This year’s AGM will be held at St John’s Conference Centre (cnr Willis & Dixon Streets) Wellington on Wednesday 22 September from 9:30AM–1:30PM. More details will be available as we confirm them.

Read the AGM notice

We’re delighted to announce that the following have been declared elected to the Federation’s Executive Committee.  As the nominations received did not exceed the number of vacancies, no election is required.

Stacia Smith, a current member, continues for her second term, along with two new members, Simon Cayley, Chief Executive Officer from the Bishop’s Action Foundation in New Plymouth and Niamh Lawless as Barnardos’ Deputy Chief Executive from Wellington.

Remember to add Wednesday 22 September, 9:30AM-1:30PM to your diary, if you haven’t already, and come along to join with fellow Federation members, Executive, staff and others to celebrate another successful year for NZFVWO.

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David McCartney, Executive Officer, Community Housing Aotearoa

The pros and cons of the recently released Ministerial advisory group report on social housing—Home and Housed: A Vision for Social Housing in New Zealand—deserve a more constructive public debate than the carefully managed period set aside to 17 September for stakeholder engagement is likely to provide.

For the members of Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA) this is part of a wider, overdue debate. It is a debate that for obvious reasons we believe should encompass more than a blinkered stoush in the media over what happens next to the stock of wholly government-owned State housing that dominates New Zealand’s total social housing pool as controlled by Housing New Zealand Corporation (HNZC).

From a CHA point of view, this report begins to shape a tangible roadmap for ‘kick starting’ or scaling up more viable community housing providers as a sustainable supplement and alternative to HNZC-provided housing. In most part those aspects of the report by the Housing Shareholders Advisory Group (HSA Group), are, in fact, what CHA has been asking for year after year, media release after media release.

Yet visions of what social housing could be in New Zealand (in the sense of the community-driven neighbourhood building advocated from within our small community housing sector) seldom find their way into this debate—a debate that too often slots housing matters into a ‘too-hard basket’, even though we all know that without safe, secure, affordable housing, all our other social service provision will be undermined or frustrated.

We don’t need officials to tell us who in our society experiences high and complex housing needs. CHA members like the Monte Cecilia Housing Trust in South Auckland are working every day with people whose ‘need is greatest’. And what they need as a basic human right is more housing, not necessarily ‘pathways’ or HNZC ‘continuums’, and definitely not revolving doors.

Through its recommendations to essentially restructure “sector arrangements” for the provision of social housing to a point that could eventually see HNZC replaced or split up, the HSA Group has suggested that only a bold, fast and substantial set of changes and a robust new “business case” will remove roadblocks to meeting that urgent and growing need for more social housing.

Under the key premise that HNZC’s stock is mismatched to need and that HNZC has too many things to do, what is being put forward at the level that CHA is most interested in is a serious opening to grow a better equipped ‘cost-based’ non-government slice of the social housing pie to levels more in line with long-standing international trends and proven success for the people who matter most in all of this: tenants and families.

Citing “economic and functional reasons” HNZC made it known in its Statement of Intent in July that it has already identified 20,285 housing assets with potential for redevelopment, reconfiguration, outright disposal or disposal and replacement. In addition, some land may be freed up “to be used by other sectors.”

Trusting that we are not being given a convenient hospital pass or a false direction, CHA members are being urged by Housing Minister Phil Heatley to “step up to the plate” as partners in taking on such land, assets and tenancies. Or as he stated at the Christchurch Housing Forum on 5 August: “Put simply, we need your help. We need community housing organisations to grow stronger.”

The HSA Group have framed the next five years as a transition period for social housing in New Zealand. However, both HNZC and the HSA Group have confirmed that the beginnings of this major shift will somehow be made to occur within existing government funding. If you’d like to support community housing to have a successful role in shaping its part in the future of social housing in Aotearoa I invite you to visit www.communityhousing.org.nz We need your support!

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This Bill includes an attempt to define ‘core services’ for local authorities, and specifies them as a rather odd list of both specific and general functions—including ‘community infrastructure’.

We submitted that it is an impossible task to define a universally, useful list of core services. We suggested that the current ‘power of general competence’ should stand, which means that local government has the authority to decide its own activities within the defined purpose of a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach.

We were asked specifically that if the core services approach is maintained, would we support the term ‘community infrastructure’? We responded that it is a very general term and not defined in the Bill which could lead to misunderstandings and mixed expectations. So, we were asked (and agreed) to go back with a suggestion of how we would define it.

Our initial thoughts that it includes two major features:
a.    community and economic development and advisory services, and
b.    grants for community-based activities.
Perhaps we should also suggest a less confusing term, such as ‘core community services’? What do you think?  We welcome your thoughts and suggestions!

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1. NZFVWO speaks out on the proposed local government legislation

Also, take a look at what ANGOA (the Association of Non-Government Organisations of Aotearoa) says from it’s last Wellington Roundtable. The group expressed “strong disappointment” at the draft Agreement. They said “it is very high level, but many people expressed disappointment and frustration at this. Here are some of the comments:

• Previous consultations had expressed strong calls for a document more specific than the original 2001 Statement of Government Intentions for an Improved Community-Government Relationship (the SOGI).
• This document is less specific than what we had – its statements were summed up as “we should all be nice to each other” – but Aotearoa New Zealand needs something more substantial than this.
• “Like motherhood and apple pie”, several people said – no-one could disagree with it, but we need something practical that addresses current issues, with accountability in both directions, and this document is no help at all.”

We encourage you to read more on the ANGOA website and tell ANGOA what you think. There is extensive and detailed discussion there raising some further issues about the content of the draft Agreement.

‘Bang the table!’ and give your feedback online about the draft Relationship Agreement direct to the Kia Tutahi-Standing Together steering group, or go to a hui and speak out.

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1. Draft Relationship Agreement with Government feels hollow

The Steering Group Kia Tutahi Standing Together, appointed by Minister Turia to develop a relationship agreement between Government and the sector, is running a series of hui around the country in July and August.  This week we attended one for national organisations and it was very lively discussion! We want to share the issues we raised at this meeting for our members to consider, and hopefully you can use as a basis for you to participate in other hui around the country and send us your comments.

Content of the draft Agreement
The draft Relationship Agreement is very high level – as promised – but it’s actually less strong and less clear than the previous Statement of Government Intentions for an Improved Community-Government Relationship (the SOGI). We would like a document that spells out the respective roles and responsibilities of parties, and has considerably more substance than this draft.

Parties to the agreement
It is proposed that Communities of Aotearoa , rather than Tangata Whenua, Community & Voluntary sector is the community party to this Agreement. We certainly recognise that our sector is not the community, but have been seeking a relationship agreement between our sector and Government and feel this definition is a re-statement of the social contract between people and Government.  It does not advance the cause of a strong well-connected and informed sector.

Implementation
Without other documentation to spell out how the relationship will work, it feels like a hollow effort. We’re aware of various other important supporting developments – such as the Code of Funding Practice, Reference Guide about Consultation, Cabinet Guidelines on Consultation -  which are all in different stages of development. These need to be brought together as part of the presentation of the Relationship Agreement, so it has some substance.

We think monitoring and review is essential and must be included with the base document. There is the need for an annual review process to be clearly spelt out, and an appeal process through an Ombudsman was stressed by many people at the forum.

Tell us what you think!
We would be very interested to hear from you about your ideas an impressions from other hui!  The quickest and easiest way to do this is to submit your comment in the space provided below.

Read other views posted on our website

See the timetable for the hui nearest to you and read the draft Agreement

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1. Join the conversation!

I attended a consultation meeting in Waitakere. It was well attended but not full, which may be a comment in itself.

There was a predominant feeling that the work on this must continue, however that was matched by a good degree of scepticism, and a very strong demand that the words must be matched by the deeds this time.  A number of people expressed the ‘been there done that, got it on vinyl, cassette tape and CD!’ the lament of a world-weary, recycled sector.

That said, us being us, eternal optimists, lots of very positive useful ideas were put forward to give the agreement teeth, make it live and ensure it survived its launch.

A few I really liked (few of them new of course) were:

• Get it signed at all levels of government, publicly and systematically, to go along with a rolling signing up at community level. This starts at Cabinet, cascades to all Chief Executives, where it’s included in their performance agreements, and thence down through the ranks to the local areas
• One idea was regional and local staff signing up at a ceremony where communities did the same, following an active workshop on implementing it, in  visible demonstration that the staff actually see the agreement, a highly effective symbol
• Put it at the front of every government/community funding contract, operationalising and demonstrating its intent constantly, and allowing constant questioning on the application of it to take place from both sides
• Put a formal review process in place, and dispute procedures, as are included in any good partnership document
• Central Government, as the dominant party financially, commits to an ongoing, specific resource within each department dedicated to implementing the agreement
• Ensure the requirement of sustainability was injected into it
• Restrict the signing scope to communities and community organisations, rather than adding in families and individuals, for purely practical reasons, but not its application, to preserve the central idea of a social compact
• Apply the thing now! i.e. test it out as it’s being consulted on by applying its draft forms to current joint projects. How would the Welfare Working Group’s scope and processes look after being subjected to the agreement provisions? There is nothing like the white heat of reality checking to sharpen all of us up.
• Understand from the outset that it’s a living document which will never be perfect, but that’s life…so let’s get on with it
• Please please, include Local Government in it!

There were lots of other comments, I’m being totally subjectively selective, and no prioritising was done but these particularly emerged for me as beacons of hope.

I look forward to the next steps.
Tony Mayow
President

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1. Draft Relationship Agreement with Government feels hollow

The National Council of Women was formed in 1896 by suffragists, who having won the vote wanted to create a forum for women.  Today the National Council “serves women, the family and the community through research, study, discussion and action”.  Currently, the Council receives some funding from the Government to advocate on issues affecting women.  And it is this advocacy function that appears to be the sticking point for the Commission.

To be eligible to register as a charity, an organisation must have a charitable purpose.  This is defined in section 5 of the Charities Act 2005, which provides that “charitable purpose includes every charitable purpose, whether it relates to the relief of poverty, the advancement of education or religion, or any other matter beneficial to the community.”  Section 5 goes on to say that a non-charitable purpose, such as advocacy, will not prevent an organisation qualifying for registration as a charity, but that non-charitable purpose must be ancillary or secondary to the charitable purposes of the organisation and not an independent purpose.  Section 13 of the Act requires that to qualify for registration, organisations must be established and maintained for “exclusively charitable purposes”.

Several organisations, including the National Council, made submissions at the time the Act was drafted that this definition of charity could prevent many organisations from qualifying.  Charitable status is important.  Only charities registered with the Charities Commission are eligible for income tax exemptions, and many funding bodies, such as community trusts and the Lotteries Commission, will give money only to registered charities.

Where to now? When in opposition National had a lot to say about this issue.

In February 2008, Judith Collins, then National’s Family spokesperson, expressed concern that charitable organisations for which advocacy played an important role would be “muzzled” by the Charities Act, and that charities would be “penalised for disagreeing with the Government”.  This concern was echoed by John Key, again while in opposition, when he said that the tax-free status of charities should be decided on what they do and not on what they say.  Now in Government, National have been strangely quiet on this issue, as has the responsible Minister, Tariana Turia.

Chief Executive of the Charities Commission, Trevor Garrett, has advised organisations with both charitable and non-charitable functions to “split” into two, allowing the charitable arm to retain its tax-exempt status.  The Sensible Sentencing Trust has already announced that it will reform into a registered charity providing victim support and a non-registered entity that will lobby and advocate for law change. The National Council could do this too by, for example, separating its advocacy work from its educational functions, but  has said it would prefer to continue its appeal against deregistration, and have its advocacy role accepted as charitable.

Trevor Garrett has said that he is comfortable with the current definition of charity, but if it, and the way charitable purpose is interpreted by the Commission, continues to lead to the deregistration of organisations such as the National Council of Women, maybe a different interpretation is required—one that recognises the contemporary reality that advocacy is a “matter beneficial to the community”.

Nicola Shirlaw

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1. Decision to deregister charities seen as short-sighted

The June 2010 ICSW Global Cooperation newsletter reports on the recent, highly successful 2010 Joint World Conference in Hong Kong.

For the first time this century the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) combined their conferences.

This was registered as a stunning success.

Read more…

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We were also aware when it was formed that not including a New Zealand-based, contemporary definition of ‘charity’ would likely be problematic.  This is now highlighted in the media this week with reports that the Commission is about to remove the 114-year old National Council of Women from its registration.

Many have suggested it’s a short-sighted move.  Those organisations that have charitable status by virtue of their registration will now be starting to think how they might measure up in the midst of all these discussions.

This gives us an urgency to ensure that in our engagement with government we stress the importance of ensuring that the definition of ‘charity’ is included in the review of the Commission scheduled for 2012.

We think this has to be moved out of the too-hard basket if the Commission is to become the effective organisation we all believe it could be.

Read the NCWNZ media release.

ComVoices has observed the intention of the Commission to deregister the NCWNZ as short-sighted.  Read the ComVoices’ media release and further comment from the NZ Herald’s Simon Collins and Brian Rudman.

Also, listen to the latest Collaborative Voices programme recorded this week features Ros and David talking to Linda Sutherland from the National Council of Women about the proposed deregistration.  Linda speaks frankly about the issues they face and their experience in the process so far.

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1. Maybe a different interpretation is required?

New Zealand once again has the ability to contract out the management of its prisons. Alongside this has been the recent raising of some $140 million of a public infrastructure bond, some of which will be used for a new prison for men at Wiri in South Auckland due  by 2014.   A Request for Proposal  to operate the Auckland Central Remand Prison and Mt Eden has been tendered to four private prison contractors in the last few weeks to commence the management of this joint site in 2011.

To be applauded is the recent Budget provision for a somewhat new concept in New Zealand, long-advocated by Associate Minister of Corrections, Dr. Pita Sharples, to provide special facilities (Whare Oranga Aneke) for Maori offenders in the last stages of their imprisonment.  This initiative is to be a stage of their reintegration to society and is facilitated with input from the community.

These changes, together with an almost total restructuring of the core parts of the Department of Corrections, represent a somewhat wholesale change to the “punishment” end of the criminal justice landscape by this Government.

What is the role of Government in the various stages of punishment, including imprisonment?

There are many who would advocate that the State should not delegate their duty of care for punishment to a private party.  Imprisonment is a huge burden to the economy thus it is incumbent on the State to spend our taxes wisely, especially when other areas of welfare are crying out for more funding.  The true test of the effectiveness of any remand prison should be the preservation of human dignity of a person in custody, who is innocent until proven guilty. If the remand process can be done more effectively by a private Company, in both a financial and moral sense, then we should not be displeased.

Operating a mainstream prison for sentenced prisoners brings other criteria to the fore. It is likely that a Key Performance Factor for the selected contractor will be based on effective containment, i.e. a demonstrated ability to minimise prison escapes, on the grounds of enhanced public safety.  No doubt losing potential profit if one occurs! The requisite level of public safety is a subject that should be a policy which is debated in a public forum, yet this topic is rarely canvassed.    Mitigating perceived risk always costs more in extra security measures, or reduced liberty and is in direct contrast with the intentions of Whare Oranga Aneke, where the plan is to maximise the number of low risk prisoners to reintegrate into society.  The Government in these moves wants to have a dollar both, or maybe even 3 ways! When private operations invade public space such dilemmas come to the fore.

The main advantage of having private companies bid to operate some prisons is the transference of effective international practice that will benefit both the State and prisoners alike, perhaps even the families of prisoners who are often largely forgotten in the design and operation of most prisons.

NGOs can also participate in the overall bids and in this way New Zealand prisons could adopt new programmes and operational practices that would be much more difficult to bring into our State run prisons.  Over time we must demand the comparison of both private and public operations side by side, with independent auditors, and determine if perhaps all of our prisons should be run either by private or perhaps by a coalition of NGOs?
Change is afoot but we must continue to ensure it yields a society with less crime.

from Robin Gunston
National Director, Prison Fellowship New Zealand

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