Around the blogs

School holidays combined with an exhibition has left little time for writing. Fortunately there is plenty of interest on other blogs;

Winston Smith has written movingly about a rare success story from his supported housing experience but observes;

Now, instead of holding up the likes of Catriona as a shining example that one's childhood doesn't have to pre-determine your path in life I have to listen day in day out to the disempowering mantra that young people with anti-social behaviour problems behave the way they do due to their negative childhood experiences. A convenient theory that then allows the young person to self destruct and the agents of state intervention to abdicate all responsibility.

Labour MP Kelvin Davis gets angry about Iwi benefiting from the privatisation of prisons;

I see some iwi are rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of being able to get rich by locking their own up.

It goes to show how high the aspirations of some of our Maori leaders are. We now aspire to bung the bros in the hinaki and watch the dollars roll in. The longer and more often we can put them away, the sooner we will be able to afford to expand the prison and lock even more away.

The Frogblog laments what they claim is the stacking of the Welfare Working Group with the "far right".

Presumably under pressure from ACT, the Government seems to be unable to resist finding places for wingnuts on the various advisory groups it is setting up. Yesterday it continued this trend by appointing Business Roundtable communications consultant and former ACT Party President Catherine Isaac (formerly Judd) to its Welfare Working Group.

Karl du Fresne nails it in his usual concise fashion;

THE LEFT keeps moaning that wages in New Zealand are too low, which is perfectly correct. They complain that the government hasn’t delivered the promised higher-wage economy – again, all true.

But just let anyone suggest that something meaningful be done to free up the economy, increase productivity and stimulate income growth – such as reducing taxes and government spending – and who’s the first to howl in protest? Why, it’s the Left.

And last but not least my friend John Ansell has written about an exhibition he went to see earlier this week. Thank you John.

Maori and separatism

Is there an assumption amongst non-Maori that the Maori Party speaks for all Maori?

Perhaps the Maori Party MPs believe they do inasmuch as Maori who do not embrace the cultural and spiritual values of the Maori Party are not 'real' Maori.

The Maori Party is billed as a huge success yet their polling remains consistently around 3 percent despite being high profile, involved in the 'big' issues and appearing to have made some advantageous deals with National.

In Maoridom I am sure that there is no such assumption. The tribal politics and affiliations are strong. And there are plenty of business savvy Maori who don't naturally embrace the economic left and Maori who are inherently conservative.

There has always been disagreement between Maori leaders about what is the best way forward for Maori. Some preached assimilation. Others, like Apirana Ngata wanted Maori to retain their language, their customs and culture but also to take on the education and health services provided in the non-Maori world. To equip themselves for the future.

Remarkably I agree with Garth George today who writes about the Whanau Ora report;

The phrase "te ao Maori", which means "the Maori world", occurs at least 30 times in the taskforce report. I wonder about that. After all, the social welfare system, no matter how it is constituted, exists mainly in the modern Western world.

Many of the tens of thousands of people who are afflicted by poverty or otherwise disadvantaged may indeed be part of the Maori world, but they live in, and have to cope in, the modern Western world.

The Maori Party are most certainly pushing an increasingly separatist line. Yet they represent the aspirations of maybe 2 or 3 out of 12 voting age Maori (and that is assuming the significant Maori voting age population in Australia have a similar voting preferences to their NZ counterparts).

If many Maori are getting frustrated with the direction in which the Maori Party is taking Maoridom I am afraid the door will be re-opened to Winston Peters. Especially if Labour-voting Maori decide they are not wasting their vote at the next election. There is no doubt Winston has been ramping it up recently, opposing separatism but also stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment and economic nationalism. Ironically there are disaffected ex ACT voters, ultra conservatives, who might also lean his way. I say ironically because it was Rodney Hide that got rid of him.

My own frustration lies in not wanting separatism yet not wanting to deny Maori the chance to do things their way. But do most Maori want to "do things their way"? Isn't it about time we were talking about "our way"? I want to hear more from Maori who want to put aside the division but I don't want to hear it from Winston Peters.

Welfare Working Group announced

Members of the Welfare Working Group include:

• Ms Paula Rebstock (Chair)
• Professor Des Gorman
• Professor Kathryn McPherson
• Associate Professor Ann Dupuis
• Ms Catherine Isaac (formerly Judd)
• Ms Sharon Wilson-Davis
• Mr Adrian Roberts
• Ms Enid Ratahi Pryor.

According to the Minister's press release;

Based on past trends and current policy settings, the proportion of New Zealanders receiving long-term benefits is expected to increase unabated. The fiscal, social and economic costs of that are unsustainable.

Somewhat similar to what the header of this blog says.

I notice a number in there.

Taxpayers currently spend $7.6 billion per annum on main benefits.

A couple of weeks back I posted about the total of $4.8 billion being bandied about all over the media and said it was too low and the real cost is likely to be over $7 billion.

The erroneous $4.8 billion came directly from the Ministry:

345,000 New Zealanders currently receive a benefit, costing taxpayers $4.8 billion a year.

Anyway, good luck to them. One can only hope that if they offer up anything useful the government will have a more constructive response than to the Taskforce 2025 (which already made recommendations about reducing welfare)

When DPB pays more than the average female worker's income

From the Future Focus fact sheets we learned;

A sole parent, with two dependent children, renting in Auckland on DPB could receive approximately $580 per week including Accommodation Supplement and other allowances. A sole parent, with two dependent children, renting in the South Island on DPB could receive approximately $500 per week including Accommodation Supplement and other allowances

Using Statistics NZ Average Weekly Earnings (Employees) by Industry (ANZSIC06) and Sex (Qrtly-Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec) I produced a chart showing how these payments compare.



The point of this chart is to illustrate that choosing motherhood over work is entirely economically rational.

Comments and provisos

- tax applied 21c in the dollar
- a single mother (or other low income workers) employed in a low paying job may qualify for family tax credits, accommodation supplement etc
- the average earnings take no account of region whereas the DPB payments do
- If the DPB recipient has fewer than 2 children the weekly payment is lower; if she has more it is higher

(Inspired by Dynamic Benefits, produced by the UK Centre for Social Justice, undoubtedly the source of this piece by Fraser Nelson;

If an unemployed Pole gets a job as a barista in Starbucks, even for 15 hours a week, his situation improves dramatically. A young man in Britain would be just £10 a week better off than if he stayed at home on benefits. Why break your back for an extra tenner?

The situation is even more pernicious for young women who leave school with low qualifications, because the alternative to low-paid work is pregnancy. A woman with one child and on benefits has, on average, more disposable income than a hairdresser or teaching assistant. With two children, it's more than a receptionist or library assistant. With three, it's a lab technician, typist or bookkeeper. So there should be no mystery about why Britain came to have so many children in workless households (one in five, the highest in Europe). The young mothers, and the young men on benefits, are walking down a road to dependency paved for them by the state.

This is a peculiar definition of compassion. What Beveridge denounced as the "giant evil" of idleness is now being incubated on a mass scale by the very welfare state designed to eradicate it. As Britain positions itself for a recovery, this raises an ominous question for a prospective Conservative government: will it do any better? If the economy is to recover, might it simply suck in more of these industrious, hard-working immigrants while leaving between five and six million British people on out-of-work benefits?

Hat-tip also to The Welfare State We Are In)

Benefit statistics - what the numbers mean

Yesterday the Minister of Social Development pre-empted the release of the March quarter benefit numbers. The good news is total welfare benefits dropped by 20,662.

However, when the economy is not in recession that is a normal development.



Analysis of a similar drop between December 2006 and March 2007 shows that the drops on UB (10,000) and DPB (3,000) were larger than the Minister is indicating for the most recent quarter, respectively 6,000 and 1,000.

So a fair chunk of the drop is off benefits other than the 4 main benefits.

In December 2009 there were 12,096 unemployed students receiving the Unemployment Benfit - Student - Hardship. This compares to 7,997 in December 2006. So in December 2009 50 percent more students were on the dole and many of those will now have transferred onto a student allowance.

So we are beginning to see where most of the drop is and it isn't so much about leaving welfare but transferring onto another form of it.

If there had been any significant reduction in either the sickness or invalid's benefit I am sure we would have been hearing about it.

Contradictory crime figures

Reading two pieces back-to-back highlighted a significant error in the first. The error was immediately noticeable and I didn't think I could be bothered blogging about it. But the second caused me to reflect yet again about the misinformation that is spread via the media.

In the NZ Herald, Tapu Misa writes:

Crime went up last year, the biggest real increase in years. Murders were up by 25 per cent, the 65 recorded homicides being the highest in a decade. And violent crime was up by 8 per cent per capita.

In the DomPost, John Hartevelt writes:

Police statistics issued this month showed violent crime was up by 9.2 per cent to 65,465 offences last year. There was a jump in recorded homicide offences – up by more than 20 per cent to 134 last year.

Misa has reported homicides at less than half of the true number. There were 65 murders but it is a significant mistake to interchange the two.

In this column she rails against three strikes, blames increased crime on increased joblessness, discusses the causes of falling crime in the US (including the discredited abortion theory), pans the 'broken windows' revolution and the Californian application of three strikes. All of which is a discussion that will no doubt be addressed by Garth McVicar or David Garrett given the chance (although the NZ Herald doesn't appear to publish responses to Misa).

One theory about a cause of dropping US crime is neglected however. She wouldn't want to find anything in favour of welfare reform.

Strong families and employment are protectors against crime. Both are diminished by out of control welfare. Crime in the US dropped as welfare dependence diminished.

If lower socio-economic men continue to be displaced from their roles as father and provider then more crime is on the cards. And it is guaranteed to continue through to the next generation via any children he produces.

Matt McCarten's misapprehension

The left - and probably many on the right for that matter - do not understand what privatisation is.

Just because taxpayer funding is allocated to people who are not directly employed by the state, it does not follow that privatisation has occurred. The contracts are still publicly funded and the taxpayer has no choice about providing the means.

Whanau ora is not privatisation.

Privatisation of welfare would require that social services and cash assistance were provided by agencies that fund themselves through corporate backing, investment, business ventures, individual donations etc. That is, the funding is provided by willing contributors.

The wages and salaries of those practitioners of whanau ora will still be paid by the state, albeit indirectly.

To use Matt's quotation, "... big f***ing deal."

UK: life in state-provided 'supported housing'

Winston Smith has just updated his blog with his usual cutting-through-the-crap humour;

After reading about Cameron’s plan to turn the lives of yoofs around it got me thinking about all the harebrained plans and policies I have to work with. In fact, right outside the office on a notice board there is one outlining our policy on Keyworking (a.k.a Support Working, Link Working just in case anyone finds the term Keyworking offensive they have options). The policy outlines all the different qualities that the resident’s personal assistant, sorry KeyWorker, should exude, thus instilling at a young age that the state is there to serve you before you have done anything in service of the state. Most notable of all though is the definition of what keyworking purports to do: “helping you to realise your goals in order to move forward in life.” This definition doesn’t allow for the fact that many of our 16-25 year old residents don’t have goals beyond getting as wasted as they can on a regular basis. This then involves me having to support them in setting some goals all the while being “careful not to impose one’s own value system” as one manager put it to me recently. The residents who don’t have goals never turn up for their Keyworking sessions and have to be threatened with eviction to engage in setting goals they don’t aspire towards. All of this is recorded, monitored and audited by layers of state financed bureaucrats.

Then there are those residents, usually the older ones but not always, who have goals and aims and are progressing and just want to be left alone to do so which they should be permitted to do. They resent formal support plans that state obvious goals like: continue to pay your rent, go to work etc. etc. They can’t understand and neither can I, why all this needs to be written down and why they have to talk about it every two weeks for an hour. They feel patronised for having their lives interfered in and they are right. However, as they can’t afford to rent properties of their own due to unjust rents they are forced to adhere to the state’s ludicrous interference to qualify for a roof over their heads.

Getting stuff done

It's not much after 9am. David has gone to work and I have done the week's grocery shopping, have today's washing on the line, the dishwasher is emptied, animals fed, beds made, a couple of blog entries before that and...the day is mine. I can read, paint, garden, walk the dog, study horse form, do a jigsaw with Sam.

This post was prompted by a remark the checkout girl made to me earlier.(She's a student who has recently been studying in Leeds reading politics and art history). She said she wished her parents were as organised as I am. That they would do a proper shop instead of buying in dribs and drabs and that she had offered to do it for them but to no avail. I was surprised at her frustration but it caused me to reflect on why I am the way I am.

It goes back to a teacher. She was deputy principal and an utter battle-axe. She would yank an illegal piece of jewellery off your neck if she caught sight of it. But she was very kind to me when I was in the sick bay - a monthly unpleasant occurrence.

One day in assembly she told us that people regarded her as very efficient. "But you know what?" she said. "I am not. I am lazy. But I like to get what needs to be done out of the way so I can do what I want to do, which includes lazing around if I want to."

In a practical sense that is the philosophy I live by. It was bloody good advice.

Explaining what a libertarian is

Highly recommended article here for those people who can't tell the difference between liberals, conservatives and libertarians.

I used to be a Kennedy-style "liberal." Then I wised up. Now I'm a libertarian.

But what does that mean?

When I asked people on the street, half had no clue.

We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they're for limited government, but they're pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support "nation-building."

And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government -- they say -- to make life kinder for people.

By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone -- in both the economic and personal spheres. Leave us free to pursue our hopes and dreams, as long as we don't hurt anybody else.

More.

Read through to the last lines because that is the crux of it for me.

Boaz indicts the welfare state for the untold harm it's done in the name of the poor.

"What we find is a system that traps people into dependency. ... You should be asking advocates of that system, 'Why don't you care about the poor?'"

The "don't know" line is missing

The latest Roy Morgan poll. Not that I was asked, but if I had been, my answer wouldn't be represented.

We could try a mini (probably very mini on a Saturday) poll here. How many of you, if there was an election to be held next Saturday, don't know who you would vote for - or wouldn't vote at all?



There is a danger I will return to my non-voting status. With a big difference. When I was young I didn't vote because I didn't know or care enough.

What difference will whanau ora make?

Whanau Ora is a restructuring of welfare services. There is no indication yet that welfare benefits are involved. Whanau ora promises to work with and reduce dysfunctional families. Dysfunctional families experience a range of negative occurrences; truancy, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, criminal offending, poor physical and mental ill-health are some.

Dependence on benefits is a big driver of dysfunction. Benefits - or a guaranteed weekly payment from Work and Income regardless - absolve people from working for a living and having positive, constructive and co-dependent relationships with other whanau members. Benefits allow people to live outside of functioning society. Welfare services evolve as a response to this dysfunction. Services may ameliorate some of the problems but a significant reduction cannot be possible while the prime driver - benefits - remains unchanged.

The taskforce report used an example of a working single mother whose children were going off the rails and was having to deal with various authorities. This example isn't typical however. The Early Start programme, the only programme that has systematically identified the neediest families, provided services to them and compared the outcomes to a control group that did not receive services, found 90 percent of their clients were on welfare. The problematic working mother does fit however with Tariana Turia's view that women should be allowed to stay on the DPB until their youngest dependent child completes his or her schooling.

It is possible that Maori will be better providers of welfare services for Maori people. John Tamihere maintains his trust can reduce youth offending if given ample resourcing. But it is difficult to see by what mechanism whanau ora is going to ensure people 'meet their obligations' unless the trust also controls benefit inflow into the dysfunctional families they aim to assist. That eventuality may still be a whanau ora goal. In the past trusts or agents have been appointed to manage benefits. As it stands however there is no intimation this is going to happen. The report specifies that there is, "... no expectation iwi would fund core services such as health or unemployment benefits."

The government claims that the 20 new whanau ora contracts will be a fiscally neutral policy. Funding will be drawn from the existing Health, Social Development and Maori Development budgets. This can only mean that there will be winners and there will be losers. We have yet to see which service providers are going to have their funding cut or lose it altogether.

The whanau ora concept focuses on the family and their collective responsibility. But in my experience working in a voluntary capacity with needy families, there is usually one (or two) individuals that pull the whanau down. Who make their own problems everybody else's. For instance Corrections complains about imprisoned whanau members pressuring their relatives to bring drugs into prison. This can take the form of intimidation or physical threats. Hence the dysfunction multiplies. However the problem still begins with, and must be resolved by, the individual.

Perhaps it is time to start talking more about personal responsibility instead of collective responsibility. When the US decided to grab welfare dependence and all the attendant dysfunction by the neck and give it a good shake they did so via new legislation called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act(PRWORA). President Clinton told Americans welfare, as they had known it, would change. In the majority of cases welfare became strictly short term assistance, the aim being to restore the incentive to rely on one's own efforts and avoid self-destructive behaviours .

Simply changing the way services are provided will only scratch the surface if the current benefit system remains unchanged.

Update; Talking to Larry Williams on NewstalkZB (starts 55:02)

Whanau ora - overhyped

Turia has been appointed Minister of Whanau Ora. The media is billing whanau ora as potentially the biggest shake-up in welfare in decades. But whanau ora is about welfare services - not welfare cash transfers. There is nothing in the report released today that would indicate whanau ora providers will take over administration of benefits.

How much can whanau ora be expected to achieve in terms of changing behaviour - or as John Tamihere would put it, getting beneficiaries/clients to meet their obligations - when services and benefits are separate? It is like tasking a group within a large company with lifting worker's productivity but giving it no capacity to penalise or reward either motivated or lazy workers. So while some are hailing this development as a great step forward, I will wait and watch.

Whanau ora is about the whole of family approach. Personally I have seen high risk whanau where one (or two) bad eggs keep pulling others down. 'Blood is thicker than water' does not serve Maori well in this respect. So increasing the well-being of the whanau still rests on the individual and his or her efforts.

The "lucky" country thinks big

The Age is reporting that the Australian Treasury has predicted their population will grow to 36 million by 2050. The roughly matches what the Australian Bureau if Statistics are forecasting as well.

Australia's estimated resident population (ERP) at 30 June 2007 of 21.0 million people is projected to increase to between 30.9 and 42.5 million people by 2056, and to between 33.7 and 62.2 million people by 2101. Series A projects the highest growth, while Series C projects the lowest growth.



In contrast Statistics New Zealand is predicting the following for New Zealand;

Low fertility and the ageing of the large baby boom cohort have raised the prospect of slow or no growth in the future. Regardless of which projection is chosen, the general demographic outlook for New Zealand over the coming decades is for slowing growth, a narrowing gap between births and deaths, and an ageing population. This is a radical departure for a society accustomed to a growing population. Any innovative or expansionist planning or business programme must take account of structural shifts in progress.



This graph is from 2000, but even latest population projections - June 2009 - are only slightly higher:

The latest projections of New Zealand's population have the estimated resident population (provisional) at 30 June 2009 as a base. Projection series 5 presented here assumes that:

* New Zealand women will have 1.90 children each on average in the long-term (below the 2.1 children required for the population to replace itself without migration)
* life expectancy at birth will increase to 85.6 years for males and 88.7 years for females by 2061
* there will be a net migration gain of 10,000 people each year from 2013 onwards.

Given these assumptions, New Zealand's population is projected to grow from 4.32 million in 2009 to 5.15 million in 2031 and 5.75 million in 2061.

There are people who celebrate low or zero population growth. I am not one. The economic reality is that dependency ratios are growing and without an expanding working-age pool (what might be expected from net migration) NZ is facing massive problems.

The distortion of the DPB

Yesterday beneficiary advocate Paul Blair was back in the news claiming the Ministry of Social Development is acting illegally. He is trying to get people who have been relegated from an invalid's benefit to a sickness benefit to come forward and form a body that will take the department to court. Mr Blair describes himself as a qualified barrister. Listening to him interviewed by Sean Plunkett this morning he lacks the discipline and gravitas one might associate with that of a practitioner of the law.

Mr Blair has nevertheless succeeded in his past endeavours to bend MSD policy to his will. In 2004 he and two other fathers took a case against the department described by the NZ Herald as follows;

Three Rotorua beneficiaries have forced a law change for single parents with split custody of their children through an out-of-court settlement with the Social Development Ministry.

On October 1, 1991, a law was introduced to stop two parents living apart, but who had split custody of their children, from both getting the Domestic Purposes Benefit.

One was eligible for the sole-parent benefit and all the benefits that went with it, while the other was entitled to the unemployment benefit.

Rotorua beneficiaries advocate and sole parent Paul Blair argued that this was not fair as the parent receiving the DPB was entitled to earn more when working than the parent on the dole.

Parents on the DPB were also entitled to childcare subsidies, a non-recoverable training incentive allowance if attending a course, and did not have to be work-tested.

Rotorua sole parents Leon Broughton, Richard Amoroa and Mr Blair started legal proceedings in the High Court at Rotorua against the chief executive of the ministry more than a year ago.

In the out-of-court settlement, the ministry agreed the second parent in split-custody cases would be entitled to the emergency maintenance allowance, paid at the same rate as the DPB and with similar advantages.

Justice Alan McKenzie ordered the ministry to review the plaintiffs' benefits, pay any arrears, treat all similar cases in the same way and review cases as far back as December 12, 2000.

This is an utter distortion of how the DPB was intended to operate; the state paying for the mother (or father) to care for the dependent children while the liable parent contributes to this payment through earned income.

Another Court of Appeal case, the Ruka Case, also saw the original intention of the DPB distorted by a ruling that stated where a women was living in a relationship with a man who was abusive and not financially or emotionally supportive she could not be legally described as 'living in the nature of a marriage'. Therefore she could continue to receive the DPB. Thousands of past decisions were scrutinised under the new ruling, overturned and financially recompensed. Note now that as long as a man is violent and doesn't support his partner she can stay on welfare. A bitter irony given an original aim of the DPB was to enable women to leave abusive relationships.

Of course there are many other ways in which eligibility for the DPB has been distorted. These are just two of the more counter-productive examples.

Shattered myth

Some news for those of us who had to be forced to eat fruit and veges as kids, continue to force ourselves to eat fruit and veges as grown-ups and force our children to eat fruit and veges because THEY WILL MAKE YOU LIVE LONGER.

All that angst and resentful compliance may have been a complete waste of time.

However, having believed it for so long I am not about to relinquish my prejudice and share this revelation with the children. When they ask, "What's to eat?" my standard response will continue to be, "Get a piece of fruit."

(They only listen to me sometimes but this at least reduces the amount of junk food they might otherwise consume. And I need to indulge myself. I always feel like a better mother when I feed them fruit and veges.)

Once a lag, always a lag?

A friend once described to me how she and two others had gone to prison to visit a gang president to 'buy' her partner's freedom. She stayed in the car but was quite explicit about the intent of the visit and which gang was involved. And I have no reason to doubt the story.

I recalled this episode just now when reading about Jack Yorke, who similarly struck a deal to obtain his release. Looking at the region it may well be the same gang. Unfortunately for Mr Yorke, when the person with whom he had struck the deal died, new blood started demanding money to uphold the agreement. It's so despicable. Yorke, probably something of a wreck from hard living and on a sickness benefit, stole some property to pay the ransom. Then he confessed to the police. It was his first conviction in the 6 years since being released from jail.

Now he is being sent back to prison for 15 months with "special release conditions to assist in rehabilitation."

This raises a few questions in my mind.

1/ What, if anything, is being done about the blackmailing of Mr Yorke?

2/ What is 15 months in prison supposed to achieve? Would it be preferable to spend the $91,000 it costs to house a prisoner each year on buying Yorke a new identity and shipping him off somewhere? In prison it is going to cost 6 times what it currently costs to support him and the fact he stayed out of trouble after 2004 would suggest he is over his life of crime, worn-out most likely.

3/ If Mr Yorke is subject to threats and intimidation on the outside, what chance the authorities can keep him safe on the inside?

4/ And, of course, is Mr Yorke telling the truth, but I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But perhaps the hard-liners would say, tough. He has to be punished and if he didn't want to do the time, he shouldn't have done the crime. Perhaps Mr Yorke is about to get his comeuppance for his previous life of offending.

And that is exactly where I part company from the hard-liners. Yes, I actually have some sympathy for this character because I imagine he is a burnt-out shell of a man who no longer poses a threat to society. There are plenty more like him hence very few old men are in prison. But more importantly the way the justice system is dealing with him seems to defy logic. There must be better outcomes available for both Yorke and the taxpayer. Surely.

11 percent of 16-24 year-olds on welfare

At December 2009 there were 62,580 16-24 year-olds on welfare,

View the benefit type, age and regional breakdown here.

Only 36 percent of them were on the dole. 35 percent were on the DPB.

(One 16 or 17 year-old was on a Widow's benefit.)

Just over 1 in 10 may not seem remarkable but in higher socio-economic areas the number will be negligible. And in the poorest areas the number will be around 4 or 5 in 10. That's where being on welfare is normalised behaviour.

Is Work and Income toughening up?

According to the NZ Herald people are being bumped off the invalid's benefit and onto a sickness benefit ahead of the new rule changes. The health advisers involved are not a new appointment though. It may be that after the release of last year's auditor general's report, which found a lack of progress in the application of Labour's changes, they have stepped up activity.

The story may also be the result of Rotorua beneficiary advocate and activist Paul Blair getting busy again. Paul Blair has previously taken the Ministry of Social Development to court in order to secure a rule change that allowed single parents to split the custody of their children, both go on the DPB and avoid work-testing.

So what do statistics show? The March quarter statistics are not out yet. But those up to December 2009 show an increase in both benefits. Within that picture it is entirely possible more people than usual are being transferred from IB to SB hence the steep rise on SB. But the inflow onto IB is still greater than the outflow.



These graphs show that around 55 working-age people out of 1,000 rely on a sickness or invalid's benefit. This compares to 24 in 1991. Something has to be done to reverse the growth trend. Putting someone on a shorter term, lower paying benefit might provide the encouragement they need to look for a different or supplemental source of income.

Methadone dispensing under increasing scrutiny in Scotland

In NZ there around 4,500 people on the methadone programme.

In Scotland, where the population is only 5 million, there are 22,000 on methadone.

As my husband noted, there must be long queues at the pharmacies in the morning.

It is no wonder that methadone has become a political football in Scotland but expense is a red herring. Methadone itself isn't expensive but the management of patients and dispensing adds up.


A coalition of world experts in drug abuse have defended the use of methadone to treat heroin addicts and warned that curtailing its prescription would bring about a spike in overdoses, crime and HIV.

In a letter to The Scotsman, the group, comprising dozens of international specialists, have condemned the "continuing misrepresentation" surrounding the effectiveness of the heroin substitute and rejected claims that is too expensive.

The defence of methadone by the coalition of GPs, psychiatrists, counsellors and epidemiologists comes in the wake of growing criticism of the treatment and accusations that the Scottish Government has become overly reliant on the drug.

Last week, Professor Neil McKeganey, the director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at the University of Glasgow, argued that more effort was required to get Scotland's addicts off drugs through abstinence.

Blog stats

Last month there were over 7,000 visits. A new milestone. Ta very much.

When less is more

An AUT survey shows that;

Feeling as though the Government is listening to them is one of the most important things to New Zealanders, but it is the area where the country scores the worst.

The best remedy for this is not more democracy, more participation, more consulting, more select committees, more representatives, more commissions of enquiry, etc.

It is LESS government. If government weren't so pervasive in all aspects of our lives its non-responsiveness would be less of a problem.

Australia sucking money out of NZ

Why are there race meetings all over Australia today sucking money out of shut-down NZ?

Because NZ is a far more Christian nation? Or because NZ has more than its fair share of spoilsports? Or perhaps it is simply that Australia is a 'can do' country and NZ is a 'can't do'. Hence the growing economic gap.

And what is the reward for being a 'can't do' country? Russell Norman?

Maori smoke because they are poor - not because they are Maori

That's the latest finding in the Christchurch Health and Devlopment Study; Specifically;

OBJECTIVE: The present study examined the role of socioeconomic status and cultural identity in the association between ethnicity and nicotine dependence, in a birth cohort of >1000 methods young people studied to age 30. METHODS: Data were gathered on ethnicity, cultural identification, nicotine dependence, and socioeconomic factors, as part of a longitudinal study of a New Zealand birth cohort (the Christchurch Health and Development Study). RESULTS: Those reporting Māori identity had rates of nicotine dependence that were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than rates for non-Māori. Control for socioeconomic factors reduced the associations between ethnic identity and nicotine dependence to statistical non-significance. In addition, there was no evidence of a statistically significant association between Māori cultural identity and nicotine dependence, nor was there evidence of gender differences in the association between ethnic identity and nicotine dependence, after controlling for socioeconomic factors. CONCLUSIONS: The higher rates of nicotine dependence observed among Māori appear to be attributable to differences in socioeconomic status. Efforts to improve the socioeconomic standing of Māori should therefore help to reduce rates of nicotine dependence in this population.

Get your teeth into that.

I don't believe poverty makes people smoke (accept that it is an affordable 'pleasure').

Hypothetical question;

Why don't Pacific women, who have the same socio-economic status as Maori women, have a higher rate of nicotine dependence? Their smoking rate is the same as European women. And Asian women, the poorest, smoke the least.

In fact, the more I ponder this, the more inclined I am to think it is being Maori, something about an attitude (how many of us smoked when we were young as either an act of rebellion or to fit in with mates) that makes their tobacco use higher. Like welfare, they start young and it is difficult to kick the habit.

But that's just opinion. The science makes a nonsense of what I think.

"Ugly body language..."

John Armstrong writes about the tensions within ACT. A favourite of the media and left-wing blogs at the moment. He describes the apparently, "... ugly body language displayed by Hide and his deputy Heather Roy towards one another on TV3's The Nation last weekend." One assumes that the ugly body language occurs between two people who are in the same space at the same time. Body language is very hard to disguise. So I thought I would have a look.

I was under the distinct impression that the two had appeared on the programme, probably in the studio, together. I sat through 13 minutes waiting for something that never happened. In fact the whole thing is a story made up by TV3. Bits of it are true and bits of it are Stephen Parker overlaying his interpretation and asking questions he can then weave into the thread that says Heather wants the leadership. The stuff about Rodney - from an interview with Stephen Franks - not being a manager is twisted into 'Rodney is not managing'. What Rodney doesn't like managing is people. That's an entirely different thing.

Heather does like managing people. Organising and planning.

I think ACT was more successful when it was a group of individual MPs doing their own thing. But Heather likes team stuff. Unfortunately with people attracted to less government, strongly individualistic types, making them work together doesn't necessarily produce a synergistic effect. During my interview by the board pre 2008 election, when asked I replied that I am not a team player. Probably got me the chop. But it's true. And I don't think Rodney is. Muriel Newman certainly wasn't. Stephen didn't strike me as one either. They are ideas people who really don't enjoy the machinery of party politics.

Rodney may not be a people-manager, or a team player, but he is the only MP capable of being ACT leader. Heather doesn't come close to possessing Rodney's charisma; his intellect; his oratory skills and sheer bloody single-mindedness.

But there I go again buying the idea she even wants the job.

Raise the Super Age

I have only now found time to go back now (prompted by a comment from yesterday - thanks) and have a look at the IMF recommendations to NZ.

In there is an utterly sane and inarguably sound idea. The age for Super eligibility must go up. The IMF ensconces that more neatly;

10. To address longer-term pressures on the budget, early steps should be taken to contain the projected growth in health care and pension costs. Measures could include improving the efficiency of health care spending and linking the pension eligibility age to life expectancy.

Super makes up the biggest single item of government expenditure ($7.7 billion) and it is going to rise significantly as the population ages. I would like to see a young group (supported by their parent's generation) pick up this recommendation and campaign on it.

It would be very provocative to use the moniker RSA. Some will say it is disrespectful to returned soldiers who have fought for their country, paid their txes etc but most returned soldiers will get a Vets pension anyway.

Grey Power are very strong politically and they are a pain-in-the-proverbial socialists (though not all of their members are). I imagine they would be the foremost opponents. What a bun fight that would be.

This issue needs a real push with Guy Smiley promising to do absolutely nothing about it. It would be a real polariser and sitting on the fence would get more and more uncomfortable.

Act-on-Campus?

History repeating

I have been reviewing older issues of the NZ Social Policy Journals this afternoon and realised that under the National government (of the 1990s) the contributors brought a far less 'government must' attitude. For instance there was a contribution by Gareth Morgan, and a number of people who wrote publications by the NZBR around that time. During the 2000s it was predominantly left-leaning academics contributing. But here is a statement, 17 years-old, that caught my eye.

Breaking the dependency cycle is one of the two top priority outcomes for the Department of Social Welfare in the 1993/94 year, and a number of new initiatives have recently been undertaken aimed at facilitating the “welfare-to-work” process.

During the 17 years another generation has become dependent. What is National's latest stated goal?

"...aiming to break the cycle of welfare dependency."

Previews and going off on a tangent

Well I've broken even before the exhibition officially opens. Sigh of relief. Can pay off credit card. Two paintings sold yesterday. I find the previews quite a trial. Everyone wants to talk to you and you are constantly aware of not being able to do that. So many friends come and go without my even being able to acknowledge them. This is one of the reasons I was never any good at politics because I not only let myself get monopolised by people, I enjoy it. I get easily engrossed in conversations. But frequently about stuff other than my paintings.

There are always people who will walk up and say, "Are you the Lindsay Mitchell that writes to the newspaper?" That's good. People who don't agree with my views never approach me. When I confess I am they launch forth on what they know and their perspective. Fascinating.

For instance a woman yesterday who had worked for social welfare in the early seventies said to me they never needed to introduce the DPB. "I could get a woman on the emergency benefit if she needed it," she said. But now , "the underbelly has got too big." Of course she is right about the emergency benefit. This idea that pre DPB women were forced to give up children, forced to live violent relationships is not wholly true. Help was available but not of right. That's what changed and that's what opened the floodgates.

Another person I know well who also worked in the department late 60s and early 70s, a sole parent herself at that time, has said the same thing. They didn't really need to do that. Quietly working within the existing rules help was there where it was warranted. Consequently when it was introduced there wasn't any big fanfare. Media coverage in the Evening Post was relegated to something like page 18 from memory.

Contrast that to the current climate - 'Future Focus' being a perfect example - whenever there is the slightest hint of eligibility rules for the DPB changing it dominates the media for days.

Easter exhibitions

Solo 29 opens to the public tomorrow and there are 2 previews today. I have 12 new works on display and hope to spend quite a bit of time there pasteling. People very much enjoy watching an artist working. It's the school holidays so hopefully that will boost traffic. While I was down there laying out the work I took the opportunity to have a quick squizz at the National Portrait Competition showing nearby. Some great paintings on display (although I see the infamous Clayton Weatherston depiction has been removed.) So if you are in the city over Easter drop by and check out both exhibitions.

Sentences and orders being served soar

This graph appears to be telling me that the number of sentences and orders in place has jumped by roughly 50 percent since July 2007.

Corrections - currently one of the few growth industries in New Zealand.

You own your own life

Given the very sad passing of Margaret Page I thought this quote, from the Freedom Foundation's daily update was timely;

A man has the right to dispose of his life and his property in any way he chooses, without interference from anyone else. A man has no right to dispose of any other man's life or property, no matter what his personal rationalizations may be.

— Robert Ringer

MPs square off over welfare and child abuse

Over at Red Alert MP Carmel Sepuloni has taken enormous offence at National MP Todd McClay linking welfare to child abuse. It is a fine example of why it is impossible to have an objective conversation about this issue.

McClay's comments must have occurred during the debate on the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill,

Todd went down the wrong path when he disrespectfully brought Nia Glassie in to the debate. He went in to a rant abour how she was surrounded by people on benefits and therefore (in his mind) this led to her murder.

This was not only bad taste but it was offensive. Not only is the Govt trying to stigmatise beneficiaries as lazy; dole bludgers, ripping off the system BUT NOW they are adding – child abusers and even child murderers – to the stigma.

I have directed her to NZ research that shows children who are the subject of a care and protection notification are 4 times more likely to have a parent or caregiver on a benefit, adding;

You have to understand that ‘are more likely to’ can co-exist with ‘most don’t’. For argument’s sake;

8 out of 100 beneficiaries abuse their children.
2 out of 100 non-beneficiaries abuse their children.

Therefore beneficiaries are 4 times more likely to abuse their children BUT most don’t.

However, inasmuch as child murder usually occurs at the extreme end of abuse, it is more likely to happen when the parent or other caregiver is a beneficiary.

So stop taking offence and start asking whether there is a link between welfare and child abuse.

How ambitious is Heather Roy?

Is Heather Roy really angling for leadership of ACT or is she being cornered into appearing so by the media?

Having a female/male co-leadership situation is so PC. She is reported as saying that it has worked for the Maori Party and the Greens. But in what way?

In terms of actually achieving votes the single leadership of National and Labour has been far more effective.

Turia on the welfare reforms

Interviewed on Radio NZ this morning Associate Social Development Minister Tariana Turia made it clear she does not support National's DPB reforms but has to vote for them as minister. So does Sharples. But the rest of the caucus is another matter.

Initially she says she does support benefit reform (makes some interesting comments about people not understanding where benefit money comes from) but then makes it clear (as in the past) that she is only talking about the unemployment benefit. Her problems;

1/ The timing - where are the jobs?
2/ Single parents should be allowed to stay home until their children have "completed schooling."

Regarding the timing, I have blogged before about where the existing and looming shortages lie and demand will come as the baby boomers age. But as well manufacturing is picking up. Plus there is a lag in introducing reforms. If we put them off because of present circumstances, when circumstances change the new rules aren't in place.

Paying single parents to stay home until their children complete school - and if she had been asked to clarify that I am sure it would have been high school - is absurd, although, in law, what currently happens.

So how is this going to pan out? Tariana would not guarantee all her caucus will vote for the reforms. Have we heard anything from ACT about the reforms? Is their support guaranteed, bearing in mind the reforms (depending on which is under the spotlight) are a rehash, a continuation of current practice or could arguably make intergenerational dependency worse? What are the numbers needed?

If 3 Maori Party MPs and ACT didn't support the legislation, even with Peter Dunne's 'aye' the vote will be tied. Can legislation be passed under a tied vote? I don't know the answer to that.

Then again the ACT ministers of government may also be obliged to support the government in which case it is a done deal. But perhaps they should be holding out for change with more teeth - like limiting benefit eligibility to the number of children dependent when the benefit was granted. Or basing work-testing on a set period of time from when the benefit was granted, rather than on the age of the youngest child. In effect, time-limiting it. After all, ACT always claimed to be the campaigners for welfare reform and time-limits were very much part of their earlier policy.

The legislation has its first reading in parliament this afternoon.

There is none so blind...

Tapu Misa has written about National's welfare reforms in her Herald column today;

You'd think then that someone like Lindsay Mitchell, a "welfare commentator" and tireless critic of the DPB, would be celebrating.

Actually, no. The benefit changes, she blogs, "are a waste of time"; they've either been tried before (and failed) or are "a continuation of current practice dressed up as a new approach".

She points out that National introduced the same work test back in 1996, with little change in the number of DPB beneficiaries.

As for making people reapply for the dole after one year, Mitchell says 84 per cent of those on the dole don't even reach one year, and anyway, the unemployment benefit isn't the problem when it comes to inter-generational welfare dependency.

Mitchell's problem is with unwed teenage mothers who keep swelling the ranks of the DPB. She says they're the ones who find the idea of life on the DPB too seductive to pass up.

Who would choose this as a lifestyle option? Not the seventh form girls at the Auckland private school I spoke to recently. They'd never even heard of the DPB.

But that's hardly surprising. The teen birth rate of girls in the poorest decile, girls who don't attend private schools, is almost 10 times that of girls in the wealthiest. Girls attending private schools have families with high expectations of them and opportunities abound. Girls in the poorest decile will have much slimmer career prospects and motherhood rates alongside reasonably well. This doesn't necessarily mean they make an active decision to get pregnant and go on the DPB or EMA (which they can do from 16), but the availability of a benefit most certainly influences their choices.

In his book More Than Just Race (2009), Harvard professor William Julius Wilson disputes the widely-held assumption that underpinned many of the 1996 welfare reforms in the United States: that there is "a direct causal link between the level or generosity of welfare benefits and the likelihood that a young woman would bear a child outside of marriage".

Wilson writes that there is no evidence for the claims that welfare payments provide incentives for childbearing, or discourage marriage.

But there is. Research for the US department of Human and Health Services by Anne Hill and June O'Neill showed that a 50 percent increase in the value of welfare payments and foodstamps led to a 43 percent increase in unmarried births. Numerous other studies, and not just American, have identified a similar association.

Women don't need to be dragged kicking and screaming off the DPB, they need good childcare and secure, well-paying jobs.

If women want "secure, well-paying jobs" they need to plan for them. Nothing has more potential to interrupt an education or absolve the need to get an education better than the certainty of a welfare income that pays more than the minimum wage.

As Auckland University associate professor of economics Susan St John wrote last week: "New Zealand's figures show clearly that when the job conditions are favourable and unemployment is low, benefit numbers fall."

So what did we see with the DPB during the economic boom? A drop from a 1998 high of 113,000 to 97,000 in 2008. The core of long-termers, especially those who start young and stay longest, wasn't touched.

A 2002 analysis by Bob Gregory, an economics professor at the Australian National University, showed that most Australian women were constantly trying to get off welfare, but most ended up back on the benefit within a short time.

My comments on The Standard most probably led Misa to Bob Gregory's research, the most astounding aspect of which is he estimated, in Australia, women stayed on welfare for an average total of at least 12 years. This did not include benefits they might transfer to when they no longer had dependent children in their care. Which supports my assertion that welfare has transformed into far more than a last resort safety net.

I am not sure what Misa is trying to achieve with this column. Work and strong families are an integral part of Pacific culture. A denial that welfare can undermine both is self-defeating. But if she doesn't want to see the evidence then a private girls school is absolutely the best place to go looking for it.

Deja vu

Which government, and in which year, said the following?

"This government will not support unemployment as a lifestyle option. We are making the benefit system simpler and fairer, but for those who do not accept their responsibilities, there will be sanctions. Those who fail to take up suitable jobs that are offered to them will not receive taxpayer support."

The truth will out - eventually

It has been an ongoing bone of contention between myself and the Ministry of Social Development that they are unable to accurately describe how long people stay on the DPB for cumulatively. This dates back 8 years.



For two reasons yesterday the issue arose again. Firstly because a commentor at The Standard was quoting statistics relating to each continuous spell and I pointed out the these couldn't tell us anything about total dependence (to which I got the usual name calling response from the usual sources).

But more importantly I see that the economics lecturer, Susan St John, did some calculations about National's proposed savings if they could cut the number of people on the DPB.

Sole parents come off the benefit either because they go back to paid work, or they re-partner. It appears that Key is assuming, heroically, the new policy will save an average of 6.5 extra years of DPB for each of the 2150 sole parents it moves into work. This would produce a net saving of around $200 million.

The only time I have ever seen that number before was when I produced it way back in 2002.

Angry America

Here's someone not holding back. Too good not to paste in its entirety;

American Exceptionalism, RIP

By Monica Crowley

Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

After Sunday night's health care spectacle dressed up as a "vote" in the House of Representatives, the American people have been shackled by a new set of chains. The United States of America - once great, grand and free - is on the path to becoming just another country. We were once the beacon of liberty, a nation that didn't just represent individual freedom but celebrated and protected it. The improbable defeat of the British that led to our dazzling founding made us exceptional from the outset. Our Constitution was quickly recognized, admired and loathed as an exceptional document of freedom. We survived intact a brutal Civil War that would have destroyed another country. And then, during two world wars, we crushed tyrannical enemies that wanted to snuff out our special liberty. We emerged stronger and, in turn, strengthened our exceptional status.

We have been the "shining city on a hill" that achieved superpower pre-eminence in a very short period of time because we were unique: The American people had a fierce passion for liberty, and our political system - based on limited government and individual freedom - was great because it was good. It allowed us to thrive, prosper and set ourselves apart from every run-of-the-mill nation.

No longer.

What the Democrats did last weekend was not just pass a horrendously expensive, corrupt and destructive health care bill.

They took a big chunk out of our exceptionalism.

They are turning us rather quickly into France. Or Great Britain. Or any other Western European nation that was once great but no longer enjoys that status.

And that's the point. President Obama said last year that he believed in "American exceptionalism, the way the British believe in British exceptionalism and the way the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Meaning: he doesn't believe in American exceptionalism. He believes we're an arrogant nation, which is why he has been obsessed with apologizing for America and bowing before foreign potentates. He believes that the United States, with its big guns and its big money, has thrown its weight around too much, been too aggressive, pushy and demanding and too insensitive to how our actions affected others. We need to atone for that, he believes, by being taken down a notch or two. He intends to do the takedown.

According to Mr. Obama, exceptionalism is so yesterday, an uncool, antiquated and ultimately destructive notion. Rather than be first among many, we should simply be one of many. Just another country on the United Nations' roll call. Nothing special. Equal to, say, Myanmar.

He is accomplishing this by expanding government in unprecedented ways. It's unprecedented for us, although it's certainly not unprecedented in the kinds of countries into which he's trying to turn us. By expanding government into every nook and cranny of your life - through health care, cap-and-trade, and education policy - he will exponentially grow the base of people dependent on the federal government. By doing that, he will create a permanent Democratic majority. (This is why he will take up amnesty for illegal immigrants as soon as the ink is dry on the health care bill this week.)

The objective: a massive welfare state, a la France and Greece - both of which, by the way, are sinking fast under their monstrous debts. One of the keys to unexceptionalism is a crippled currency. By transferring millions more Americans to the public dole through health care entitlements, he is growing our debt to levels that will bring about the end of the dollar as the exceptional cornerstone of the world's monetary structure. We'll soon be going hat in hand to the Chinese (the way the Greeks are going hat in hand to the European Union), begging for economic salvation. America as uniquely free? Not anymore.

This is why most Americans are not going to settle for anything less than the full monty: absolute and total repeal of Obamacare. Most if not all Republicans will run on repealing it. That's swell, but we have two conditions: (1) that they actually mean it and aren't just spewing "fiscal responsibility" rhetoric to get elected and then, once in office, backtrack from working for full repeal, and (2) there are to be no exceptions in any repeal. No exemptions for subsection this or that. No "well, that part isn't so bad" or "let's only throw out the bad parts." The entire thing is the bad part. The whole bill should be deemed an unconstitutional, criminal act. It must be repealed in toto.

Health care "reform" was never about health care. It was about expanding government into every part of your life as an excuse to confiscate more and more of your private property, strip you of your constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and remake America into a two-bit, second-rate, debt-laden European socialist backwater.

Sunday night, Mr. Obama said, "This is what change looks like." The change to which he refers is the change to unexceptionalism. Note to the president and congressional Democrats: We are exceptional Americans, and you are wholly unexceptional thieves of freedom. We want our liberty and exceptionalism back. We're throwing off the chains.

Monica Crowley is a nationally syndicated radio host, a panelist on "The McLaughlin Group" and a Fox News contributor.

(Hat tip The Freedom Foundation)

$4.8 billion?

The figure of $4.8 billion for welfare has taken hold over the last few days.

#New Zealand spends about $4.8 billion a year on welfare.

#The figures show 345,000 New Zealanders currently receive either independent youth, unemployment, sickness, invalid or domestic purposes benefit (DPB), and this costs taxpayers $4.8 billion a year.

#The changes, which include study loans for the DPB and additional funds for child care, will cost $88 million to implement in the first four years, but will save just $300m from the $4.8 billion benefit bill over the next decade.

#The Government says 345,000 New Zealanders currently receive a benefit, costing taxpayers $4.8 billion a year.

The total quoted of $4.8 billion covers only the basic benefit rate - not the supplementary assistance like family tax credits, accommodation allowance, disability allowance etc. The following shows that much more than $4.8 billion is spent on working age welfare.



Ball park figure - $6.2 billion

My estimates
$800 million accommodation supplement
$900 million family tax credit
$500 million incomer related rents

Add in student and disability allowances and the total climbs to over $7 billion.
That is the figure I would use for what working-age welfare costs.

(I expect that the lion share of 'other social assistance benefits' is WFF. If you want to label that welfare - and some do - then your'e looking of a welfare bill of approximately $9 billion. Considering the MSD vote is $20 billion that figure makes much more sense than $4.8 billion.)

"Unwarranted"?

The NZ Herald's editorial is about the welfare reforms. It makes this observation;

Young women who regard the domestic purposes benefit as an open-ended career choice have long been a source of largely unwarranted anguish to the party.

Naturally my response is why "unwarranted"? Has the Herald some particular insight or information that the rest of us do not possess? As I have said before at least a third of single parents currently on welfare started there as teenagers. If record keeping extended beyond 1996 the percentage would be considerably higher. Perhaps the Herald looks at the point-in-time numbers and thinks, ah, only 3 percent of DPB beneficiaries are teenagers. That is not an uncommon mistake but leads to a complete misunderstanding of the size of problem of young women treating the DPB as "an open-ended career choice."

Children who are raised long-term on welfare are at much greater risk of experiencing poor health, transience, insecurity, poor educational achievement, abuse and neglect, getting into trouble with the law, developing substance abuse problems and becoming a beneficiary themselves. Anguish about this group can never be "unwarranted".

The Bill of Rights and senseless outcomes

The NZ Bill of Rights has its place but sometimes when the Attorney General reports on an abuse of it the practical ramifications are nonsensical.

Work testing sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB) is an unjustifiable breach of human rights, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson advised Parliament today.

It was against the Bill of Rights Act that a woman on the DPB with a child over six would face work testing, while women on the widow's benefit or the woman alone benefit would not, he said.

So go ahead and work test them all.

But most of the women on a widows benefit are nearing retirement age and it makes more sense to get younger women, who have years ahead of them to support themselves and their families, into the available work.

What work-testing the DPB will achieve

This is a direct quote from a letter I received from the Ministry of Social Development 13 May 2005;

Under the work test, 17.5 per 1,000 Domestic Purposes Benefit or Widows Benefit clients left benefit each month. This has risen to 18.8 per 1,000 clients in June 2004 following the introduction of enhanced case management and the personal development and employment planning process.

So the Ministry's own evidence shows that current policy is more successful than National's.

What a waste of time these reforms are going to be.

Welfare reforms a re-hash

WELFARE REFORMS A RE-HASH
Tuesday, 23 March, 2010

The National Government's welfare reforms aimed at reducing the cycle of welfare dependency and branded as Future Focus, have either been tried before or are a continuation of current practice dressed up as a new approach, according to welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell.

"For instance, the Minister is promising a redesigned medical certificate for sickness and invalid beneficiaries but the current certificate was only redesigned in September 2007 as part of the Working New Zealand: Work-Focused Support Programme. Additionally we are told that applicants for the invalid's benefit who are expected to be able to work part-time in the next two years will instead receive a sickness benefit. That is the existing criteria for eligibility."

"Work-testing the DPB when the youngest child turns 6 has been tried before and resulted in a mere 2.7 percent drop in numbers on the DPB over the period it was in force. According to the Ministry a single parent with two children living in Auckland receives 14 percent more per week than someone on the minimum wage working full-time. That provides a significant incentive to avoid work-testing by ensuring the youngest child is never older than 5. So if the birth rate of welfare dependent mothers increases this policy is more likely to increase the cycle of welfare dependence. That is because children raised on a benefit are more likely to become beneficiaries themselves."

"Finally making people reapply for the dole after 1 year is not a bad idea by any means. But 84 percent of unemployment beneficiaries don't even reach a year. The unemployment benefit is not the problem when it comes to intergenerational welfare dependence."

"Where people are capable of working - and a majority are - the government should be making welfare strictly temporary assistance. That was what the original architects of welfare intended."

Benefit reforms - arguably worse than the status quo

Paula Bennett has just announced Future Focus, National's much vaunted welfare reforms designed to "break the cycle of welfare dependency".

Summarised;

Unemployment benefit

Continues to be work-tested but instead of 100 percent loss of benefit for non-compliance with work requirements, only 50 percent of the benefit will be lost at first failure.

All UB beneficiaries will have to re-apply after one year and undergo a comprehensive work assessment.

Invalid's benefit

The medical certificate is being re-designed to provide case managers with more information about the beneficiary's capacity to work.

Anyone deemed able to work in the next two years will be sent to the sickness benefit instead.

Sickness benefit

Again, redesigned medical certificate and a new requirement that a second certificate is issued at 8 instead of 13 weeks.

Like UB, a compulsory review after 1 year.

From May next year, where assessed capable of working part-time, will be work-tested like unemployed beneficiaries. Sanctions for non- compliance same as UB.

DPB

From September beneficiaries with youngest child aged 6 will be part-time work-tested. Some exemptions for parents of special needs children or those studying at level 4 or above. Same sanctions as unemployment benefit.

Sanctions

Staggered instead of 100 percent at first failure. Single beneficiaries more likely to be sanctioned than couples with children.

Hardship payments

Easier to get a small number over a year - harder to get large number

Abatement

The $80 threshold (how much a beneficiary can earn before their benefit income is reduced by 30 cents in the dollar) is raised to $100.

My response;

The Unemployment benefit.

Why reduce the sanction for failure to comply with a work-test? This weakens the effectiveness of sanctions. It seems that National wants one sanction regime so eased it in advance of extending the scheme to the sickness and domestic purpose's benefit. I note they explicitly state, "single beneficiaries with no children are more likely to be sanctioned than couples with children." There is a incentive here to make sure you have a child dependent on you.

Invalid's and sickness benefits.

MSD had already introduced a redesigned medical certificate in 2007 and the effectiveness was called into question in a recent Auditor General's report. In any event, numbers on IB and SB continued to grow.

The reforms to sickness benefits will emulate what Australia did with their disability support pensions in 2006 by introducing part-time work obligations on those assessed as able to work.

The result there?

The Sydney Morning Herald reports earlier this month;

The reforms introduced a much tougher social security regime that aimed to end long-term welfare dependency and cut the growth in welfare rolls.

But the evaluation shows the changes failed to put a brake on the high numbers joining disability pension rolls, made little progress in moving people with disabilities off benefits and into work, and made only ''modest'' gains in the work participation of the very long-term unemployed and mature-age job-seekers...

The evaluation shows that in the year after the reforms the same numbers were added to the disability pension rolls as in previous years. These rose from 712,000 in July 2006 to 757,118 three years later.

However, there was also progress with 10 per cent of new disability pension applicants on Newstart leaving income support after six months. In previous years, only 4 per cent of a similar group moved off the pension.

Clare Martin, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, said: ''Although the figures show there was a small rise in people with disabilities moving into work, the policy actually left thousands of people worse off because they were diverted onto lower levels of payments. It was simply problem-shifting.''

DPB

The introduction of a work-test when the youngest child turns 6 will encourage the beneficiary to make sure their youngest child is never older than six. National says that when they previously introduced a work test on the DPB (1997-2003) the full-time employment rates of sole mothers climbed rapidly. But the number on the DPB dropped by only 3,000 or 2.7% percent. This policy could be significantly strengthened by adding a cap on the number of children allowed while on a benefit. Currently about 5,000 children are added to an existing benefit every year.

The figure the Ministry has provided for a typical DPB parent renting in Auckland is $580 per week or $30,160 per annum after tax. A full-time job on the minimum wage would pay $26,520 before tax.

That's another big incentive to keep growing a family and stay on the benefit.

Lifting earning capacity for people who are part employed and part benefit dependent seems like a good idea but may simply lead to more people staying in that position than moving into full-time work.

The reforms will enhance the motivation of those people who want to work. But are they the problem?

The Minister says they are aimed at reducing the cycle of dependency but they may well do the very opposite by increasing the benefit-dependent birthrate. Children born onto a benefit are far more likely to become adult beneficiaries.

The most pressing problem inherent in the welfare system - making children guarantors of a no-obligation benefit income - just got worse.

Forced wealth redistribution losing popularity

A new instalment of the Social Inequality Survey conducted by Massey University has just been published with some interesting shifts in respect of welfare and wealth redistribution;

The Government’s Responsibility

Forty percent of respondents agreed that it is the government’s responsibility to reduce the differences in income between people with higher incomes and those with lower incomes. However, 34% disagreed and 26% neither agreed nor disagreed.

Responses to the question of whether the government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed showed a similar pattern: 43% agreed, 30% disagreed and 27% were neutral.

Only 22% of those surveyed agreed that the government should spend less on benefits for the poor; 48% disagreed and 30% neither agreed nor disagreed. This is consistent with the notion that the government has a responsibility for reducing income differences.

However, while there is support for the government to play an active role in protecting those on low incomes and reducing income disparity, this support is by no means universal. Furthermore, the proportion of New Zealanders who believe that the government should reduce income differences has fallen by 10% since 1992. This mirrors a similar decline in the proportion who believe income differences in New Zealand are too large. In both cases, most of this decline has occurred in the last decade.

Following the current trend those who do not think it's the government's job to reduce income differences will be in a majority within 15-20 years. Whether that will translate into government action is quite another matter.

An appalling miscarriage of justice

False accusations of rape. How common are they? This question runs through my mind whenever I read a story like this one, a particularly shocking case given the accused spent 17 weeks in Waikeria Prison prior to a trial at which the jury then found him 'not guilty' after 7 minutes deliberation.

Perhaps if the police kept statistics on the incidence of false rape complaints they might take a more cautious approach to investigating and prosecuting. But they don't.

They keep statistics on "False statement/Declaration Etc" but do not distinguish the nature of the false complaint. And they keep statistics on sexual offences.

I know I have blogged about this subject before but it keeps resurfacing. 1990s US data shows that 1 in 4 men suspected of rape can be excluded through DNA testing. That is not to say the other 3 were guilty. In 20 percent of cases the DNA evidence was inconclusive. A match was established in the remainder but then the matter of whether or not an assault or consensual sex took place has to be determined.

On a reading of just the media coverage, this man has suffered a gross miscarriage of justice. It doesn't do much for my faith in police procedures. Note his barrister's comment;

"What happens in these cases is everyone is risk-averse. No-one wants to exercise any discretion as to whether the case will proceed or not."

MSD misrepresenting statistics and misleading the public

A report just published by the Ministry of Social Development examines efforts in Counties Manukau to reduce youth offending.

Under key findings the following appears;

Homicides in Counties Manukau reduced from an unprecedented peak of 34 in 2005 to 7 in 2008.

The figure of 34 looks too high. For further verification I went to the actual report;

Homicides
The number of homicides tends to vary considerably from year to year. However, the 2005 figure (34) in Counties Manukau for young offenders was the highest recorded in the last decade. The numbers of homicides in 2007 and 2008 were considerably lower at 6 and 7 respectively. Nationally, excluding Counties Manukau, homicides by young offenders remained fairly stable between 2004 and 2008 at approximately 20 a year.

Here are the police statistics for Counties Manukau;



There were 19 homicides in 2005. How can there have been 34 homicides by youth offenders in the same year?

Of course there may have been more youth apprehended for homicide but that isn't what the report says.

The media would simply cut and paste the statement under key findings which is an error of significant magnitude.

Moderation turned on

Sorry folks but I have turned on the moderation function. Fortunately I am never far away from the keyboard so when you comment it should appear fairly quickly.

Unfortunately my deep reluctance to curb freedom of speech is increasingly being interpreted as some sort of tacit approval of the quite absurd comments I leave up.

Remember Wayne Patterson?

Do you recall the exploits of one Wayne Patterson?

He invented superannuitant identities and successfully defrauded Work and Income of 3.4 million dollars. A TV doco aired about this quiet and unassuming character who lived modestly, invested the money wisely, including in gold bars which he hid in his ceiling. Ultimately he made a profit for the taxpayer of $467,000.

Contrast this to the sleazebag ASB finance investor who stole $17.8 million from unsuspecting and trusting clients. Blew it on sex and lavish living. Poured it down the toilet pretty much.

Who should have got the longer sentence?

Patterson got 8 years and sleazebag got 6.