Lindsay Mitchell

MSD's  Annual Report  was released yesterday. From the CEO's forward: There is a lot we can reflect on and be proud of over the last...

The Supported Living Payment (SLP) replaced the Invalid's benefit. Officially : Supported Living Payment is for people who have, or care...

MSD's annual tome of poverty statistics was released last week. The NZ Initiative provides a good summary here. Eric Crampton wryly n...

 The following graph shows the number of MSD clients living in emergency housing up to 2021: Typically, around 92 percent of clients are ho...

A stoush between collectivist and individualist Māori is long overdue. It has simmered for a long time but this week boiled over when Kelvin...

Stephen Joyce opines in the NZ Herald today about the PM's "performative policy-making": "I thought we'd reached pea...

 A reader sent me the following quote from a Bryce Edward's article at the BFD: The Prime Minister took on the portfolio of Child Pover...

A just-published Listener article asks, "Why doesn't middle-class NZ care about child poverty?" It gathers views from half ...

The longer people are on a benefit, the harder it is to get off it. The following graph illustrates that. Someone who has been benefit-depen...

 As it is now common practice to accord sentencing discounts to criminals with childhood experiences beyond their control, what about surcha...

Our time, the Queen died very early Friday morning. Mike Hosking, a proud royalist and huge fan of Her Majesty ran an excellent show dedicat...

An advert plays incessantly on the radio telling me that "Wearing a mask is an act of intentional kindness." An intention cannot b...

MEDIA RELEASE 28 August 2022 Report - Why Do Our Young Lead Developed World In Poor Mental Health? In 2020, UNICEF ranked New Zealand last o...

Jacinda Ardern in 2017: “...we are small enough that we can absolutely introduce child wellbeing policies so that New Zealand is once again...

 A TV1 news item  says about the inquiry into abuse-in-care: "A report from the Inquiry shows one in three young people placed in resid...

Increased benefit rates drive increased deprivation. This is no surprise to logical thinkers. Simply upping benefits doesn't mean the ex...

Labour's policy was to drive down the prison population. And they have. But since March 2022 the population has levelled off. 2022 looks...

Unemployment drops by a third - benefit numbers rise by a quarter. That's what's happened during (almost) five years under a Labour ...

MSD have released a report on benefit incomes. I have long held that beneficiary advocates base their poverty pleading on the basic benefit...

  Heard any alarm bells ringing yet?