Lindsay Mitchell

On the same day that the Washington Post breaks the news that US unemployment has risen to 9.7%, the NCPA has run a piece about the growth...

There isn't time to delve very deeply into this right now but the following headline has got to be the biggest beat-up; DIY disasters ki...

Is the war on child abuse any different from the war on drugs or the war on poverty? They all feature escalating measures and escalating fai...

Media Release OECD WARNS AGAINST LONG-DURATION, SINGLE-PARENT BENEFITS Thursday, September 3, 2009 The OECD has just released a comparative ...

Unless the NZ Herald has made a significant mistake a health economist is truly barking. He has proposed a Smartcard system for beneficiary...

What a lot of BS this is. Key says he hasn't got time for trivial stuff like the anti-smacking law but has the time to ponce about curr...

A couple of weeks back there was some media reporting about the costs of raising children. The costs seemed over-inflated to me. As the rese...

Paying for other people's choices. Where will it end? Last week the Families Commission proposed that child support payments for custod...

Making pseudoephedrine prescription-only is back in the media today. Having discussed this with my on-call pharmacist he puts up another obj...

Last weekend I was driving my daughter and a friend to a pool (swim, not snooker) party and the girls were discussing why the venue had been...

Sheldon Richman, from the Future of Freedom Foundation, takes an objective look at what Edward Kennedy stood for. In theory government is s...

This is Geoffrey. Named by Robert. He's almost three weeks old. That's if he is a he. He may be a she. Not wanting to over-handle hi...

I am about to read a paper just released by the Families Commission about a review of child support. But the following statement from the p...

I was further reflecting about the amount of government funding given to the Salvation Army, Barnardos, Plunket, and hundreds of other so-ca...

Australians are also coming under increasing UN pressure to ban corporal punishment in the home. They will be treated to all the same misin...

The Sallies are telling those of us who voted to decriminalise smacking to "move on" . Doesn't look like we have much choice, ...

Another of National's big ideas? Subsidised holiday programmes for poor kids. A week in a lifetime. It's hard to get excited about. ...

I am still wading through the Families Commission 292 page Family Violence Statistics report released yesterday. Here are two graphs that s...

This is lifted from a slide presentation produced by the Ministry of Social Development and the Inland Revenue Department. It is a surprisin...

Media Release VIOLENCE RISK 4 TIMES GREATER FOR FEMALE BENEFICIARIES Tuesday, 25 August, 2009 Women who are beneficiaries have a four-fold r...