned through high places on gender equality and the happy planet index, and a good showing on income equality (its Gini measure of 32.7 places it 5th among the rugby nations).

Both nations spend relatively high on the military (though Wales is reflective of UK spending overall). Wales does rate better than France on the global peace index (9th compared to 11th) and transparency (7th compared to France’s 10th place). However, it outperforms France most in global generosity, where (with the other UK entities) Wales ranks no 1 in spending on overseas aid. Though at 0.56% of gross national income – it’s still well below the international target of 0.7% for wealthier nations (a target first set in the 1970s – you can’t say they haven’t had time!). Only five OECD countries have managed to reach that target; and they’re not rugby nations – hmmm, is there a connection? But to the UK’s credit, they have made a commitment to reach the 0.7% target by 2013.

However, Wales performance on these latter aspects is not enough to pull it up from 11th place in our rankings – and France’s greater fairness on internal social equality measures puts it way ahead overall. In this match – I’ll be gunning for France (oops – excuse the militaristic language).

Martin de Jong is Communications and International Advocacy Coordinator for Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

We can’t let this weekend’s games go by without noting the oil slick coating our ‘Bay of Plenty’ shores and tarnishing New Zealand’s clean, green ‘100% pure’ image – as the container ship Rena continues to spill heavy fuel oil, containers and other debris off the coast of Tauranga.

It’s easy to blame the situation on what appears to be careless or negligent action of the ships’ officers in charge. (And sadly, some have used the fact the ship was Filipino crewed to blame all Filipinos – including those who have found a home here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

But Fr Denis O’Hagan, writing this week on CathNews New Zealand, questions whether the pursuit of profit is partly to blame. ‘Rena … is owned by one company, chartered by another and possibly operated by at third, registered under a flag of convenience and crewed by poorly paid seamen; the Captain and Mate are under arrest.  Is man or profit at centre of this affair?’ he says.

He also notes that Pope Benedict in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate – Charity in Truth argues that ‘Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.’

Do the realities and pressures of modern shipping absolve those of us on shore – this shipping that brings low-cost consumer goods from far away places? Are we innocent of these men’s charges, the death of wildlife, and the blackening of our shores?

Martin de Jong is Communications and International Advocacy Coordinator for Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

On the rugby stats, South Africa could be expected to dominate on the field, but on our social equality rankings, it comes a lowly 18^th and would be out of the competition at this phase. Australia ranks 8^th, aided by a much better Gini coefficient of 35 on a 0-100 scale (where 0 represents total equality of income in the country). South Africa has a Gini figure of 58, placing it 16th on income inequality alone.

Even greater disparity is shown on the gender inequality index, where Australia (on a 0-100 scale) scores 29 while South Africa rates at 63.5.

The only social equality indicator that South Africa performs better on is on military spending, where they allocate 1.4 percent of gross domestic product compared to Australia’s 1.9 percent. However, more internal conflict and violence puts South Africa at 18^th compared to Australia’s 7^th of the 20 rugby nations on the Global Peace Index.

It may be a hard call to make on the field, but in the social equality stakes – Australia’s the undoubted winner in this match.

QF 4: Argentina v New Zealand (Auckland)

Two vastly different rugby teams, two vastly different countries. But they do have some key things in common – high reliance on agriculture for national income (Argentina is Latin America’s second-largest agricultural producer), and a highly unequal sharing of that wealth. New Zealand places at 11^th on income equality among the rugby nations, while Argentina falls a little further away at 15^th. New Zealand performs better on gender equality: 6^th compared to Argentina’s 14^th placing; while the rugby capital of the world tops the table on the global peace index and transparency.

What Argentina has going for it though is that it is arguably the happiest rugby playing nation on the planet. It scores 59 on the 0-100 Happy Planet Index (where 100 is highest – representing long life and general wellbeing coupled with minimal environmental impact). New Zealand by contrast scores 36.2, placing it 13^th on this scale. Argentina also spends less on its military as a proportion of gross domestic product, but that’s more than counterbalanced by low scores for global peace and transparency. This all adds up, in the overall rankings, to New Zealand placing 5th and Argentina 14th.

In this match, both the rugby and social analysis concur – New Zealand is the winner.

Martin de Jong is Communications and International Advocacy Coordinator for Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Neither England nor France is a stellar performer when it comes to fairness: both are ranked mid-table in our rankings, and with middling scores in most categories.

It’s France, however, who take the early lead from income and gender equality. France’s income equality in particular is stellar for what is a reasonably large, diverse country. England, of course, has nearly as many people, but keeps them cooped up a bit tighter. They aren’t the least equal society in the World Cup by any stretch (they do slightly better than New Zealand, for instance). However, it’s disappointing that the fearless imperial power of the past apparently lacks the courage these days to combat injustice back in the motherland.

And now to digress a little, a couple of days ago I talked briefly on Facebook with a German engineering student friend who is frustrated with the difficulty of getting companies to take her on for a praktikum. There are still very few female engineers anywhere in the world, which makes Frenchwomen’s proportion of working engineers look almost respectable, even as it sits at a piddling 16.7% (PDF). Indeed, it looks pretty stellar in comparison to the equivalent statistic of just 6.9% in the UK. These numbers should go up somewhat as time goes by – and indeed women are making up an increasing proportion of engineering students, at least in France – but the fact that these numbers are so low indicates the pervasiveness of prescribed gender roles in both nations.

As for the rugby, neither nation has earned itself a great reputation over the past few weeks. Whether it’s England seemingly breaking rules at will, or French teams apparently bribing Polynesian players to stay away from the world cup (finally proving that Transparency is related to fairness), both nations seem happy to preserve the oligarchy that is international rugby at all costs. Indeed, it seems as if neither team really wants my support, but I’ll have to give it to France, who are superior in almost every measure of inequality.

In other vaguely World Cup-related news, newly sent-home Georgia and Russia seem to have found new territory for a stoush in the Pacific. Who knows, maybe the money will make a difference for equality and living standards in the region?

Chris Nimmo is a student at Victoria University of Wellington and the New Zealand School of Music, and lead researcher for this project.