Slave- and child-labour free fish oil/omega 3s

Some months back our neighbour asked me if the cod liver oil she takes is slave free.  It’s been a bit of a challenge to find an answer, but I now have good news and bad news.  The bad news?  I'm not confident the brand she’s been taking is slave free.   But the good news? I’ve identified two other brands I'm confident are :-)

As well as looking into cod liver oil, along the way I looked into all major brands of fish oils and omega 3 supplements I found for sale either in supermarkets or online pharmacies.  You can read our detailed findings here.

It turns out this is a pretty complicated area from a human welfare point of view.   Most brands were keen to tell me about their quality standards and environmental standards, but it seemed few had seriously considered human welfare standards in their supply chain.   And the supply chains aren’t trivial to trace: fish oils are usually made from what’s left over after higher value parts of the fish have been removed, and oil from different sources seems not uncommonly to be mixed together.

Further complexities were in the labelling of oil.  A lot of fish oil is sold as being ‘Norwegian’: however, it turns out Norway is a major hub for the re-processing of fish oil, as well as being a major fish oil fishing nation.  So ‘Norwegian’ oil may have been made from fish caught on Norwegian boats (which have excellent labour standards) or it could have been caught who-knows-where and simply re-processed there. You don’t know if you don’t ask.

It doesn’t help that the two major certifiers of fish oil basically only certify working conditions in factories (rather than on fishing vessels), even though all the worst abuses happen at sea rather than on land. And abuses can be severe: fish that produce lots of oil are typically cold-water fish, occuring in deep sea far from land. Ships are frequently at sea for months on end, making these fisheries at very high risk for forced labour: workers can be tricked onto them and then have no way to leave.

Still, I did find three companies Just Kai can recommend:

• Clinicians make their oil in Norway, from fish caught in Norway;
• Ethical Nutrients make their oil from fish caught in low-risk jurisdictions (mostly Peru), and has strict responses to human rights abuses when they are found to occur;
• Blackmores visit the fishing vessels that catch their fish in port and audit them for human rights abuses.

Particular products from other brands are also recommended.

You can read my full article here or download a summary pdf of my findings here.

Formalising Just Kai

Martin and I have been working hard on the Just Kai website in recent weeks.  We're wanting to break the 'Just Kai' work off from this personal blog now that people I don't know are showing such an interest in it.   I had nearly 3000 views on the 2019 Easter egg post - but I'm not going to retain those people if they have to wade through heaps of random things about my personal life to get to the content they're after!

I will continue to link my big fish research articles here, but if you'd like to be alerted to smaller, more regular updates, subscribe to the Just Kai blog here.  The latest post is my speech from the Fairfield Conference, which went online today :-)

My buying guides for fish, cocoa and sugar have also been collected there: from now on, those are the ones that will be updated, rather than the versions on this blog.

I've also set up a Facebook page for Just Kai.  I'll mainly use that to promote the blog articles, although it may also get some unique content.  If you want to like that, it's here.

Just Kai has also signed up to Twitter.  As well as promoting blog posts there, I'll use it to re-tweet articles relating to modern slavery and child labour.   I put one up today about modern slavery in the UK, featuring a number of people forced into very everyday jobs.

Exciting times!

Fairfield Conference 2019

Three weeks ago Martin and I, along with our friend Anna, attended the Fairfield Conference: a conference trying to encourage social justice through ethical trade.  We had a table there for Just Kai and I also gave a talk.

Introducing Just Kai

As you'll know from this blog, a major project for me this year has been researching different sectors of the retail fish industry, looking for brands that have taken significant steps to remove slavery from their supply chains.  In the process I've come across some pretty hideous stories of literal rape and murder, both of which seem scarily common.  I've learned that fish is the food purchased in rich countries that is at highest risk of having been produced by slave labour.  I've also come across some amazing companies who are really going the extra mile: working very hard to eliminate slavery from their supply chains, despite this being an issue with very little public awareness to date.  I have been especially impressed by the work of Sealord in this regard.

To pass on what I've learned, I've produced printable buying guides for both slave free fish for people (covering the sectors I've looked at so far) and slave free fish for pets (fish is found in a remarkably high proportion of pet food but can be invisible as it often isn't mentioned in the product name).  These are part of a very exciting project that has consumed a lot of our time in recent weeks: Just Kai.

Tearfund is hosting The Justice Conference in Auckland in two weeks time.  As 'Just Kai' Martin, along with our friends Anna and Sarah, will have a table there.  They will be advising people on how to buy fish, cocoa and sugar (the three foodstuffs most likely to have slave labour in their supply chains) without supporting slavery.   You can download a pdf summary of that advice here or check out the Just Kai website for more detail.  For cocoa and sugar they will be telling people to look for various trusted certifications; for fish the situation is more complicated as there are no human welfare certifications used on fish in New Zealand - for that, people will have to rely on my research.

So is your kai just? Or is it just kai?  Check out the website to see!

And if you expect to be in Auckland with no particular plans in two weeks time, why don't you consider signing up for the Justice Conference?  There's a wide range of speakers addressing a great many social justice issues, collectively bringing the challenge for us to join God in His work of making all things new!

Why I support Nestle

Around the world today countless people are being abused in the supply chains of large multinationals: either directly through their working conditions, or indirectly through the destruction of their environment.  If we want this to stop, it is crucial that we either support Nestle, or boycott multinationals altogether.  A selective Nestle-only boycott can do nothing but harm people who are current victims of the misbehaviour of large multinationals companies.

Why would I say such a thing?  After all in the 1970s Nestle actively foisted infant formula onto mums who had no access to clean water to make it up, convincing them it was modern and hence better than breastfeeding.  Tens of thousands of babies per year died from diaorrhea as a result.  There was a widespread boycott of Nestle products as a result.

But have you noticed what happened subsequently?  I've only discovered this relatively recently and have been really surprised by what I've learned.

Buying fish for human rights: pet food

This post has been moved to the Just Kai website.  Further updates will be posted there.



This is the third post of a series on buying fish for human rights.  The other posts completed so far cover salmon and tinned tuna, sardines and mackerel.

Last year I blogged about how Martin and I try to shop in ways that support human rights.  We do that by:

1. Preferentially buying things produced in low income countries;
2. Buying things produced under the best labour conditions available;
3. Trying not to buy things produced by child or forced labour.

The reasons behind these principles are explained in more detail here.

When buying fish-containing pet food, following these principles can be particularly challenging.

Firstly, you may not even realise the pet food you are buying contains fish.  Some cat and dog foods mention fish in the product name, but fish is an ingredient in many cat and dog foods that don't.  Regardless of the product name, the vast majority of fish food contains seafood of some kind, as does all turtle food and some food for other reptiles.  The only category that seems never to do so is small animal food.  If the product name mentions fish or other seafood, you can be confident it's there; if it doesn't, you can't be confident it's not unless you read the ingredients list.

Secondly, unlike human food, pet food often contains highly processed fish products like fish meal and fish oil.  Without careful checking by the company you cannot be confident such products are free of human rights abuses: there are many steps between the sea and the final product and most of these steps are known to use child and/or forced labour some of the time.  In addition, when named fish are used in pet food the most common choices are deep sea species such as tuna, mackerel and ocean whitefish: these are at very high risk for human rights abuses as boats are often out at sea for months or even years at a time and those on board can't escape if things go bad.

Working around all that may sound terribly complicated, but I have good news!  Several companies are working very hard to root human rights abuses out of their supply chains.  If you restrict your purchases to brands in the following chart you can be reasonably confident you're not supporting child or slave labour; and if you preferentially buy those brands circled in red you'll help provide good employment to people in low income countries.

Click to download as a pdf to take with you as you shop :-)

Read on to learn why I came to these conclusions.

Love Mercy

A friend asked me to record a short video on what 'love mercy' means in my own life for her to use in a sermon on Micah 6:8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

The sermon has unfortunately needed to be postponed, but I thought I'd share what I came up with here:

Investments that support human rights

I've written a lot over the years about shopping for human rights.  How we buy creates the world in which our global neighbours live, so being mindful in this area is an important means to love our neighbours.

Perhaps a bigger factor in many of our global neighbours' lives though, is the companies in their neighbourhood.  Those companies have a big say in the conditions under which our neighbours work, how polluted their local environment is etc.  The larger of those companies are generally owned by people in high-income countries, many of whom don't know the first thing about what they get up to.  Most of us in high-income countries invest in aggregated funds (which in turn invest in actual companies) meaning that we generally don't even know the names of the companies we part-own.  Through these indirect investments many of us are unwittingly benefiting from some pretty dreadful practices.

Fortunately you can avoid this trap by seeking out investment funds that exclude or include companies based on ethical criteria.  A while back I blogged about Kiwisaver schemes that do this.  Martin and I now have other money to invest and have been investigating what options there are outside the Kiwisaver framework.  In priority order, we've been looking for:

1. funds that only invest in companies which protect the human rights of people throughout their supply chain.  At a minimum we are looking for funds that don't invest in companies that use forced or child labour or buy from those who do; ideally we'd like them to invest in companies that pay a living wage and providing a safe working environment;
2. funds that preferentially invest in companies that are making a positive difference in the world (social enterprises, companies that practise in sustainable ways etc.);
3. funds that invested in companies in lower-income countries where investment capital is hard to find.

Do such funds exist?  Yes!  We couldn't find any funds that met all three criteria, but there are a number doing the first two :-)

Slave-free sugar

This post has been moved to the Just Kai website.  Further updates will be posted there.



To see how we avoid supporting those who enslave others when we purchase other goods, see my main post on shopping for human rights.

Last updated 11/5/19

Sugar is one of the five highest-value categories of goods likely to have been produced by forced labour (the others are cocoa, computers and electronics, clothing and fish and seafood).  The US Department of Labour reports that forced labour is used in the sugar industries of Brazil, Burma, Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Pakistan; and that child labour is used in the sugar industries of Turkey, Panama, Burma, Paraguay, Cambodia, Phillipines, Colombia, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Uganda, El Salvador, Vietnam, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Belize, Mexico, Boliva.

That's not something I want to support, but until recently I've been unsure how to avoid it.  However, I've recently learned that Countdown own-brand sugar is Bonsucro certified.  This is an independently audited certification that ensures the sugar farms and mills are free of child and slave labour.  That's what we'll be buying from now on!

The Countdown sugar range includes white sugar (in 1.5kg, 3kg and 5kg bags) as well as brown sugar, raw sugar, icing sugar and caster sugar.  Slave-free muscovado and golden granulated sugar is also available from Trade Aid; demerera sugar that is likely to be slave free (but uses a small certification I'm not really sure of the reliability of) is available from Ceres Organics.

Buying fish for human rights: tinned tuna, sardines and mackerel

This post has been moved to the Just Kai website.  Further updates will be posted there.



This is the second post of a series on buying fish for human rights.  The other posts completed so far cover salmon and pet food with fish in.

Last year I blogged about how Martin and I try to shop in ways that support human rights.  We do that by:

1. Preferentially buying things produced in low income countries;
2. Buying things produced under the best labour conditions available;
3. Trying not to buy things produced by child or forced labour.

The reasons behind these principles are explained in more detail here.

Unlike salmon, the fish I'm considering here are mostly deepwater fish caught offshore or on the high seas, although some sardines are caught on-shore.  Deepwater fisheries provide ideal conditions for forced labour as the fishing boats are often at sea for very long periods of time and workers can't get away.  Slavery, harsh beatings, rape and even murder are disturbingly common on such boats.  In addition, much of this fish is canned in countries where labour laws are poorly policed: child and forced labour occur frequently in fish processing factories.  You can't even be confident that tinned fish caught in New Zealand waters is caught and processed without such abuses: there are no fish canneries in New Zealand so all our fish is canned overseas, and there have been a number of cases of slavery on deep sea fishing vessels operating in New Zealand waters.

If you want to buy tinned tuna, sardines and mackerel without supporting such things, I have good news!  After extensive research I have identified companies selling tinned tuna and sardines in New Zealand that are taking these issues seriously and from whom you can buy in confidence :-)

Here's how you can buy tinned tuna sardines and mackerel whilst supporting the human rights of those who produce it:

1. To buy tinned tuna, sardines and mackerel that provides employment to people in low income countries, you should buy tuna and mackerel rather than sardines (which are generally caught and canned in higher income countries);
2. To buy such fish produced under the best labour conditions available, you  should buy from Sealord;
3. To avoid supporting child or slave labour, you should buy brands from as high as possible on the following table:

Download as a pdf to take with you when you shop.

Read on to learn why I came to these conclusions.

Buying fish for human rights: salmon

This post has been moved to the Just Kai website.  Further updates will be posted there.



This is the first in a series of blog posts on buying fish for human rights.  The other posts completed so far cover tinned tuna, sardines and mackerel and pet food with fish in.
 Last updated 27/10/18.

Last year I blogged about how Martin and I try to shop in ways that support human rights.  We do that by:

1. Preferentially buying things produced in low income countries;
2. Buying things produced under the best labour conditions available;
3. Trying not to buy things produced by child or forced labour.

The reasons behind these principles are explained in more detail here.

At the time that was written I was uncertain which (if any!) fish or seafood we could buy that would accord with those principles.  We had become aware that slavery was rife in the fishing industry.  People were being forced to work without pay both on the boats and in processing factories, child labour was being used, and there were plenty of disturbing stories of rape and murder, too.  It was all pretty sobering.

A year later, I have good news!  There are companies taking this stuff seriously, and there are brands you can buy in confidence :-)  I have been in discussions with a number of companies over recent months and am keen to share what I've found with you.

In summary, here's what I've found:

1. To buy salmon that provides employment to people in low-income countries, you should (surprisingly) buy salmon farmed in New Zealand where possible (the salmon feed tends to include fish meal produced in such countries);
2. To buy such salmon produced under the best labour conditions available, you  should choose products from New Zealand King Salmon (which produces the brands Regal, Southern Ocean and Ora King) as they only buy feed from suppliers that are certified child and slave labour free;
3. To avoid supporting child or slave labour, you should restrict your purchases to the following brands:

Click to download as a pdf to take with you as you shop :-)

Read on to learn why I came to these conclusions.

There are no good people

On Radio New Zealand National, Kim Hill recently interviewed Reni Eddo-Lodge about her 2014 blog post Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race and its aftermath.

Listening to her speak, Martin and I realised that Christianity has something really important to offer here.  Reni Eddo-Lodge is concerned with the way we white people simply do not notice our own racism.   One of the things that prevents us from doing so is that we are perpetually dividing the world into 'good people' and 'bad people'.  When it comes to race, racists are clearly the 'bad people'.  This means that, when a person of colour calls out racist attitudes in a white person, that white person isn't in a good place to hear that message as they're likely to assume they're a good person and hence know that they can't be a racist.

But one of the core tenants of Christianity is that none of us get to be the 'good people;.  I came across this again just today in my New Testament reading.  In Luke 11, Jesus is explaining to his disciples that they can confidently ask God for what they need.  To illustrate his point, he says:

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?  Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Luke 11:11-13, NRSV

Did you see it?  Jesus takes for granted that his disciples are 'evil' and seems to assume that they will take this for granted as well.

A sashiko sunhat for me :-)

I realised a while back that my sunhat, whilst fun and very me, doesn't actually shield my face from the sun very well.

What to do?  I thought it'd be a fun challenge to try and make myself a new one from things I already had lying around the house.  It felt like it'd be a great use of  resources, too :-)

Shopping for human rights

Last updated 23/7/2018

Whenever we shop, we're buying things made by people.  Some of those people are treated well in the course of making our things; others are treated very badly.  The more people who buy things made by people with good jobs, the more good jobs there'll be.

How we buy creates the world in which our global neighbours live.

How can we buy things in a way that helps the poorest people in the world flourish? For Martin and I, we've decided to:

1. Preferentially buy things produced in low income countries.  People in places like New Zealand have lots of job opportunities but people in places like Bangladesh have very few.  If something we need is available from both rich and Majority World countries, we will buy the one produced in a Majority World country in order to give the job to the person most likely to be left destitute otherwise.
2. Buy things produced under the best labour conditions available - even if they're bad.  Many things produced in poor countries are produced in terrible conditions.  We try to look first for things that are produced under independently-verified good labour conditions.  But if no one is producing the thing we need under good labour conditions, we would rather buy items produced under terrible conditions than items produced here in New Zealand.  The workers subjecting themselves to those terrible conditions have freely chosen to be there: I trust their judgement that any alternatives available to them are worse and I will not force them into those worse conditions by boycotting the ones they have chosen.  I write more about this here.
3. Do not buy things produced by child or forced labour.  The exception to point 2 is where some form of forced labour or coercion is involved.  Then the workers involved haven't chosen freely and may well have had better options if they hadn't been trafficked or indentured into their situation.  We will not support people who enslave others and, when we become aware of that happening, will preferentially buy things produced in rich countries if necessary.

Below is a printable summary of our buying policies (click here to download as a pdf), followed by more detail on the human rights issues involved in various categories goods we buy frequently and how we respond to them.

Ideas that guide how we live

Over the years we've come up with a bunch of key concepts that we refer to whenever we make decisions.  We've found it really helpful to have worked these through, as that means we can often easily see what the right thing to do is in a given situation.  I'd like to share them here :-)

In the Biblical book of Matthew, we read of this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees (religious teachers):

one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 22:35-40

We often refer to these two commandments and our 'key ideas' flow from them.

We also refer frequently to another idea: the Kingdom of God.  This is something Jesus refers to frequently: the world in which he is King and where things are run on God's lines.  We believe that God calls us to join him in redeeming the world and creating 'islands' of that Kingdom in the here and now.  So, running through many of the ideas we reference day to day, is the idea of doing our bit in building that different world.  We believe you get the world that we all, collectively, build; and we want to make that a Kingdom of God world!

So, here are our 'key ideas', as they currently stand!  It's kind of long, so I start with just the ideas themselves, then flesh them out in detail below.

On not paying the Living Wage

As I've mentioned here before, I'm generally a big fan of paying people a Living Wage: i.e. enough to provide for the basics of food and accommodation, alongside participation in the community.  However, two things have recently given me pause.

Firstly, this documentary on RNZ National, about a company in Southland who hire staff with intellectual disabilities to sort rubbish for recycling.  The company has a minimum wage exemption, enabling them to hire about 30 people to do work that could just as well be done by three people and a fancy machine.  If they had to pay them the minimum wage, the business wouldn't be economic, and they'd buy the machine instead.  But, by getting a minimum wage exemption, they've been able to greatly improve the quality of life of 30 people (all of whom waxed lyrical about the joys of having a job), whilst still getting the job done.  So, by allowing this employer not to pay the minimum wage (which is significantly less than the Living Wage), we, as a society, have greatly improved the quality of life of those people.  We've also, presumably, reduced the amount we need to pay them collectively: topping up their wages surely costs less than paying them a benefit.

Should our church pay staff at least the Living Wage?

Going through the budget prior to our church's recent AGM, I noticed that several of our staff didn't seem to have had a pay increase for some time.  As I was thinking about that, I also wondered whether they were receiving a 'living wage'.  After all, I know that churches sometimes skimp a bit on salaries so they can make more funds available to other aspects of their work and I didn't want us to be doing that.

I raised this with the elders and then ultimately Martin, on my behalf, raised it with the whole church at the AGM.  The church decided to appoint a working group to investigate this and bring a proposal to the church at next year's AGM.  To encourage the whole church engage in this discussion, I was asked to email the church with my thoughts on all this.  As this is something I've been thinking about a lot in recent years, I wanted to share it here, too.

Dear Church Family,

At the AGM, the church agreed to appoint a working group to look into our policies on staff salaries in relation to both the Living Wage and inflation-related increases. This was partly as a result of my raising these issues with the elders. In order to start a discussion on this within the church, here are my reasons for doing so.

The Church is the first-fruits of God's Kingdom. One day Jesus will reign here on Earth. Until that happens, I believe that one of our roles is to join with God in redeeming his world by creating 'islands' where things function somewhat like they will when Jesus rules in person. In Jesus' Kingdom, I believe that no one will be in material want: as we are told in Revelation, it's a world with no sickness or crying or pain. So, I don't think anyone employed by us should be in material want if we can avoid it, either.

Living Wage Movement Aotearoa New Zealand have calculated what it costs an 'average' household (2 parents, 2 kids) to live without material want in Auckland. For the family to be able to live in a house in the bottom quartile of the rental market and eat an adequate diet, and for the kids can go on school trips and buy simple presents so they can accept invites to birthday parties, while one adult works full-time and the other half-time, they calculated in 2013 that those adults need to be paid a minimum of $24.11 per hour. (You may also have heard the figure of $18.40 per hour - that's the 2013 national number.  It's higher in Auckland mostly because housing is so expensive here.)

I would like us to consider whether we should take this 'living wage' and treat it like the minimum wage: not that everyone should be paid the same, but that no one should be paid less than it. This isn't something we can impose on all of New Zealand, but it's something I'd like us to consider for the staff we employ ourselves: to think whether we need to take this step in order to communally live out what God's Kingdom may look like.

I would like us also to consider whether we need to have a policy on inflation-increasing wages. At the moment, inflation is running quite low (0.3% from June 2014 to June 2015). However, sometimes it's much higher than this.  If we don't increase peoples' wages when that happens, their effective income decreases over time as their expenses go up.  In order to keep our staff well-provided-for, I would like us to consider not only paying them a 'living wage' now, but also increasing (and decreasing?) those wages annually in line with inflation over the previous year. This would be independent of any actual pay rises we may wish to give them.

In this discussion, I'm primarily thinking of the staff we hire directly or contract regularly (i.e. the cleaner, office administrator, pastor and youth worker).  In the future, we may choose to widen the scope of our action to those whose services we contract for specific jobs (e.g. the people who repair our photocopier or make our billboards) or even to the people who produce the goods we consume (e.g. by purchasing fair trade tea and coffee).  But in the first instance, it made sense to me to consider the people over whose situations we have the most influence.

I understand that making these changes would cost us money that we currently don't have. However, there are many places in the Bible where God promises to honour those who give away more than they can afford in order to advance His Kingdom. Do we think paying our staff more would advance God's Kingdom? If so, are we willing to do so and rely on God to make up the shortfall somehow? To me, and maybe to you, such a change feels scary, but I think it is important to consider whether it is something God would like us to do.

Thank you for your consideration of these things.

In Christ,

--Heather :-)

So far it seems to have sparked a fair bit of interest (and more emails than I'd be able to deal with on an on-going basis!).  Some feedback has been negative, but that's only come from people who think I'm asking for everyone to be paid the same.  No one has yet objected on principle to the idea of choosing a salary floor higher than the legal minimum wage.

I don't know if I really want everyone to be paid at least the official living wage (after all, it's needs-based, and not everyone needs quite as much as it offers).  But I'm pleased that our church has now chosen to consider what we think is an appropriate remuneration policy, rather than simply following the market and the legal minima.

Social support for the elderly vs. social support for the infirm

In recent days I've had cause to spend some time on the WINZ website.  Whilst there, I was confronted with something I've been shocked by before:

1. A married couple who both have health conditions that render them permanently unable to work, but who happen to be under the age of 65, will be given $558.26 to live on by the government;
2. A married couple who are fit and healthy but happen to be aged 65 or older, will be given $638.46 per week to live on.

Around $80 a week is a big difference.

If the older couple have health problems of their own, the discrepancy becomes greater:

1. A married couple who both have health conditions that render them permanently unable to work, but who happen to be under the age of 65, will be given $558.26 to live on;
2. A married couple who both have health conditions that render them permanently incapacitated, but who happen to be aged 65 or over, will be given up to $761.22 to live on.

Around $200 a week is a huge difference!

Similarly, if the two couples needed assistance with housing costs, the help offered to the older couple would be a lot more generous than that offered to the infirm couple.

The data I'm working from is all on this pdf.

Note that benefits for people with permanent health conditions are known as "Supported Living Payments" these days, not Invalids Benefits).

This seems to me blatantly unjust.  I'm OK with the unemployment benefit (known these days as "Jobseeker Support") being at a lower rate than Superannuation: you're not expected to be unemployed for the rest of your life so it's not so important that it's at a long-term liveable rate.  But I'm not OK with those who are unable to work being treated worse than those who are simply old.  After all, the only reason we give financial support to older people is because we consider them too old to be able to work!

What would I like to see done?

I'd like these Superannuation and Supported Living Payments to be set at the same level.  People who won't be able to work again for the rest of their lives and people who are too old to work again have the same needs and so should receive the same support.  I don't hugely mind which level the two benefits are set at (i.e. at the current rate of Super, the current rate of the Supported Living Allowance or somewhere in between), but I strongly feel the rate should be the same.

If it's considered politically impossible to lower the rate of Super then this proposal would increase the government's costs.  In that case, I'd propose raising the age of entitlement to Super to 70 (in order to make the change fiscally neutral) but with one proviso.  Anyone aged between 65 and 70 who was assessed as unfit to work due to their physical or mental health, and who is assessed as being likely to stay that way for at least 6 months, would receive a Supported Living Payment.  Once assessed as eligible, they would remain eligible until they turned 70, without periodic reviews.  This would mean that, in effect, between the ages of 65 and 70 Super would be needs-assessed, and from the age of 70 it would be a universal entitlement.

Why?  With increasing life expectancies, many people are staying healthy and able to work well past 65.  It makes sense to me to increase the age at which we say that you are probably no longer fit to work in order to give money to those who have actually been assessed unfit to work.  However, some people (e.g. people who've done physical work like shearing or people who just have bad genes) get 'old' at a much younger age.  It seems harsh to force those people to either continue trying to work or to perpetually prove their incapacity once they've demonstrated their working days are done.  Not requiring regular reviews would also save money, and I doubt it would result in many people fraudulently receiving this special Supported Living Allowance at any time as you could only receive it for a maximum of 5 years anyway.

If life expectancy continues to increase, I'd want to periodically increase the cut-offs for eligibility both for Super and for this special Supported Living Allowance.

I'm not sure what to do with my idea.  Does anyone know?  I know that John Key has emphatically stated that he's not going to increase the age of entitlement to Super so long as he's Prime Minister, plus his government has really tightened up entitlement to other benefits, so it's probably not worth talking to him.  I guess that means I should try and lobby Labour or the Greens, but I don't know how to go about getting their attention on an issue that's not one of current debate.  Any ideas (or any feedback on my solution to the current unjust system) would be appreciated!

Upcycled Christmas presents

This year I was delighted to be able to make a lot of my Christmas presents from things that had been discarded, or buy discarded things for re-gifting.  I love doing that because it's frugal and because it forces me to be creative, but most of all I love doing it because it's a gift to some of the poorest people on the planet, not just the recipient.*

* to see what I mean, read this earlier blog post.

One resource that's really helped with that is the website 'get textbooks'.  Despite the name, they're a website that helps you find books of all kinds second hand.  They search zillions of other websites for your book, then present the results sorted by how much it costs to ship the book to NZ.  It's awesome!  I spend a lot of my time listening to audio books and keep a note of those I particularly like.  After choosing titles from my list that I thought would suit various people I entered them into 'get textbooks' and was able to find every one I wanted, in good condition, for only $10-$15 each (including shipping).

Many other presents were hand-made from discarded materials: something I chipped away at as I was able between June and November.

When we got our lounge curtains we got 'remaindered' ones, many of which were too long for our windows.  We duly shortened them and I kept the offcuts, some of which I have now used to make a toiletries bag.  The curtains are thermal-backed so the bag will be waterproof.

I've used 5 of Martin's old T-shirts (along with one of mine and one of Sarah's) to make 3 Christmas presents: two scarves (instructions for tying the square knot they use are here) and a bathmat.

The bathmat is backed with hessian from an old coffee sack: if you don't back these mats, when you wash them they just turn into one big knot :-(

 

From off-cut bits of felt from other projects, I made a set of tropical fish fridge magnets.  The actual magnets were culled from surplus 'self denial' boxes from Tranzsend's 2013 appeal.

 

From felt offcuts and the same magnets I also made some magnetic pincushions; other felt offcuts turned into a baby ball.

Lastly, I made an 'eco travel lid' for my cousin: a food cover you can use in place of glad wrap.  It looks like a large shower cap and can fit quite a range of bowls and plates.  The outer is fair trade cotton and the waterproof lining is gore-tex(!) from a cycling jacket of Sarah's that got damaged beyond repair.

Finally, just to show off, this set of tea towels are the Christmas present I was most pleased with.  They're not upcycled (the actual tea towels are brand new and the cotton isn't even fair trade), but I just love them!  The borders are fabric paint and the flowers are crayon (ironed into the fabric so it'll survive washing) edged with stem stitch.

Marriage equality bill

In New Zealand, a members bill is currently being debated in Parliament which, if passed, would extend marriage to homosexual as well as heterosexual couples. My instictive reaction has been that, on the whole, I would like this bill to be passed - i.e., I'd like NZ to legalise same-sex marriage. This doesn't appear to be the common Christian position, but my thinking on the matter has been significantly influenced by reflecting on the situation of a young family who used to live over our back fence: a family made up of two adult women and one preschool girl.

As I came to care for them, I began to be concerned about how one particular part of NZ law affected them.

Under current NZ law, children can only be adopted by either single people, de facto couples or married couples.  As only heterosexual couples can be recognised as being either de facto married or actually married, that means that gay couples cannot adopt.  One member of a gay couple can adopt a child on their own (as singles can adopt) and they can then raise that child together, but legally, only one of them is that child's parent.

In general, that could be fine.  But, if the legal parent is away from home on business and the child suddenly has to go into hospital, the other partner isn't that child's legal next of kin.  They can't make decisions about the child's care, they can't visit them and reassure them in intensive care etc. etc.

That seems to me to be hugely contrary to that child's wellbeing.  As I read the Bible prior to the last election, trying to work out what kind of rulers God appeared to be in favour of, again and again I found that he wanted rulers who watched out for the concerns of the weakest members of society.  Preventing both of a child's actual parents (at least from the child's point of view) from being recognised as their legal parents appears to me to be harmful to the interests of that child - one of society's weakest members.

At first, one might think you could shore up this situation by preventing adoptions by single people.  But of course, single-person-adoption isn't the only way a homosexual couple can end up raising a child.  All a lesbian needs to get pregnant is a syringe and a cooperative friend.  (I guess that's all a gay man needs, too, although in his case the degree of cooperation required is somewhat more substantial, and adoption law still comes into play once the baby is born.)  However, when that lesbian woman gives birth, there is currently no way in which her partner can be recognised as a parent of that child.

So, in a world in which it is so easy for lesbian women to have babies and for them to raise them with their partners, is it just to deny those children the option of being legally adopted by their non-giving-birth-to-them mother?

Of course, allowing homosexual couples to marry isn't the only way to resolve the situation outlined above.  But I expect that most Christians would have a similar level of distaste for extending the right to adopt children to homosexual couples (whilst still preventing them from actually marrying) as they seem to have for 'marriage equality'.

That said, the folk at 'Protect Marriage' raise a few points that give me pause for thought.  For example, it does seem plausible to me that 'marriage equality' could lead to more heterosexual divorces and fewer heterosexual couples choosing to have children, and neither of those are outcomes that I'm in favour of.  But I keep on coming back to the wellbeing of our little former neighbour, and I think that 'marriage equality' for her parents really would be in her best interests, at least.