The national standards controversy rumbles on

Had a call from National Radio yesterday looking for opinion from 'the right' that would support national standards. It wasn't going to come from me. A number of posts earlier in the year explained why. But the producer wanted me to join the panel (19:40) anyway. Which left Jim Mora pushing the government arguments but each guest refuting them. Yes, there is a problem with some under-achievement. No-one disputes that. But schools were already testing and as parents we were satisfied with the level of information provided to us about our child's comparative progress and ability. Imposing change across the whole system was unnecessary. I now see that's what the principals are also saying.

Art blog updated

Have just updated and re-templated the art blog with pieces from my last exhibition and other commissions. My Andean Woman was accepted for the Academy Galleries Matariki Exhibition opening Saturday 10 July. It will be a show worth visiting if you appreciate art. Especially representative art.

Maori almost 5 times more likely to be serving a sentence or order

According to the New Zealand Herald;

There are currently 9131 beds catering a muster of about 8400 prisoners, which is forecast to rise to 12,500 by 2018.

Putting aside the huge forecast increase, offenders in custody make up only a small percent of those serving sentences or orders.

According to Corrections;
The average number of offenders on community sentences and orders being managed on any given day was 44,893 at the end of March 2010.

44 percent or 19,753 of the people serving a sentence or order are Maori.



The Maori 15-64 year-old population is around 400,000 therefore 49 per 1,000 Maori are serving a sentence or order.

25,140 people serving sentences are non-Maori. The non-Maori 15-64 population is around 2,500,000. So 10 per 1,000 non-Maori are serving a sentence or order.

The likelihood of Maori serving a sentence is almost 5 times greater than for non-Maori. On reporting this to my other half he asked, quite guilelessly, why?

He doesn't ask questions if he doesn't want an answer. So, off the top of my head I offered:

Maori are poorer and get into more financial strife. Unpaid fines escalate.

Maori get into more shtook with substance and alcohol abuse.

Maori have higher rates of mental ill health often a factor in offending.

Maori have fewer stable two parent families which act as a defence to crime.

Maori are targeted more?

On this last point I am thinking about a book just published that posits the war on drugs is really a war on African Americans. It would appear that the author, an attorney, believes many young black men are 'fitted up'.

According to federal figures, blacks and whites use drugs at a roughly equal rate in percentage terms. In terms of raw numbers, whites are far and away the biggest users -- and dealers -- of illegal drugs.

So why aren't cops kicking their doors in? Why aren't their sons pulled over a dozen times in nine months? Why are black men 12 times likelier to be jailed for drugs than white ones? Why aren't white communities robbed of their fathers, brothers, sons?

It is unthinkable that NZ police would have a culture like US cops (if indeed there is one culture spread across so many different states and populations). And it is equally unthinkable that there isn't some degree of institutionalised racism operating in the NZ police and justice departments.

But it is a constant source of sadness to me that too many Maori experience any or all of the above precursors for crime and that I don't see this state of affairs changing in the next few years or even decades.

The "intemperance of the rising generation"

Left to me the TV news wouldn't go on in the evening. But life is a compromise. (At least mine is and those I have observed that are not aren't happy ones.)

But by 6:12 watching Three News last night I was again verbalising my frustration about the prominence given to perennial nag issues. First up Hone Harawira pulling a heart stunt in front of the select committee. Forcing the tobacco manufacturers to hold the heart of a smoker still alive in the room. (Out the window the Maori attitude to body organs went at his convenience - " The tüpäpaku is tapu")

Hot on the heels of the announced ban on smoking in prison comes the news that psychiatric patients in Canterbury will not be allowed to light up anywhere on hospital premises from tomorrow. This is absurd and heartless. Cruel cantabrians. It's no wonder their incidence of psychiatric disorders leads the country.

Then we moved onto alcohol and the 'sages' petitioning other 'sages' about saving us all from the demon drink. It's our young, it's the drinking age. Put it up.

100 years ago the Evening Post used to run a "Temperance" column which regularly served up a summary of international nagging as well as local and ethnic nagging. Such as;



Oh no. The intemperance of the rising generation.

If it was possible to travel forward 100 years it is almost certain that the refrain will be unchanged.

Mean time, what the hell else is going on in the world? Surely there is more interesting news than this endless NZ navel gazing.

Quantifying the economic effects of the ETS fraught

Statistics NZ has released a paper about measuring the effects of the ETS. In summary;

Key features to note about the measurement of the impact of the ETS are:

* ETS transactions between residents and non-residents are currently treated as intangible non-produced non-financial assets in the Balance of Payments (BoP) statistics.
* Individual transactions in derivatives associated with carbon emissions will be captured in the BoP statistics but will not be separately identifiable from other financial derivatives.
* The international treatment of emissions trading in the National Accounts is still being decided.
* The impact of the emissions trading will not be captured directly in the current suite of National Accounts (and related) measures, although they will be indirectly captured in many of the National Accounts data sources. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the impact of the ETS scheme on the National Accounts from that of other factors.
* Environmental measurement statistics will be undertaken by agencies other than Statistics New Zealand (eg the Ministry for the Environment will measure the rate of emissions in the Greenhouse Gas Inventory and changes in land use via the Land Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS)).
* These environmental measures will record changes that may arise from the ETS scheme, but not its economic effectiveness.
* Greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency have been identified as core topics in the finalised energy domain plan and environmental domain plan currently under development.
* The purchase of emissions units will not directly appear in the current suite of price indexes (consumers price index, producers price index).
* Indirect price impacts from the operation of the ETS scheme will be captured, but the attribution of how much of a price change is due to the operation of the ETS scheme will not be possible.
* The Annual Enterprise Survey (AES) will capture some information, but under the current questions this data will not be identifiable.

New Zealand embarks on a scheme tomorrow that it is going to be almost impossible to evaluate. Unreal.

Grope and go to jail

Today we have stories about a couple of creeps who both need a good kick where it hurts most.

The first is the re-telling of an incident that has probably happened thousands of times to thousands of people. Unwanted sex after too much imbibing. Wouldn't a person with a shred of morality realise they had played a part in encouraging what was later to become a problem? She and Brooke has previously had consensual sex and she pursued him. Then her 'friend' decided to exploit the situation by extracting money from Brooke as some sort of compensation (or was it hush money?) So sorry. Robin Brooke is a creep. But the friend is an even bigger creep who should have been done for blackmail.

Then we have...drum roll... New Zealand's 'first striker'. Well this is a joke. Another first class creep who can't handle alcohol makes a drunken pass at his friend's missus. This astoundingly qualifies as a strike on the list of very bad crimes. There must be a lot of people ringing 111 these days getting the police to sort out their dysfunctional private lives.

Good lord. At this rate the prisons will be full of randy reprobates (gagging for a smoke). And we will all be much safer - not.

Update: The 'blackmailer' was in fact the friend so I have adjusted the post to reflect that.

Smoking ban in prison - no tick here

The government's decision to ban smoking in prisons is not an easy one to support from any kind of liberal perspective. Health-wise it aims to protect people from themselves and others, but it is also quite likely to endanger people, both guards and inmates. Total prohibition has practical staffing and enforcement implications that may render it unworkable. The only positive I am attracted to is the deterrent potential. Maybe it will reduce crime as would-be offenders try to avoid a custodial sentence? But if the ban is unenforceable in practice, then the deterrent effect will disappear.

The piece below, Should smoking be banned in prisons? is reasonably balanced and provides evidence against the bans but this is the case when no or little cessation aid was given.

The success rate for cessation programmes is however fairly low. Having just consulted the in-house pharmacist he thinks around 1 in 5 patients actually quits. And these are people who are well-motivated - who want to quit.

Read on and make your own mind up.


The rush to ban smoking in prisons has occurred in the absence of evidence regarding their overall effectiveness in terms of long term cessation once the individual is released into the community, whether it achieves its main goal of actually stopping prisoners smoking during incarceration, and the consequences arising from tobacco prohibition.

The major impact of smoking bans appears to be the creation of another black market and its associated problems—standovers and intimidation, trading sex for tobacco, smuggling and policing another illegal substance. In California recent reports indicate that packets of cigarettes are fetching $125 within the prison system. Prisoners, visitors and prison staff have all been caught smuggling and selling tobacco on the prison black market.

The effectiveness of a smoking ban is evidenced locally in the juvenile justice system where smoking is currently prohibited in centres throughout NSW. According to a recent survey of the state's juvenile (under 18 years) offender population, 86% smoked before coming into custody and 66% of regular (at least weekly) smokers before detention also smoked in custody despite the ban. Cropsey also reports the ineffectiveness of smoking bans in the United States where 76% of prisoners continued to smoke in prison following the ban and 97% smoked when released to freedom.

In 1997 Queensland opened the Woodford Correctional Centre in which smoking was banned. Three weeks after it was opened the prisoners rioted and attempted to burn down the new complex. A government inquiry found that the smoking ban was partly to blame.

From a human rights perspective, a ban on smoking in prison represents the erosion of yet another freedom to an already disenfranchised group. However, this is likely to appeal to those who favour all punitive measures as part of the punishment spectrum. This attitude was reinforced recently when public outcry followed media reports that a high profile prisoner in NSW was allowed to have a bread‐toaster in his cell!

Banning and quitting are not the same thing

Banning smoking is different from quitting. Requiring people to give up smoking while in prison will undoubtedly have health benefits but these benefits are lost if they recommence smoking after release. There is no evidence that simply banning smoking is effective in reducing smoking rates over the long term. Quitting smoking while in prison and maintaining this in the post‐release period would undoubtedly save prisoners' money and could be part of the overall rehabilitation process. However, this has yet to be demonstrated.

Demand for quit smoking programmes among prisoners is considerable. According to both the 1996 and 2001 inmate health surveys, around half of all prisoners report needing help to quit smoking. While demand is high, only eight (6%) individuals in 2001 had received help or treatment since coming into custody. Many jurisdictions require prisoners to pay for smoking cessation aides such as nicotine replacement therapy—this is an unrealistic expectation.

Smoking cessation programmes for prisoners are few and far between and little reliable evidence exists regarding their effectiveness if the medical literature is anything to go by. However, in 2003 we undertook a trial at Lithgow Correctional Centre of a multi‐component intervention for smoking cessation involving combined nicotine replacement therapy, a pharmacotherapy (bupropion, Zyban), and brief cognitive behaviour therapy. The results were promising with a 40% abstinence rate at 5 months. This trial has evolved into a randomised controlled trial (placebo versus nortriptyline) currently under way in the NSW correctional system.

Health has been remarkably absent from the debate on smoking in prison, but more recently a NSW government response to the inquiry into tobacco smoking in NSW recognised that smoking rates need to be addressed in vulnerable groups such as those with a mental illness, injecting drug users and Aborigines—all of whom are over‐represented in prisons. The challenge is likely to be formidable as these groups are probably the most difficult in which to reduce smoking rates, as many report commencing smoking from an early age and are therefore highly dependent on nicotine, have co‐occurring mental health and substance misuse problems and lack access to community smoking cessation programmes.

The future?

Prisoner populations comprise some of the most disadvantaged groups in the community and are recognised for high levels of smoking. With around nine million prisoners worldwide at any one time (more if younger offenders and those serving part‐time and community sentences are included) and significantly more passing through the criminal justice system each year, there is scope for accessing this group and initiating smoking cessation interventions as a means of impacting on the general community.

Smoking bans appear to have little impact on whether prisoners continue to smoke during incarceration and the long term decision to quit smoking following their release to freedom, thereby bringing into question the health benefits of prohibition.

Smoking bans create another black economy in prison and the problems this creates for custodial authorities who have to enforce the ban. These problems impact on all levels of the prison system from the debts accumulated by prisoners to buy contraband tobacco to the staff who have to enforce and police them.
While smoking bans are laudable and have a clear role in the public health arsenal, prisons cannot be viewed in the same light as restaurants, hospitals and office buildings. Clients [prisoners] cannot just pop out for a quick smoke or hold off the urge for a couple of hours; prisoners are locked in their cells for prolonged periods with little to do. By the same token, a non‐smoker prisoner cannot leave his/her cell to avoid the harmful effects of his/her cellmate's smoking. The solution appears to be a better management of this problem with guarantees that non‐smoker prisoners are not subjected to environmental tobacco smoke in cells, prison transport or communal living areas and that smoker‐prisoners have access to free interventions with proved efficacy. The challenge is likely to be considerable and the responsibility should not be left to prison authorities alone.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this issue is that any moves towards smoking bans in prison need to be implemented in tandem with cessation programmes proved to work for this population group and offer the prospect of long term cessation. This approach will also reduce the disorder often caused by hurriedly implemented bans.

Another reason for the high Maori prison population?

I am struggling through a highly technical paper about the role of incarceration and child support in the labour force participation rate of young less-educated Black men.

Their labour force participation rates dropped through the 1980s and 90s, to a much greater degree than white or Hispanic rates, while over the same period their incarceration rate climbed from 2 to 5 percent and the index of child support enforcement measures taken by states climbed from 0 to almost 6.

The paper speculates about the high marginal tax rates on non-custodial fathers, in the order of 60-80 percent, and what effect this has on their labour force participation. Incarceration potential (my suggestion) is heightened by not working and in turn, incarceration lessens the chance of working after release (verified by the paper).

The increasing focus on child support enforcement was a feature of the welfare reforms with the federal government paying states bonuses if they met child support targets. Child support extractions range from 20 to 35 percent of income according to state. Our child support system, began in 1991 from memory, works in a very similar way.

I am now wondering whether the same factors are at play in NZ and account in part for the high incarceration rate for Maori. Unfortunately the IRD does not keep specific statistics on ethnicity of non-custodial parents.

Another fail for Phil Goff

Does someone risk secreting drugs on their own person on behalf of another? Clearly if good money is offered, yes they do. But into a dance party?

Because if Phil Goff's daughter has "never taken drugs" that is what she must have been doing. Taking a huge risk to satisfy someone else's desire to take ecstasy. I don't buy it. But Phil does.

At least that is his story for the media. She carries ecstasy in her bra but doesn't use it. Oh, OK, it was the first time she had done it so fortuitously never actually got around to taking them. At 25?

Why not come out and say that prohibition is futile law, and causes more harm than any it seeks to prevent? Including the inevitable political fallout and stress for his family.

And would a poor brown boy managed to have dodge the consequences of this pernicious law as successfully as Mr Goff's daughter? I don't think so.

Instead of going into denial Mr Goff could have learned something really useful from this nasty episode. But he failed.

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."

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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.