Regressive tobacco tax

A 2002 study estimated that tobacco spending made up 14 percent of low income non-housing budget. Rates of smoking are highest amongst the most deprived. Tobacco taxes are therefore regressive. That means they create a disproportionate burden on the poor.

On the back of this hike, a few people will give up smoking . According to the NZ Medical Journal for a 10% price increase, the demand would fall in the long term by 0.7% to 5.2%.

But the vast majority will not. They will cut spending elsewhere or get deeper in debt. The deeper in debt they get the more worried and depressed they will get and the more they will want to smoke. Vicious circle stuff.

Next time you hear a politician - except for the 4 ACT MPs who voted against the hike - spinning a sob story about under-taxing the rich and over-taxing the poor remember this particular plundering of the already impoverished.

Good on 4 ACT MPs

Well done to the 4 ACT MPs who didn't vote for a tax increase on cigarettes and tobacco products.

But who was the ACT MP that did?

Youth offending - treat reports with caution

I have long since stopped relying on media reports about reports. It is time consuming but if you come across a report about a report that interests, go straight to the horse's mouth. Today's NZ Herald report about a report is a good example of the wrong impression partial reporting can create;

Youth offending falls further in latest figures

That's great, isn't it?

The report is 208 pages long and I think the journalist covering it must have gotten tired about mid-way through. I certainly did. But I was looking for the whole story.

For instance;



OK. So we cannot infer very much at all by falling apprehension rates. Just as we cannot infer much at all by climbing prosecution rates but what the hell, we may as well look at them. They do form the larger part of the report despite the media coverage not mentioning it at all. (It may be that the writer is planning a further instalment.)



So significant increases in the rates of prosecution. This backs up the increasing severity of offending seen in apprehensions.

Of course no report about crime would be complete without some ethnicity analysis. Therein lies a shocking picture. Yes. I am still shocked by the disparity between European and Maori in so many sets of social statistics.



1 in 20 young Maori is prosecuted in court compared to 1 in 100 young European.

So the overall picture looks like this.



Let's finish with a quote from the report on the report from Judge Andrew Becroft;

Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft said the statistics punched a hole in the popular perception that youth offending was "spiralling out of control".

Draw your own conclusions.

John Armstrong backs the call to remove conscience voting

John Armstrong writes that political parties abrogate their collective duty by allowing conscience votes on drinking laws. He obviously approves of the born- again temperance brigade writing that we live in "conservative times".

Nats lose their political nerve over booze law

...Its recommendations aside, the commission's big challenge to Parliament is its call to end conscience votes on alcohol-related measures.

The commission is dead right. Conscience votes on such legislation have traditionally been granted to MPs on the grounds that drinking is a matter of personal morality.

This is a charade which allows parties to abrogate their responsibilities on things like the drinking age where public opinion unpredictably waxes and wanes on raising or lowering it and the politics get too difficult.

Parties should act as a body and predictably on matters they have campaigned on. Did National campaign on reversing alcohol consumption laws?

Did it campaign on removing conscience votes?

John Armstrong is only taking this line because it suits his position on the issue.

Contrast what Armstrong writes above to what he wrote about the Civil Union Bill and conscience voting;

Labour's gay MPs have been told to take a back seat to prevent critics accusing the Government of pandering to the "pink vote".

And she [Helen Clark] has stressed this is ultimately a conscience measure and thus Parliament's decision, not the Government's.

It hardly adds up to a rip-roaring celebration of the measure's intent.

But both Helen Clark and David Benson-Pope, the minister in charge of the bill, have kept their nerve, not least because the left faction in the Labour caucus will be furious if they buckle.

So nerve was kept in this instance but lost when it comes to alcohol laws.

There are very good reasons why parliament has conscience votes on moral issues. They are too important to relinquish.

The whys and wherefores of waste

There is a report in The Press claiming that 50 percent of drugs are being wasted. That wouldn't be happening if they were recreational drugs notice. Try to envisage people turning up to tinnie houses with bags stuffed to bursting with unused cannabis. No. It is too silly.

First, 50 percent seems high when I do a mental check of my own medicine cabinet. 10 or 20 maybe, but then that's just my family.

There are valid reasons why medicines remain unused. Death. Often people are on massive amounts of medication at the point of death.

Recovery. Some medicines should be taken as a whole course but many will do the job and no more is needed.

Over zealous prescribing. Patients can be very passive and let a GP prescribe for them medicines that they have no intention of taking.

Bad reaction. Sometimes the patients rightly or wrongly perceive a bad reaction to a drug and stop using it.

And there are other things that come to mind which lead to waste. The rules around pharmaceuticals and dispensing. Over cautious best-by dates. The non-recyclability of returned medicines.

And of course subsidies. Human nature is such that often people do not value what they do not pay for. There-in lies the paradox. The state makes medicines more accessible so that people's health is preserved and they do not become an economic cost at the secondary level. But by doing so, waste taxpayer's money at the primary level.

In my opening comment I drew a parallel with recreational drugs. Are they comparable? I think so. Genuinely sick people should be just as motivated to take their medicine as people looking for a high. So why, apart from the reasons of death and recovery, aren't they? Because they didn't really need or want it in the first place? If food was subsidised there is no doubt in my mind that the waste of it would be colossal.(I have seen people wasting food from charity parcels - mince, still in the tray, left on the floor for the cats to chomp their way through.)

So the waste of pharmaceuticals is, to some degree, a product of taxpayer subsidy and unnecessary bureaucracy. Death and recovery are immutable factors. Subsidy and over-regulation are not.

First-hand account about Maori and social security post-war

The best way to find out what happened in the past is to read first-hand accounts. The following excerpt is from a book called Nurse in the North and is by Barbara Ancott-Johnson, She worked in the Hokianga with a well-known doctor G M Smith - "Jock" - and writes here about her efforts to enforce his expectations about social security in Maori communities. As you read try to imagine such an approach happening today. Oh the screaming over privacy rights there would be;

Tapu Misa on private enterprise

Motivated by the government's plans to allow the private sector into prison management and accident insurance Tapu Misa today wades into the evils of privatisation. She ends with this;

As a former comptroller of the US, David Walker noted in 2007: "There's something civil servants have that the private sector doesn't. And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good - the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interests of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not the country."

There is something else civil servants have that the private sector doesn't. And that is access to funds that are guaranteed through the force of the state. Their jobs do not rely on producing either a good or service that customers will voluntarily meet the cost of.

I hope at some future date Tapu Misa is going to write a column slating private ownership of the media because companies only serve the interests of a few and profits go offshore. She could cite her own employer as an example.

Coddington on Bennett

Deborah Coddington says Paula Bennett, despite being "not unintelligent", comes across as "a bit of a bint." I confess I had to consult a dictionary to confirm the meaning of bint which is a 'not too bright' woman. This is, according to Deborah, because of the content of her speech. For example, she (and John Key) over-use the word 'actually'.

We are all too familiar with lazy speech. Like, er, like, basically, it's er sort of, well, actually, like that. Absolutely, awesome (never with the -ly), piss poor communication.

I must just drop in a story here. My son's cousin knows a girl who goes to my son's school. The cousin asked her if she knew Robert. The girl replied, "He's that guy that uses big words that nobody can understand". Now that tickled both Robert and I. Robert uses interesting language because he reads a lot. Her inability to understand him isn't his problem. It's hers. Robert isn't about to change to accommodate her because he likes words. Yesterday I had cause to say to him "For goodness sake you," to which he quickly retorted "Don't you 'for goodness sake you' me," which instantly dispelled my annoyance.

Anyway here's the guts of it. We speak like the people we live with and spend time with. My message to the children is, don't use that word when there is a better one available. Don't overuse words until they lose all meaning. Don't swear often. Save your cursing for when it really matters, otherwise what will you have when the need arises?

The English language is rich. I have a responsibility to use it fully and sometimes, painstakingly. The way I communicate with my children is more important in my view than the way I feed them. The way I converse with my husband rubs off on them enormously.

But we are not conformists. We don't try to be like other people. The degradation of language and communication is a product of conformism and, a phenomenon Theodore Dalrymple identifies; the conformism is going in the wrong direction. A physical analogy is tattoos. Once a mark of lesser educated working-class men, now so-called intelligent middle class women flock to affect them. It is a sad fact that some politicians are downward conformists, not only because that is their inherent nature, but because they think it will buy votes.

I agree with Deborah Coddington. It's not good enough to say, speak how you like; that's freedom of expression isn't it? It's just evolving culture isn't it? 'I'm a Westie and proud of it'.

No. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression rely on the ability to think and communicate. Language is the tool by which we achieve both.

I am sick of the dumbing-down process. Never have I said so before because 'dumbing down' is, of itself, one of those hackneyed overused phrases. Apparently IQs are rising as the world becomes wealthier. If so, it's not particularly apparent.

Some of the worst displays of ungrammatical, grating, dull and repetitive language appear in and around sporting endeavours, from both commentators and players. Many times I have cursorily reflected to myself, all brawn and no brain (naturally a 'gender neutral' comment for those academics who do possess healthy linguistic repertoires, but nonetheless fill their written and oral communications with woolly concepts and overladen sentences). Still, the players at least use their physical abilities to best effect. The same cannot be said for commentators.

And it cannot be said for politicians.

Which brings me back to Paula Bennett. If there is merit in having an ex-beneficiary Maori single mother as Minister because she represents realised aspiration, then why not try to inspire people further? For any politician, there is no shame in being articulate.

It is a sad indictment if politicians are merely there to reflect ordinariness and lack of ambition - the characteristics that often go hand-on-hand with low-grade communication.

Discovering 'poverty' in Japan

Apparently Japan has discovered 15.7 percent of its people are living in poverty and this is a blow to a society that has always considered itself mostly middle-class.

They made this discovery by adoption of international definitions. An example is used of a single mother raising a teenage daughter and working two jobs. She can't afford to send her daughter to vocational school, a special school that teaches animation acting. But most of the people living in poverty have enough to eat, cars and cellphones.

Contrast this to Brasilia, another story of poverty where people live in make-shift tents on rubbish dumps.

This is no doubt how Mrs Sato, the Japanese example, thinks of poverty.“I don’t want to use the word poverty, but I’m definitely poor,” said Ms. Sato, who works mornings making boxed lunches and afternoons delivering newspapers. “Poverty is still a very unfamiliar word in Japan.”

And may it stay unfamiliar. Japan is a country (as much as I know about it) that has strong families and low crime. In part that can be attributed to very limited state welfare.

When the US discovered 'poverty' and began the 'war' against it in the 1960s, all that happened was poverty became more entrenched and widespread.

If this article is anything to go by, and notice how one female academic is already talking about people not being able to participate fully in society (which is exactly what NZ officials said in 1973 before they created the DPB), then Japan may be about to start going down the same misguided pathway to not less poverty, but less prosperity.

If you doubt my warning consider that currently Japan has one in 7 children living in (let's label it accurately) relative poverty. But NZ has one in 5 living in relative poverty and most are in benefit-dependent households. Why would Japan want to copy western models of welfare?

IMF projected economic growth

The IMF have just released their outlook for economic growth in 2010-11. It contains masses of information but these two charts caught my interest given that China has now moved into the position of NZ's 2nd biggest trading partner. The US is also in the pink. I wonder if the colour use was intentional? The numbers represent % economic growth. (NZ ranks 26th in the world on GDP per capita in current prices and US dollars).

GST question

If beneficiaries,superannuitants and WFF recipients are going to get an income boost when gst rises, are they going to get an income cut if GST comes off food?

Around the newspapers

Jim Hopkins does what nobody else can better - leaves you wondering whether to laugh or cry.

Here's a man who survives the dangers of Afghanistan only to come to NZ and become of victim of something far more insidious - false rape accusations. Again it appears the complainants (female scumbags) get name suppression and no consequences. Surely this sort of vicious and malicious behaviour is almost as worrying as the physical danger taxi drivers face yet gets nowhere near the publicity.

In Taranaki a judge asks if the case of a man taking marijuana into court isn't the stupidest case of the day. The man, a mental health patient says he self-medicates to control his violence. Stupidest case or stupidest law?

Staying in Taranaki, and possibly with the theme of stupidest, Phil Goff was asked to complete the 6 word branding task it recently set members and gave it a go. Like most politicians he couldn't keep to the brief. A nearby observer did much better with 'boring and uninteresting' although even that is repetitious.

And the granddaughter from hell let's rip at a judge when she fails to convince him she has turned over a new leaf. Own goal. Definitely stupidest.

March 2010 benefit statistics - a mixed bag

March 2010 benefit fact sheets are out.

Unemployment benefit 60,211
DPB 109,643
Sickness benefit 55,796
Invalid's benefit 84,877


Over the year to March unemployment benefit is up 62 percent ; DPB up 7 percent; sickness benefit up 9 percent; invalid benefit up 1 percent.



Over the quarter to March while the DPB also rose (+354) the unemployment (-6117), sickness (-3362) and invalid (-161) benefits fell.



Earlier in the month the Minister said;

1,110 sole parents also cancelled their DPB and went into paid work.

But more joined up to the DPB than left.


The quarterly fall in sickness beneficiaries is good but I am not sure what it means. Perhaps the December quarter had featured a temporary surge in short term recipients explaining why 2009 saw the biggest calendar year SB increase ever recorded.

The quarterly fall in the unemployment benefit is also obviously good but I still believe much of it represents a transfer to student allowances. There are still no 2010 statistics available for those.

Authoritarian National

A few days back I made a comment on Mulholland Drive about authoritarianism being in the ascendency with the National government.

This morning DPF blogs;

National has had an authoritarian streak to it recently, where they are whittling down the number of issues MPs traditionally are not whipped on. They even want to remove conscience voting on alcohol. There are MPs in National (and many party members) who support NZ becoming a Republic, and they should have been allowed to say so.

So what happened in Parliament yesterday of any value?

The Republican Bill was stopped from going to select committee. It's not a subject I have strong feelings about one way or the other but many do and it should have been debated.

ACT's bill to reintroduce a minimum youth rate was not allowed to go to select committee. There is conclusive evidence the lack of a youth rate is affecting youth unemployment.

BUT Paul Quinn's bill to further disenfranchise prisoners was given the green light to go up for public discussion. Hallelujah - not. Exactly what is taking the vote away from short term inmates supposed to achieve?

Oh and ACT voted for that too. It's not even as if there is any pattern of quid pro quo emerging whereby the Nats support ACT's bill in return for ACT supporting theirs.

My frustration with National/ACT is not unusual but DPF being very angry with them is. If that is a reliable barometer many New Zealanders must be starting to get a touch tetchy with this government.

More on the Declaration

A couple of quotes from separate media articles about the reasons why Canada won't sign;

Canada feels key parts of the text remain ambiguous and open to competing definitions that could, to give one example, allow native groups to reopen already settled land claims.

In his address to the General Assembly before the vote, Canada's UN ambassador, John McNee, said Canada had "significant concerns" over the declaration's wording on provisions addressing lands and resources, as well as another article calling on states to obtain prior informed consent with indigenous groups before enacting new laws or administrative measures.

And the following backs up Mai Chen's belief that the Declaration is a precursor to a more binding Convention;

Indigenous congress demands teeth for UN Declaration

THE UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, achieved after a 20-year struggle, recognises the right of the world's 370 million indigenous people to autonomy, self-determination and control of their territory and resources for their own benefit.
However, as a mere declaration, it lacks the legally binding nature of UN conventions, which form part of the framework of international law. This is the goal that the leaders of native peoples are now pursuing

And just listening to the radio today, reading the blogs and newspapers etc I think Key has significantly under-estimated NZ's response to his actions and the secrecy surrounding them.

Define "temporary"

Paula Bennett was reportedly in the Hutt explaining how National's reforms would reduce welfare dependency. My reaction:

Nurturing neuroticism

Until the media told me about worried children I wasn't worried about it. Now I am worried about my 11 year-old worrying. And the writer intends to make me worry even more tomorrow and even more the day after that. And apparently stressed parents make 11 year-olds worried. Um. I think I see the solution.

The UN Declaration - Verbosity super-sized

Surely the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People could be distilled into a much smaller document. Multitudinous affirmations, re-affirmations, concerns, considerations, solemn proclamations, considerations, convictions, encouragements, beliefs, recognitions, emphases followed by 46 articles.

Here's a kicker.

Article 39
Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to financial and technical assistance from States and through international cooperation, for the enjoyment of the rights contained in this Declaration.

Translated: Maori have the right to taxpayer's money. Nothing to get enormously excited about in practice I suppose when there is already a sizeable transfer one way or another. But should National have signed up to an explicit individual right to taxpayer money based on an imprecise concept like indigeneity?

Unemployment insurance shouldn't be the priority

Revisiting an announcement from the Welfare Working Group Chair, Paula Rebstock last week, who said;

Ms Rebstock told Radio New Zealand that the employment insurance will be looked at by the Working Group.

"Right now, if you are in a relationship with someone and you become unemployed, the chances are you would not be entitled to a social welfare benefit.

"But if you are involved in an insurance scheme and you have contributed, then you would also be in receipt of an unemployment benefit for a period," Ms Rebstock told Radio New Zealand.

She said the system could be similar to Canada's Employment Insurance scheme.

"It is clearly within the terms of reference of the group," Ms Rebstock said.

When the Welfare Working Group was first announced the Minister was quite clear their job was to look at ways of reducing dependency and breaking the cycle. Most recently, “The Welfare Working Group will examine long term welfare dependence, identifying causes and solutions.”

Over recent years the unemployment benefit has not been a significant contributor to long term welfare dependence. Currently 84 percent have been on it for less than a year (at least in that current continuous spell). The numbers dropped to 22,748 (based on December quarter figures) at one point. Now they are back up to 60,00 due to the recession. Obviously the UB is very sensitive to the labour market. But generally when there is work the Unemployment Benefit numbers fall substantially. Not so for other benefits.

So it was interesting that Rebstock chose looking at unemployment insurance as her initial announcement. I am not against looking at unemployment insurance at all but it shouldn't be a priority. And while Rebstock says, "It is clearly within the terms of reference of the group" other benefits - the DPB and Invalid benefits in particular - are more in need of attention.

I sincerely hope that the 'hard stuff' will not be neglected.

Promising a new and nauseating level of Nanny State

As the Liberal Democrats star seems to be in the ascendancy in the UK general election campaign I thought it would be timely to look at what they are promising with welfare. Britain's system is probably (with the exception of Australia's) closest to that of NZ and naturally the problems are similar. I looked but, hell, not one interesting or original idea could I find.

But something different must be building their following.

I searched on undettered and came across this glitzy teen mag lookalike pamphlet called Real Women. Go look but get your bucket ready first. Some policy examples;


Remove pre-interview sex discrimination with a ‘no name’ policy for job applications to stop employers making conscious (or subconscious) judgments about whether a woman can ‘do the job’.)

Scrap tuition fees for all part-time and full-time degree courses

Help women over 25 going back to study by paying the fees for their first Level 3 qualifications

A Citizen’s Pension for all based on residency and set above the poverty line, helping women who took time out from work to raise children. This would rise in line with earnings or inflation, whichever is higher

Recruit and train thousands more health visitors and midwives. These professionals will advise new mothers and families on parenting skills including, advice on the health of a baby and support for relationships, which can become particularly trained when a new child arrives. We would set these professionals free from meaningless targets so that they could focus on the well-being of families and children

Protect children from body image pressure by preventing the use of altered and enhanced images in advertising aimed at under 16s, through changes to Advertising Standards Authority rules. We would work with industry regulators and professionals to find ways to ensure that children have access to more realistic portrayals of women (and men) in advertising

Help women make informed choices by requiring adverts to clearly indicate the extent to which digital retouching technology has been used to create overly perfected and unrealistic images of women Encourage the British Fashion Council and design schools to ensure students are taught and judged on their ability to cut to a range of sizes and body types

Ensure that late night trains have a well-publicised ‘Secure Carriage’. This carriage would be where a guard would sit

Develop a 'stopping on request' element to night bus services so that women and men can get off the bus in between bus-stops, to minimise the distance they need to walk on their own


There you go ladies. If you don't ever want to think or do for yourself again this is the party for you. And sorry I don't have time now to go looking for their Real Men policy but anyone want a bet as to whether they have one?