Tenants could be exploited under proposed laws requiring rentals to be insulated and have smoke alarms, Catholic advocacy and aid agency Caritas Aotearoa says. Under the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, (RTA) ceiling and underfloor insulation will need to be retrofitted in social housing by July, and in all other rental homes by July 2019. It Read more
Pacific voices have been heard at the Climate Change Conference in Paris, COP21. “It is through the actions of civil society and small island nations that the agreement recognises we need to keep a global temperature limit well below 2C, and work towards a limit of 1.5C to protect the most vulnerable states,” says Caritas Read more
Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand Director, Julianne Hickey, is bringing the voices of Pacific peoples affected by climate change to a global audience at the historic Paris Climate Change conference (COP 21) in December. She is one of only two leaders to represent the 165 member organisations of the Caritas Internationalis confederation and will speak at an event Read more
State of the Environment report for Oceania 2015 – Caring for our Common Home was released on October 4 by Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand. This report may help to wake New Zealanders and Australians up to the serious environmental problems exisiting in their own backyard. A Caritas indicator included in the publication gives a snapshot Read more
This week is Social Justice week. The focus this year is family poverty. Almost a quarter of all New Zealand families with children experience income poverty. 2014 Child Poverty Monitor That means that these families live on less than 60% of New Zealand’s mean income. Only 37% of the adults in these families are in paid Read more
My role, as a journalist, should be to act as a witness; to report on the situation as a bystander and then leave it as I found it,” says journalist Rachel Smalley. “But an incident in 2013 changed my perspective on the Syrian crisis, and I now find it morally indefensible not to help where Read more
Our government has done the right thing in using its role as chair of the United Nations Security Council this month to give Small Island Developing States, (SIDS) the opportunity to air concerns, says Caritas Director Julianne Hickey. However she believes New Zealand needs to ‘walk the talk’ on the security and wellbeing of Pacific Read more
A Poverty and Justice Bible campaign will be launched with an event hosted by Cardinal Dew on 13 September. The campaign has not only received the support of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference but also endorsement from Cardinal Peter Turkson in his capacity as President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. A Read more
Climate change minister Tim Groser last week announced that Zealand’s provisional target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 which is equivalent to 11 per cent below 1990 levels. This target has been condemned as inadequate and some critics are saying New Zealand’s clean green image is Read more
Ursula Rakova, who was born in the Carteret Islands, is visiting New Zealand. The Carteret atoll is only 1.2 meters above sea level. Originally there were six islands, but Huene was split in half by the sea and so now there are seven. In 1995 a wave ate away most of the shorelines of Piul and Read more
