NBR keeps Xero on the hook

The world of business is foreign to me. When I first read about Xero I had no idea what kind of animal it was and had to ask Google.

Long time supporter of Dave Henderson, Rodney Hide (with friends like that you can afford enemies) has been chronicling his own and Henderson's wife's investigation by the state by stint of running businesses and being related by friendship or marriage to Mr Henderson. It's appalling.

The managing director of Xero is not covering himself in glory. First Xero denied divulging Henderson's wife's business data to the Official Assignee, than admitted they had been directed not to inform the owner of the information.

Even those who cleave to the axiom nothing to hide, nothing to fear should be repulsed and angered by this ability of the state to commandeer private information.

(Left click to enlarge)

Quote of the Day

The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.

– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Religion [1776]

Hat-tip FFF

Don't tell me what to do about the flag

Since childhood I've resented being told what I think or should think. If the opinion piece in today's NZ Herald is aimed at changing minds (and changing the flag)  it's a great big fail for me. It touched that resentful nerve:

Admit it, the ballot paper is still sitting on the sideboard while you wonder what to do. 

No it isn't. It's been binned.

 One or two of those designs are clearly better than the others.

Really? Isn't that a matter of subjective taste? Yet the writer (arrogantly) thinks his or her selection is superior.

 ... to ignore the ballot paper increases the risk of ending up with a flag we really dislike.

How exactly?

 When the Commonwealth leaders gathered at the weekend, very few flags outside their conference venue featured the Union Jack. It is only a matter of time before we remove it from ours. We might not be excited by the alternatives but we need one.

Or perhaps we'll be the last with it on the flag. Perhaps Australia should change theirs. Perhaps changing their flag should be made a forcible outcome for the loser of the next Rugby World Cup. That's only as silly as the current process has been.

 Please vote.

I will. In the next stage.

Graph of the day

Many countries which fared far worse during the GFC would envy that household income line.

(Looking at the tables, the gap in income to housing costs ratios is growing between Auckland and the rest of the country, and largely driving up the steep rise in the bottom line. The difference in ratio in 2007, between Auckland and the rest of the North Island was only 1.4 points. Now it is 4.1 points -though the numbers are somewhat volatile.)

Source Household Economic Survey.

Using police as arbiters of family disputes

Here's a familiar statement from today's NZ Herald:

Statistics show New Zealand has the highest rate of intimate partner violence in the OECD and on average police respond to a family violence incident every five minutes.

Do the maths. That's just over 105,000 'incidents' annually.

But here are some other stats to lay alongside.

Annual imprisonments for:

Acts intending to cause injury - 1,387
Sexual assault and related offences - 434
Dangerous or negligent acts endangering persons - 77
Homicide and related offences - 50
Abduction, harassment and other offences against the person - 189

All of the above might result from family violence incidents. I have purposefully gone to the other extreme ie the worst offences as demonstrated by an imprisonment outcome.

So a maximum of 2,137 men and women are imprisoned due to family violence incidents.

I understand that many many more will be charged and prosecuted and sentenced to lesser punishments but my thesis remains (as it does with child abuse and neglect statistics).

A good chunk of the calls to police represent individuals resorting to authority arbitration and administration of family disputes. As people have increasingly become dependent on the 'benevolent' welfare state so they have lost the initiative and intelligence to sort their own shit out.

High unemployment decides election outcomes?

Mike Hosking had a piece in the NZ Herald suggesting that National will be in trouble in 2017 if unemployment is over 6 percent.

He may be right. Below are the last four changes of government and what was happening with the unemployment rates at the time. Govt change happens when unemployment is 'relatively' high and trending up. The only exception on the trend was when National lost in 1999, but the downward trend was very slow and patchy through out the second half of the 1990s:



26 July 1984  (NA by current measurement but unemployment benefit numbers rising with a bullet)
2 November 1990    8%      trending up
10 December 1999  6.8%   trending down
19 November 2008  6.3%    trending up

"Won't someone please think of the childless?"

So said "libertarian" senator David Leyonhjelm from NSW supporting legislation to remove welfare from parents who won't immunise their children.

The central issue aside, what a difference to NZ discourse:

"To the childless people of Australia, I want to say, on behalf of this Parliament, thank you for being childless.
"You work for more years and become more productive than the rest of Australia. You pay thousands and thousands of dollars more tax than other Australians. You get next to no welfare ...
"But you pay when other people get pregnant, you pay when they give birth, you pay when they stay at home to look after their offspring ..." Senator Leyonhjelm said.
The Liberal Democrat said that he was sorry than instead of receiving thanks, Australians without children were "often ignored, pitied, considered strange, or even thought of as irresponsible".
"For your sake, I hope the children you are forced to support don't end up as juvenile delinquents, and I hope that they get immunised so that you don't end up getting sick. Because you'll pay then, too." 

I suppose the immediate objection is that a "libertarian" senator would not support the state forcing parents to immunise their children. But the state isn't. It is withdrawing other people's money from those who refuse to.

Further dumbing-down at RadioLive

The only remaining reason I listen to RadioLive is disappearing.

Veteran broadcaster Sean Plunket has been axed from RadioLive's morning talkback show – and it is believed he could be replaced by long-time colleague Mark Sainsbury.

When MediaWorks sacked John Tamihere they killed the intellectual bite from the afternoon show. Now they are going to purge the pithy wit and humour that is Plunket.

Just what sort of audience they are seeking is a mystery to me. That stands to reason though, because I'm not it.

I wish I'd never read this

Don't read this story of child abuse and murder if you don't want to start your day depressed.

Throughout I felt angry until the last line:

It is understood she has now had a baby with a new partner since her release from prison.

Then I just felt very sad.

Remember this one next time you hear some feminist bleeding-heart lecturing about the sanctity of female reproductive rights.

DomPost at it again

The DomPost is a highly manipulative paper. If they publish a piece that is in conflict with their own editorial viewpoint some trick will be employed to twist it.

Today's prime example is the appearance of this headline in BusinessDay:

Living wage good for singles


Naturally I look first for the author. Eric Crampton. Well there is no way Eric Crampton would be plumping for the living wage.

The guts of his column deals with how the living wage is not an effective tool for lifting the living standards of those with dependent families because of the commensurate loss of WFF assistance. The majority of council workers are not supporting families so the living wage fails in targeting those most in need. He says central govt is better placed to design income support via the tax system. He then works through some of the negative but "logical" effects of the WCC imposing the living wage on contractors (ruling pending in the courts).

The implication can be drawn that the living wage is good for singles despite not helping the partnered-with-children.

But is isn't good for the ratepayers (everyone directly or indirectly, including singles) if it leads to "higher rates, fewer services, or more debt" .

It also won't be good for singles, particularly the young, if it drives up unemployment.

KidsCan talk up a problem they can't solve

A brief piece in today's DomPost describes how a "crisis" at KidsCan is leading to nearly 600 Wellington school children going without "basic healthcare, food and clothing from the charity".

Chapman said it cost about $8000 a child each year to provide the support. 

That is a staggering sum which poses the question, how much does it take to operate KidsCan?

The report then goes on to say that 260,000 children are living in poverty; 180,000 children are living without the basic needs of food, clothing and warmth.

To attend to all the need, KidsCan would require over $2 billion.

No wonder they had to get into the business of child sponsorship. Unfortunately they have over-promised and under-delivered. Which says something about what potential donors think about the cause.

I'll stick with funding the most-basic education of a  Nigerian child whose family is being provided with a hygienic toilet to prevent sickness and death.

"...being a beneficiary is a type of servitude"

Over a month ago I wrote about Tuhoe's desire to be paid out benefit money up front to invest in job creation. Today the NZ Herald has finally written about it. 

This post is simply to draw attention to a stunning statement from Tamati Kruger. He echoes what I and many others have come to believe. It's long been behind my opposition to welfare. I've hated being labelled a' beneficiary basher' for attacking welfare, though you can get used to anything. A white middle-class, middle-aged woman presents an obvious target for derision and denigration, but how does the leftist, pro-welfare lobby deal with the same expression of frustration when it comes from the heart of a subjugated community?

Tuhoe chief executive Kirsti Luke said a majority of Tuhoe people in that area were on benefits, and tribal leader Tamati Kruger said the iwi aimed to change that.
"We are declaring war on dependency," Mr Kruger said. "Our motivation is that if we want to be a vibrant people, to be a productive people who live up to their beliefs and to their faith as to what life is all about, and the honour that has to be part of humanity, then this is clearly what we have to overcome - because being a beneficiary is a type of servitude."

If best attack is hypocritical statistical manipulation, Labour's stuffed

From Question time today:

Grant Robertson: Is it correct that the 46,000 long-term unemployed is the highest level since 1999, other than two quarters in 2012?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would certainly want to investigate the number, because, as the member will be aware, in the welfare reform process there has been a lot of reclassification of people, and the product of that reclassification is that a lot more people are now regarded as available for work. They used to languish on the sickness benefit under the Labour Government, which decided they were hopeless and gave up on them. We do not give up on people like that. Even if they cannot get a job immediately, we try to help them get ready to get a job.

It was National that put a definition on "long-term" unemployed. In fact, long-term on any benefit was defined as 1 year plus.

There were 65,652 Jobseeker claimants who had been on a benefit for more than a year at September 2015. A substantial drop from 82,006 in September 2010.

Labour never officially defined long-term dependence on a benefit. Not until Robertson - in Opposition - decided it was 26 weeks or more....well, at least for the unemployment benefit.

Chris Trotter's feminist phonyism

Pompous prat Chris Trotter is parading his feminist solidarity by scolding Michelle Boag for not exhorting National women MPs to join the parliament walk-out earlier this week.

It's a feeble, non-factual play from the willfully ignorant Marxist.

Rather than pouring scorn on the women from the Opposition, Boag should have been upbraiding her sisters in the National Party for not having the courage to join the Opposition women’s protest. Then again, perhaps the National women were happy to go along with their party leader’s cynical exploitation of such emotionally-charged words as “rapist”, “murderer” and “child-molester” to distract the nation from their government’s failure to adequately defend the rights of New Zealanders detained in Australia’s concentration camps.
Perhaps, if New Zealand was blessed with a Women’s Minister who was happy to describe herself as a feminist, a mass walk-out of all women MPs might have been the result. Perhaps, if the last two Ministers for Social Development, both of them women, had been willing to educate their male colleagues about the endless, wearing, anxiety of being a woman without resources or influence, with two or three children to house, feed, educate and keep healthy on a Sole Parent Support benefit of $295.37 per week, there would have been no need.

This idiot arrogantly calls for "male" National MPs to be "educated", yet can't even educate himself.

The income he cites as causing "endless, wearing, anxiety" is under half of the actual average income a sole parent receives.

Not a sentence he writes is worth serious consideration when the substance behind them is so wanting.

Desperate to be victims

Several female opposition MPs declared that they are victims of sexual abuse, presumably to stake their credentials for a parliament walk-out today.

The day I declare myself a victim is the day I lose control of my life.

These are not "courageous" women. They are politicians doing what politicians do best - theatre.

How beneficiaries have experienced the welfare reforms

Left-wing beneficiary advocates have constantly criticised the use of sanctions (cuts to benefit payments)  to enforce work and social obligations. The CPAG has written entire papers about them. (Even Carmel Sepuloni jumps on the band wagon periodically despite Labour being the government that instigated the regime.)

Here's a typical example:

 Lisa Woolley, the president of the Council of Christian Social Services, said the numbers were shocking.
She said the first thing to go when budgets were cut was food, but some may also be struggling with rent, which could lead to overcrowding.
"The impact on the health for children on overcrowding is huge and also when you think of the children being moved from house to house, it's their education that gets impacted," she said.

MSD has now conducted some  qualitative research into how beneficiaries have perceived and experienced the welfare reforms. From the findings comes this:

Clients who had been sanctioned said the experience had encouraged them to swiftly visit their case manager, and had not impacted on their wellbeing
The few clients interviewed who said that they had been sanctioned reported that they had quickly fulfilled Work and Income requirements to restore their benefits.
While they did not feel that the sanctions had impacted their work search or their wellbeing, receiving notice of the sanction had encouraged a swift visit to their case manager.[My emphasis]

Granted the sample is very small. "Only five of the 140 clients spoken to in the evaluation remembered having their benefit suspended or reduced." But their actual experience is counter to the what anti-reformists want us to believe.

Generally, the overall responses are a mixed bag. There are misconceptions about changes (formed by listening to the media apparently), and adherence to old benefit names. However, a broad understanding that there's a much stronger emphasis on finding work has developed.

If your views of WINZ were formed solely on the negativity pushed by the left, the positivism and even appreciation among interviewees would surprise. The over-riding impression I am left with though is the case manager relationship is all important to beneficiaries experience of  and attitude to the reforms. The beneficiaries take on the reforms should not be discounted or downplayed. There is wisdom in the old adage, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. I am a great believer in persuasion over force.

Little shows how well-qualified for the job he is

Politicians in particular are creatures who use statistics to suit their own purposes. They have no compunction in spinning the worst scenarios when in opposition and Andrew Little is right up there.

According to the NZ Herald:

[Little] said 305,000 children were living in poverty.

He selected the highest number he could find. Technically speaking, in 2014 there were 305,000 children living in homes that were below 60 percent of the median equivalised household income after housing costs as measured by 'moving line'.

But you can bet that if Labour ever regains power they will very quickly start looking for the smallest numbers they can find. For instance 90,000 children are living in  households experiencing severe material hardship as measured by European Union standards.

Selfies illustrate how wealthy we all are

The latest expose of unequal wealth accumulation by Max Rashbrooke has the NZ Herald featuring photo shots of John Key's son Max and some other girl I've never heard of.

Wealth inequality is driving us back to the days of Victorian England, argues a new book which exposes the rise of the rich kid club.

The journalist continues:

Decadent lifestyles shown by social ­media's young elite have echoes of portraiture from the 18th century, says Rashbrooke.

As oil painters once sought to show off a subject's prestige, now selfies - where youth snap their Bollinger receipts - have the same ­effect of implying status and are in stark contrast to the austerity being forced on most of the West's economies.

Before photography only the very rich could commission oil renditions of family.Today the ability to take selfies extends  across society and wonderfully illustrates how much wealthier we all are. What those selfies portray is another matter....

But the facility to record all and sundry for posterity is nevertheless available to each and every New Zealander.

We've come a long way from Victorian England and we aren't heading back there.

Only sensible policy swapped for sugar showdown

The NZ Herald reports,

The Labour Party has officially dumped its policies to .... raise the retirement age.

Little says it sent the wrong message to people physically unable to work past 65.

Without a doubt those people are in a minority. Policy should be made for the majority and outliers dealt with differently. Someone physically and indefinitely unable to work currently goes on a Supported Living payment. Joining National in this stubborn adherence to Super entitlement at 65 has removed one of  Labour's major points of difference.

Meantime,

 The Labour Party will make food manufacturers reduce the sugar content of processed food and use prominent labels listing how many teaspoons of sugar and salt was in a product.
Labour's health minister Annette King set out the anti-obesity policy at the party's annual conference in Palmerston North today.
She said the Government's recent obesity package was a "feeble attempt" at addressing the problem.

Labour cannot beat John Key (and the National govt, which runs a distance behind the leader in popularity) by doing what he does better. And it seems unable to sufficiently differentiate itself with alternative ideas.

This situation highlights why politics gets in the way of good governance. In trying to win a popularity contest, the difficult calls are not made. Then, when the harder- to- swallow policy is dropped, there's no impetus to measure  public support for it. It's not on the agenda so can be swept under the carpet yet again.

State housing - it's about choice, not need

The government is reducing the number of times a prospective tenant can turn down a property from 3 to 1.

It's also increasing stated location preferences from a minimum of one to three.

That it even has to do this proves state housing is frequently not about need. It's about choice.

Nearly 10,000 social housing offers were made last year and of those 3,453 were declined, with 414 for unacceptable reasons such as wanting a garage or a bigger back yard.

Primarily people want a state house because they are cheaper than private rentals. Social agencies and budgeting organisations know this and work with the client to facilitate acquisition of state rentals.

There is an old adage "beggars can't be choosers" which means people with no other options must be content with what is offered.

They are not content because they have other options.

Yet this compromising centrist government still gets the jelly wobbles:

Under the changes people who refuse a property without a good reason may be removed from the social housing register for 13 weeks.

Why not much longer or permanently? The door is always left open to those who would play the system.