A martyr is exactly what we thought you were

Last night I heard Rodney Hide say to TV3 News, "I am not a martyr".

The reason Hide's tax-payer funded spending on his girlfriend's travel consumed talkback on all channels yesterday is because that is exactly what people thought he was - a martyr.

He used to rail against perks. He cast a lone vote against increased perks. He made himself very unpopular in Parliament. A martyr "accepts discomfit in order to be more highly thought of."

Also last night, a friend rang me. She and her partner voted ACT last year because I convinced them to. That Rodney was the best thing in parliament. A cut above.

She asked, do you still have that painting of Rodney Hide? To which I responded, yes. Well get it out. I wanna throw darts at it.

She's a full-time cleaner with kids to support. Life isn't flash in material terms.

Rodney, you earn 10 times what she does. Nobody is disputing that level of recompense (not yet anyway).

But why couldn't you have paid for your partner's airfares and travel expenses?

Any Kiwi child could be a doctor or brain surgeon

Reacting to Michael Laws' comment that potentially awful parents could be offered cash as a sterilization incentive,

Barnardos New Zealand chief executive Murray Edridge said the comments were part of a pattern of provocative comments from Mr Laws designed to draw attention. "I can't believe that he actually believes this."

Any Kiwi child genuinely could become a doctor or brain surgeon – as long as there was community support for them, he said.

Well, I can't believe that Edridge actually believes that.

Leaving aside that many children are born with invisible handicaps due to their mother's lifestyle during pregnancy, leaving aside that their parents do not value education and cannot transmit a value they do not possess, leaving aside that adoption is now frowned upon by the state, does he really believe that all children have the same chance of reaching their potential?

Sadly, he is a deluded. At some point these Guy Smiley types, with benevolence oozing from every pore, with their oily optimism and perky platitudes, stop being annoying and start being a hindrance. When those entrusted with the job of advocating for children bring to the task this level of self deception you know it's time to pull the plug. His convictions will not improve the lives of NZ children.

Treasury: DPB growth about "Young women having children"

Media Release

TREASURY: DPB GROWTH ABOUT "YOUNG WOMEN HAVING CHILDREN"
Friday, October 30, 2009

In its report into economic long-term sustainability released yesterday, Treasury acknowledged that the recent growth in DPB numbers reflects a combination of a temporary rise in the number of young women having children and the impact of the recession.

Welfare Commentator Lindsay Mitchell welcomed this official recognition but was disappointed with Treasury's attitude.

"The popular political line has always been that the DPB is there for people who experience a relationship break-up. The Minister for Social Development recently defended the DPB saying the vast majority of recipients had come out of a marriage or de facto partnership. But now we have the Treasury acknowledging the growth is coming from young women having babies. During 2008 2,300 females aged 18-24 years-old transferred from a pregnancy-related sickness benefit to the domestic purposes benefit. These are young women who had no partner or financial support before or after birth."

"Unfortunately Treasury seems unconcerned by the rise, predicting it will be temporary. While it is true that there has been a demographic blip in the number of young women of child bearing age, the fertility rate (number of babies born per 1,000 females) has also climbed. In the 15 - 19 age group the rate has been climbing since 2003. Why does Treasury believe that trend is about to reverse?"

Treasury also draws attention to the substantial growth in sickness and invalid benefits and suggests this area as a focus for cutting spending. "While I couldn't disagree with that suggestion, equal, if not more focus needs to go on the DPB. That is because the DPB is the major driver of intergenerational benefit dependence. A report examining the long-term sustainability of the economy that fails to take account of intergenerational dependence is incomplete."

"Still, given the National government is hell-bent on ignoring the main thrust of the report, the reform of Super, its incompleteness is probably neither here nor there."

The long term outlook

Treasury yesterday released a report into the long-term outlook for New Zealand. The NZ Herald has a summary here. However, it provides an excellent overview of current spending in each major area. But for starters this is a summary of how tax is raised and who pays it.

The tax system
Total tax revenue is the product of what is taxed (the tax base) and the rate at which taxes are levied on that base. New Zealand's main taxes are:
■ personal income tax, levied using a progressive rate structure (raised $28.5 billion in 2009,53% of the tax take)
■ GST, levied at 12.5% on virtually all domestic consumption (raised $11.6 billion in 2009,21% of the tax take)
■ company tax, levied at a flat rate of 30% (raised $9.3 billion in 2009, 17% of the tax take), and
■ a range of excises on petroleum, tobacco and alcoholic products, some tariffs on imports,road-user charges and stamp duties (raised $4.8 billion in 2009, 9% of the tax take).

Issues with the tax system include:
■ Households (with children) in the bottom half of the income distribution effectively pay no income tax or receive tax credits, because of the interaction with the income support system.
■ The top 10% of income earners (those earning more than $70,000) pay more than 40% of all income tax revenues and about 20% of GST revenue.


Half the country is free-loading. That's great. Very sustainable.

ACT pisses me off

There. I said it. I am feeling really shitty because I had to leave a seagull with a broken wing lying helpless on the beach. I tried to right it but it just panicked. The tide is coming in and it'll drown but what the hell does one do? I'm not sure a badly broken wing can be fixed anyway. But it has reduced me to tears because I couldn't do anything about it and it looked at me as if I should be able to. Just beautiful and helpless.

Then I come home and read about stuff that just pisses me off. And at least I can do something about that. Or say something about it. This business of taking DNA from people who have not been convicted of a crime stinks. And ACT supported it. It should be utterly against the principle they claim to uphold and defend; that of individual freedom.

It is inconsistent with the Bill of Right's "provisions against unreasonable search and seizure." It turns on its head the time-honoured (with inestimable good reason) presumption of innocence.

And the Maori Party is right. It will disproportionately affect young Maori men. But that shouldn't be the reason that they voted against it. They should have, as ACT should have, voted against it because the state has no right to forcibly take DNA from someone who has not been proven to have violated anybody else's rights.

Brain development in the absence of fathers

The Wall St Journal has an interesting article about research into the brain development of degu pups that are raised without fathers. These relatives of chinchillas are apparently normally raised by both parents. When the father is taken out of the equation the neurones develop differently.

When deprived of their father, the degu pups exhibit both short- and long-term changes in nerve-cell growth in different regions of the brain. Dr. Braun, director of the Institute of Biology at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, and her colleagues are also looking at how these physical changes affect offspring behavior.

Their preliminary analysis indicates that fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents...

...Of course, the frontal cortex—where thinking and decision-making take place—is more complex in humans than it is in other animals. Thus, says Dr. Braun, it is important to be "really careful" about extrapolating the recent findings to human populations.

It's official - calm down Sir Geoffrey

The Social Report for 2009 is out and amongst many other findings about various social indicators this appears;

Most recent data

In 2006/2007, 23 per cent of drinkers of alcohol aged 15 years and over had a potentially (my emphasis) hazardous drinking pattern.

Longer term trend

There has been no change in the rate since 1996/1997.

And in response to this 'no change' state of affairs the following have been proposed;

1 Increase the price of alcohol

2 Increase the purchase age of alcohol

3 Decrease accessibility of alcohol

4 Decrease marketing and advertising of alcohol

5 Increase drink-driving measures

...because, we are apparently, "in the grips of an under-recognised national alcohol crisis."

"The value of nothing"

There was some talk around the blogs last week about obsessive ecologists Brenda and Robert Vale who have suggested that, because our dogs have bigger carbon footprints than SUVs, we should eat them. On Friday I gave them my brickbat when participating in the NewstalkZB Face Off panel. But the following is so beautifully written I thought it deserved wider attention. From Dr Martyn Hutt to the Dominion Post;

Spending on welfare - "...engine of the domestic economy."

Did you know that, according to Gordon Campbell;

It seems to have eluded Federated Farmers economic spokesperson Philip York at least – just as it eluded Ruth Richardson – that spending on welfare is one of the engines of the domestic economy. Beneficiaries spend the money that they get from the state in local shops – not on overseas trips or on luxury imports.

So if we want a strong and growing economy, what we need is more spending on welfare. If that were so than during the rapid growth period of welfare (last 40 years) NZ's per capita income would have climbed relative to the rest of the developed world. It hasn't.

Or perhaps he means we just need to maintain current levels of spending, at the very least, to prop up the economy.

But the money being redistributed to beneficiaries is money that cannot be spent in investment and job creation.

It is no good talking up a group's collective consuming power if, eventually, there isn't a commensurate producer. This isn't chicken and egg stuff. The production has to come first. And production requires labour.

Same story with the low paid. It has been estimated for instance, that 2/3 of this year’s wage rise to staff at Progressive’s supermarkets will be spent back at Progressive, on groceries. The money circulates back through retailers, and government gets some of it back in tax.

No. It is not the same story with the working low paid. They add value to the economy with their labour. Their earnings are not taken away from the productive sector with no return. Wealth redistribution through voluntary means - paid employment - is entirely different from redistribution through government coercion.

I do not, and never have, advocated cutting benefit payment levels. However, and I am sorry to repeat myself, a stop to the ongoing inflow of new beneficiairies is urgent. That, and a progressive raising of the qualifying age for Super would see a steady decline in welfare spending. That would drop the proportion of government spending as a percentage of GDP. That will make NZ a wealthier country.

It is impossible to estimate the social cost in crime, marital breakdown and mental health problems that have resulted from this ongoing pressure on benefit levels and entitlements.

Almost as impossible as trying to estimate the cost in crime, marital breakdown and mental health problems that have resulted from benefit dependency itself. Again all of those aspects of life have become more commonplace on the back of the growth in the welfare state. They may have worsened in the early nineties but they were already well-entrenched compared to life before the culture of entitlement and hand-outs arrived.

I am not an economist but this claim is as nutty to me as the one that goes, I may be a beneficiary but I still pay tax. I make my contribution.

I'm out of touch

My age is beginning to betray me. I seem out of touch with the new kind of gung ho approach by politicians. The fostering of solidarity and admiration among an audience that is most impressed by seeing them as 'good sports' and 'a laugh' and 'one of us'. Perhaps they figure that is the best they can do in a recession and a positive contribution to the countries morale is better than nothing.

A newish comedy show screens on TV3 called 7 Days. It's a stock in trade competition between two teams of comedians responding to leading from a adjudicator. It had me laughing out loud on Friday night. Then in rolled the Minister for Social Development (I suppose a new comedy show is a form of social development). Rolled because she had to roll in her own seat and sit in the middle. She then participated in that old game whereby you must never answer a question with 'yes' or 'no'. Probably not much of a challenge for a politician. Questions like "Have you ever done it in the back of a Holden?" answered by, "Who hasn't?". At which point I had stopped laughing and began using all my energy trying to process what I am seeing and figure out why 'we are not unamused'.

It's not very dignified. So what? Stop being such a pompous twit Lindsay. But aren't we supposed to take this person seriously? She is in charge of the government's biggest spending portfolio. In which case she is allowed to have some fun for a change. Give her a break. But I spend so much of my frigging time worrying about welfare and she's positively chirruping. In which case she has a better work/life balance than you and you could do worse than take a leaf from her book. But what would an overseas visitor make of it all? Who is that, they would ask. Oh that's just the government minister in charge of child protection services, the disability sector, care of the aged and reduction of family violence. She must be up to the job because she can make people laugh.

So my discomfit is without foundation. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It can only be explained by my age and the expectations I have because of it. I am a dinosaur with an attitude that says there is a time and a place; portraying a level of discipline publicly is important; maintaining a certain distance and anonymity is desirable; but above all, when there is serious, urgent work to be done there is no time for personality parades.

Abortion - I can't bring myself to do it

I support the right to choose. But personally I cannot choose the termination of life. It's an emotional, deep-seated impulse. But I faced it this week. And I am not trying to be flippant.

Daisy is pregnant again. We wanted her to have one litter and then we would spey her. But while she was still nursing her kittens, and unable to have the op, she got knocked up again. So I rang the vet and asked for some advice. They could spey her now. No problem. And the kittens she is carrying would be aborted during the process. Well I knew that is what they would tell me. Booking her in was really the purpose of my call. But then I couldn't do it.

So here we go again. Take two.

NZ does not exist in a microcosm

Reform UK has just released a report proposing ideas for reforming the current social security system. I thought the opening sentence was spot on;

Responsibility has drained away from the British welfare state, leaving a poisonous blend of entitlement and apathy.

A summary of proposals is;

> Abolish middle class welfare and benefit gimmicks, with immediate cuts that would save £14 billion. Further savings, including from migrating individuals from the state pension onto personal protection accounts, should be made as part of a medium term plan to restore the public finances.

> Hand benefit rules and operation to social enterprises and companies, funded through employee national insurance contributions.

> Develop flexible Personal Protection Accounts, building on the success of ISAs and the introduction of auto enrolment and personal accounts for retirement savings in 2015.

> Where possible, replace social security benefits with private provision, with private insurance being a potentially useful but largely underutilised tool, particularly for disability but also in other areas.

Of particular interest, however, given the overdue debate NZ is now having over ACC, and last week's Auditor General report showing MSD was not succeeding in reducing Sickness and Invalid benefit dependence, is further discussion about insuring for accidents and disability, and international activity;


As well as savings for the costs of retirement, personal accounts have the potential to be used for a range of other social policy purposes. This is the approach taken in Singapore, where, alongside pension funds, individuals contribute towards personal welfare accounts that provide support for unemployment, accident or injury...

A variant of personal accounts has been in place in Brazil for several
decades and has been introduced by several other Latin American countries. Uruguay has a dual public/ private insurance system which covers, among others, old age and unemployment insurance....

The OECD has identified private disability insurance as a potentially useful but largely underutilised tool. Private disability insurance has become an important part of welfare provision in countries such as the Netherlands and Finland. In the Netherlands, for example, the introduction of experience-rated premiums for public disability insurance was a key factor in explaining the recent sharp fall in the rates of inflow onto disability benefits....

The use of private insurance in Switzerland and Canada has also had similar effects on reducing the inflow and costs of disability. These positive effects reflect the financial incentives facing private providers to avoid the liability from people becoming unwell and, if they do become unwell, not recovering as quickly as possible...

So anyone who thinks we should or will stick with our current approach has their head in the sand. Historically welfare provision debates and outcomes have occurred in an ongoing and international fashion. Labour's reversal of ACC privatisation in 1999 was merely a stalling of reform.

The culture of excuse-making goes on

Apparently because alcohol kills 50 times more people than P we should be 50 times more worried about it. If I were 50 times more worried it still wouldn't keep me awake at night.

According to Prof Doug Sellman launching Alcohol Action New Plymouth last night,

"Alcohol has become totally over-commercialised in New Zealand, encouraging a heavy drinking culture that leads to serious health problems, fractured families and increased violence and crime affecting thousands of people.

"Over a thousand people die every year from an alcohol-related injury or chronic disease and there are over 70,000 physical and sexual assaults perpetrated by people who are alcohol affected."

The reasons were clear.

"The easy availability of alcohol at all hours, low prices and continuous bombardment by very clever advertising and highly strategic sponsorship deals are key drivers of our dangerous drinking culture," he said.

Shades of Hone Harawira's attack on the tobacco industry.

I cannot share Prof Sellman's confidence - at all. At the root of alcohol abuse are psychological problems. You can make access to alcohol more difficult but that doesn't address why people want to drink so heavily. Blaming the alcohol industry is just a cop-out.

Add to that the triumph of collective responsibility over individual responsibility, whereby the adverse consequences of alcohol abuse are socialised across society, and we might start getting warm.

When I was young I used to get in trouble with alcohol. I remember waking up in bed with some guy appalled to find myself there. Gutted. But I didn't blame the alcohol. And I didn't blame him. I blamed myself.

Today there are a lot more girls like I was but it seems to me they can't look at themselves and take it on the chin. They blame their behaviour on drinking (abetted by people who would blame accessibility and promotion of alcohol) or they blame the guy and cry rape. What they need to feel is a massive dose of shame, remorse and guilt so as not to do it again. That is how human nature works.

I am afraid Prof Sellman is just contributing to the culture of excuse-making.

I won the bet!

Well, actually, I haven't won the bet yet but I won the bet. Let me explain.

Last Sunday Des Coppins had a draw open to all callers to his Trackside programme. The prize was a bet that the TAB put up. It's a double. Whobegotyou (hot favourite) to win the Cox Plate tomorrow and Viewed (last year's winner) to win the Melbourne Cup, November 3, If they both come in the return is $1000. And I won it.

But I haven't won yet....

The Auditor General's Report

I have now had chance to read the report.

In 2007 MSD instigated a new approach to sickness and invalid beneficiaries. It involved more intense case management and a classification of beneficiaries into three groups - ready to work (don't know why this group isn't on the Unemployment Benefit) ready to plan to work and won't return to work.

GP certifying certificates were redesigned to acquire more information as to what suitable interventions might be and any other helpful input the GP could offer.

The AG's report is a evaluation of the results and it isn't good.

I am not going to quote extensively from it but essentially MSD isn't monitoring the changes, there are inconsistencies of practice across regions, GPs don't fill in the certificates adequately, GPs are very unimpressed with Work and Income case managers, particularly their availability to discuss matters, regional health and disability commissioners are under-utilised, the benefit numbers have continued to climb since 2007 and increased contact between beneficiary and Work and Income is patchy. Much of it is instigated by the beneficiary when extra financial help is required rather than the case manager fulfilling new guidelines.

15 recommendations were made.

Of course none of this addresses the underlying primary causes of ever-growing dependence on these benefits (and neither is it intended to). But all parties have been found wanting - accept the beneficiary.

Stunning

I was caught on the hop yesterday when I received a call from Radio Live asking me to record an interview about my earlier press release regarding National's broken promises. Although I was in a carpark and didn't have the release at hand that wasn't a problem. The problem emerged when the first question related to an Auditor General's report released yesterday. I hadn't heard about it or read it. Which is what I said. I don't bluff. Anyway the interviewer was telling me that Paula Bennett was saying that the problems with the sickness and invalid benefits were of Labour's making. Well, sure. But National campaigned on a whole lot of policy ideas about how to fix the problems and haven't implemented one. I rattled them off. And so it went.

When I arrived home late last night I naturally googled said report and was astounded to find Paula Bennett saying:

“This report confirms the changes we promised before the election are heading in the right direction."

BUT YOU HAVEN'T FULFILLED ONE OF THOSE PROMISES. And the numbers are continuing to head in the wrong direction.

That has been confirmed by your Ministry.

Blue vs Red - I may as well be colour-blind

Sus kindly sent through a letter she received yesterday from the Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett. Representing National, in the blue corner we have ;

"I think we all agree that children should be provided for, whatever their family situation. If we penalise the caregivers for moral reasons, I can only see this impacting upon the ability of the state to help the children of these caregivers.

The benefit system, including the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB), is designed to supply a level of income support to enable parents to provide for their children. Benefit entitlement is based upon a person's individual situation. I could not agree to withholding money from people looking after children. It is the children that would suffer from that type of decision.

You might be interested to know that the vast majority of DPB recipients are in fact sole parents who have been married or in a relationship and who have lost the support of their husbands or partners for a variety of reasons.

As the Minister for Social Development and Employment, I will be looking into solutions that assist people into getting off the DPB and into work. Our policies will support parents while also recognising the value of paid work."

The following are excerpts from letters I received from former Minister for Social Development, Steve Maharey. Representing Labour, from the red corner we have;

"Income Support in the form of DPB contributes to the needs of children, and towards the valuable task of childcare, and is intended to provide a good start in life for children. Children are our country's future.......The government and the law cannot discriminate on moral grounds


The majority of DPB recipients are separated or divorced from a legal or de facto spouse (63% in 2001).


Officials are looking at the best means by which sole parents can be supported and encouraged to balance their work and family responsibilities. The idea is to get alongside them, talk to them about what they want to do with their lives, then help them get there."

Any discernible difference/s?

The overriding message from both is that as long as children are reliant on an individual, the state is obliged to provide the individual with an income. Therein lies the problem.

And regarding the past relationship status of DPB recipients, obviously the vast majority have been "in a relationship". But the Minister knows nothing about what type of relationship unless the recipient states that they were separated from a marriage or divorced. The latest information I have shows only 3,249 recipients were divorced and 29,622 were separated (I am assuming from a marriage because it wasn't from a de facto). Leaving the "vast" majority in the unknown category. The identifiers rely anyway on the accuracy of the recipients own description. For a variety of reasons that accuracy may be dubious.

The DPB is not, on balance, good for children. It can't be when it has created, in the space of a few decades, a whole new demographic of doubly disadvantaged kiddies with no in situ fathers and no money. I am very tired of those people with an ability to do something different simply defending it.

Change the rules

I was wondering whether regional reliance on the unemployment benefit matches regional unemployment rates.

(June 09 benefit data is used because the most recent HLFS data available is June 09.)

This is what I found;



No bloody correlation whatsoever.

So what is this chart telling me?

On the face of it, one would expect that where the unemployment rate is low, reliance on the Unemployment Benefit would also be low.

For example Nelson has low unemployment and a low ratio of dependency on Unemployment Benefit.

Northland, on the other hand, has a high rate of unemployment and a low ratio of dependency on Unemployment Benefit.

Or, expressed another way;

Nelson has low unemployment and a high ratio of dependency on other benefits.

Northland has a high rate of unemployment and a high ratio of dependency on other benefits.

Is it safe to conclude then, that people will rely on other benefits (SB, IB and DPB) regardless of the unemployment rate?

That is, anyway, what recent history tells us. We hit the lowest level of unemployment in the OECD at one point but reliance on other benefits was largely unchanged or growing.

The implication of this is very important. It seems obvious that people are on other benefits for other reasons. Granted. But when it comes to trying to tackle their dependency we are told, but there are no jobs so we can't do anything.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: This Government is committed to helping sole parents into work. We intend to change the work-testing rules to incentivise those parents to get a part-time job when their youngest child turns 6. However, I am committed to setting up domestic purposes beneficiaries to succeed, so we will hold off on making the changes until the economic conditions change and there are jobs for those people to be getting those sorts of opportunities.

But for many unemployment didn't cause their dependency and employment won't necessarily solve it. Many of these people are going to continue on benefits long term regardless.

BUT, Bennett is so hung up on what to do about existing beneficiaries that she is too distracted to think about how changing the rules would effect potential beneficiaries. Can't change the rules because there are no jobs for us to enforce new rules. Doesn't matter. Change the damn rules as a deterrent if nothing else. Change the rules in anticipation of an economic upturn. Get on with it or dependency will be allowed to just keep on growing.

Working-age benefits rise by 21 percent

The number of working-age beneficiaries has risen by 21 percent over the last year.

Here's a breakdown by September 2009 total and annual rise;

DPB 107,658 up 9%
Invalid's Benefit 87,615 up 2%
Sickness Benefit 56,384 up 17%
Unemployment Benefit 60,660 up 161%

All 326,811 up 21%

Some comments;

- Take out the unemployment benefit and the rise in all other benefits is still 8 percent.

- The rise in other benefits is more of a concern than the rise in unemployment because people stay on those benefits much longer.

- The 9 percent rise in DPB represents around 15,000 more children on welfare.

- The combined total of Sickness and invalid benefits represents a new high at 144,000.

- If National had delivered on the election promises I identified yesterday some of the rises may have been contained.

Flawed defence of ACC

There is too much wrong with Tim Hazeldine's defence of ACC's viability in today's New Zealand Herald to take any comfort from his she'll-be-right reassurances. First he likens the cost of funding the results of accidents, to the costs of raising children. We need not possess the total cost up front, he argues. It would be "foolish" to treat children as unfunded liabilities.

Suppose you and your spouse are in charge of a family of, say, three young children. That means you are legally responsible for bringing them up to school leaving age and morally responsible for helping them in further training or education after that.

Putting aside the obvious problem that being 'legally responsible' does not make any New Zealand parent financially responsible if they refuse to be, there are others.

Along with the costs of raising children there are benefits. Parents do not generally end up poorer than non-parents. That is because the lifestyle they adopt as parents tends to accrue wealth. For example, they buy bigger homes and save larger amounts of their income.

So there is a return on raising children that does not exist in funding long-term weekly compensation payouts to accident survivors, where much of ACC's liability lies.

Children are dependent for a limited time. ACC beneficiaries may be dependent for the remainder of their lifetimes. Given most serious accident claims are from young men, their reliance will likely span decades. Because of ever-improving medical technology and a seemingly increasing propensity to take risks (driven ironically by socialising the adverse consequences) the numbers dependent will only grow. This is also evident in the never-reversing growth in invalid beneficiaries that far outstrips population growth.

But Mr Hazeldine is not concerned about future ability to pay because it can easily be funded by government on a pay-as-you-go basis. He says, "...the Government's ability to raise revenue when needed is much more secure than any individual's future income".

Again this is a troublesome notion. Government's ability to tax relies directly on the individual's future income. If his future income is much less secure, then so is the government's. He frames his defence of ACC on the power of forced collectivity but uses the productive individual (the integral cog in the wheel) to demonstrate vulnerability and uncertainty.

There are problems with ACC, but they very much depend on how the issues are framed. Truly, New Zealand can have a decent, efficient, state-run accident compensation system without breaking the bank. Don't fret about it. Get back to figuring out how you are going to pay for bringing up those kids.

So Mr Hazeldine wants us to add ACC to all the other pay-as-you-go budgets like "Vote Health and Vote Education" (I note he avoided any mention of Vote Social Welfare) and not to worry about it. Go back to figuring out how to pay for bringing up your kids, he says.

Frankly the worrying I am doing is how my kids are going to pay for tomorrow's ACC costs, on top of the burgeoning health and welfare costs associated with our rapidly ageing population. Now is not a time for offhanded complacency.