Graph of the Day

Very informative piece in DomPost today by Justin Stevenson regarding the forthcoming Well-Being Budget argues we actually need to focus more on GDP and featured this graph:

Is it any wonder beneficiaries prioritise tobacco and alcohol

Stats NZ have provided interactive data that shows expenditures on 12 items in a variety of households.

Spending on alcohol and tobacco rates 4th highest in beneficiary households. No other household has a rating this high.

In absolute terms most other household types are spending more on alcohol and tobacco but it's lower down the list of items usually appearing 6th or 7th.

The other stand-out obviously is housing. All households bar the highest income/expenditure have housing as their number one cost - even Superannuitants, which is a worry. But the graph above has a pattern unlike any other in that all of the expenditures are close to the left (bar food) with housing hard to the right. Note the vast difference when compared to the highest income group:

Going back to the problem of housing making poor people poorer, look at the change for beneficiaries since 2008:

If I was on a benefit under this scenario I'd be prioritizing alcohol and tobacco too (notwithstanding rising accommodation supplement is meeting some of the increased housing cost).

The housing market is in a real mess. And it happened under a National government. After Labour set up the stifling regulations.

Silly Simon

Simon Bridges is making himself sound silly over the slushy 'scandal'. How much time (taxpayer money) did his staff spend digging up this dirt to throw at Corrections' Minister, Kelvin Davis, who sounds like a man with gravitas for a change?

It just makes me question Bridge's judgement even more. What goes on in his head?

For instance the prison population is on the rise again, despite Labour's pledge to reduce it; despite the Justice Summit which did cost a truckload and seems to have delivered little. Corrections says  a backlog of criminals due to be processed caused the rise. Why a backlog? Justice delayed is not justice. There are a myriad of serious questions the leader of the opposition could be asking but he picks the petty.

Youth Payments increase by 88.9%

That was sneaky. The March benefit statistics were due out last week. But they were never posted on the front page of the website. If you didn't know where to look, you would never find them.

I do and there they are.

All bad news.

Because the quarters fluctuate it is vitally important to compare year on year to get an accurate picture.

So amidst the glaring shortages of workers eg bus drivers, that are crippling services there has been an almost 11 percent increase in numbers of unemployed. Worse, those jobseekers classified as 'work ready' have risen by 14.5 percent.

While the base number is low Youth Payment has risen a staggering 88.9% from 126 to 238.

There are just 6 fewer sole parent beneficiaries putting the brakes on that downward trend. The same can be said for the ex invalid benefit, now SLP, where there has been a very small increase.

What this illustrates is how the benefit system had now evolved into a bona fide, state-sanctioned alternative to employment for too many. (Recall my earlier post that showed 75% of those in the Growing Up in New Zealand study receiving a sole parent benefit said they had partners.)

It isn't kind or compassionate to admit more young people into a system that traps them and saps any ambition they may otherwise have held. It's just a waste.

Ardern's no Lange

Currently reading David Lange's memoirs, I am reflecting on how different the two Prime Ministers

are. When Roger Douglas had almost unanimous caucus support for a flat tax (Lange: When it came to the crunch only Cullen and I opposed - "Dear God! What a terrible lot of people they were!") he unilaterally scuppered it by announcing an unscheduled press conference and telling the country there would be no flat tax. He'd said nothing beforehand to Douglas who was out of the country, or the rest of the caucus. He put his Prime Minister-ship on the line for his convictions.

If Ardern was as convinced about the CGT (another ideological economic device) she'd take it to the next election and set about right now trying to convince New Zealanders of its merits.

"Jacinda Ardern's economics of blindness": David Seymour

ACT MP David Seymour writes at Magic Talk:

Would you live in a country in which the average age at death is 45, few children attend secondary school, and most people don’t have access to a telephone or electricity?
Sounds awful, right? That was New Zealand in 1913. The difference between then and now is productivity.
Paul Krugman – a Nobel Prize-winning, left-wing economist – once wrote that “Productivity isn't everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.”
Most serious economists would agree. 

More 

Media Release: Widespread benefit fraud identified by Auckland University

Widespread benefit fraud identified by Auckland University

April 11, 2019

Lindsay Mitchell, Welfare commentator and researcher

Widespread benefit fraud has been identified by the Auckland University of Technology in research published yesterday by the Ministry of Social Development.

For a number of years, and on a number of occasions, I have questioned the longitudinal Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) data because the level of reported sole parenthood does not match the reported national level. In new research by AUT the authors have made similar observations:

"A weakness of the GUiNZ data is that it may not be population representative and is not linked to administrative data.... Overall, 95% of GUiNZ children are born to mothers who are partnered. The GUiNZ sample seems to have low sole-parent status compared to a 2009 study that found one-third of families with dependent children were headed by sole-parents (Ministry of Social
Development, 2010). This could be because being partnered in the GUiNZ data is not the same as their domestic-purposes benefit status, from which partnership status is inferred by other studies. We find that 70% of those who say they receive the domestic-purposes benefit also answer yes to the question of whether they have a partner – confirming that the sole-parent status derived from GUiNZ is essentially different to those studies which rely on benefit status to infer partnership status." (My emphasis)

Work and Income rules state:

You may get Sole Parent Support if you are:
-aged 20 or older
-a single parent or caregiver with one or more dependent children under 14
-not in a relationship
-without adequate financial support

Claiming a sole parent benefit while partnered is illegal. Based on these new findings the practice may be widespread. It appears however to be tolerated.

The government is currently sitting on the completed Expert Welfare Advisory Group report. It is to be hoped that benefit fraud and better policy to prevent it, will form part of the ensuing discussion.

There are no fathers now - just 'partners' of mothers

Are you a Dad? Do you want to be known as the father of your child or just the 'partner' of his mother?

Research released today by MSD into protective factors for vulnerable children based on the longitudinal Growing Up in NZ study refers only to mothers and partners, not mothers and fathers.

Fathers are only referred to in token reference to overseas research. Barely at all.

There is a huge irony in play here. I doubt the researchers noticed.

Stephen Franks nails it

Stephen Franks utterly nails it using gun control to illustrate how unknowingly incompetent the current crop is:

A general problem when censorious children are elected to govern
I see this issue as yet another where the urban ‘woke’ have utterly tin ears.
New Zealand has avoided many irreconcilable political fights over competing values. Now an ignorant generation are looking for ways to anger their opponents by deliberately kicking  sleeping dogs. Wise politicians pick no unnecessary fights that focus people on differences instead of on values they share.
Gun law has not been a tribal political issue here. My Select Committee 17 years ago reached a cross party consensus. But it is a badging issue in the US. So our “progressives” start the same chants to ape their US betters. They want to stick it to gun owners to show who is in charge – to anger “deplorables”. Whether the changes have any connection to a problem or a solution is immaterial to them. It is not so much ‘virtue signalling’ as IFF – identifying friend from foe.
From the same impulse they are trashing our 50 year old tacit deal  on abortion (‘we’ll pretend we have a law against abortion and leave the issue alone, if you too pretend the same”).
They look for any issue they can to stick the coercive state’s fat finger up the nose  of Christians – while excusing the ghastliness of Islamism, again to ape their US models.
They ended charter schools out of similar vindictiveness, thereby ensuring that whatever Hipkins does now in education will be reversed when he loses power.
And on free speech and so called non-binary gender and many other ‘me too’ (in its original sense) progressive causes their language, their solutions and their reasons are entirely derivative.
A consolation is that they are cementing their distance from the ordinary working people they have long scorned but claimed as the objects of their sanctimonious “altruism”.

Why child poverty claims are all over the place

MSD has helpfully produced a table that shows the extreme variability of official child poverty measures:

Depending on what political barrow is being pushed, the highest or lowest number can be selected.

The highest number - 341,000 - represents children living in homes under 60% of the median equivalised household income after housing costs. The lowest number - 65,000 - represents children living in severe material hardship experiencing eight or more specific deprivations.

Of interest the higher number has increased recently; the lower has decreased calling into question the relationship between the two.

The paper usefully goes on to point out:

Are all children in low-income households experiencing material hardship?
• No.
• The overlap between those in low-income households and those experiencing material hardship is considerably less than 100%, and the actual overlap depends on the measures being compared.

So next time you hear UNICEF for instance talking about one in three children in Aoteroa living in poverty you'll have some context to make sense of the claim.

Violence against women - some balance

Yesterday I received a press release from the White Ribbon Campaign containing the following statistics:

 KEY STATISTICS
·         New Zealand has the highest rate of reported violence towards women in the developed world
·         Police investigated 118,910 family violence incidents in 2016 or about one every five minutes
·         That’s 41% of a front line officer’s time
·         One in three women will experience partner violence at some point in their lives
·         Less than 20 percent of abuse cases are reported
·         Approximately 3,500 convictions are recorded against men each year for assaults on women
·         On average, 14 women a year are killed by their partners or ex-partners
·         Between 2009 and 2015, there were 92 IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) deaths. In 98% of death events where there was a recorded history of abuse, women were the primary victim, abused by their male partner.
 

 For balance here are some further statistics from the most recent 2018 Crime Victimization Survey:

The survey estimates that 16 percent of adults experienced one or more incidents of partner violence at some point during their lives. Women (21 percent) were more likely than men (10 percent) to have experienced one or more incidents of partner violence at some point during their lives.

21 percent is considerably lower than "one in three" so perhaps matters are improving. The correct expression of these percentages  should be one in five women and one in ten men.

 The survey also estimates that 23 percent of adults experienced one or more incidents of
sexual violence at some point during their lives. Again, women (34 percent) were more likely than men (12 percent) to have experienced one or more incidents of sexual violence at some point during their lives

Here we are closer to the one in three claim but note the distinction between 'violence' and 'sexual violence'. And again men are also affected albeit to a lesser degree. Of course these numbers rely on personal subjectivity and the individual's idea of violence. There may be gender differences between perceptions and willingness to acknowledge.

From 2009 to 2015 the Family Violence Death Review  Committee reports

There were 91 intimate partner violence (IPV) death events
Of the 92 deceased and 92 offenders in IPV death events:
• 68 percent (63 deceased) were women and 32 percent (29 deceased) were men
• 76 percent (70 offenders) were men and 24 percent (22 offenders) were women.

Almost a quarter of the offenders were women. Most of the women offenders were considered to be the victim of a history of abuse, but not all. Some cases are described as 'perpetrators in combination' which accounted for 8% in the 2002-08 reporting period.

Based on the above (latest) data, by my calculations, 9 women a year are "killed by their partners or ex-partners". Not 14. Googling 14 turned up this from the Christchurch Women's refuge:

About half of all homicides in New Zealand are family violence. There were 41 family violence homicides in New Zealand in 2010/11. On average, 14 women, 7 men and 8 children are killed by a member of their family every year.

So that claim is based on older data. Statistics are improving then for both women and men.

As for NZ having the "highest rate of reported violence towards women in the developed world," deaths are usually a good indicator for levels of violence, reported or otherwise. I had a quick look across  the Tasman where, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 99 women (and 27 men) were killed by a current or previous partner between 2012/13 and 2013/14. 50 women on average annually versus 9 in New Zealand. With a population only five times larger than NZ's, Australia looks slightly worse.

Causes of Poverty: Bad luck, bad choices and enablement

The Canadian think-tank, the Fraser Institute has just released a paper which suggests an elegantly simple framework in finding three causes of poverty: bad luck, bad choices and enablement. The first two need no explanation. The third is described thus:

We can say that poverty is “enabled” when systems and structures are in place to discourage the kinds of efforts that people would normally make to avoid poverty, i.e., find employment, find a partner (especially if children are present), improve one’s education and skill set, have a positive outlook, and take personal responsibility for your own actions. Ironically, it is government programs (welfare, in particular) that are intended to help the poor but end up actually enabling poverty.

In NZ, many of our current influencers (MPs and media) pooh,pooh the idea that bad choices are responsible for poverty despite this being self-evident. They base their disdain for the idea on a belief that greater systems, for example institutional racism, drive bad choices. Of course when they do this they excuse bad choices and even compensate the person making them. Undoubtedly, most of those sitting on the Welfare Expert Advisory Group would hold views of his nature.

There are people who will resist the suggestion that poor people might be responsible for their own poverty. Isn’t this just another example of “blaming the victim”? Shouldn't we be looking for other causes? Isn’t poverty really a condition of bad luck and something that just happens to people rather than a situation in which people find themselves largely due to their own bad choices? People who take the former view aren’t really looking at the implications of their own beliefs. Were we to live in a world where no one could be held responsible for making bad decisions that adversely affect themselves (and others who depend on them), then no one would be responsible for harm and no one could be held to account for the harm they do. But that is not the world in which we all live and,
indeed, is not a world that anyone would want to live in. The fact is that we all make bad choices from time to time. No one is immune. However, there are some critical choices we can make that will greatly reduce the chance of our being poor. Poverty researchers have identified those critical choices and this paper has discussed them at great length. Those choices are: 1) Finish high school—at a minimum; 2) Get a full-time job; 3) Wait until you are married to have children; and 4) Limit the number of children you have to those you can afford. Each of those four is a choice. This is what Sawhill and Haskins mean when they talk about “playing by the rules.” These choices are not always the easiest path. Making them well often means that you have to take responsibility for your own life, have some degree of self-control, and do some longer-term thinking. But there is certainly a lot of help available: remedial programs for completing high school; employment centres, skill upgrades, and job search apps; and various kinds of birth control. The problem, of course, is that we have institutions that, while nominally intending to help the poor, actually enable bad choices and thereby end up enabling poverty. 

The author, Christopher Sarlo, Professor of Economics, Nipissing University concludes:

Anyone who cares about the poor and wants to eliminate this horrible predicament needs first to understand what causes poverty. This paper suggests that a useful framework for understanding poverty is to look at bad luck and bad choices as the proximate causes, and to enablement as the key explanation for persistent and enduring poverty. I argue that bad choices are the dominant initiating cause of poverty in countries like Canada and the US, and that state policies like welfare are the critical enablers of poverty. 

Ditto New Zealand.

Good on David Seymour...

... who isn't afraid to say:

"You do not defy terrorism and defend our democracy by throwing out democratic procedure such as parliamentary scrutiny and the public's right to submit in full, at the first sign of trouble...

"We're missing out on the opportunity to make better laws and have more details come to light about how we can do better..." 

"But we're also, symbolically, allowing the terrorist to achieve his goal and dishonouring the victims by changing New Zealand away from a place that has a sober law-making process with parliamentary scrutiny and public input, and rushing things through at the first sign of trouble.

"I don't think that's a good way to respond."

Neither do I.

A balance needs to be struck between emotion and reason. Unfortunately, though understandably, the balance is tipped too heavily towards the former right now.

A small voice also nags away at the back of my mind that would-be terrorists will only see this ban as a challenge not in the sense of a hurdle, but a provocation.

But even if this particular passage of law is the correct and popular action, will the next be? What about privacy and hate speech laws? Do we want controversial and wide-ranging legislation enacted in haste with minimal debate?

Immense caution is required about the precedent being set.

Two strongly contrasting views

When I think about Christchurch I imagine what it would feel like if one of those young men were my son and it reduces me. To write any words from outside of and about the mosque members grief feels disrespectful. But plenty are being written. And some are worthy.

Yesterday Chris Trotter spoke on radio saying New Zealanders must not beat themselves up over the Christchurch terror act. His analysis of what happened and how we should react is here:

What happened at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques was horrific, but it wasn’t our doing. As we begin the long journey towards recovery, it is vitally important that we keep that fact squarely before us. New Zealand is a good place. New Zealanders are good people. We are not responsible for Brenton Tarrant’s dreadful crime. This is not us.

Today Anne Salmond writing in the DomPost infers New Zealanders are responsible if only indirectly:

In the wake of this terrible tragedy, let's be honest, for once. White supremacy is a part of us, a dark power in the land....In its hard version, it's violent and hateful, spewing out curses, incarcerating young Māori in large numbers, denying them a decent education, homes and jobs, telling them they have no future, and are better off dead.....The Muslim community has suffered a terrible, heart-breaking loss, and it needs all our love and support. It is not the only group who are targeted by white supremacists, however, and there are more ways of killing and maiming people than with a gun.

Interestingly Chris Trotter predicted this sort of reaction:

 The Prime Minister will, doubtless, come under increasing pressure from angry and misguided persons to curtail the rights of New Zealanders articulating unpopular views concerning Maori-Pakeha relations, the Islamic religion, multiculturalism and immigration policy. In defence of the liberal-democratic values that Tarrant assaulted so violently, Jacinda should calmly resist all such calls. We must not allow the unanimity of our grief to be translated into a demand for unanimity of opinion.

I hope, in this instance, Trotter's pen is mightier than the sword.

The re-abuse of children in state care

One of the longstanding debates regarding the removal of children who have been abused or neglected is whether Maori children should be placed with whanau/ returned to their families versus removal elsewhere. So new data about the re-abuse of children who are already officially in state care is interesting from that perspective alone.

In the quarter to September 2018 there were 200 findings of physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect concerning 130 individuals. Fifty nine percent of children in state care are Maori but accounted for 71% of the abuse findings.

A majority of the re-abuse occurred in a family placement (family member) or return to family care (usually parent). Most (60%) of the re-abuse was physical.

Most of the physical abuse occurred in a family or return/remain home placement. Almost all of the neglect occurred in these two categories, and most of the emotional abuse. Only sexual abuse (19 findings) had a different pattern and over half of that had occurred when the child was away from care eg had absconded.

Based on these statistics the evidence for keeping children within the whanau is not great. BUT there are around 6,300 children in state care so 130 isn't a high proportion.

(At this Stuff link there are also stats to December 2018)

The day the music died

Michael Jackson's music has made me and millions of others happy over decades; indeed, over half a century. Whatever else is or isn't true, I know for a fact I will be poorer for not hearing his music.

But apart from my bias, some questions:

How is this new phenomenon of retrospective 'catalogue cleansing' to be administered?

With or without criminal conviction?

Based on what type of crime and determined by whom?

Forever? For how long?

Before or only after the offending occurred?

And what about associated composers and musicians who will suffer from royalty loss? Will they be compensated?

Should Jacinda tie the knot?

Interesting conclusion to a thoughtful column about the forthcoming "well-being budget" that essentially argues people should be making their own well-being choices with personalised saving accounts instead of the government deciding what is and isn't worth spending on:

Marriage, for example, has a large positive effect on wellbeing. So should our Prime Minister be cajoled into it? Citizens must be the ultimate decision-maker.

Nice one.

It has been proven repeatedly that marriage is generally good for people. But all we need there is some acknowledgement, not government interference to boost it.

The point made by the writer sees the PM hoisted by her own philosophical petard, nanny-statism.

My well-being is my business. Butt out Jacinda.

"Rape bias" as titled by NZ Herald

My 550 word opinion piece was too long for publication but a 100 word letter would be accommodated, I was told. The usual word limit for letters is 200.

What are they scared of?

What the Welfare Expert Advisory Group will recommend

Due to report back this week, here's a selection of what I believe the Welfare Expert Advisory Group will recommend:

1/ No more compulsion to name the father of a child dependent on a beneficiary. That's what scrapping the current penalty for not naming the father will mean. So expect the estimated cost of this move to be grossly under-estimated.

2/ Passing on child support to the beneficiary instead of keeping it to offset the cost of their benefit.

3/ Linking benefits to CPI and wage inflation (as per Super).

4/ Scrapping the 'additional child' conditions National imposed - ie work-testing the mother who adds a child to an existing benefit when that child turns one. They will justify this by showing the condition hasn't stopped people adding children anyway.

5/ Extending the In Work Tax Credit to other beneficiary parents. Perhaps it'll be named the Not In Work Tax Credit.

Then some possibilities:

5/ Scrapping the sanctions system.

6/ Lifting abatement rates to allow parents in particular to earn more without losing benefit component.

7/ Scrapping stand-downs which were introduced in the early 1990s

8/ Removing tax from benefits.

That last one is interesting. From memory Roger Douglas introduced taxation on benefits to solve a problem connected with people who work some of the year and are on benefit for the remainder. I can find reference to this as " a major package of tax reform that included the grossing up and taxation of welfare benefits" in October 1986.

(As an aside, in searching for information about the introduction of tax on benefits I came across this Tax Review report presented to Michael Cullen, then finance minister, in 2001. Searching capital gains resulted in the following, "We do not consider that New Zealand should adopt a general realisations-based capital gains tax. We do not believe that such a tax would make our tax system fairer and more efficient, nor do we believe that it would lower tax avoidance or raise substantial revenue that could be used to reduce rates. Instead, such a tax would increase the complexity and costs of our system.")

All of the above recommendations will cost a great deal and I wouldn't put it past the group to recommend lifting the super qualifying age as a means to afford more working-age welfare. I believe we should be lifting the age (as are the UK, Australia and the US) but not to pay for more welfare.

Remember that the welfare review is part of the coalition deal extracted by the Greens. The panel members are almost exclusively politically left. The public response, on the back of the controversial tax recommendations, will be most interesting.

On Jordan Peterson's 'rape' comments and the provocation of outrage

Regarding the views of Jordan Peterson, recently interviewed by NZ Herald journalist, Simon Wilson: "He's said several times it's wrong to believe the victim in rape cases.”

Without wishing to put words in Peterson’s mouth I expect he might have conveyed his intention better if the word ‘automatically’ had been inserted before ‘believe’.

And I suspect that Mr Peterson has talked about this issue on the back of feminist fixation with the issue of rape and consent. It is entirely pertinent to this country.

The message steadily gaining traction is, ‘No women laying a rape complaint must be disbelieved’. Prior to the 2014 election Labour wanted to shift the burden of proof of consent to the defendant.

In any event Labour did not win the 2014 election. But again in April 2017 Labour's sexual violence spokesperson, Mrs Poto Williams called for “…radical reform of the sexual justice system which would see rape accusers believed by police as a starting point.”

This would invert the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

Naturally Peterson would oppose this idea. We all should. The whole point of the justice system is to fathom out the facts and respond accordingly.

To further explain his position he also makes mention of the high number of false rape complaints that occur. There have been numerous examples in New Zealand. Reports from the mid-2000s suggested police put the level of false rape complaints as high as 60-80 percent. The Peter Ellis organization documents many. Not content with second-hand information, I wrote to the New Zealand Police in 2008 asking for statistics relating to false rape allegations. Their response:

“Police record statistics under the offence “False Statement/Declaration Etc”. However, these statistics do not distinguish/identify the nature of the false complaint e.g. ‘Rape’….official statistics for what you have requested do not exist.”

Hit a brick wall there. But in the late 1990s Jan Jordan, Victoria University, wrote a paper Beyond Belief? Police, Rape and Women’s Credibility.

Describing her own interviews with detectives experienced in sexual assault investigations,  Jordan writes estimates of false rape allegations  “…ranged between one detective who said 10 percent and another who estimated that 80 per cent of all rapes reported were false ‘in one way or another’.”

Jan Jordan was given unprecedented access to police files to make her own analysis of rape and sexual violation complaints. Police judgement on 164 cases from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were examined. Factors that featured in findings of false complaint included drug or alcohol impairment, a delay in reporting, previous consensual sex with accused, previous rape complaints and intellectual impairment. Jordan observed “…a dominant mind-set of suspicion underlying police responses to reports of sexual assault.”

She also sensibly points out: “The police do, in fact, have to tread a fine line between the victim and the accused as they attempt to preserve the balance of justice and guard against the possibilities of wrongful conviction. However, an over-zealous commitment to the rights of the accused may unwittingly tip the balance the other way.”

The converse is equally true. That is the direction we are heading in, or indeed, a destination we have arrived at - an “over-zealous commitment” to the rights of the accuser.

This, then, provides context for Jordan Peterson’s comments which taken in isolation provoke the outrage the journalist intended.