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My heartiest congratulations to David Irwin, of Featherston, who has been awarded France's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur.
Mr Irwin is one of seven New Zealand World War II veterans who have invested with the honour, made in appreciation of the New Zealanders' service on D-Day in 1944, by visiting French Veterans' Affairs Minister Hamlaoui Mekachera.
The representative awards were made in recognition and appreciation of the veterans' courage and sacrifice as part of last year's 60th anniversary of D-Day.
Nearly 10,000 New Zealand air force and navy personnel served with British ships and air force squadrons which supported the D-Day landings.
The Minister Responsible for the Fire Service Commission, Mark Burton, is reassuring New Zealand communities that there is no agenda to reduce appliance or service coverage in isolated rural stations, or anywhere else. On the contrary, he says work is being undertaken to ensure that there is a comprehensive service delivery system, including, for the first time, a nationwide fleet management plan.
The New Zealand Fire Service is developing a planning tool which will, for the first time, let it examine all resources nationally so to develop an up to date service delivery plan to best meet the needs of differing communities across New Zealand. The national fleet management strategy will be one facet of this much broader strategic plan.
The intended outcome of all of this will be a modern fire and rescue service with a much closer alignment between resource and need.
The NZFS existing standards of service delivery relate to fire only, and are based on a now outdated UK model. We require an increasingly diverse range of capabilities from our fire service.
For example NZFS has to deliver a service that includes:
- Motor vehicle accidents - extraction of victims, fire management, road cleaning etc
- General rescue situations such as industrial accidents, high angle rescue, trench collapses etc.
- Hazardous materials incidents both fixed and mobile
- The provision of New Zealand's three Urban Search and Rescue task forces,
- Medical assist and cardiac arrest calls (many appliances now carry Automatic External Defibrillators)
- A wide variety of civil defence situations caused by flooding and high winds.
- Calls of a general assistance nature for which the Fire Service has an equipment, training and resource capacity.
Social Development and Employment Minister Steve Maharey has announced that a simplified benefit system will begin in May this year.
A single core benefit and enhanced employment services will replace the current raft of benefits, rules and entitlements.
The change to a single benefit, with one set of criteria, will dramatically reduce the time spent on administration, allowing case managers to focus more on moving people from dependency to work.
The new service delivery model will be piloted in 11 centres around the country and legislation for a single core benefit will be drafted and introduced this year.
This is a system designed to meets the needs of the 21st century. We will see fewer rules, but more sophisticated assessments and services tailored to individuals.
Key features of the new system include:
- A single core benefit with one set of rates and one set of eligibility criteria
- Add-ons to support people with higher costs because of things like accommodation, childcare, or disability.
- An enhanced employment service with two distinct streams:
- The rapid return to fulltime work stream for people who are ready and able to work and need the right services to get them there. Also included will be people for whom a return to work will take slightly longer, for example, people in work-focused training, or who are temporarily unable to work for health reasons.
- The work, development and preparation stream for people who need a more gradual transition to full-time work, or for whom part-time or intermittent work is a realistic long-term option. People in this stream will have work-focused requirements, such as planning and assessment, to help them return to work as circumstances allow.
No one will be financially worse off as a result of these changes. The focus is on better services to help even more people back into work. People who are unable to work because of serious health problems or disabilities will continue to be exempt from any work expectations.
With unemployment at record lows and a strong labour market there has never been a better time to refocus the benefit system. These changes will help meet the challenge of filling the jobs created by a growing economy.
My offices are inundated every day with spam so it pleases me (and my staff) that Information Technology Minister David Cunliffe has unveiled the shape of forthcoming legislation to combat this nuisance.
The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill will complement codes of practice, technical measures and consumer education to help fight the deluge.
The Bill will apply to emails, text messaging and instant messaging services by requiring the sending of multiple commercial electronic messages of a marketing nature over these services be made only to recipients who have opted-in to receive such messages. Senders of promotional electronic messages will be required to abide by requests from recipients to opt-out of further mailings.
Fisheries Minister David Benson-Pope wants nominations of recreational fishers to form an advisory panel to advise him on issues facing the recreational fishing sector.
Anyone interested in being on the Recreational Advisory Panel should provide their name, postal address and an email address or contact phone number to: The Administrator, National Recreational Advisory Panel, Ministry of Fisheries, PO Box 1020, Wellington.
Nominations close 14 March.
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