Trireme – an ancient Greek or Roman war galley with three banks of oars; a galley with three rows or tiers of oars on each side, one above another, used chiefly as a warship.
Whanau Voices of Aotearoa Far From Home
25/11/2020UK-based New Zealand singers have come together to deliver a musical love song far from home:
As the arts continue to suffer internationally due to this pandemic, New Zealand’s UK based opera singers are coming together to record a concert of purely NZ/Māori/Pasifika songs to be broadcast and shared internationally from the Royal Albert Hall this November.
What started as just a simple idea of performing again has grown into something that is bringing dozens of Kiwi performers together from all around the UK to share and celebrate our country, our culture, and what unites us. We have been silenced for months through no fault of our own and we are incredibly proud and excited to share the smallest of insights into what it feels to be us at the moment: what our Whānau means to us, and how we long for home, for better times and to be together once again.
We are hugely grateful to the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, Royal Albert Hall, Foundation for Australia & New Zealand Arts, NZ High Commission, RNZ Concert (our proud broadcasting partner for this concert) without whom we couldn’t be performing, and the ongoing support of our colleagues and friends back in NZ: Auckland Opera Studio, New Zealand Opera, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music, Chamber Music New Zealand, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and all our family and friends.
Please join us for the release of this concert, set for broadcast later in November, to enjoy some of NZ’s finest opera singers and musicians performing a stunning concert of NZ/Māori/Pasifika songs and ensembles. Please consider donating to help each one of these world class singers/musicians through this incredibly tough time, and we hope you enjoy this concert: our ode to Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Ngā mihi nui,
Kiwi opera singers in London
You can donate to help here.
RNZ has a story on the concert here.
If some more is good . . .
25/11/2020The Helen Clark Foundation and Institute for Economic Research are calling for an increase in the minimum wage.
. . . Institute deputy chief executive Todd Krieble told Mike Hosking the industry needs a reset.
“Now’s the time for change because it’s cheap to borrow and we can’t continue to rely on on low wage migrant workers to fuel the economy.”
Krieble says employers need to be thinking of how to retain staff and improve overall performance.
He says investing in people will provide more output and increased efficiency.
It was Labour policy to increase the minimum wage faster. This report goes further, wanting it to be raised to the living wage.
. . . Krieble said lifting the minimum wage to the level of the living wage of $22.10 would boost productivity.
Why stop there? If some more pay is good wouldn’t much more be better?
“It would encourage investment from employers in skills, either technical skills or soft skills, and it would help employees to hang around.” . . .
Not necessarily, especially now which is not the time to be adding costs to businesses:
A sharp boost to the minimum wage would see fewer jobs created as businesses struggle under a tidal wave of government-imposed costs, National’s Economic Development spokesperson Todd McClay says.
The Helen Clark Foundation has today called for wealth to be ‘pre-distributed’ through a sharp increase of the minimum wage to boost productivity.
“Sadly this will have the opposite effect. It will be especially hard on small businesses still struggling from debt taken on during the Covid-19 lockdowns,” Mr McClay says.
“Businesses need policies that will help them grow the economy and create jobs, not greater costs that will slow the job market.”
MBIE forecasted that 6500 jobs would be lost when the minimum wage was last increased. As employment costs increase, businesses find it hard to afford to replace workers who leave. This in turn slows job creation – a lagging indicator for unemployment.
The way to help businesses pay people more is through better rules, less red tape and lower costs. This in turn leads to job creation and wage growth,” Mr McClay says.
“The Government is proposing to increase the minimum wage quickly, double sick leave, impose another public holiday and reintroduce 1970s-style collective bargaining at a cost or more than $2.8b per year on Kiwi businesses at a time when they can least afford it.
“Now is the time for the Government to reduce costs on businesses and make it easier for them to create jobs, not make it harder for them to pay their bills.”
Businesses expect modest increases in the minimum wage but steep rises are counter-productive.
They are much more likely to lead to investment in technology which reduces the need for people rather than in their staff and to make it much harder for people who are younger, unskilled, inexperienced or with any other disadvantage to find work.