CIR Asset sales referendum result

A third say YES. Good result. Probably reasonably representative. A minority of National voters didn't want the sales. Nothing to see here. Waste of time and money.

Preliminary Results of Citizens Initiated Referendum

13 December 2013 Media releases

The Electoral Commission has released the preliminary result of the Citizens Initiated Referendum on the question “Do you support the Government selling up to 49% of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Power, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand?”

2013 Citizens Initiated Referendum Preliminary Result

Votes	Number of Votes Received	Percentage of Total Valid Votes
For the response Yes	432,950	32.5%
For the response No	895,322	67.2%
Informal votes*	4068	0.31%
Total valid votes	1,332,340	100.0%

RNZ panel discussion about poverty

Radio NZ invited me to participate in Jim Mora's panel discussion on poverty today. I would have loved to address David's Slack's lead-in comments about "intelligent redistribution" and the American experience but that would have used up too much limited time. Starts at 11:00.

"The politics of empirical truths"

This piece, by Peter Saunders, resonated with me and probably will with you:

The politics of empirical truths

  

In a lecture delivered at Munich University in 1918, the great German sociologist, Max Weber, outlined the qualities required by anyone considering a career in politics. He ended with this warning: 'Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer.'

That counts me out, then.

Having spent the last 14 years working for public policy think tanks in Australia and Britain, I have become increasingly frustrated by the 'stupidity and baseness' of politicians who refuse to acknowledge awkward empirical truths. Even when, occasionally, a politician summons up the courage to tell people facts they would rather not hear, he or she immediately comes under pressure to withdraw their comment, and even apologise for it.  

Rod Liddle recently offered one example in the UK edition of The Spectator. He highlighted an apology issued by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, who had warned of a culture of 'endemic corruption' in certain Asian countries (notably Pakistan) from which many British ethnic minorities originate. As Liddle showed, Grieve's warning was fully justified, for Pakistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and the UK Electoral Commission has expressed concern about bribery and vote-buying in certain Pakistani communities in Britain. But although he was right, Grieve issued a grovelling apology.

This problem of thought crime and self-censorship is not limited to issues of race and ethnicity. It extends to discussion of gender and class differences too.

Last week, for example, a UKIP Member of the European Parliament, Stuart Agnew, was censured by his own party after claiming that men outnumber women in top jobs partly because many women choose child-rearing over career building. But he was right. A 2009 survey found only 12% of British mothers want to work full-time, and a 2008 report found two-thirds of working mums would still want to reduce their hours even if improved child care were made available. In Norway, where mothers can choose between free child care (if they continue working) or cash payments in lieu (if they raise their children at home), four-fifths choose to stay home.

Again last week, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, landed in hot water for pointing out that one reason upward social mobility is not more extensive is that some people lack the intelligence needed to perform high-level jobs. Again, he's right - this is something I have been documenting for the last 20 years, and Boris is the first prominent politician in all that time to acknowledge it. But in politics, evidence is often irrelevant. Deputy Prime Minister, 

Nick Clegg, attacked Boris for his 'unpleasant, careless elitism,' Cameron hastily distanced himself from him, and the BBC and newspaper journalists declared open season on him for several days afterwards.

Max Weber wouldn't have been surprised by any of this. He taught that political leadership is about charisma, the mobilisation of emotion among your followers. Evidence can be left to faceless bureaucrats. Populist leaders in search of votes work on sentiment.

If like the CIS, you are in the business of shifting policy agendas through appeal to evidence and reason, this emphasis on emotion and sentiment can represent a major frustration. But as Weber concluded in his Munich lecture: 'Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics.' 

Peter Saunders is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. 

Paid parental leave extension unwarranted

Media Release

PAID PARENTAL LEAVE  EXTENSION UNWARRANTED

Thursday, December 12, 2013

The government is reportedly reconsidering its opposition to extending Paid Parental Leave from 14  to 26 weeks. This comes despite Treasury advice that there would be "minimal benefit from increasing the length of parental leave."

Welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell said last year Treasury analysed who was using paid parental leave, labour market outcomes, and child health outcomes. It found that, "...there is not a strong evidence-based argument to support extending the length of paid parent leave."

Treasury's report states, "...the majority of mothers return to work when the baby is six months old...". Marginal benefits to labour market participation and child health and well-being would therefore be small. Additionally, it notes, "...the most vulnerable children are likely born into families where parents are not eligible for paid parental leave...".

In a discussion about improving income adequacy it found that the arguments are "weak" as "the current access group are likely to be middle and high income women with stable employment." Of the 32,000 paid parental leave recipients in 2011/12, 58 percent were earning over $40,000; 27 percent were earning over $60,000.

Treasury also noted a possible negative impact for employers, particularly small to medium enterprises, as their costs are, "...likely to be more significant as the length of parental leave increases." This could give rise to greater discrimination against child-bearing age females in the labour market.

The implementation of 26 weeks  Paid Parental Leave will cost $327 million by 2015/16. Unchanged, the cost would be $176 million in 2015/16.  An annual increased expenditure of $151 million for "minimal benefit" seems highly questionable. The benefit to the government may lie in gaining electoral favour in 2014.

The Nats buy votes too

The government now appears to be entertaining Labour MP Sue Moroney's Bill to extend Paid Parental Leave from 14 to 26 weeks.

Opinion polls have shown strong support for extending paid parental leave.

In a nutshell, most parents with newborns already stay off work for 6 months. They fund the difference themselves. That's because they can afford to.

If Bill English approves this it's a middle-class handout. A vote-buyer. Nothing more, nothing less.

DomPost letters

Jacinda Ardern and red herrings

Labour's Jacinda Ardern to Paula Bennett in parliament today:

Jacinda Ardern: What will her Government do to address low wage rates in New Zealand, given that 40 percent of the children living in poverty are being cared for by adults in paid work but who are still not earning enough to survive?

1/ Clearly they are surviving.

2/ Being pedantic, around 6 percent of children  'living in poverty' have parents who receive income from benefits and work.  34 percent receive incomes from work alone. But even they are getting more in tax credits etc than they are paying in tax. The government is already addressing low wage rates.

3/ This is the important point.

The 265,000 children (living in households receiving less than 60 percent of the equivalised  median household income after housing costs) are not all experiencing hardship (as measured by the Living Standards survey.)

That's because the income data is derived from a sample survey of 3,500 declaring their annual income.

Some families experience a year of low income for a variety of reasons. Unemployment, fewer contracts, a new business start-up, illness, accident, relationship break-up etc. BUT they do have savings and assets to draw on. That is partly why less than half of the 265,000 children 'living in poverty' are actually experiencing hardship.

Ardern's question is designed to shift attention from beneficiary families to working families. But children in working families will (generally) only experience transitory or temporary 'poverty'. They are not affected in the lifelong way that children who spend most of their childhoods in beneficiary families are.

Talking Child Poverty on Newstalk ZB

On NewstalkZB earlier this evening talking to Tim Dower about the latest Child Poverty report.

One of the e-mails that Tim read out later was, he said, representative of  "a developing theme". It said,

"I assume extreme poverty is being able to afford Sky Sport but not Sky Movies."

I didn't support the line that there is no poverty. I've seen kids in houses where they get sick because of crowding and unhealthy, unhygienic surroundings. Probably the same house has Sky.  But  the chronic poverty of benefit dependence exists. It's spirit and soul sapping.

Children's Commissioner Child Poverty Report

Some of the data from the forthcoming report is depicted at this site. This is their graph for the trend.

Another graphic shows that 51% of the children in poverty live in single parent families.

Here's a graph showing the number of single parents families over a similar period.

Again, the subsidisation of single parent families has been a major contributor to the growth in the numbers of children living in poverty.

And the best answer the Children's Commissioner can come up with is more subsidisation.

An unrepresented constituency?

A NZ Herald editorial begins,

There will always be a constituency for the Act Party's founding principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility, small government and lower taxes.

It does my heart good to see those principles re-stated. Unfortunately the writer goes on to enumerate the many problems that have faced the party over the years and concludes a come-back is unlikely.

So the constiuency that "will always be", which I believe is bigger than ACT's best result would indicate, will essentially go unrepresented in parliament?

I hope not.

"Blaming parents is pointless"

The Children's Commissioner is about to publish an apparently "shocking" report about the increasing number of admissions to hospital for "poverty-related illnesses". The Herald on Sunday editorialises,

"Child poverty should not exist in this country. Blaming parents is pointless."

 What or who then should be blamed?

A few weeks back I wrote something about this question. It was published on Breaking Views so apologies if you have already seen it.

 Without doubt one of next year's major election issues will be child poverty. Most of the voices heard on this issue, including the Children's Commissioner, blame the problem on inadequate wealth redistribution. Either wages or benefits are too low. Child poverty is therefore a product of the collective economic system and solving it becomes the responsibility of government.
I disagree. We are commonly told that approximately 270,000 children live in homes with incomes that fall below 60 percent of the median household income. Less focus goes on who these children are and why their parents are poor.
Around two thirds live in benefit-dependent homes; of those, around three quarters live with a sole parent. Yes, there are poor children with working parents but the poverty they experience tends to be temporary versus chronic. Their parents may experience short-term unemployment, or fewer working hours, especially during a recession but poverty is not entrenched. This scenario is quite different to that experienced by children who are born onto a benefit and spend much of their childhood there.
More than one in five children in New Zealand will be dependent on a benefit by the end of their birth year. The percentage improves only slightly in good economic times and worsens during bad. Because of the rapidity of the recourse to welfare it can be no surprise to most of their parents that their child would be born into economically difficult circumstances.

Over the years these children accumulate in the child poverty statistics. As Treasury observes…"around 1 in 5 children will spend more than half of their first 14 years in  a household supported by a main benefit."  So what began as a fifth of all children born in any given year extends out to become at fifth of all children at any given time.
This phenomenon is the main contributor to New Zealand's much publicised child poverty problem. The results of this reproductive pattern of behaviour get discussed broadly, but the behaviour itself is largely ignored. The misdiagnosis of the child poverty affliction leads to the wrong treatment, or at least calls for the wrong treatment.
For instance, in 2011 Labour and the Greens both proposed increasing welfare payments by paying the In Work Tax Credit to beneficiary parents. This would produce a short-term effect of increasing incomes but risks drawing more children onto welfare as the gap between wages and benefits, already very narrow, becomes non-existent. Internationally, attempting to reduce poverty via the benefit system has been shown to increase the number of workless households. The solution to child poverty is not increasing the number of children dependent on the state.
The current government has taken steps to discourage people from viewing a sole parent benefit as a legitimate alternative source of income to employment. It needs to go further by setting clear time limits and re-framing welfare as emergency assistance. It is nevertheless on a better track towards reducing child poverty than any proposed by the potential alternative government.
Trying to achieve economic, and arguably even more important, emotional security for children through the benefit system is like trying to get rich playing the pokies. It's never going to happen.

Teaching lies

Yesterday Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei gave a speech about child poverty. It was interspersed with animated clips. Here's an example:

(Animation: three children discuss the economic system “So what’s happening with all our money?” “We’re giving it to the government and they’re giving it to the rich people.” “And they’re spending it on stuff they don’t need.”)

Children get their ideas from somewhere. Hard to believe this was just one of those overheard unscripted quirky conversations children have.

It's pretty appalling to imagine adults teaching and prompting these lines for the camera.

But the Greens have never been above using children to buy votes.

The truth about NCEA

Dale Carnegie, the head of Engineering at Victoria University, writes in the NZ Herald about the consequences of NCEA. I don't want to politicise this particularly but I was dead against NCEA. In 2002  NCEA opposition was one of ACT's main policy planks. I recall putting up the large billboards around the Hutt South. My main concern was that it would dumb down or de-motivate bright kids. That the grading was just too broad. My child is currently practising for Level One next year. She comes home with grade and  remark, "Excellence, but if you'd done so and so you'd get a stronger excellence."  But there is no 'stronger excellence'. So why bother to go the extra mile.

Anyway, here's Mr Carnegie's thoughts on the matter:

NCEA has been successful in many areas, especially keeping students in school longer. However it is very clear from our research that for very many students NCEA is not effectively preparing them for engineering study at university.
Our research over a large number of first-year engineering students reveals a systemic problem with the concept of the "achieved" NCEA grade. This grade spans a huge range - it can include excellence-level students who have made some minor errors, through to students who really have not gained competence in the material. Many potentially capable students report that they just "cruised through NCEA" knowing they would be able to obtain the achieved grade with minimal work. A failed assessment is "no big deal"as often they get to re-sit that assessment. When they take that work ethic and expectation into University study, they are in trouble. The result is that there is significant variability in "achieved-level" students' study habits, work ethic and subsequently, actual subject knowledge.
Compounding this issue, we are aware of secondary schools that actively discourage students who have only gained an achieved grade in mathematics at NCEA Level 2 from enrolling in that subject at Level 3. This seems to be due to a concern that those students might fail, with a consequential adverse effect on that school's league table standings. This removes many potential students from even being able to consider enrolment in engineering.
At the core of the problem is the lack of a real, meaningful grade. I advocate for a return to real percentage scores - these motivate students to improve themselves, to gain the best score they can. It would end the farce of excellent students receiving an achieved grade due to one or two minor mistakes. It would give the universities a real understanding of student ability.

ACT's opportunity

Casting around for something meaningful to say about John Banks and the prospects of ACT in the future, I came across this on Scoop:

ACT on Campus thanks John Banks, looks to future

Wednesday, 4 December 2013, 8:43 pm
Press Release: ACT On Campus ACT on Campus thanks John Banks, looks to future

ACT on Campus President Taylor Warwood today thanked John Banks for his contribution to ACT in the past two years.
"John Banks has worked tirelessly in and out of parliament to achieve valuable goals. He has successfully overseen the introduction of Partnership Schools legislation, and has a voting record we in ACT on Campus can be proud of," said Mr Warwood.
"In particular, we thank him for his support of marriage equality, keeping the drinking age 18, and opposing the testing of party pills on animals.
"John is a politician of true integrity who cares about New Zealand. It will be sad to see him go.
"However, ACT is more than just John Banks. The party now has an exciting opportunity to rejuvenate itself, and we will welcome attention being refocused onto ACT's many potential candidates.
"ACT on Campus will play an active role in the selection of candidates and we welcome other young liberal kiwis to join us in this process."

Whoever wrote that, take a bow. It's honest, it identifies concretes instead of employing woolly platitudes and most importantly, reaffirms ACT's liberal credentials.

With the advent of the Conservative Party, ACT no longer needs to cast its net in that direction.

I really do see Bank's retirement as an opportunity, but like ACT on Campus, would  like to sincerely thank him for his animal welfare advocacy.

Education rating incongruities

Only recently the Legatum Institute rated NZ Number 1 in the world in education rankings.

They base their analysis on things like teacher/pupil ratio, enrolment and perceptions about the education system. Matters that governments can control. They do not appear to rate by individual achievement or performance.

The OECD measures the actual performance of students by testing 4,000 and delivers a different result. NZ is slipping in Maths, English and Science. Although the rankings could fairly be described as "plummeting" the absolute scores haven't dropped radically.

I heard one commentator talking about the worsening results being down to the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer." But the one trend that is 'up' is achievement by immigrant students. If immigrant students generally fall into lower income groups (I am making that assumption but could be wrong) then that doesn't stack up.

Another incongruity arises too. The OECD report apparently finds the gap between achievers and non-achievers is larger than any other country. Maori have traditionally featured disproportionately among the non-achievers.

Yet yesterday Census 2013 results found,

Over 36,000 Māori stated a bachelor’s degree or higher as their highest qualification at the 2013 Census – a more than 50 percent increase since 2006.

It's difficult to square all of this up.

Welfare checks de ja vu

MSD are apparently going to begin "home visits" to sole parent support beneficiaries to check whether they are indeed single.

But they intend conducting them 14 weeks after application. So only new applicants are scrutinised? 14 months or 14 years after any application would probably reveal more fraud.

In any case even if they find the beneficiary is living with a partner there are a number of ways she can challenge having her benefit stopped. Just read up on the Ruka Ruling in the MSD manual.

I don't particularly like this state snooping stuff (but can accept the legitimacy of it). It's been done before in 1980 under George Gair, a National Minister and sparked outrage then, with an Evening Post headline, BENEFIT CHECKERS DENY 'GESTAPO' TAG.

Here's the thing. If the benefit was strictly time-limited, if everybody had clear expectations that the degree and amount of assistance was tightly controlled and not open-ended (it effectively remains so despite the reforms) then the need to police welfare in this manner would disappear.

And Sue Moroney makes an utterly redundant comment:

But Labour social development spokeswoman Sue Moroney said the visits would be "complete overkill", levelling suspicion at people who had done nothing wrong. "If only they would put their money into putting people into paid employment, rather than bringing in the thought police," she said.

The "thought police"? What has freedom of speech and expression got to do with people defrauding the taxpayer? MSD aren't checking if beneficiaries are thinking about fraud; they are checking whether they are committig it.

Update: More de ja vu regarding "home visits". I was just reflecting on the following which I wrote some years ago:


The Ministry of Social Development’s procedural policy requires staff home visits to beneficiaries be in pairs due to security concerns.  During 2001/02 however, an experimental project involved unaccompanied home visits to discourage the pursuit of a benefit application.  On this occasion, staff members were trained to use cell phones for security, not make home visits out of cell phone range and to leave the property at the first sign of danger.  Some case managers declined to participate.
Source: 

Evaluation of Avenues: A Pilot of a Modified Domestic Purposes Benefit-Sole parent Application Process, Ministry of Social Development, June 2003

Who is Labour targetting?

This piece of personally addressed  electioneering material arrived in my letterbox today. Mrs Lindsay Mitchell was the only voter in this household to receive one. Makes me wonder about a number of things.

1/ Why does the text begin, "Most New Zealanders don't want assets like power companies sold off..." when they are asking me to vote in a referendum designed specifically to find out if Most New Zealanders don't want assets like power companies sold off... 

2/ Why did they put up the postshop/kiwibank locator web address to help me "find a post office or box near you"? What moron doesn't know where the nearest post box is? Or is this just subliminal messaging about kiwibank and its connection to Labour?

3/ Why has Labour left it until after many people will have already received and returned their voting papers to embark on this exercise?

4/ Why was I selected from the electoral roll?

5/ Was it purely random or do they have a target group?

6/ The message doubles as a recruitment drive for Labour so again, how are they profiling targets?

7/ Does Labour think older married women will be particularly receptive to their advances (oh look the little wife got  mail in her own right?) and have they given up commuicating to men?

8/ Have I simply found my way onto one of their databases because I am politically active?

Too late Labour. Voted 'yes' over a week ago.

Dealing with propaganda

The Child Poverty Action Group recently re-released this scatter plot (amended at the y axis after I pointed out their ealier calculation error) depicting the percentage of child abuse in each CYF site office against the rate of benefit dependency in each site office area.

Along the x axis they plotted, "% income-tested beneficiaries in the total estimated population". I argued with them that they should have used income-tested beneficiaries with dependent children if attempting to assess any association between child abuse and benefit dependency. Including everyone on an unemployment, sickness and invalid benefit would skew the result in my view.

To make my point I requested the relevant data from MSD.

Here's the result.

Below, in the first graph, I have used the CPAG data (available at their appendices) and recreated their scatter plot (the pattern is naturally identical to the one above).

In the second graph I have used the same CPAG data for child abuse (Y axis) but entered the new income-tested beneficiary with dependent children as a percentage of the 18-64 year-old population data (X axis).

As expected the correlation has strengthened markedly.

CPAG has tried very hard to downplay the association between child abuse and benefit dependency going so far as to state in the same report, "The data suggests there is no correlation between benefit receipt and child maltreatment." (p2)

Make your own mind up.

But also ask yourself why they would do this.

CPAG believes that children are poor because benefit payment rates are too low. They cannot accept there is anything inherently problematic with being on a benefit long-term barring children don't receive enough income from the state. If the public starts to believe that benefit dependency is a significant risk for children then CPAG is in trouble. And so are the electoral chances of the Greens and Labour, both promoting higher benefits.

NewstalkZB tomorrow

On NewstalkZB tomorrow after the 10am news with Justin du Fresne talking about welfare, social issues and the stuff I generally blog about.

Another good graphic from Statistics NZ

Another good graphic from Stats NZ showing how much we are spending on certain commodities when comparing 1974 with 2013:

Click here for enlarged view