Blue vs Red - I may as well be colour-blind

Sus kindly sent through a letter she received yesterday from the Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett. Representing National, in the blue corner we have ;

"I think we all agree that children should be provided for, whatever their family situation. If we penalise the caregivers for moral reasons, I can only see this impacting upon the ability of the state to help the children of these caregivers.

The benefit system, including the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB), is designed to supply a level of income support to enable parents to provide for their children. Benefit entitlement is based upon a person's individual situation. I could not agree to withholding money from people looking after children. It is the children that would suffer from that type of decision.

You might be interested to know that the vast majority of DPB recipients are in fact sole parents who have been married or in a relationship and who have lost the support of their husbands or partners for a variety of reasons.

As the Minister for Social Development and Employment, I will be looking into solutions that assist people into getting off the DPB and into work. Our policies will support parents while also recognising the value of paid work."

The following are excerpts from letters I received from former Minister for Social Development, Steve Maharey. Representing Labour, from the red corner we have;

"Income Support in the form of DPB contributes to the needs of children, and towards the valuable task of childcare, and is intended to provide a good start in life for children. Children are our country's future.......The government and the law cannot discriminate on moral grounds


The majority of DPB recipients are separated or divorced from a legal or de facto spouse (63% in 2001).


Officials are looking at the best means by which sole parents can be supported and encouraged to balance their work and family responsibilities. The idea is to get alongside them, talk to them about what they want to do with their lives, then help them get there."

Any discernible difference/s?

The overriding message from both is that as long as children are reliant on an individual, the state is obliged to provide the individual with an income. Therein lies the problem.

And regarding the past relationship status of DPB recipients, obviously the vast majority have been "in a relationship". But the Minister knows nothing about what type of relationship unless the recipient states that they were separated from a marriage or divorced. The latest information I have shows only 3,249 recipients were divorced and 29,622 were separated (I am assuming from a marriage because it wasn't from a de facto). Leaving the "vast" majority in the unknown category. The identifiers rely anyway on the accuracy of the recipients own description. For a variety of reasons that accuracy may be dubious.

The DPB is not, on balance, good for children. It can't be when it has created, in the space of a few decades, a whole new demographic of doubly disadvantaged kiddies with no in situ fathers and no money. I am very tired of those people with an ability to do something different simply defending it.

Change the rules

I was wondering whether regional reliance on the unemployment benefit matches regional unemployment rates.

(June 09 benefit data is used because the most recent HLFS data available is June 09.)

This is what I found;



No bloody correlation whatsoever.

So what is this chart telling me?

On the face of it, one would expect that where the unemployment rate is low, reliance on the Unemployment Benefit would also be low.

For example Nelson has low unemployment and a low ratio of dependency on Unemployment Benefit.

Northland, on the other hand, has a high rate of unemployment and a low ratio of dependency on Unemployment Benefit.

Or, expressed another way;

Nelson has low unemployment and a high ratio of dependency on other benefits.

Northland has a high rate of unemployment and a high ratio of dependency on other benefits.

Is it safe to conclude then, that people will rely on other benefits (SB, IB and DPB) regardless of the unemployment rate?

That is, anyway, what recent history tells us. We hit the lowest level of unemployment in the OECD at one point but reliance on other benefits was largely unchanged or growing.

The implication of this is very important. It seems obvious that people are on other benefits for other reasons. Granted. But when it comes to trying to tackle their dependency we are told, but there are no jobs so we can't do anything.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: This Government is committed to helping sole parents into work. We intend to change the work-testing rules to incentivise those parents to get a part-time job when their youngest child turns 6. However, I am committed to setting up domestic purposes beneficiaries to succeed, so we will hold off on making the changes until the economic conditions change and there are jobs for those people to be getting those sorts of opportunities.

But for many unemployment didn't cause their dependency and employment won't necessarily solve it. Many of these people are going to continue on benefits long term regardless.

BUT, Bennett is so hung up on what to do about existing beneficiaries that she is too distracted to think about how changing the rules would effect potential beneficiaries. Can't change the rules because there are no jobs for us to enforce new rules. Doesn't matter. Change the damn rules as a deterrent if nothing else. Change the rules in anticipation of an economic upturn. Get on with it or dependency will be allowed to just keep on growing.

Working-age benefits rise by 21 percent

The number of working-age beneficiaries has risen by 21 percent over the last year.

Here's a breakdown by September 2009 total and annual rise;

DPB 107,658 up 9%
Invalid's Benefit 87,615 up 2%
Sickness Benefit 56,384 up 17%
Unemployment Benefit 60,660 up 161%

All 326,811 up 21%

Some comments;

- Take out the unemployment benefit and the rise in all other benefits is still 8 percent.

- The rise in other benefits is more of a concern than the rise in unemployment because people stay on those benefits much longer.

- The 9 percent rise in DPB represents around 15,000 more children on welfare.

- The combined total of Sickness and invalid benefits represents a new high at 144,000.

- If National had delivered on the election promises I identified yesterday some of the rises may have been contained.

Flawed defence of ACC

There is too much wrong with Tim Hazeldine's defence of ACC's viability in today's New Zealand Herald to take any comfort from his she'll-be-right reassurances. First he likens the cost of funding the results of accidents, to the costs of raising children. We need not possess the total cost up front, he argues. It would be "foolish" to treat children as unfunded liabilities.

Suppose you and your spouse are in charge of a family of, say, three young children. That means you are legally responsible for bringing them up to school leaving age and morally responsible for helping them in further training or education after that.

Putting aside the obvious problem that being 'legally responsible' does not make any New Zealand parent financially responsible if they refuse to be, there are others.

Along with the costs of raising children there are benefits. Parents do not generally end up poorer than non-parents. That is because the lifestyle they adopt as parents tends to accrue wealth. For example, they buy bigger homes and save larger amounts of their income.

So there is a return on raising children that does not exist in funding long-term weekly compensation payouts to accident survivors, where much of ACC's liability lies.

Children are dependent for a limited time. ACC beneficiaries may be dependent for the remainder of their lifetimes. Given most serious accident claims are from young men, their reliance will likely span decades. Because of ever-improving medical technology and a seemingly increasing propensity to take risks (driven ironically by socialising the adverse consequences) the numbers dependent will only grow. This is also evident in the never-reversing growth in invalid beneficiaries that far outstrips population growth.

But Mr Hazeldine is not concerned about future ability to pay because it can easily be funded by government on a pay-as-you-go basis. He says, "...the Government's ability to raise revenue when needed is much more secure than any individual's future income".

Again this is a troublesome notion. Government's ability to tax relies directly on the individual's future income. If his future income is much less secure, then so is the government's. He frames his defence of ACC on the power of forced collectivity but uses the productive individual (the integral cog in the wheel) to demonstrate vulnerability and uncertainty.

There are problems with ACC, but they very much depend on how the issues are framed. Truly, New Zealand can have a decent, efficient, state-run accident compensation system without breaking the bank. Don't fret about it. Get back to figuring out how you are going to pay for bringing up those kids.

So Mr Hazeldine wants us to add ACC to all the other pay-as-you-go budgets like "Vote Health and Vote Education" (I note he avoided any mention of Vote Social Welfare) and not to worry about it. Go back to figuring out how to pay for bringing up your kids, he says.

Frankly the worrying I am doing is how my kids are going to pay for tomorrow's ACC costs, on top of the burgeoning health and welfare costs associated with our rapidly ageing population. Now is not a time for offhanded complacency.

National's broken promises

Media Release

NATIONAL'S BROKEN PROMISES
Sunday, October 18, 2009

Information obtained under the Official Information Act shows that the National government has failed to implement the welfare policy promises it made during the 2008 election campaign.

Welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell said that she had been provided with information from the Ministry of Social Development which confirms that none of the promises laid out below has been implemented. The first column shows the promises and reasons for them, as detailed in National's manifesto; the second column provides the information from the Ministry of Social Development confirming none of the promises has been actioned.

"National produced an 11-page benefits policy prior to the 2008 election and they have a mandate and responsibility to deliver. Probably the worst omission is a failure to introduce a part-time work test on the domestic purposes benefit. Australia introduced work-testing in 2006 and a report released by the Centre for Independent Studies last week shows that the number of Parenting Payment (Single) recipients has dropped by 21 percent. The report concludes the drop is due to a combination of movement off welfare and transfer to the unemployment benefit. By contrast, New Zealand's DPB numbers have risen by 6 percent in the past year."

"National also said it would 'address growth in sickness and invalid numbers' yet the total number has increased by a further 5 percent in this year alone."

"To win votes on false promises is fraudulent. National promised an 'unrelenting focus on work' but, after almost a year in government, is not delivering for its voters . Even worse, it's not delivering for people on benefits who need more carrot and stick to become self reliant."

"The welfare bill is the government's biggest at $19.4 billion a year or 30 percent of core expenditure. This is where National needs to be focussing its attention and honouring its promises."

Garrett on gang meeting

Has David Garrett got this right?

So Pita Sharples used taxpayer money to host a meeting with Black Power and Mongrel Mob leaders. Taxpayer money is constantly being spent on gangs and their affiliates.

-Benefits
-Justice costs
-Prison
-Rehabilitation services

What's another $6,000 if Sharples thinks he can achieve something?

What I want to know is, what did they talk about and what's the next move.

Missing kittens

Yesterday was an unseasonably warm day so I latched back the door out to the deck. It wasn't the first outdoor exploration the kittens had gone on and I was reasonably confident that fresh mince daily was enough to discourage them from leaving home. (Yes. We have not one, but two keepers - Jeffrey and Palangi. My last blog post paid off and Eddie and Tabs found a lovely home together.)

Late afternoon a faint twinge of discomfit was felt. So I had a cursory look around the place and then dismissed my concern. They'll emerge at tea time. Teatime came and went and the babies were still absent. Soon it would be dusk, and then dark. Daisy was by this time prowling around, more angry than fretful, searching for the recalcitrant two.

So began the search. Screeds of stuff was hauled out from under beds, the back of the piano was investigated, cupboards emptied, stacks of paintings moved, the fridge searched, toilet cisterns checked, dishwasher checked, beds uncovered, and so on. Then the torches came out. Shone under the house, under the deck, through the thickets of undergrowth, with Daisy in train wherever we went. Of course, all the time calling out the names that seem ever sillier. (Now I know where Robert got the name JefFREEEEE......)

Back inside for the commencement of a second going over and suddenly, there's Jeffrey in the hallway, flicking his wee tail in disdain it would seem. Soon after Palangi appears out of nowhere. Of course in our relief we didn't do a post mortem and spend ages trying to figure out from whenst they had magically arrived.

Until this morning. Breakfast disposed of, again, they disappear. Now last night we noticed their miraculous manifestation occurred in the vicinity of the study. So we figured that the computers and necessary tangles of wires were providing a hidey hole. So we pursued that line of enquiry, to no avail. Then I said, "Could they be in ---," but David assured me they could not. The back is solid. Which is true.










































The back is solid. But the drawers do not extend to the back or the floor.....

Smacking - the controversy shifts

Statistical studies into the effects of smacking are becoming even more controversial than the practice itself. If you can find the stomach to plough through this stuff it's really rather funny. Whole nations IQs are now being checked on the premise that spanking lowers them. The Wall St Journal reports on the latest studies and why statisticians find them wanting;

Martin Wells, a statistician at Cornell University, re-ran the statistical test to check whether regional variations in IQ -- which is lower in Latin America and Africa -- could account for the IQ differences Prof. Straus found. After accounting for regional variations, Dr. Wells found the effect of spanking vanished. Dr. Wells plans to use the Prof. Straus's research in the classroom to demonstrate why it is important to consider alternative explanations.

Where or what would you cut?

Thinking about the previous post, this government needs some ideas about how to cut spending. Can we assist? Substantial amounts are needed so bear that in mind, and make sure you can cost it (roughly). Don't go all radical libertarian on me. Be realistic (yes, I know radical libertarian is realistic, but we live in an unreal world) and let's see how big a total we can build.

I'll kick it off with;

1/ Raise the Super qualifying age to 67 (66,000 pensions x $15,000 = $990 million)

A picture tells a thousand words

Government spending;

Copycat crime

We had a hefty ACC rise last year under Labour.

Now we have an even heftier ACC rise under National.

I still haven't figured out what improved with the change in government.

George Shultz interviewed on the drug war

This is an interesting interview from the Wall St Journal, more because it encapsulates why the drug war won't go away rather than why it should.

In recent years, Mr. Shultz says, "There has come to be more and more of a realization of the nature of the problem. I thought it was interesting six or eight months ago, that three former presidents of Latin American countries, President Zedillo from Mexico, President Cardoso from Brazil and President Gaviria from Colombia made a report basically saying that we have to look at this problem in all of its dimensions if we are going to get anywhere with it. And we have to realize what its origins are."

Yet it is also true that those presidents spoke up only after they left office. I asked him if there is any hope of policy leadership from those in office. "There is a certain amount of evidence that people are realizing the nature of the problem and have more of a willingness to try to deal with it."

But, he says, we still have not created the "political space" necessary to raise the issue in public. "Right now if you are in politics you can't discuss the problem. It's just poison. The result is that we have this giant problem that is tearing Mexico apart . . . and we have plenty of problems here too and we're really not having a debate about it."

Mr. Shultz is a strong proponent of education to reduce demand. "If we want to get serious about this issue, we should start with a gigantic campaign to persuade people that drugs are bad for them. And it has to be based on solid factual material. You can't try to mislead people."

Males dominate ACC claims roughly 2:1

In the past I have examined the gender imbalance in working age Work and Income clientèle. The ratio was running about 60:40 weighted towards females but has dropped back slightly with more unemployment. So in the interests of fairness I should point out that males make far more ACC claims than females (and pay more in premiums).

This is the number of all active entitlement claims in the 2008 financial year.



Females cost $602,323,000 and males $1,343,388,000.

The next is weekly compensation claims;



The cost of female claims in weekly compensation is $247,194,000 and male, $650,978,000.

There is one area where females claims are much higher. Sensitive claims (usually by victims of sexual crime) cost $15,965,000 for females and $3,709,000 for males.

Obviously men work in more dangerous jobs as reflected in work related claims (female) $123,991,000 and (male) $458,799,000.

In sports the male dominance continues at $68,746,000 for females vs $212,956,000 for males. Even with home and gradual onset claims, men are more expensive. And you can imagine who have most of the bad backs and motor vehicle accidents.

There is no gender breakdown for serious injuries caused by fighting(!) but I am picking they would also be dominated by males. They cost only $874,000. A snip.

At last, an upside to NZ feminist equality

According to the BBC;

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has outlined plans to raise the state pension age for men to 66 from 2016, up to 10 years earlier than planned.

He said the move was needed to help reduce the UK's debts, saying "hard choices could not be avoided" because of the dire state of public finances.

The pension age for women will rise to 65 by 2020 under Tory proposals...

Under the government's existing plans, the state pension age for men will rise gradually from 65 to 68 between 2024 to 2046. For women it will gradually rise from 60 to 65 over ten years from 2010.



Why are UK women allowed to qualify 5 years before men???

Look at the NZ comparison;


Now if NZ women qualified for Super at 60 that would add up to another 120,000 pensioners or push the total up to nearly 15% of the population.

What is wrong with the poms? I always thought their sheila's were soft. Seriously, I cannot think of any reason why women are paid a state pension to retire at 60, when men are not.

The degradation of values linked to benefits

The following graphs are from a recent study by the London School of Economics which charted the change in values by examining waves of survey questions put to people born in different decades. The paper theorises that the work ethic has been 'wrecked' by benefits, as Mail Online puts it.

Abstract: Jean-Baptiste Michau argues that a declining work ethic helps to account for raising European unemployment from the 1970s.

Link to study

He defined work ethic by a belief that work came first and honesty. One question asked was, is it OK to claim benefits you are not entitled to? The base point is 1930. Beyond that shows the likelihood of change in the answer given. So someone born in 1980 was 24 percent more likely to justify cheating.




Then he looked at how high unemployment benefits/insurance payments were and if it affected the change in values.



Is there anything that would indicate NZ would show a similar result? The 1988 Royal Commission on Social Policy did exhaustive surveying on values and one of the questions asked was, people should have to look after themselves more with less help from the government - do you agree, disagree, etc. That is a different question but relevant, perhaps.

The result shows that the older people were the more likely they are to agree, with a spike for those born during the depression/ WW11. But because this is just one survey (as opposed to waves) it is impossible to control for age, which the above graph has.



(Hat tip to KG for the media link)

Liable parents foot 7 percent of DPB bill

Media Release
LIABLE PARENTS FOOT 7 PERCENT OF DPB BILL
Monday, October 12, 2009

In 2008 the Inland Revenue Department transferred $136 million from collected child support payments to the consolidated fund. This money offsets what is paid to custodial parents on benefits.

Welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell says this is a small percentage of what custodial parents are costing the state. "In 2008, the basic DPB bill was $ 1.479 billion. However, when other top-ups like the accommodation allowance are added, the all-up bill exceeds $2 billion. The transfer from IRD represents 6.8 percent of the total."

"Forty five percent of liable parents (58,423) have annual incomes below $20,000 and pay only the minimum rate of $2.19 per day per child. During April this year 35,675 liable parents, usually fathers, paid child support from their own benefit income."

"DPB claimants are required by law to file a child support application or face a penalty for not doing so. At June 2009 no application had been filed for 19,400 children included in a sole parent benefit."

Mitchell said the traditional political response is to demand fathers face up to their financial responsibilities. "However, the child support problem is only a spin-off from the DPB system. If there was no DPB, which acts as an incentive to single parenthood, there would be nowhere near the current number of liable parents - 130,762. The state has effectively replaced many fathers who are nevertheless expected to pay the bills for children they often have no role in raising. "

"As a general rule fathers should take responsibility for their children but the state has to stop skewing the morality of this by putting up cash rewards to prospective single mothers."

"Before the DPB it was difficult for mothers to chase maintenance through the court system and fathers ran the risk of conviction and imprisonment for reneging on a court order. But that was forty years ago. Today, avoiding becoming pregnant and giving birth is much simpler. And in respect of relationship breakdowns, women, who now make up half of the workforce, are much better equipped to handle being a breadwinner and men are much better equipped for sharing parenting."

"Until the DPB is reformed to suit the times, the taxpayer will continue to foot the lion's share of its cost."

Another look behind unemployment statistics

Reading the following from today's NZ Herald one could be forgiven for thinking that we have come a long way.

Numbers on the unemployment benefit declined from a postwar peak of 177,000 in 1993 to 17,710 in June last year, but rose almost four-fold since then as the world plunged into recession.

Unemployment only a tenth of what it had been. Marvellous.

But wait.

In 1993 there were 63,700 people on sickness and invalid benefits. Add that to unemployment and you get 240,700.

Today add the 140,800 on sickness and invalid to the 60,660 on unemployment and you get 201,460.

Let's chuck the DPB in as well, 96,300 in 1993 compared to 106,600 now to get new totals of 337,000 in 1993 and 308,060 in 2009.

Just an alternative look at some numbers.

On the plus side one could argue that the picture is still much better because the population has risen by 25 percent since 1993. True.

One could also argue that the higher numbers on benefits other than unemployment mean total dependency is worse. How's that?

If we measured dependency in weeks (Sweden manages to) rather than at a point in time, today's statistics are almost certainly worse. That is because people spend much longer on invalid, sickness and domestic purposes benefits. That explains, in part, why the social security bill (now nearing $20 billion) continued to rise while numbers on the unemployment benefit dropped drastically.

The following show percentages of total caseload according to the periods spent continuously on that benefit alone (add in other benefits to account for transfer between benefits and the durations rise);

Invalid

Less than one year 10.3
Between one and four years 31.0
Between four and ten years 29.9
10 years or more 28.8

Sickness

Less than one year 52.5
Between one and four years 33.5
Between four and ten years 12.4
10 years or more 1.6

DPB

Less than one year 30.4
Between one and four years 36.1
Between four and ten years 23.4
10 years or more 10.2

Unemployment

Less than one year 88.9
Between one and four years 8.8
Between four and ten years 2.0
10 years or more 0.4

As you can see the stays on unemployment benefit are much, much shorter, as you would expect. In the early 1990s stays were comparable with 79 percent of recipients reliant for less than 1 year and 94 percent reliant for less than 2 years.

There are people on invalid's benefit with medical conditions that make it impossible for them to work. But there is growing acknowledgement that sickness and invalid benefits (called disability support pension in Australia and incapacity benefit in the UK) are de facto doles. Many gravitated to them over the past ten to fifteen years because of the physical and mental impacts of being long-term unemployed.

So make your own mind up. Have we come a long way since 1993? And have another quick look at the link. Should the Minister of Social Development really be looking so jolly?

Question for you

Doing a little market research here.

What percentage of the welfare bill for sole parents do you think liable parents are footing?

A quarter of NZ babies and toddlers rely on welfare

These are the latest statistics for children relying on a benefit. They do not include children whose caregiver is younger than 18.




Five points of interest;

1/ The number of babies (0 years) relying on welfare has grown 17 percent since 2005 whereas the growth in total births has grown by around 11 percent. More people are going on welfare from the time their child is born.

2/ Many people seem happy with mothers (usually the benefit recipient) receiving a benefit when their children are very young. Yet 67 percent of the children are 5 or older.

3/ The number of children on welfare has dropped since 2001. Labour made a big deal out of reducing 'child poverty'. But given the period featured record low employment and good economic growth (so we are told) the drop in the number of children on welfare was relatively small.

4/ According to NZ Statistics population estimates there are 1,149,000 children aged 18 or younger. So around 1 in 5 is on welfare. In the poorest areas this will jump to 2 or 3 in 5. That means being on a benefit is normalised and thus the tendency is towards more benefit receipt.

5/ In the 0-2 age group the ratio rises to 1 in 4 children being on welfare. That is fairly sobering stuff.

Pseudo solution to pseudoephedrine problem

I am not going to repeat what I have said previously about making pseudoephedrine prescription only here and here. And I am not going to start on about rabid authoritarianism and the slow but sure curtailing of freedoms rightly exercised by productive and harmless individuals.

The model is Oregon so best just go there and read what the results have been after 4 years. Mixed and not easy to measure.

The following are excerpts from two columns from Oregon Public Broadcasting News which are from Tuesday and Wednesday this week;

Oregon became the talk of the West Coast for making pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient for illegal meth, a prescription drug.

And yet you don’t have to go far to hear about how meth is still very much in circulation.

Todd Eno: “I’m Todd Eno. I know a few friends of mine that are into it. I do once in a while.”

Eno spent last Sunday morning at a North Portland grocery store, feeding bottles and cans into the recycling machine for some change.

He’s beyond skinny, emaciated, really, his long blue jacket hanging on him like a scarecrow’s coat.

He says he definitely noticed changes between the meth that’s on the street now, and what was sold when pseudoephedrine was easy to get.

Todd Eno “It’s a lot different. MSM is what they’re using.”

Eno’s talking about Methylsulfonylmethane -- one of several alternative meth ingredients you can still get over the counter.

Todd Eno: “You go in there and buy that for a couple of bucks, spend two or three dollars and you can smoke all you want.”

But he says, it’s not as strong as what was on the market before...

Arrests for meth production, trafficking, and possession trended down between 2006 - the year pseudo became a prescription - and last year.

Even officers who were skeptical about the change admit they’ve seen a shift. They’re relieved to find fewer biohazards on crime scenes.

At the same time, Jeff says the days of swooping in on meth cooks coming home from the drug store are long gone.

Jeff: “We obviously can’t do that anymore. We deal with informants, people that are charged with crimes that want to talk. We continue to run with troopers on the highway running interdictions, stuff like that. Working narcotics is the darker side of the business sometimes.”

And getting darker. Jeff says one thing the pseudoephedrine law also changed: when Oregon’s mom & pop shops started to shut down, and drug trafficking organizations solidified their hold on the meth trade...

Bill Piper “Meth labs are down, but most of what you call meth labs weren’t 'labs'. A lot of law enforcement in a lot of states, if they went to a house and someone was making meth in the kitchen sink - most cases that was for persona use – there was a tendency to call that a lab largely because they had to prove they were busting up these labs to get more money. That’s not at all a criticism of law enforcement, it’s more a criticism of the funding streams, which kind of distorted incentives."

Piper says it’s a little too soon for policymakers to say whether the the pseudoephedrine law helped or hurt. There are officers around the state who say the law really cut down local meth production, which caused a slew of environmental and social problems.

But others say it’s eliminated some homegrown competition for large drug trafficking organizations. There’s general agreement these groups are regaining the influence they had before the "Mop & Pop" meth labs set up shop in Oregon.

And from the second column about whether addiction has reduced;

Livingston says the pseudoephedrine law wasn't a bad idea, but it hasn't really made meth less available. Her counselor, New Step Director Maria Couch, agrees she's not seeing fewer meth addicts either.

Maria Couch "I have not. I don't see that the numbers have dropped at all."

Addicts are taking advantage of meth made out of state, or meth made without pseudoephedrine at all.

The year the pseudoephedrine law was passed, 15,000 people sought treatment for meth at state-funded facilities. Last year, that number was closer to 11,000. That's 4000 fewer people.

So did the stranglehold on meth ingredients lead to lower addiction rates? Not exactly. There were plenty of people who needed treatment for meth abuse, but didn't get it, because there wasn't enough money to pay for it.

Karen Wheeler runs Addictions Policy and Programs for the state of Oregon. She says funding for treatment of all addictions has actually dropped by tens of millions of dollars, in the years since the pseudoephedrine law was passed.

Cultural disconnection blamed for violence

Maori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia, is commenting about a hikoi against violence, especially violence toward childen, that is taking place in Murupara today;

“I support Ngati Manawa’s call for help to address the cultural dislocation and disconnection that leads people to commit acts of violence, and as a minister I will do my very best to help them."

There are varying reasons why people commit acts of violence. Cultural dislocation and disconnection may be one - indirectly.

Tariana's view is formally described here;

A third framework, focusing on the role of cultural identity has, over the preceding two decades, been the dominant explanation employed to account for the ethnic asymmetry in child maltreatment rates in New Zealand. This view proposes that it is the degree of association that Māori families have with Māori kin groupings and the level of commitment they show to traditional customary practices that will influence the likelihood of Māori children experiencing maltreatment. From this perspective, strength of Māori identity in families is a protective factor for child abuse, and a lesser identification with Māori cultural domains may increase the risk of children being exposed to maltreatment. Intervention guidelines for child abuse have therefore been specifically developed for Māori, by Māori. These focus on determining the levels of affiliation Māori families have to cultural domains and the strength of cultural identity of individuals who reside in the family. Reattachment of Māori families to cultural domains and customs has therefore become a key feature of current child abuse intervention efforts.

This has recently been tested however.

Researchers dividied 1,011 21 year-olds into non-Maori, sole Maori and Maori/other group according to self-identification.

Comparisons of the sole Māori and Māori/other group showed consistent differences between the groups in terms of several aspects of Māori culture, including:

* frequency of marae visits (p < .001)
* being a member of a Māori group, organisation or sports team (p < .05)
* being a member of a kapa haka (cultural performance) group (p < .001)
* attending a tangi (funeral) or unveiling (p < .001)
* listening to Māori-language radio programmes and watching Māori-language television programmes (p < .001)
* listening and watching programmes in the English language about Māori (p < .001).

(Provision was made for maternal self identification and changing self-identification over time during the classification process.)

And what did the research show?

It was concluded that Maori, and in particular those of sole Maori cultural identity, were at higher risk of exposure to physical punishment and inter-parental violence, and that the associations could not be fully explained by either socio-economic deprivation or exposure to family dysfunction in childhood.

Which throws a very large spanner in the works for Tariana Turia's assumption about cultural "dislocation and disconnection".

The other ATM

John Stossel looks at the extent of cash transfers in the US today. He calls his column, "Transfer Machine". Ironically if he had called it American Transfer Machine the abbreviation would be ATM, which reminds me of the protest banner at a recent Obama rally, Do I Look Like An ATM To You? ;

"The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul," George Bernard Shaw once said.

For a socialist, Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested...

...Frederic Bastiat, the great 19th-century French economist, defined the state as "that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." I don't know if he envisioned one half of the population living off the other half.

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Exercise programme

I tried it, I liked it, you will too!!

The older we get the more important it is to incorporate exercise into our daily routine. This is necessary to maintain cardiovascular health and maintain muscle mass.

If you're over 40, you might want to take it easy at first, then do more repetitions as you become more proficient and build stamina. Warning: It may be too strenuous for some.


Always consult your doctor before starting any exercise program!



SCROLL DOWN.............














































NOW SCROLL UP..

That's enough for the first day. Great job.

Have a glass of wine.

The true extent of unemployment

Most people don't know how the official unemployment rate is calculated. Most are surprised when they find out.

The government, via Statistics New Zealand, conducts a survey called the Household Labour Force Survey. Citizens are recruited into the survey and must participate for two years. Every three months they are phoned and questioned about their work habits and those of other household members. Through the questions it is ascertained whether or not the participant (and any other adult members of the household) is employed. At any given time 15,000 households participate.

The current official unemployment rate gleaned from the survey is 6 percent.

The unemployment rate is not a reflection of people registering at Work and Income. If it was, the number would be considerably higher. For instance, at June 2009 310,000 working-age (18-64 years) people were receiving a benefit (unemployment, sickness, invalid or domestic purposes, etc). That represents around 12 percent of the working age population or 1 in 8 people.

There is good reason to assert this figure is a better representation of the true unemployment rate. Regardless of the reason somebody is reliant on welfare they are unable to support themselves through paid work or other means . They are not employed.

It would also be a fair suggestion to add to this figure those people who are long-term ACC claimants. During the year to June 2008 there were around 108,000 people claiming weekly compensation from ACC; 23,000 had been receiving compensation for 1 year or more. If last year's figures are similar, that would add another 1 percent the 12 percent who are on benefits. Perhaps an accurate unemployment rate hovers around 13 percent.

Certainly there is nothing scientific about these rough calculations . But they serve to show that an unemployment rate of 6 percent is not telling us a great deal about the ratio of dependent working-age people to non-dependent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prior to the creation of the HLFS the only source of information about unemployment was the census or the number of unemployment benefits claimed. It is rather sobering to take a look at what those figures looked like in the mid-1960s.

5,125 males were unemployed on census night in 1966. Most of the unemployment must have been a temporary affair however given that throughout the sixties there were only ever a couple of hundred people on the unemployment benefit. In 1965 there were only 28,000 people receiving working-age benefits - the majority, a Widow's benefit. There was no ACC. The population was around 2.6 million.

Fewer than 30,000 dependent people then, compared to over 300,000 today. A ten-fold increase with less than a doubling of the population.

How the world has changed. New Zealand's modern benefit system reminds me of the famous quote, "Build it and they will come.

He who laughs last....

Guess who owns this up and coming horse?









Here's a clue.

Doggy freedom

Speeches by politicians are best avoided in my experience. Full of banal, platitudinous, dreary waffle.

But I rather liked this one from Rodney Hide, quoting John Stuart Mill in an effort to get his audience, the NZ Companion Animal Conference, thinking about some basic principles.

I stand for freedom. I take the view, and apply it as Minister, that less government is good government. I think government should leave people as free as possible.

I believe hand-in-hand with individual freedom comes personal responsibility.

Too many people want to be free to do as they please but then aren’t prepared to accept the consequences of their own decisions and actions. They prefer to offload the consequences to others.

The fact is we can’t enjoy individual freedom unless we also accept personal responsibility.

This belief is probably more popular in the abstract than in everyday life.

Faced with any problem, an awful lot of people immediately think that ‘there should be a law against it’. And an awful lot of legislators, listening to the people as they should, agree, and pass a law against it. Sometimes, this law works, and things get better. But mostly it doesn’t.

I think the lowering of road deaths is an example of stronger laws and heavier enforcement producing a good result. Sure we have had to accept random breath tests, but our roads are undoubtedly safer as a result. That’s a small price to pay for reducing the carnage on our roads.

My belief in the need for individual freedom and personal responsibility impacts directly on my job as Minister of Local Government, which includes consideration of the country’s dog laws.

I want to announce today that I have asked officials to begin thinking about a first-principles review of the dog laws.

I have not asked that this be a priority, because I think the government has more important things to do. But I expect that sometime in 2011, you may be asked for your views.

In the meantime, the present laws will apply, although I hope that local authorities will work hard to ensure the emphasis is on freedom, rather than restriction.

I do not know what will emerge from such a first-principles review. In the lead-up to it, we can all do some thinking. Here’s mine: John Stuart Mill, the great 19th-century advocate of freedom, was responsible for what we know as the ‘harm principle’. It says 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection'.

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Misleading headline?

The headline from yesterday reads,

Increase in benefit numbers smaller for Sept

Unfortunately the only benefit statistic released was the unemployment benefit.

Which makes me wary.

It is nevertheless good news that fewer people have needed to resort to the dole.

Don't tell the OECD

The OECD is nagging Australia about not letting the unemployed gravitate to disability benefits. That is because only a small percentage ever come off them. The OECD says;

Disability benefit receipt has almost doubled in Australia since 1990, with the biggest growth among the working-age population.

Better keep them away from NZ or they'll be nagging us too. The number of people receiving a sickness or invalid's benefit here has almost trebled since 1990, from 47,000 to 140,000.

I wonder if Paula mentioned that last week when she was in Paris detailing to other employment Ministers at an OECD-hosted meeting how well NZ does in keeping people off benefits. What was it she said again?

"Unlike other countries, we don’t hand over a benefit and then offer to help someone find work."

Australians discovering extent of welfare-upbringing disadvantage

The Australian National University has been conducting an ongoing survey into young people, their experiences and attitudes. It involves participation of some 4,000 youth accessed through Centrelink (Work and income equivalent) records. Some of their latest findings were presented to the Australian Conference of Economists last week. The Melbourne Age reports;

Young people who have grown up in welfare-dependent families are disadvantaged in more ways than has previously been realised, a study shows.

From much higher rates of asthma and hospitalisation to much lower rates of post-school study and entry to university, the young are likely to suffer the disadvantages of their parents....

..."People have suspected these differences but I'm not sure we knew of the extent of the disadvantage and the breadth," Professor Cobb-Clark said.

Specific measurements of various differences are provided. Frankly, unlike Professor Cobb-Clark, I am surprised that the differences weren't greater. It may be that there is a positive bias because participation in the survey was voluntary so the sample is a more motivated group.

The Centre for Independent Studies says;

"Welfare campaigners this week lobbied the government to lift unemployment benefits, after the OECD revealed that more than half the jobless households in Australia are ‘poor’: with incomes less than half of the median.

But acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not take the bait, standing by the government’s decision not to increase unemployment benefits and payments for sole parents in this year’s budget.

Gillard was right to stay firm. More work, not more welfare, is what these families need to improve their economic situation and the well-being of their children.

One in eight kids now lives in a jobless household. Most of us instinctively appreciate that the striking disadvantage they face extends well beyond the purely economic.

Fairfax’s Adele Horin reported yesterday on new research from the Youth in Focus study released at the Australian Conference of Economists this week. It highlights just how destructive welfare and parental joblessness is for these kids.

If welfare rights campaigners who this week attacked the government really want to improve the lives of those they claim to help, they could start by recognising that making welfare more attractive will only intensify their problems."

Couldn't agree more.

Worst excesses of welfare; UK and NZ parallels

The destructive practice of paying women to have babies with casual acquaintances is starting to permeate the collective consciousness of the UK population. Even PM Gordon Brown is starting to talk about the ill-advised policy that pays 16 and 17 year-old mothers to live 'independently' in council flats.

A friend has just returned from the UK. She brought with her an article from the Daily Mail, knowing I would be interested. Fortunately it is also on-line. Here I will excerpt pieces and draw New Zealand parallels.

It opens;

Machetes by the door, drugs on the table - and mothers paid by the state to have babies with men they barely know. What HAVE we done to the British family? It's the most destructive crisis of our age - a generation of violent, illiterate, lawless young men living outside civilised society.

New Zealand - A prison population at an all-time high, convictions for violence at an all time high, gangs that are getting more vicious with no shortage of newcomers.

It always started the same way, he said: he'd start seeing a woman, and she'd tell him she was on the Pill.

Then two weeks later: 'Bang, she gets pregnant.' There was never any discussion about the pregnancy.

As far as he was concerned, they were barely an item at that stage - and they were certainly not about to move in together.

So why did these women choose to have babies by a man they barely knew?

Prince, who is 37, laid the blame squarely on benefits: 'Women get money from the Government; men get eradicated. What do you need a man for? The Government has taken our place.

Politicians, for their part, blame the rising numbers of troubled children on the breakdown of the family and the absence of fathers.

This is a fundamental mistake: they are presuming there is a family in the first place.

Above all, the Government needs to recognise that benefits are a powerful incentive, particularly for young girls.

For the past few years, Britain has had the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe, with 90 per cent of births occurring outside marriage.

The British teenage birth rate (27 per 1,000 15-19 year-olds) is behind New Zealand's at 32 (and for Maori it rises to 80). There is a marked correlation between the high Maori teenage birthrate and high Maori crime rate.

An overhaul of the benefit system is clearly at the heart of transforming the lives of disadvantaged children. But to accuse their mothers of being feckless is unjust: they are merely responding to the economics of the situation.

They have grasped the consequences of our poor education system better than our politicians ever have.

Last year, less than half of teenagers finished compulsory schooling with five good GSCEs that included maths and English. Of those, the ones who do worst of all are children from lowincome families.

Then what happens? The boys take to crime - and the girls get pregnant.

Incredibly, more than a quarter of British children are now raised in single-parent families - and nine out of ten of them are headed by women.

At the last census 28 percent of New Zealand families with dependent children were headed by a single parent - eight out of ten are women. Male single parenthood is more common among Maori probably accounting for the gender difference with the UK.

What future is there in Britain today for a girl without qualifications?

Skilled and hard-working immigrants now monopolise menial jobs, and the next step up - a job, for example, in catering or hairdressing - pays about £10,000 a year before tax.

Which is slightly less than a girl with two children receives in benefits, and without the incentive of somewhere to live rent-free.

In Streatham, South London, I overheard two young girls pushing buggies talking about a friend. 'Why she got pregnant?' asked one. 'She's got a good job!'

In other words, if you were in well-paid employment, with good prospects, there was no reason to have children.

The average income for 18-24 year-olds is $384 - below the average income of a single parent on the DPB.

Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, summed up the situation starkly: 'We are talking here about the perverting influence of welfare. The more kids you have, the more money you get.'

In New Zealand around 5,000 babies are added to an existing benefit each year.

Many single mothers are excellent parents, of course. But the Government has put disadvantaged girls in a position where the only career open to them, the only possibility of an independent life, is to have children - whether they want to or not, whether they are likely to be good mothers or not.

The state, as Prince pointed out, has indeed taken over the role of both husband and employer.

With a combination of financial incentives and poor schools, it is ensuring a steady supply of babies who start life with all the factors in place to become the next generation living on benefits or the proceeds of crime.

What is the Government doing about this cynical cycle of deprivation?

Over the past few years, it has come up with a plethora of schemes to intervene ever earlier in the life of a disadvantaged child. In other words, it has concentrated on the consequences of single parenthood - but not the cause.

Ditto, ditto, ditto for NZ. Last week the latest was announced. Getting parents back into the class room to teach them how to raise their ill-disciplined children.

What is the point of setting targets to end child poverty when the Government's policies are creating tomorrow's poorest children - and grandchildren?

Exactly. See my post about the Maori Party targets to end child poverty.

So why hasn't the Government reformed the benefit system? It's as if they're offering car drivers a bonus for every crash - then acting surprised when accidents shoot up.

Good analogy. Cash is offered to teenagers to have babies and then hands are rung over the rising teenage birthrate. The only defence of this stupidity is that the two are not related. Yet research has shown the two are related.

The absence of a male role model has a particularly profound effect on disadvantaged boys during their teenage years.

A third of 14-to-25-year-olds questioned for a survey by the Prince's Trust did not have a parent whom they considered a role model.

More than half said they'd joined a gang to acquire a sense of identity, while a quarter said they were in search of someone to look up to.

These boys are unlikely to find male role models in schools. The number of male teachers has slumped to its lowest level in at least 20 years; and in primary school, 85 per cent of teachers are female. Even in youth offending teams, women make up the majority of the staff.

This year, according to the latest research, one in three children who live with a single mother will spend less than six hours a week with a male role model - whether a father figure, relative or teacher.

All the odds are stacked against them. Even children on the 'at risk' register are five times more likely to have single teenage mothers - as Prince knows all too well.

Two of his children, he discovered recently, were being neglected by their 19-year-old mother.

'The house was like a crack house: dirty clothes everywhere,' he said. 'She fed them crappy food, she left the kids [to] fall asleep in front of the TV. My boy was underweight and quiet.'

Social services removed the children and gave them to their maternal grandmother to bring up. But Prince's ex-girlfriend, he says, has made no attempt to get her children back.

He shrugged. 'She's never had a job. She's lived off the Government and what men give her.'

'Prince' is no prince either. His holier than thou tone is somewhat derisible. But he is spot on when he sums up the situation. The government has usurped fathers and the vital role they play, causing massive social problems. And that is no less true in this country.

"Capitalism needs to lift its game."

Karl Du Fresne has a very readable column posted entitled, Capitalism needs to lift its game.

Essentially we blame systems instead of the individuals tainting them. Capitalism gets a bad name because of greedy, immoral people. The law gets a bad name because of exploitive, dissolute lawyers. Democracy gets a bad name because of unprincipled, power-hungry politicians.

It doesn't follow that we throw out the systems.

Ah, but you might say, the welfare state gets a bad name because of abusive, free-loading types and yet you want to fundamentally change it. True. But that is because it hasn't proved itself to be the best option. Unlike capitalism which, as Du Fresne writes,

"...is the only economic system that has consistently demonstrated, over time, that it can improve the human condition. That’s why all the most humane, liberal, advanced societies in the world have capitalist economies."

Frankly, I would settle for a large reduction in the size of the welfare state but its inbuilt mechanisms mean it will always tend towards growth. There-in lies the conundrum.

I voted for Dane

Last night was the grand final of Homai Te Pakipaki. I voted for Dane Moeke - not because his was the best performance on the night. But because he has the most talent. Unfortunately last night it was looking raw, almost undercooked.

At every performance Dane has tackled songs that have stretched his voice. His first performance of I Will Always Love You was amazing - a much overused word that I rarely use. And two weeks ago he took on the Celine Dion number, My Heart Will Go On. Apart from one crack, again he delivered the crescendos powerfully and left me transfixed.

But last night he bit off more than he could chew. I don't know whether the song was his choice but he could have done with better advice.

The winner, Roland Williams, sang Me and Mrs Jones superbly but it's a safe choice for any half decent male singer. And he does have the x factor going on with the ladies. He was the only danger to Dane.

But Dane. You were the winner of the series on sheer potential and for having the guts to push it. Today go watch Little Miss Sunshine because it'll lift your spirits and it has a message that you need to take to heart. Winners are the ones who never give up. If I don't hear you sing again I will be much the poorer for it.

Blog stats

Exceeded 6,000 visits for first time ever last month.

Thanks for staying tuned in. And leaving comments which I (nearly) always appreciate. And for being civil and considered.

Children of the last recession

There are social trends happening here - and in other similar developed countries - which demand some attention.

It is true that through the second half of the nineties and early part of the 2000s some social indicators were heading in the right direction. But inexplicably they reversed. No. It wasn't the advent of tougher economic times because the trends reversed in advance.

Examples; Teenage birth, drinking and driving, crime in general, homelessness (anecdotally), youth suicide?

A couple of these are exclusively functions of the young, others, disproportionately. But there hasn't been a demographic blip. I have another theory.

The change is driven by the children born in the last recession who have been hitting adolescence and young adulthood. In 1990-1992 welfare dependence was very heavy. There were far more young people on welfare than ever before. They were abusing alcohol and other substances in greater numbers than before. Many, subsequently, never left the welfare ranks. Thus their children were affected pre- and post birth by their lifestyles. Many are disaffected and lawless. And probably mentally disturbed.

Huge hike in cannabis offences

Oh yes. Prohibition is a wonderful deterrent.



Recorded cannabis offences rose by almost 26 percent in the year to June 2009.

Police downplay rising crime

The June quarter crime statistics have just been released and they aren't good. What irks me no end is the spin the police put on them.

There were 442,540 recorded offences compared with 426,690 for last year, an increase of 3.7 percent. During this time New Zealand's resident population increased by approximately one percent. So, the recorded offence rate per head of population increased by only 2.8 percent.

'Only' be damned.

That's 15,850 more offences. Many, many more victims of crime.

It is the job of the police to prevent crime, not to normalise or downplay it.

What are you going to do when you grow up?

My generation commonly referred to adults as 'grown-ups'. I suppose it was the natural extension of the often-asked question, what are you going to be when you grow up? Or, what are you going to do when you grow up?

I am going to have kids, then I am going back to school to learn how to be a grown-up.

But Anne Tolley says nobody can force you to. Not even Work and Income.

That's good. 'Cause I was about as interested in a second time round as I am in the first.

Well if you aren't interested in learning how to be a grown-up from strangers, what about your own mum and dad?

What dad?

Well what about your mum?

She's too busy.

Doing what?

Going to school learning how to be a grown-up

Paula Bennett goes to Paris

Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett, is in Paris addressing her OECD counterparts about what New Zealand has done in the face of recession.

“I’ll be focusing on our country’s strong “work first” approach. Unlike other countries, we don’t hand over a benefit and then offer to help someone find work."

Now she may be saying that in a media statement, but what's the chances she will say that directly to other Ministers? Then again, this is Paula Bennett. Just which countries does she think let people onto welfare more readily than NZ does? It'd be interesting to know.

NZ has not been hit as hard as others by the recession and fortunately, when redundancies have occurred, other jobs can sometimes be found, hence NZ's success in work placement. But let's not go near other benefits..... For instance, if NZ treated workless single parents as unemployed, in the way other OECD countries do, her 'triaging' record would look a lot less positive.

(As well the picture is further complicated by other countries differing social security systems. Many have unemployment insurance whereby people have immediate entitlements to payments due to premiums paid by employers/employees/dedicated taxes. Whereas here, at the mercy of unemployment benefits funded through general taxation, entitlement is far more tenuous.)

“I’ll also look at how we’ve stimulated the economy through tax cuts ...."

Well, I must have missed that. So I can't comment. Anybody else want to?

Maori and Child Poverty

From today's NZ Herald;

In 2008 the Maori Party campaigned on ending child poverty by 2020. Child poverty is, however, implicitly tied in with welfare dependence.

Periodically Pita Sharples is heard promoting work-for-the-dole. He has said that welfare is hurting Maori, destroying their mana. And yet, in the same breath, he acknowledges that sole parents are part of Maori culture and must be supported.

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Violence - "a harsh lesson in reality"

The young cynic takes a candid look at violence.

(This is a kid who loves to wander around with the cat cradled in his arms and gets 'honours' for his rendition of Moonlight Sonata.)

'Radical' to 'run-of-the-mill'

I have been trying to find a quote I once read about how thinking changes over time, simply that today's radical idea is tomorrow's accepted wisdom. Of course, the transformation can be quite protracted. Arthur C Clarke said;

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.


The relevance is to the gradual change in various country's response to drugs. A conference has just been held at El Paso, Texas;

More than two dozen drug experts, academics, border journalists and law enforcement officials gathered to compare notes for three days about drug policy, coming from Mexico, the United States and even Colombia.

Two seemingly unlikely advocates of radical change at the conference were Terry Nelson, a retired federal agent, and James Gray, a California state judge, both of whom once sent drug offenders to prison.

“The global war on drugs is probably the greatest public policy failure of all time,” said Nelson, who stalked traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America during three decades with the U.S. Border Patrol, Customs and Department of Homeland Security.

“The drug war has brought us the militarization of our police force,” Nelson said. “And it's killing our families when you put a mother or father in jail for smoking small amounts of marijuana.”

Nelson said the answer is legalization, education and regulation, the treatment given two other dangerous but popular legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Unbelievable interview

This has got to be the whackiest interview script I have ever read. Paul Holmes interviewing Hone Harawira about his goal to make criminals out of tobacco manufacturers;

PAUL What do you want to actually see Hone, do you want to see a ban, do you want to see prohibition?

HONE I'd like to see the production sale and manufacture of tobacco in Aotearoa banned yeah. I think that unlike alcohol and other drugs which people like, with cigarettes most people actually want to stop more than 80% of smokers want to stop, so it's not like there's going to be a black market...

Really?

"...You can't create a black market in a situation where people don’t really want the product."

If people "really don't want the product" why is there a substantial existing legal market?

PAUL So you'd ban cigarette sales, ban tobacco, production of tobacco, marketing tobacco, well that’s already banned, you'd ban the sales but people will still want their smokes, that’s what I'm saying, because you would now turn them into criminals.

HONE No no no no no.

PAUL Well we've had that....

HONE No no no no no no no, we have deliberately not targeted smokers because I know from having been a smoker that if you target smokers all you do is piss them off, so you go after the tobacco companies and most smokers actually support what it is that we're trying to do here, that’s number one, number two you have to arrange a regime whereby you can help people wean themselves off tobacco, but again going back to that fact again, that most New Zealanders who do smoke want to stop, it's not that hard to do.

Apparently it's not that hard to give up heroin either. Yet despite it being illegal there are still thousands of heroin addicts.

PAUL You see even Helen Clark thought that prohibition had its limits and might not work, she said the trouble with prohibition and banning and she is very stridently anti tobacco, she said it makes criminals of addicts. So the courts clog up because someone's been caught smoking a cigarette.

HONE No no no, no no no, the courts don’t clog up with smokers, because we're not banning smoking, we're banning the production, sale and manufacture of tobacco. The only people who would end up in court would be the tobacco companies, but if we pass the law they'd be gone tomorrow Paul, wouldn’t you be happy?

PAUL Probably so I suppose, but where would we get our smokes? From the gangs?

HONE No you wouldn’t get your smokes from the gangs.

PAUL Of course you would you'd drive it underground.

HONE No you wouldn’t get your smokes from the gangs, because the gangs find greater money in other drugs, cigarettes are not that kind of a product. You would maintain a measure of production for weaning off purposes, for all of those kinds of situations but again going back to the knowledge and the fact that most New Zealanders want to stop it's just enough to get them out of the game. Paul, 5,000 New Zealanders every single year die form cigarettes. If a country did that to us Paul, we'd declare war, a company's doing it to us and we're letting it happen. There's something wrong there.

PAUL At the same time though Hone a nicotine addict doesn’t rush out and bang an old lady on the head because he hasn’t got any smokes left. Why don’t you tackle crime?

HONE That’s great if a smoker's not going to go to knock and old lady on the head over cigarettes, well let's just ban it, it's not gonna lead to any crime.

PAUL No but what I'm saying is the nicotine addict is not a danger to society, look at the prison population announced this week, more people in prison, 50% of them Maori, Maori comprise 50% of the population, why don’t you take on ...

HONE If you want to get into this whole sort of gang thing Paul, in the history of the gangs say since 1970 there'd be less than 500 people have died as a result of that, in that same 30 year period, in that same 30 year period, listen to this Paul nearly 100,000 New Zealanders have died from tobacco. What's the big fuss about gangs, it's not gangs that’s killing New Zealanders it's tobacco.

Un-bloody-believable. There is no account taken of the difference between the kinds of violent, often young, deaths associated with gangs and prohibition and people dying from smoking related illnesses towards the end of their natural allotted time. Or that drugs that gangs manufacture and sell also kill.

The man is a lunatic. Fortunately someone sane was listening in and made a comment or two;

RICHARD PREBBLE – Former ACT Leader

...Look the thing that gets me is this, he gave up smoking, it's a matter of personal responsibility and he's trying to claim that other people can't, it would be far better if he actually said to people this is something you have to take personal responsibility for, it's not easy but I've done it, if I've done it you can do it, instead he wants the colonial state to ban cigarettes for him. I mean it's the most patronising statement I've seen from a politician in a long time, and there's plenty of competition for that position, but what he's doing won't work, and just because it's a good cause that doesn’t make it right.....In the valley that I'm in there's so much marijuana grown and smoked that you actually see people smoking it quite openly. Now the Police can't stop that, and yet here we are having an MP who apparently is so out of touch with his electorate doesn’t realise that marijuana is growing wild in the north and is now saying he's going to ban tobacco. Look if I was in organised crime and I heard Hone this morning, I'd be writing out a cheque for his campaign.

Alcohol and moral panic

Every day there are stories in the media related to alcohol laws and consumption, with an emphasis on young people. One could get bored by them. Or one could have a look at some statistics.



When I overlay the 15+ population it looks like this.



The next graph and accompanying notes reveal more;


It is interesting to see how this translates to the amount of alcohol available for consumption per person above the purchasing age (noting that the minimum age for purchasing alcoholic beverages changed from 20 to 18 years in 1999). Before this, the amount of alcohol available per person aged 20 years or over had generally been declining since 1986. It fell by 24 percent, from 12.8 litres per person in 1986 to 9.8 litres per person in 1999. Since the purchasing age was lowered, the amount available per person aged 18 years or over has risen slightly from 9.4 litres in 1999 to 9.8 litres in 2007.

So what we are currently experiencing daily through the media is largely unsubstantiated moral panic. Yes there are problems with alcohol. Nobody in their right mind would deny it. But is the situation any worse than it was 20 or 30 years ago? And I put that time frame on it because it is those who were young 20 or 30 years ago making the fuss and clamouring for greater regulation.

Of course it is all cloaked in well-meaning paternalism like "...too many young people are killing themselves on the roads." Well, of course they are. One is one too many. But, again, is it getting worse? No.

Blogging again

Young Robert has leapt back to life. Can't tidy or censor the stuff. It just is.

This should wake you up

There are those who want to see local government much more heavily involved in "improving social well-being" - in practical terms providing more social services, social housing, etc. Maori will push this agenda because they want funding channelled into outfits like urban Maori authorities so that they can provide (and control) what they want for their own people.

Well, that might be OK if central government was getting out of the game - but it ain't. This will be a whole new layer of government activity paid for by you.

Now consider this headline from NewstalkZB today;

Brown and Bradford for Super city?

Why choosing a benefit is rational

The following chart is from a report called Dynamic Benefits and is based on UK data. The UK has a lone parent benefit rate similar to NZ in its generosity.



Note the statement under the figures - ...life choices other than work are realistic and even rational ones to take.

Here is a rough comparison for New Zealand. The median weekly income from working is taken from NZ Statistics Income Survey with 20 percent tax applied. The others are the result of some googling and are fairly arbitrary. The benefit incomes include other top-ups like accommodation supplement, family tax credit, etc.

Occupation/ Net income p.w. from median female wages

• Single person out of work $250 (all benefits)
• Median weekly income 15-24 year-olds $384
• Waitress/Bar staff/Cleaner $400
• Receptionist $415
• Hairdresser $418
• Single parent with one child out of work $430 (all benefits)
• Shop Assistant $448
• Typist $512
• Librarian $544
• Nurse $569

Seriously, if you had no or few school qualifications or little work ethic/inclination, why not choose motherhood?

Sue Bradford - shame about the causes

This won't be a very popular post but I am going to say something - or two if I can stretch to it - positive about Sue Bradford.

When I made submissions to the Social Services Select Committee Sue was never rude or intimidating (unlike Philip Field and Liz Gordon who could both became apoplectic). And she listened and would ask questions.

She has two strong personal attributes, courage and commitment. Shame about the causes she brought them to.

But I am glad she has resigned from Parliament. Because she is a thorn in the side of welfare reform - a particularly sharp one. She will, of course, continue to be, in some capacity. What capacity awaits to be seen.

With the extreme leftist welfare ethos gone from the Greens, Labour may be freer to look afresh at what needs doing. After all, it is more often than not that Labour is the party of reform.