Hitting the nail firmly on the head

Absolute must-read from Martin van Beynen published in today's Dom Post under the hard-copy headline, The dysfunctional are exasperating our patience:

"We have tried everything and all we have created is a culture of dependence, entitlement, helplessness and irresponsibility."

Bennett being a bully?

From today's DomPost:

This is an injudicious response from Bennett.

1/ It sounds threatening

2/ The question is entirely reasonable given the data now available about at risk children and long-term welfare dependence

3/ The government is doing quite a lot to reduce the incidence of "young, incapable and irresponsible" parents through various policies. Does Bennett stand behind those policies?

4/ In light of this, her taking aim at a particular question/er displays illogical defensiveness and  animosity


I have only ever had one direct piece of correspondence from Bennett when she objected to my pointing out that while many sole parents came off welfare, they also returned. She was offended on their behalf. At least they were trying. And she herself had tried to come off welfare and had to return.

It's a little like the Left's 'walk a mile in my shoes' deflection whenever someone questions the circumstances of a needy person. It doesn't wash with me.

An MP or  Minister's job is to deal with questions objectively. I am sure that the questioner knows what Paula's background is. It's been well-publicized.

(Disclaimer - My reaction is based purely on the DomPost snippet. I have no further context. But nether do the thousands of other readers.)

"No cost control mechanism and not under active review"

MSD has just released its Four Year Plan. The stats are only current to June 2015. Not much caught my attention bar this diagram:

(Left click to enlarge.)

The most worrying aspect of this is the note attached to Super:

"No cost control mechanism and not under active review".

Benefit rise sucked up by Auckland landlords?

Yesterday the NZ Herald reported:

 Rents in Auckland jump $20 a week to record high

"...in April rents jumped up $20 a week to $520, a record high."

That's according to Trade Me anyway.

Is it a mere coincidence that benefits rose on April 1st by $25?

Rents didn't rise by $20 nationally because there isn't demand nationally.

The resistance to increasing the accommodation supplement is based on the theory that it will go straight into landlord pockets.

Subsidies. They always distort markets and often end up failing to achieve their goal.

Do we need to bring back orphanages?

A woman with eight children has been barred from Housing NZ because she was evicted from a meth contaminated home. WINZ is going to pay $100,000 to keep her in emergency accommodation until she can get back on the HNZ list.

This is madness. The threat of losing her home if it was abused obviously failed. WINZ can't turn her away because she has 8 children. Seems yet another instance of someone using their children as hostages to their lifestyle.

What's the answer? The children need to be cared for, housed and fed. Are we at a point in the welfare state cycle that we need to bring back orphanages that will care for children when their parent/s can't or won't?

But when you think about what it costs to keep one individual in prison the sums say it's cheaper to keep the children in their mother's care and pay out the $100,000.

Foster care? Probably best keeping the children together so a placement for 8 children would rule that out.

In any case, CYF must have deemed the mother the best care solution (if they are involved). So surely it would be better to find a house in a provincial centre, close to schools and other amenities, at around $300 a week and shift her there. She may not want to move out of Auckland but perhaps that's the price she will have to pay. Sorry, WE will have to pay. It's better than $100,000.

Prisoner stats

Statistics NZ recently released prisoner stats some of which I have graphed below.

The Maori and European lines intrigue me. Why do they follow each other so closely in terms of trend? You would almost think there was a quote system in place. Obviously practice and policy plays an important role.

From Corrections here is the latest. At March 2016 there were 9,273 people in prison.

Just as an aside I was reading a paper on Maori over-representation in the justice system.

I searched the paper for the word 'father'. Not one mention.

This despite a number of relevant facts like Maori men under twenty are 6 times more likely to be fathers than NZ European. And children who grow up without fathers in their lives are much more likely to offend.

'Mothers' are mentioned 14 times. For example:

Māori children are more exposed to the risk of fatal child maltreatment associated with having a step-parent, as Māori children are twice as likely as New Zealand European to be raised in a family situation where unrelated persons - such as a new partner to the mother - are resident.

Isn't this what we always come back to? The disruption - even abandonment - of the nuclear family has so much to answer for.

I'll end with another quote:

"There is nothing fixed or immutable about these high rates of imprisonment. The over-representation of Māori in prison is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating from the period of increased urbanisation.  Changing values, family breakdown, lack of education and social competencies and social and economic inequality all feature as explanations of the current situation."