The Xmas Card

The birth of my oldest son triggered off artistic attempts to capture his image on paper. That was 14 years ago. The same year I decided to use one of my paintings to create a Xmas card. Being something of a traditionalist I have always loved receiving cards but I thought it would be useful to create something unique and also keep people up to date with events when sending them. Ever since my cards have featured paintings of the children or our animals. I have one friend who tells me she has kept every single one.

Naturally the newly-adopted failed farm dog had to be the subject this year so I thought it would be good to depict her in a typical pose in our typical environment. Lately I have taken to photographing the sketch or painting as it develops. Might come in handy one day. A 'how to' book perhaps.... so many ideas.... too little time.

This was the result.

Oh, and I was thinking about something I heard the other day. Had been walking the steep hills behind Eastbourne with Robert and I was listening on my walkman to Justin Du Fresne close his last show of the year. It was a glorious day and I was taking in the harbour below. Justin was reading Desiderata to some ethereal music. Ave Maria perhaps. I have heard it before but this time one line jumped out at me.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Amen to that.

To you and yours, Merry Christmas everyone.

S59 and Sweden

I responded to a DomPost published proponent of the S59 legislation which triggered a further response.



Dear Editor

Tom Radley (Letters, December 19) writes that Sweden, "... has taken a far higher number of immigrants relative to its population than has New Zealand." Many, he says, come from countries where violence against children is acceptable, hence Sweden's ongoing problem with child abuse despite smacking being banned in 1979.

In 2007, of the children who began receiving care and protection services in Sweden that year, almost two thirds had one or both parents born in that country.

The problem of child abuse and neglect is not confined to Sweden's immigrant population which is, by the way, proportionately much smaller than New Zealand's.

Lindsay Mitchell

It's not about more money for chrissakes

The Press reports, Parliamentarians will form a group to combat child abuse as a new report shows it costs the country about $2 billion a year.

Well whoopty do.

This is typical modus operandi of the left. A lobby group commissions a report to show how much some form of dysfunction is costing society. Then they use that cost to lobby for more money to be spent trying to reduce it.

Child abuse is apparently costing $2 billion. Infometrics is a credible outfit so I don't doubt the figure they have arrived at.

The report recommends a $1b trust be set up from which private and public groups can apply for money to do innovative child-abuse prevention work.

This assumes that we should simply continue to encourage the creation of at-risk children through unpartnered and, under critical analysis, unwanted childbirth. After which we should pour rescources into intensive monitoring and guidance of mothers who aren't ready to be mothers.

This is how it works. These girls - and older women who started on this pathway years earlier - have all these talking heads coming into their homes telling them 'how' and then going away. But nothing happens. Just as people had previously told them they had to go to school, they didn't and nothing could be done about it.

The best hope for change is that a volunteer goes in, rolls up their sleeves and works alongside them. You can't help get someone's life on track until their physical environment is liveable and healthy for the child. It takes a fair bit of nose-pegging and good humour to get through just that process. Paid social workers , community nurses, plunket nurses, etc don't fulfil this role and neither should they. Hence there is a limit to what paid workers can achieve. A very low limit.

Yet people like Deborah Morris Travers, the lobbyist who commissioned the report, cling to this belief that it's all about a lack of money. That saves them actually confronting the truth. That the only way to help people live better is to get in there and show them how. It's about finding time, having goodwill and hope. That's how to deal with the current crop.

Then we stop growing more. Take away the cash incentive. For goodness sake. The last thing we should do is up it, which is Ms Morris Travers other big idea.

I am so weary of this grand self-deception and grand gesture. Another cross party committee is going to make not a blind bit of difference. It could even make matters worse.

Happy Birthday to us

I have just realised today is the third birthday of my blog. I have never not wanted to keep blogging. But I do struggle with some bitches about blogging periodically. Surly and manic anonymous comments always irritate but are more than made up for by considered and clever anonymous comments. I wouldn't want to restrict commenters and touch wood, so far I haven't had to. Thank you all, self-identifying or otherwise, for keeping on reading and responding.

The impetus for this blog is conviction that a radical rethink of welfare is critical. I am even more committed to that idea than I was three years ago.

Minister must stick to her guns

Media Release

MINISTER MUST STICK TO HER GUNS
Friday, 19 December, 2008

The Minister of Social Development, Paula Bennett, has welcomed the Human Rights Tribunal finding against the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) claim that children of beneficiaries are discriminated against because their parents do not receive the In Work tax credit.

Welfare Commentator , Lindsay Mitchell, noted however that the Associate Minister of Social Development, Tariana Turia, may not join in celebrating the good sense the Human Rights Tribunal has shown. "The Maori Party strongly supported the action of the CPAG. Many children of beneficiaries are Maori and the DPB is an integral part of the Maori community, " she said today.

"Fortunately Ms Bennett is able to grasp the bigger picture and appreciate that preserving an incentive for parents to work, which is in the long term best interests of children, is vital. As the CPAG is now seeking a meeting with the government to plead its case directly, it is to be hoped that they do not aim to play one minister off against the other."

Beneficiaries are not entitled to In Work payment

The title of this post seems to be a statement that goes without saying. Yet the Child Poverty Action Group has fought a protracted battle with the government to have this overturned because it 'discriminates against the children of beneficiaries'. They want people who do not work to receive an in-work tax credit.

I am very pleased and relieved that the ruling has gone against the CPAG. So is the Minister of Social Development. Her Associate Minister, Tariana Turia, will not be. The Maori Party publicly backed the CPAG action.

These are my earlier arguments against those of the CPAG;

If the CPAG win, essentially we will see an increase in benefit levels. An increase in benefit levels leads to an increase in the number of people going on or staying on benefits. CPAG want a short term gain and refuse to see the long term cost which cannot be in the best interests of children.

There is no guarantee the money reaches the children anyway.

And, most obviously, the incentive effect of the In-Work payment will be nullified if it is extended to non-working families.

The Greens and the Maori Party are supporting the CPAG.

Who is going to win? We have seen the Ministry of Social Development forced to settle out of court previously for discriminating against a single male parent who had full custody of a child (the mother had full custody of the other child/ren) by not allowing him to be on the DPB. But in this case, should the government lose, there would be a significant financial impact. Around $3-400 million more would be paid to parents on benefits. (From the beneficiaries point of view that's about a 14 percent pay rise.)

Beneficiaries already receive family support for each child. It varies according to age and ranges from $57 to $95 per week. Payments increased in April 2005 and April 2007. I wonder if I could take a case to the Human Rights Tribunal claiming discrimination because I do not receive these payments?

Or, more to the point, perhaps I should try discrimination on the grounds that I do not receive the In Work tax credit. The government has set arbitrary conditions on who receives them. The one that excludes me is an income test. The one that excludes beneficiaries is a work test. If the CPAG can get the work test removed perhaps I can get the income test removed.

UPDATE: A couple of months back I put out a media release about the CPAG being "at loggerheads with the OECD" on the matter of what strategy is most effective in reducing child poverty. I was pleased to read in the Dominion Post this morning that the government will be calling two representatives from the OECD as witnesses in its defence against the CPAG.

"Why men don't take messages"

(And I didn't know there was such a thing a pabst beer)

Survival of the fittest time

I bit the bullet yesterday and went Christmas shopping. Never before can I recall 8 shopping days THIS SIDE of Xmas Day, there being the sorts of offers currently available. I ended up spending what I had budgeted for but getting more than I planned.(I make this point because some figures show retail spending holding up against last year's. If buyers are getting more though, somewhere along the line someone is getting less. Profits must be down.) Two for one deals and 30% discounts are everywhere. And no, they are not offers on inflated prices.

But still the shops are not busy. We shopped till lunchtime and there were no queues, except at the Warehouse general counters, but they weren't long. And the CD, DVD counter, the one we usually use, had no queue at all. None of this augers well. I see Woolworths in the UK will close all its stores by January 5. There must be be a fair few NZ retailers sailing very close to the wind right now.

Kahui kidding himself

"It was a fully functioning household. We did the shopping, paid the bills and basically lived a normal life."

Chris Kahui about the home he and Macsyna King lived in.

This is true in his mind. It was a home like any other he had ever known and a home like many others in the neighbourhood. As a volunteer I go into homes that I couldn't live in as they are, but they are 'normal' within those communities of people. Being on welfare is normal, having Work and Income pay your bills is normal, living amongst clutter and grime is normal.

"Like it was said in court, only the primary caregiver could have noticed if something was wrong. My cousin April had changed the baby, she didn't notice anything and she's a grandmother to four kids."

Kahui is 23. His cousin is a grandmother four times over. Roll that around in your mind a while. That is a marker of prolific and very young breeding. But that's normal too.

Although Chris admits he didn't know Macsyna as well as he thought he did, what he saw was a good mother.

Good mothers do not abandon children. Perhaps she never talked about her older children to other men. Still. You don't need to know someone very well to shack up and sleep together. That's normal too.

For now, Chris is happy using his skills to help around the home, fixing broken cupboards or old ceilings.

That's nice. That gives him plenty of time to keep on 'normalising' his lifestyle and past in his head. Someone needs to give this guy a good shake. But that won't happen. The money will no doubt keep turning up in his bank account each week and he can go on playing at life.

ReStart could rev-up recession

The government's temporary, boosted assistance for workers made redundant, ReStart, may play a role in deepening the recession. That is because, as usual, with welfare paid out of general taxes there will be distortional incentives.

The package is going to encourage these responses.

From employers;

1/ They will feel more comfortable laying off workers. An employer who might otherwise have worked with staff to share in a decreased return from the business might now mentally justify making one or two redundant. Especially if he is inclined to keep his own returns to a status quo.

The Minister has been explicit in urging employers to ring the 0800 number to find out what support can be provided if employers 'need' to make staff redundant. Some individuals take their 'morality' from the state. They will be assured they are doing the 'right' thing.

2/ Employers will be incentivised to minimise redundancy payments in order that employee qualifies for greater assistance.

From employees;

1/ As the extra assistance is means-tested the redundant worker may be tempted to take a lower redundancy payment, or dispose of any cash assets or investments within 20 days. He will find ways to maximise the assistance on offer even if conditions have been put on eligibility for reasons of 'fairness'.

2/ Employees will be encouraged to take voluntary redundancy where they might otherwise not have. For instance, low paid women who have left DPB to work 20 hours may find a return to benefit will see them in a better financial position (for up to 16 weeks at least).

These incentives then, could drive unemployment higher than it would otherwise have gone, thereby reducing desperately needed productivity. The rise could be compounding.

What will it cost?

The costing of ReStart is based on a 'worst case scenario' of 70,000 job losses over two years. As I have previously pointed out however, if Treasury predictions are right (and they are lower than other economists) and unemployment rises to 5.7 percent by 2010 then the total unemployed is likely to be over 135,000.

The costings of $50 million are far too modest. Even if they are based on 70,000 redundancies the figure assumes an average payout of $714. Using the Ministry's own examples of typical payouts, this assumes each person becomes re-employed within 8 weeks.

There are also difficulties with the concept of self-employed people effectively making themselves redundant. A self-employed person just scraping by, who was considering a move back to being an employee anyway, could be tempted to declare himself redundant in the interim.

Additionally there will be people who miss out on the help because of technicalities. For instance a worker with a long and stable employment history who just happened to have a break during the last 6 months will be ineligible.

In countries which operate dedicated unemployment insurance schemes it is normal to pay one claimant more than another based on the difference in the premiums that have been contributed. But that is not what is going to happen here. The extra assistance qualified for is based upon need, not contribution. Sounds fair but why is one family needier than the next? Perhaps one family has been living frugally in order to pay down their mortgage while the next has been living beyond their means. The family that will be eligible is the second because they have high mortgage repayments and no savings. (A cynical bureaucrat may point out that the first family, which is used to living frugally will manage better on just the basic dole whereas the second is accustomed to chomping through more money.) This is more of the socialist imperative of punishing responsibility and rewarding irresponsibility.

The good aspect of this development is the government employing the principle of temporary assistance. That is something we need to see more of. But not on top of indefinite entitlement benefits.

Crisis? What crisis?

There can be no doubt there is a strongly conservative mood afoot in the early 21st century. The prohibitionists of many flavours are more prevalent than they were during the last part of the 20th. Although certainly not exclusively females they do predominate. Strangely their political colours are varied. Often Green but just as often blueish. Fortunately the blueish ones have failed to secure an effective parliamentary presence with the failure of the Family and Kiwi Party's most recently.

My comments are provoked by the Dominion Post's headlines of the last two editions. Saturdays front page proclaimed, 'We are killing ourselves' and today's 'Weekend of drunken mayhem'. Both are strident rallying cries to clamp down on alcohol.

The voices come from people who work in A & E and alcohol watchdogs. On Saturday the solution pushed was a massive increase in the price of alcohol through higher taxes. Bugger the people who drink responsibly and the people who make their livings from producing and selling alcohol.

But when you look at the facts reported there is room for optimism. A booze bus operating in Levin and Otaki (potentially areas where a high result might be anticipated) only 9 out of 1,000 people tested were over the limit. Not even 1 percent. The Wellington police said the number of calls due to alcohol-related incidents was nothing out of the ordinary. And let's not forget that the number of calls is up due to the 'It's not OK' campaign - apparently. The police had processed all of 22 intoxicated people yesterday.

The front page of the Dominion Post is being used to promote the crusades of those who chose to work in areas where they know they will see the extremes of alcohol abuse but would nonetheless punish the rest of civilised society with their prohibitive solutions.

Just like the 'mother country'

“It is about the right to work. It is in the name of the party. It is the Labour party.”

Hah. That's a quote from Labour's Work and Pensions Minister, James Purnell, as he defends his proposed welfare 'reforms' on the eve of their announcement.

From what is already known, they are timid. They will have little effect, essentially asking beneficiaries to plan to go to work as opposed to stopping the inflow of young people or tightening up eligibility.

Asked why he wouldn't consider time-limiting benefits;

"The British people would think that was unfair, if you had very bad luck over five years and at the end of it there was an arbitrary limit to your support.”

James Bartholomew sums up the UK's performance in welfare over the last few years. He could just as easily be talking about New Zealand and our Labour Party's performance.

Britain has more than four million people who are of working age but who are claiming benefit on the basis that they are not working. This is the case after more than a decade of economic growth. The figure is likely to rise substantially now that we have entered a recession.

The numbers who are claiming benefits in this way are about four times the equivalent figure in the 1960s. This has been a massive increase and it shows particularly in the number claiming benefit on the basis that they are sick or incapable and then number claiming benefit as lone parents...

...The Labour government basically funked it. President Clinton had signed into law a radical change in the USA which resulted a 60 per cent reduction in the numbers claiming welfare benefits. Other countries, according to Professor Gregg, also sharply increased the conditionality of their welfare benefits. Britain has made only marginal progress. The welfare culture with the damaging effects it has on national culture has been allowed to continue.

Why National's DPB reforms aren't enough

The Americans reached a realisation that welfare was harming families and children during the 1990s. They decided that open-ended welfare must be transformed into temporary assistance only. They abolished Aid To Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and introduced Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF).

I came across this in the Delaware State Plan;

Five key principles form the foundation of TANF:

1. Work should pay more than welfare.
2. Welfare recipients must exercise personal responsibility in exchange for benefits.
3. Welfare should be transitional, not a way of life.
4. Both parents are responsible for supporting their children; and
5. The formation and maintenance of two-parent families should be encouraged, and teenage pregnancy and unwed motherhood should be discouraged.

If we held current New Zealand policy up to these principles, it would fail. As would National's work-testing-without-a-cap amendment. I will take each principle and show why with just one point;

1/ Having more children raises welfare income. People in work do not get a pay rise when they add children to their family. Hence welfare pays more than work.

2/ Adding children to an existing benefit highlights 5,000 acts of personal irresponsibility every year.

3/ A female can go from being supported as a dependent child on the DPB, to receiving the sickness benefit for her own pregnancy, to receiving the DPB as a sole parent, to receiving to DPB for Women Alone, to receiving Superannuation. Nearly 500 people moved from the DPB to Super in 2006. There is no legislation that prevents a person from choosing this pathway.

4/ The current child support/DPB system actively encourages non-support of children.

5/ Benefits for mothering are available to females from the age of 16 and very few, if any, conditions are imposed. In broad terms money is taken from two parent families and given to one parent families hence the 'formation and maintenance' of the first is discouraged.

All of this will continue unless National has plans afoot we are not yet privvy to.

Women's troubles

It is never long between reports that women aren't getting a fair shake of the stick - in the workplace or in society.

Yet our biggest government department employs a staff that is 73 percent female. Yes, the Ministry of Social Development. They like to skite that their workforce is representative. It's true that the majority of beneficiaries are women.

The Families Commission does even better in employing a staff that is 83 percent female. Then they start acting like role models by being very family friendly with flexible hours, school holiday programmes at work, going home early on Families Day, etc. I guess the idea is walking the talk so they can justify lobbying for ever more workplace legislation along these lines. Think compulsory breastfeeding-stations.

But the people who work in these organisations don't live in the real world. They don't have shareholders to answer to and profits that must be made if they want jobs. They have budgets but they go over them routinely. If they don't go over them they won't appear to be working hard. The taxpayer's pocket is very deep.

Many of these women employees - and their 'clients' - would once have been supported by men and worked in unpaid caring roles. But the more paid caring roles that are created - DPB carers beget social workers for example - the more they have to be managed and studied and monitored. The whole kit and caboodle exists to expand.

Now New Zealand is being told off by UNICEF because it has too many children living in poverty, not enough Paid Parental Leave and not enough good quality childcare. Don't tell me. Another taxpayer cash injection is called for. Yet;

1/ Most of the children living in 'poverty' in NZ have mothers on the DPB.

2/ The DPB is permanent paid parental leave.

Paying people to produce and stay home with children has hardly been hugely successful to date.

If the government would keep its nose out of redistributing income to further what it sees as socially desirable ends, people would get back to relying on each other for committed support. In which case the DPB, PPL and subsidised childcare, as institutions, would all be redundant.

Need I say it? More government, and the many appendages of government, is not the answer.

Too many cooks

The title of this post is too frivolous but sets the scene aptly.

This morning Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett, told Breakfast TV host Paul Henry, that although she had called a halt to the Families Commission Summit, she had no intention of scrapping the Commission itself. Among other things she believed they had done a good job in the 'It's not OK' campaign. 'It's not OK' has almost become part of our vocabulary she said.

The 'It's not OK' campaign has apparently resulted in more reports to police of family violence. When the police respond to a report, if children are present in the home, they are bound to make a notification to CYF.

See below the effect this has had;


Now, the CYF Briefing to the Incoming Minister has this warning;

The volume of family violence notifications we receive from the Police is higher than ever. We received 33,569 in 2007/2008, compared to 26,348 in 2006/2007. This is an increase of just over 27 per cent. If this number continues to rise, it will have an impact on our ability to cope.
The growing number of family violence notifications provides further opportunities for a more effective community response. Most of these cases are best responded to by family violence workers, not Child, Youth and Family social workers.

Let's be clear about this. The campaign by one arm of government is causing a problem for the other.

In fact the campaign might feasibly be making life for children in genuine danger even riskier as those social workers with the power to remove them become less available. Theoretically one could even speculate that the FARs (Further Action Required) line in the graph above has dropped slightly as a direct result of the notifications increasing. Over-worked social workers will have reduced capacity to take further action.

Talking about the Families Commission

I was invited to join Radio New Zealand's Jim Mora for a discussion about the Families Commission and whether we need it. Funnily enough Chris Trotter, when on topic and not talking about the history of the Labour Party or the pressing need to build more state houses, agreed with me more than once. (Starts at 9:00)

I note too that the DomPost editorial today calls for the scrapping of the Families Commission.

This entity began life with Commissioners numbering up to seven and 20 support staff. According to their latest annual report there are now 41 staff. Like the Children's Commissioner, they are well over budget. Most of the staff are involved in policy and research but the Ministry of Social Development has another 330 people fulfilling similar functions within the main body.

Its pet project seems to be trying to convince the government to increase spending on Paid Parental Leave ten-fold. As far as I can ascertain its sole purpose is to influence greater redistribution of resources. To Swedenise New Zealand if you like.

National's plan to amalgamate it with the Children Commissioner's Office is nothing more than window dressing. Disband it.

How most New Zealanders see themselves?

There is an inordinate amount of squealing going on at the moment by those who have held sway for the last nine years. Here an academic takes on the thinking behind curbing local government and makes an interesting but unsubstantiated claim;

But deep down in this vein of thinking are more insidious ideological preconceptions about who we are as a society and what the legitimate role of government ought to be. Most Kiwis, apart from those to the far right, would feel uncomfortable with such views.

In this respect most New Zealanders see themselves having more in common with the worldviews of European social democrats than with those of American neo-conservatives.

Actually Labour fancied themselves as the New Zealand version of the social democrats. Their grand vision was to cement themselves as such as the natural party of government. The electorate just threw them out because they behaved as such.

As immigrants from Europe my parents were decidedly different to their siblings. So were their forbears. Their values drove them out of Europe. As did the values of many who journeyed, of their own volition, to Australia and the States. The people the writer mixes with may be Scandinavian wannabes but I am not convinced "most New Zealanders" are.

Somewhere along the line we have forgotten the description of New Zealanders as embodying rugged individualism. But there is still a strong strain of it simmering.

....councils should play a broad and proactive role in responding to community objectives and promote social, economic, cultural and environmental wellbeing.

Bollocks. The well-being of many ratepayers has been severely compromised by this very prescription. This is just code for greater and greater wealth redistribution by those who can't make a gainful living elsewhere.

Talkfest torpedoed

It was unclear yesterday what Paula Bennett intended to do about a families Commission Summit to be held in February 2009 at the cost of 200,000 so I didn't comment. Now it is clear she is pulling the plug on the affair. Well done. If National continues with this habit there will certainly be less to criticise. With the talkfest torpedoed she might as well go a step further and disband the Commission itself. Apart from preserving paper-producing jobs (of which there are hundreds more within MSD) I can think of no reason to persist with it.

Wiping away tears

A 16-year-old wiped away tears as he appeared in Christchurch Youth Court today charged with the murder of Abdulrahaman Ikhtiari.

He should be taken to the home of the victim and made to wipe away the tears of his wife and children. Perhaps he might vaguely stumble upon the difference between tears of grief and tears of self-pity.

Taxing questions

I gather John Key's throne speech has been delivered and is no longer embargoed. No surprises. All the stuff we already knew about. But this has me nonplussed;

My Government is today tabling a Bill to reduce personal taxes from 1 April 2009. Its intention is to pass this new tax legislation by Christmas and it believes this tax reduction will equip New Zealanders with some much needed extra cash in tough economic times.

Personal taxes will be further reduced from 1 April 2010 and from 1 April 2011. As a result, by 1 April 2011 around 80% of New Zealand taxpayers will end up paying no more than 20c in tax for every additional dollar that they earn.

Additional to what? So we could have a higher tax rate than 20 percent up to a certain threshold and then a reduction above it? Or is 20 percent the top rate target by 2011? What am I missing here?