What are your kids listening to?

Both of my children are musical. Robert is playing piano at grade 8 level and Sam is a singer (pictured here at the local pub) due to sit level 4 in September. Not that the academic framework means much but that is where their interest lies to the degree that they will practice and perform. And their school preference largely rests on the fantastic music tutelage and talent at Wellington High.

As I write we have Clapton's Layla coming out of the mini speakers attached to Robert's ipod. He listens to almost exclusively 70s and 80s music. So if the same could have been said about me at his age I would have been listening to music from the 30s and 40s. Which certainly wasn't the case. Most of the music my mum and dad played was musicals, classical, crooners - Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, anyone singing Burt Bacharach. Dad would sometimes buy a Bob Dylan or Byrds 45 and he shared my love of James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon, Carole king, the country rock of the 70s. But there was no way he was into Motown, british classic rock, or US hard rock.

So my point is that what was new and original when I was a teenager is still largely my kid's choice of music. In fact I never hear anything that is currently in the charts and have just had Robert confirm he doesn't know what's current.

Yet when I was a teenager the top twenty was everything. I kept the weekly record of it, planned which album or 45 I was going to buy next and then drove my parents mad playing discs repeatedly, pushing the volume envelope as hard as I could get away with. That's another thing. The only time I ever ask for volume to be lowered its either the TV or a game - never music.

(We are now onto The Watchtower which sounds better now than it did when I first heard it, but my generation was absolutely totally utterly spoilt for choice and I am more appreciative in retrospect.)

So there is this difference-in-generation thing going on in my family and I wonder if the same is going on elsewhere. And even more intriguing and puzzling to me is, who is listening to today's contemporary music? And will the 'quality' of the 1960s,70s and even 80s ever happen again? At the time, we thought 'pop' music was about 'here today and gone tomorrow' - unlike the classical music from earlier centuries.

But the artists of those times (many still producing now) were making history and their music has endured. What will endure from the 90s and 2000s? Far, far less I suspect.

So what are your kids listening to?

Plenty to celebrate

I didn't expect to be posting about the soccer but Cactus has written a coolly analytical piece that prodded me into expressing my own reaction.

It would have been a travesty for Paraguay if they had lost. A country that actually does stand still when their team is competing, they deserved to go through on that performance against NZ. The commentator told me they had 14 tries on goal. I wasn't counting. NZ has a brilliant goalie who will soon be batting off lucrative job offers instead of quality strikes.

The All Whites did bloody well to come away unbeaten and they will arrive home heroes. Unlike Italy. And you can sympathise with the Italian public. They had a real chance of going all the way. We didn't.

But NZ soccer is on the ups. And that is the central point to celebrate.

(And I look forward to the inevitable political row as the girls demand to play at the top level. Some of these fast and feisty, female youngsters are already playing in mixed rep teams. It's only a matter of time....)

State shoe-shops?

Sometimes Libertarians use the example of supermarket shopping and the inherent freedom of choice when the government isn't involved, to ask why we put up with the state dictating (largely) the education and health markets. Food is after all as essential as health and education. I liked the following excerpt which similarly lays out how purchasing a pair of shoes would look if the state was in charge of fitting out our feet;

"Imagine, if you will, that you have acquired, honestly and voluntarily, the means to purchase a new pair of shoes (either by rendering a useful service to another or by selling to him a property to which you have previously earned the entitlement and which he is now more eager than you to possess).

Now picture yourself in a world where you yourself cannot go directly to the retailer, but where you are obliged instead to give your money to a government-appointed commissary who will enter you in a queue for a standardized piece of footwear, with little or no say over the style or quality — and possibly not even any over the size — being accorded you personally.

Worse still, this bureaucrat may decide that someone else “deserves” the shoes more than you do, at present, That “someone else” may be a person whose vote it is, for the moment, expedient to cultivate, or someone whose fallen circumstances or designated “victimhood” currently complies with our masters' personal, pseudo-compassionate prejudices. It will certainly not be someone tainted, like you, with the suspicion that, by dint of your own self-reliance, you might be altogether oblivious to the social usefulness of the functionary himself and even more dangerously indifferent to the whims of his power-hungry political bosses."

More

Sue Bradford blogs

Sue Bradford blogs about the Reviewing Welfare & Social Sector Policy & Reform conference of Monday and Tuesday complaining that it was a "privatisation" of the very debate because it wasn't free.

It's just a pity that whatever insights on Government intentions Paula Bennett has to share today will be heard only by those wealthy or well funded enough to be in the room.

Even the "wealthy and well-funded" missed out because the Minister of Social Development didn't attend.

One of the key groups of people who should be involved in the current discussions around welfare are those who work every day with beneficiaries and their families.

Yet most of the organisations for whom they work are chronically underfunded, and the chances they'll be able to cough up even half the entrance fee for this week's bun-fight are marginal.

I spoke with people who work directly with beneficiaries. Also in attendance were public policy academics, analysts from government departments like the Ministry of Women's Affairs, disability advocates, community trusts, etc.

It is ironic that the second, expensive conference offers a far more balanced lineup of speakers from different parts of the welfare debate, while denying many who care passionately about the subject the chance to attend.

Bottom line is the organiser has to make a profit from the service they provide or there will be no service. Based on numbers, this particular conference didn't look like one of their better earners. It may even have made a loss having been somewhat gazumped by the Welfare Working Group conference which was hastily planned after this conference was conceived.

Sue needn't have worried. The audience remains dominated by people who rely on and believe in government. The welfare "industry" is well and truly captured by a cabal of tax-funded, left-wing, collectivists. At best, some may be unwilling adherents but they know which side their bread is buttered on.

Ministry says strange stuff about stats

I asked the questions,

1/ At December 31, 2009, how many DPB recipients had a dependent child born in 2009?

2/ At December 31, 2009, how many DPB recipients had a dependent child born in 2008?

3/ What was the age, gender and ethnicity of the DPB recipients in each of the above groups?

The answer was prefaced as follows;






"Dropped"? That implies a change between two points in time. Furthermore, a positive change.

Think about it for a minute.

These figures are at the same point in time. It is to be expected that the 2008 figure would be higher than the 2009 figure because those babies have had an extra year to appear on welfare.

All I can conclude from this table is that at least 13,530 babies born in 2008 (21 percent of all babies born that year) were reliant on the DPB at December 31st 2010. There will be more that have been on welfare and left during the two years.



14,839 women who identified as Maori gave birth in 2008. 6,544 DPB caregivers of children born in 2008 identified as Maori. Most will be their mothers, but not all. So a ballpark figure for how many Maori babies born in 2008 were on welfare at December 31st 2009 is 44 percent.

This information pertains only to the DPB and 18-64 year-olds. So the percentages will rise if other benefits and ages were included.

Don't like the evidence? Ignore it

I am currently attending and speaking at another two day conference. This one is a privately organised affair reviewing welfare and social policy. My subject was the US welfare reforms and what can NZ learn from them. I will put up a link to it when available.

You may have noticed that three of the most popular buzz words in the public sector today are "evidence-based policy". That seems well and good. Except when people don't like the evidence, they ignore it anyway. They get stuck on the exceptions, or as Roger Kerr would put it, the "outliers" instead of considering the broad results.

This piece from today's Melbourne Age while not a stunning example, highlights this tendency.

THE biggest welfare reform in decades will become law as soon as today, expanding income management to disadvantaged groups across the country.

The federal government released a survey of its own workers yesterday, supporting the controversial measure about to be widened. Welfare quarantining was introduced as a part of the Northern Territory intervention into remote indigenous communities three years ago.

''Nearly 60 per cent of government business managers working in Northern Territory indigenous communities report that views towards income management have shifted favourably since June 2008,'' Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said of the survey. ''The majority of people believe that the [intervention] has had a positive impact on community awareness of nutrition, health, child abuse, education and drug and alcohol-related violence...

...Income quarantining restricts a portion of welfare to spending on essentials such as food and clothing, and bans items such as alcohol and pornography.

Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) chief executive Clare Martin is yet to be convinced that the intervention is working.

''We've got no evidence,'' Ms Martin said. ''The Prime Minister says he is one for evidence-based policies and this is not. I'd call it anecdotal.''

Brawling women probably state wives

I missed this story until I found time to rifle through the pages of the DomPost later in the day. It's basically a brawling story with little to recommend the victim either, although the reporting is somewhat ambiguous. 8 women set upon a single woman in retaliation for an earlier incident. The attack was vicious and happened late in the evening in Stokes Valley.

Acting Senior Sergeant Donna Rider said the attack was linked to an ongoing dispute but said the behaviour was "disgusting". "I'm horrified at the level of violence from these women. The other aspect to it is that two of them are pregnant and several others claim to be pregnant.

"One of them is eight months pregnant ... [you] can only guess at what kind of parents they'll make."

"Claiming" to be pregnant to avoid court-ordered consequences no doubt. Exploiting their babies even before they are born.

My heart, and maybe yours, goes out to the innocent babies that these women will bring into the world. But it won't be going out to them for long.

A few years down the track they will have grown into replicas of their mothers, in some form or fashion. And it is quite probable that they will all be raised on your money. Time to coin a new phrase. Add to state houses, state wives. Like many state houses they symbolise a seedy side of New Zealand that social policy makers seem unremittingly determined to sponsor.

An optimistic view on the future of freedom

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Gary Becker which appeared in the Wall St Journal (distributed today by the NZ Business Roundtable). Beautifully written by a former speech writer to Ronald Reagan, it's well worth 5 minutes of your time. And it's quite uplifting to boot.

"No, no. Not at all."

So says Gary Becker when asked if the financial collapse, the worst recession in a quarter of a century, and the rise of an administration intent on expanding the federal government have prompted him to reconsider his commitment to free markets.

Mr. Becker is a founder, along with his friend and teacher the late Milton Friedman, of the Chicago school of economics. More than four decades after winning the John Bates Clark Medal and almost two after winning the Nobel Prize, the 79-year-old occupies an unusual position for a man who has spent his entire professional life in the intensely competitive field of economics: He has nothing left to prove. Which makes it all the more impressive that he works as hard as an associate professor trying to earn tenure. He publishes regularly, carries a full-time teaching load at the University of Chicago (he's in his 32nd year), and engages in a running argument with his friend Judge Richard Posner on the "Becker-Posner Blog," one of the best-read Web sites on economics and the law....

....My last question involves a little story. Not long before Milton Friedman's death in 2006, I tell Mr. Becker, I had a conversation with Friedman. He had just reviewed the growth of spending that was then taking place under the Bush administration, and he was not happy. After a pause during the Reagan years, Friedman had explained, government spending had once again begun to rise. "The challenge for my generation," Friedman had told me, "was to provide an intellectual defense of liberty." Then Friedman had looked at me. "The challenge for your generation is to keep it."

Fewer abortions, but Pacific rate up

The abortion rate is down for 2 years running now. The tables show that the biggest drop is among young NZ European women with a 4.1 percent reduction in the number of abortions since 2007. For Maori the drop is 4 percent. For Asian, 1.9 percent. But the Pacific total is up 3 percent.

Of the 8 countries provided for 2008 NZ (19.7 per 1,000 women aged 15-44) ranks second behind Sweden (21.3)

The largest drop in abortion rate is among 15-19 year-olds, followed by 20-24 year-olds.

What does it all mean?

The only thing to be concluded for sure is that there are fewer abortions. Any other statement could be wrong. There are fewer unwanted pregnancies? Not necessarily. A pregnancy can be unwanted but the mother nevertheless decides against abortion.

Further, there isn't any evident strong correlation between the abortion rate and the birth rate for 15-19 year-olds (where the abortion rate has dropped the most).



Graphing the information shows that loosely speaking, more young women were having abortions and not giving birth until the lines converge and now more are giving birth and the same and most recently, fewer, are having abortions.

(There is improved ethnicity information over the past two years so the apparent rise in Pacific abortions could simply be that more are identifying their ethnicity.)

New painting

During my last exhibition I noticed a young man taking notes about one of my paintings so approached him. He was very animated because he had made a connection with the painting. We got talking and he told me he was travelling the world and interested in the varying characteristics of the facial traits of different ethnicities. At his request I agreed to paint a version of any photo he wished to send me. He seemed keen to develop some sort of collaborative project. Being Spanish his English was fairly good. Much better than my Spanish anyway :-) He duly emailed me a photograph taken somewhere in South America and this is the result.

Fatherhood is the new 'privatisation'

This illustrates how welcome the advanced intervention of the state is in some quarters. Benefits introduced solely for single parents subsidised the rapid rise of (mainly female) single parenthood. Now that governments want to reduce or remove these benefits here's a feminist calling the process 'privatisation';

That public policy is what we call welfare-or what anti-welfare reformers of the mid-1990s named Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). At the time welfare reform policy was enacted, it was widely hailed for transforming single mothers into breadwinners by forcing them to take low wage jobs in the labor market. While compulsory labor market work is a feature of welfare reform, the reform equally emphasized the compulsory introduction of fathers into single mother families.

Indeed, the guiding principle of welfare policy is that the economic security of families requires mothers to have relationships with fathers. This is a privatizing move, tying the economic well-being of families to the presence of fathers' wages. It also is a patriarchal move, conferring economic security only to those mothers who conform to traditional father-mother norms.

Bo hoo Brown

Cactus blogs about the "weird" Mayor of Manukau, Len Brown, this morning. His histrionics of yesterday provoked a similar wave of amusement, distaste and finally, disdain in me. Len Brown is described as an emotional man. We are all emotional. Some learn how to control it. Maybe over-control it. Unfortunately the under-controllers are a growing force. Watching Fair Go last night I found myself cringing, God, he's no going to cry is he, about a man whose cladding had gone wrong. Increasingly we are subjected to dripping apologies. Never has Shane Jones appeared on the list of people I respect, but at least he had the fortitude to resist a sobbing self-flagellation. The it's-ok-for-a-man-cry movement can pat itself on the back. While it might want far more wet stuff yet the general direction males are going in is right on target. Well, it doesn't impress me. Browns performance was sodden with self-indulgence. But we should thank him for reminding us what self-indulgence looks like. So we can all try and avoid it.

Of course my daughter will remind me that I cried during Hotel For Dogs, at the movies no less! Well that's right. But at least I had the good grace to slink down in my seat and feel embarrassed about it.

Times-on-line - it won't work

Most days I check out the Times-on-line. Today I found a redesigned site. Looks better, I think, more traditional and less magaziny. But tai ho. I click on a headline that interests me and I get a message telling me to register for a 'free' trial. Bugger off. A/ I am interested but not that interested and B/ I don't have the time.

I don't know what the future of newspapers is, but it isn't through on-line subscription.

Last resort?

This is a statement to ponder over;

However, the vast majority treat welfare as a last resort.

First I ask myself, what constitutes a vast majority. Over 90 percent? A small majority would be between 50 and 60 perhaps. A large majority, say 70 odd. But vast is a lot, isn't it?

Something is clearly wrong when 324,814 working-age people – 12 per cent of the total – were on a main benefit on March 30 this year.

Indeed. But if my 'vast majority' prescription is applied, 292,332 people are using welfare as a last resort.

Give me a break. Recall Paula Rebstock's figures;

• In 2008, after a decade of economic growth and prior to the
recession, New Zealand had reached the point where roughly 1
in 10 working age New Zealanders were receiving a benefit.
• To put these numbers into context: in the mid-1960s about
30,000 people were receiving a benefit. That was only 2% of
the working age population.

Professor Bob Gregory made an observation about welfare reform at the WWG forum. That if eligibility is tightened some people will just disappear. Because they don't need to be there anyway.

After the US AFDC was replaced with TANF (open-ended entitlement transformed into temporary and conditional assistance) in 1996, the number of families relying on it dropped from 5 to 2 million (or thereabouts).

Some of the reasons were that people didn't believe they would meet the new criteria. Or they didn't want to comply with the work or activity requirements. Or people simply stopped going on to it. Possibly because they were saving up their 5 year allotment for when they really needed it. When it truly was a 'last resort'.

Stupidest comment

Can't get past this story about the pilot who crashed near a Sydney school. Nor can I listen to the final transmissions he made. He would have been desperately searching for green space, for his own sake and for the safety of those on the ground. He may have been heading for the school field. But he didn't have the height to make it. Worst of all he would have had full, or fairly full tanks being on the outward leg

Engine failures are rare. Most aerodromes are near built-up areas for public convenience. What on earth was this about?

Jodie Weir, 42, a resident of nearby Clifford Avenue, said: ''We regard it as an accident waiting to happen.''

Benefit numbers rise but are 'below forecast'

If she can find something good to say about them, the Minister of Social Development releases monthly benefit numbers;

The number of New Zealanders receiving a benefit increased slightly over the month of May by 0.6 percent, but overall numbers remain below forecast.

"With seasonal work winding up, we expected to see a slight increase in Unemployment Benefit figures, but it is much lower and has occurred later than it did last year," says Social Development Minister Paula Bennett.

All benefit types have increased by 1,887 in total.

An extra 729 people have gone onto a Sickness Benefit, 342 more people on the DPB and 391 more on an Unemployment Benefit.

Two things interest me. First a reason is offered for the rise in unemployment benefits but not for the rise in other benefits. So are we expected to assume that other benefits are a proxy for the dole? A net increase of 729 on the sickness benefit in one month is high. (The way this is depicted by the Minister is incorrect.)

Secondly, the best thing the government can say about the numbers is that they are below forecast. That amused me because at a Treasury session during the Welfare Working Group conference, which addressed the subject of benefits, projections and how to make provision for those projections, the presenter used the word "embarrassing" when he described how the projections are made. They are based on an assumption that the numbers are fixed proportions of age groups. Hence, the forecasts:



Of course, in the past the lines have been far from flat, and will be in the future.

What prison over-crowding really looks like

I had been looking at this photo from a Californian prison for a while before realising that the beds are bunks.



The accompanying article is about the prospect of the Supreme Court intervening in a 3 federal judge ruling that the state must release 40,000 prisoners to relieve over-crowding.

"I don't get out of that bed," said Fernandez, 47, gesturing to the top of a three-tiered bunk in the malodorous heart of a human warehouse. "In a cell, you only have your cellie to deal with. But here, you got 200 different attitudes. Some guy gets a bad letter from his wife and he's going to be a problem for everyone around him."

Mule Creek was designed to house 1,700 prisoners when it opened in 1987. Today it holds 3,900, with two to a cell and 500 crammed into what used to be common areas for recreation. That is typical of all the state's prisons, which hold twice the number of inmates for which they were designed.

It looks bad, very bad. But so does this. Have a look. 302 homicides this year in the LA county mapped. Look at the victims faces.

The violent crime rate is trending down in the US. Unlike NZ.

Borrow for bariatric bypass

Why isn't a loan an acceptable option for people who want a gastric bypass?

If the state can only afford to fund 5 to 7 in 500, it would be fairer to offer interest free loans.

The operations cost between $17,000 and $35,000. Students take out loans that size. People buy similarly priced cars on time payment; take out mortgages 10 times that amount. Assuming a morbidly obese person will have a much greater chance of earning an income if they can get back to a normal weight, why don't they make the investment in themselves?

Aided and abetted by MPs, why does the argument always revert to a demand that the state pay? It doesn't help or advance their cause.

Paula Rebstock's WWG speech

The following is Paula Rebstock's opening speech to the Welfare Working Group forum. Worth reading it all:

Welfare Working Group – June Forum
Paula Rebstock, Chair
Wednesday 9 June 2010

• Minister Bennett, speakers and delegates, I would like to
welcome you all to this Forum, hosted by the Welfare Working
Group.
• The Working Group has been set up to look at long-term
welfare dependence and the growing number of people on
benefits in New Zealand.
• Our terms of reference are clear and require us to address
some big issues, including how work outcomes for sole parents
can be improved; how disabled people and those suffering from
ill health who have some work capacity can be supported into
work and independence; and to learn from the experience of
ACC and the insurance industry.
• Since we started just over a month ago, we have been listening
to a wide range of views. We’ve held a series of workshops
around the country involving people with personal experience of
the benefit system, as well as the providers and agencies who
work in the social services sector.
• This Forum builds on these workshops and brings together a
range of perspectives. We want to broaden the public debate
and provide wider context for what is happening in New
Zealand and internationally.
• By the end of the next two days, the Welfare Working Group
wants to have identified the range of issues that will enable us
to drive real change in the benefit system.
• We need your help to do this.
• So, why is this important?
• Put simply, the New Zealand benefit system affects all of us.
• As of March 2010, nearly 325,000 people or roughly 1 in 8
working age New Zealanders were receiving a main benefit.
• Current expenditure on the benefit system (and excluding the
tax credits) accounts for 11.5% of core government expenditure.
• The large numbers of people currently on benefits reflects longterm
underlying trends, rather than just the recent recession.
• In 2008, after a decade of economic growth and prior to the
recession, New Zealand had reached the point where roughly 1
in 10 working age New Zealanders were receiving a benefit.
• To put these numbers into context: in the mid-1960s about
30,000 people were receiving a benefit. That was only 2% of
the working age population.
• Two central questions the Welfare Working Group therefore
faces are: why does New Zealand have so many people on a
benefit? And why are some people on a benefit for so long?
• We are not alone in looking at these issues. They are being
debated around the world. And the good news is that we can
learn from the evidence and experience of other countries.
• As we begin to define our way forward here in New Zealand, I
want to start by acknowledging the reason we have a welfare
system. At some point in their lives many New Zealanders need
some form of support because they experience a period of
unemployment, or they get sick or lose a partner.
• Importantly, most people who need this support and use the
benefit system in these circumstances, do so for only a short
time.
• But when we look more closely at the statistics about people on
benefits, and discuss these issues openly in our communities,
we see there are also a large number of people who are using
the benefit system more or less permanently. For them the
safety net has become a trap.
• Of the nearly 325,000 people on a benefit in March this year,
roughly 30% have been on a benefit continuously for four or
more years. Nearly 12% have been on benefit continuously for
over a decade.
• And even these depressing statistics mask the true story
around those receiving benefits for long periods of time.
• If we consider the fact that many people have multiple periods
of benefit receipt, the true extent of long-term benefit
dependence becomes even clearer.
• Of the people on a benefit in June 2009, 177,500 of them had
spent seven or more years on a benefit since 1993.
• That’s the equivalent of the entire population of the cities of
Dunedin and Invercargill who have spent more than seven
years on a benefit.
• That we have such numbers of people on benefits for such long
periods of time should be deeply concerning to everyone.
• We know that being on a benefit long-term is a corrosive
experience, and many of the people who are on a benefit more
or less continuously are actually able and willing to work.
• New Zealand has the third lowest measured rate of
employment of sole parents in the OECD, and we have to ask
whether the structure of our benefit system is contributing to
this result.
• For some people with disabilities or illness, we need to ask
whether the benefit system focuses too heavily on what they
can’t do, instead of what they can do.
• According to the evidence, the wellbeing of people who are
disabled or unwell and on benefits could be improved by getting
back into work sooner. But they need the right support from the
community and employers.
• The current system, established in a previous century and
tinkered with by successive Governments, is not effectively
responding to the demographic, economic and social realities of
New Zealand in 2010 and beyond.
• For many individuals and their families we need a fundamental
rethink of the support we are offering to people in need of
income support.
• The old approach emphasised the ‘security’ of a modest benefit.
• But I don’t think the old approach provides real security. It
simply locks many people into life on a benefit and robs them of
their potential.
• For most people, real security is provided by the earnings,
confidence, the social contact, better health and the future
prospects that participation in the workforce offers.
• For those who have no capacity to work, we have a
responsibility to meet the real cost of their support. We also
have a responsibility to ensure they are able to participate
effectively in their community.
• For those whom work is possible, we must refocus our efforts
and resources.
• Children growing up with a parent or parents long-term on
benefit don’t get security. They get limited aspirations and
opportunities.
• The human cost this represents is surely a concern to every
New Zealander.
• The financial costs are also a concern. Right now we are
spending around $7.5 billion of core government expenditure
on benefits.
• We need to consider whether the investment we are making in
the current system is actually delivering the results we expect
or want.
• A recent study estimated that the future fiscal liability of people
currently on benefit in 2009 was in the order of between 24%
and 31% of GDP. This is a very large figure, and we need to
ask whether we are investing enough, and investing in the right
areas, in order to reduce these future costs.
• Our task is not easy. The challenge over the next two days is
for every person in this room is to debate the issues and
contribute to the process in a constructive way.
• We need to confront some complex and difficult questions.
Here are some to kick-start the debate:
• What can be done to reduce the cycle of benefit receipt
between parents and children? We know from research that the
family environment is vital in nurturing hope and aspirations.
One in five children currently lives in a family that is receiving a
benefit. Is this an outcome we want ?
• Why are so many young people leaving school without the skills
they need to support themselves, ending up on a benefit and
staying there far too long? What are the hard questions we
should be asking of our education system?
• And, what do we need to do to improve the prospects for those
who have been receiving sickness or invalid’s benefits for long
periods? What are the supports and attitudinal changes that
need to be put in place?
• We might not all agree on the answers, but these questions
need to be asked. We need to engage in a clear dialogue, as
we cannot keep doing what we have been doing and failing to
address the problem of long-term welfare in New Zealand.
• We need solutions that are innovative, we need the best
possible evidence, and we need to be ambitious for what we
can achieve.
• We have a lot to learn, share and consider over the next two
days. Every one of you here has an important role to play.
• To be successful we need to respect the differences of opinion
and be open to testing the boundaries.
• We have a unique opportunity to challenge some old myths and
engage in a dialogue about one of New Zealand’s most
pressing issues.

Armstong moots a Machiavellian Minister

John Armstrong's interpretation of Paula Bennett's comment that during the Welfare Working Group forum we could see an "ugly side" of NZ is a way from mine. He paints the comment as a manipulative attempt to ostracise the left. I felt it could just as easily be aimed at people like me loosely characterised as libertarian extremists or misinterpreted as racist. Paula Bennett and I are not buddies. She has only once communicated to me directly and that was as an MP and ex DPB recipient, and was a criticism of a media release I issued.

There are a whole bunch of people who seem to think there is some sort of conspiracy occurring, John Armstrong included. I don't know what the word for this psychological phenomena is but where I would once have participated I now observe it. If you have ever worked your way up through large organisation for instance, at the bottom you imagine that management are in cohorts and have a plan. They are invulnerable and omnipotent. As you get closer to the top you understand that you are not necessarily dealing with a group of like-minded individuals at all but individuals with their own agendas, ideas, and varying abilities to make those ideas come to fruition.

I don't believe that National has a radical plan for welfare at all. Various players will be making it up as they go, some winning, some losing. But political inertia is a strong force. Back to Armstrong;

Bennett's remarks should have rung alarm bells in the institute's ivory towers about the highly divisive direction in which the welfare working group's work is likely to move. Rebstock's paternalistic talk of the current system locking "many people" into life on a benefit which "robs them of their potential" is the giveaway of the kind of agenda operating here.

What Rebstock said is undeniable. But not only does it rob people of their potential, it robs their children.

Such talk also does not equate with the facts. Ministry of Social Development data shows those getting the domestic purposes benefit number about 110,000.

But that disguises the stream of sole parents flowing in and out of that category. About 31,000 people signed up for the DPB in the year to March. But in the same period nearly 26,000 came off it.

And? What about the other 80-odd thousand? What about the ones I focus on, who go onto a benefit pitifully young, 16 and 17 year-olds, and stay there for many years continuously, or habitually cycle on and off? And he ignores that most of the people signing onto the DPB are either transfers or returners.

...The figures suggest the current system does not lock people into benefits and that people want to work, but the determining factor is the state of the labour market.

If everyone wanted to work why was the drop on DPB numbers during the economic boom, when NZ had the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD, so small? Because people lack skills and self-discipline; because they lack confidence; because benefits can pay more and offer more security; there are myriad reasons, only one of which is there isn't a job for them.

Armstrong doesn't understand what he is writing about in more ways than one.