End of Life book cover example of the 'misinformation and emotion' it seeks to counter

A new book which discusses the End of Life Choice bill has been published. From the author:

"I did some research and the further I got into the issue the more I realised how intricate it is and how many levels there are to it. I came away with questions ... and there's so much misinformation and so much emotion out there, I think it's hard to find good information to make sure you can make a good choice - it's really to equip people to make good choices."

And there's a shining example of "misinformation and so much emotion" right there in the cover image, a seemingly healthy young women standing on a cliff-side contemplating jumping:

 Just google 'terminally ill cancer patient' to find hundreds of highly suitable, relevant images.

Greens: Increasing welfare with a wealth tax

The Green Party has released its welfare policy which substantially raises benefits, WFF, Best Start, and Student Allowances by introducing a 'wealth' tax set at 1% on net wealth over $1,000,000 and 2% at wealth over $2,000,000.

Earners will also pay more income tax at higher levels.

This is to fund "no stand down, no deduction of child support and no sanctions." The usual Green's no-holds-barred welfare policy. Metiria Turei will be cheering.

If you have a rental property on top of your freehold $1,000,000 home you are going to be taxed 1% on the value of that. So that'll take your yield down from maybe 4% to 3% - on top of all the extra costs imposed under the present government. If you've got a boat or a bach you'll be taxed on that.

Other assets included would be shares, bonds, business assets, and valuable artwork.

Elderly with high wealth but low income can defer the payment until death (like death duties).

They reckon the wealth tax will only affect the "top 6% of wealthiest New Zealanders."

They don't reference that figure and it sounds too low to me.

My numbers?

One out of ten for aspiration.

Student demographics

Just a post of general interest.

I was unaware of the large discrepancy between male and female students, with the female portion trending up.

Interesting too that the ethnic percentages are reasonably in line with population percentages - perhaps slightly under for Maori and Pacific given their young populations.

Overall you'd have to conclude that the student population is dominated by young white women.

Say no more.

Jobseeker numbers down?

When you hear that Jobseeker numbers are decreasing, be aware that many recipients are transferring to the new higher Covid-19 Income Relief Payment granted to nearly 7,000 between the 8th and 19th of June.

If CIRP was classed as a benefit - albeit temporary - there was a net gain of 4,743 in the period 8-19 June 2020

Meaningless stats

A lot of statistics appearing in current news items paint an optimistic picture. Whatever the indicator (eg house sales, houses to rent, jobs advertised) the good news story is, that compared to April 2020 the increases are like 100% up. Wow! Well of course increases are impressive when compared to the month of lock-down. What I want to hear is how June 2020 compares to June 2019.

The following preface and graph doesn't provide year-on-year data but it does highlight my point:

Janet Faulding, General Manager SEEK NZ comments: “With the lifting of restrictions we have seen an increase in job advertising of 133.9% in the fortnight ended 14 June, compared to the average of the month of April.

Lawyer speaks against sexual violence bill

Andrew Little's Sexual Violence (Legislation) Bill, main sponsor Jan Logie from the Greens, has sort of snuck under the radar. But it jumped right back into my consciousness this morning when I read the following opinion piece in the DomPost:

As a young woman, I came to New Zealand eleven years ago from the Middle East to undertake my Master of Laws degree.
Early on I was struck by how rights and freedoms are so frequently taken for granted by those born in this country. Because I come from a part of the world with so few protections, fair trial rights that protect people accused of crimes - of any type - are particularly important to me.
Now as a defence lawyer, I feel compelled to explain the very damaging effects to those rights that the Sexual Violence (Legislation) Bill would inflict if enacted.
So what are fair trial rights? There are several, all protected in our Bill of Rights Act, and they include the right to be presumed innocent, the right to run an effective defence and the right to remain silent instead of having to help the prosecution prove your guilt. This bill would seriously violate each.

More 

Unfortunately I cannot direct you to the Bills Digest because for some reason there is no parliamentary link.

But here is the final report of the justice committee.

Based on the first reading  it looks like National is largely supportive.

In my view the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of complainant's rights. I need add little more when Samira Taghavi covered these concerns so adequately suffice to say, I have written on a number of occasions about false rape complaints which have been well-documented over the years. It would appear that Judges will in future be required to instruct juries against "misconceptions about  the prevalence or features of false complaints."

Update on Loheni's clarion call

(This post updates yesterday's which you might need to read first)

Today Fellow National MP Alfred Ngaro says, 

“Yesterday after discussing the story of the murder of Crystal Lee Selwyn with my colleague Agnes Loheni, she turned to me and asked ‘what are you going to do about it?’”



“This is a truly confronting issue we face in our country and sadly this is not the first time one of our mothers has been lost to domestic violence.



“I’m calling on all men to rise up and march against the continuing violence we perpetuate against our wāhine.



“Men need to own this issue. We need to take the burden of addressing male violence off women who are currently shouldering this unfair load.



“Over the next few days I will be organising a day where we men can come out in our thousands to stand in solidarity with our women, our daughters, sisters, and mothers.



“It is time to take back the space for women to live safely and free from the fear of us.”

Goes from bad to worse. What ridiculous rhetoric.

Clarion call is emotional coercion

According to Agnes Loheni, National List MP, after another domestic murder of a female by a male,

"If you are a man stand up for the mums, the wives, the daughters, the grand-daughters in your lives and demand accountability of yourselves," she said.
"I challenge the men to organise the protest march against this death and all these deaths. I challenge our men to flood the streets of Auckland, Hamilton, and Wellington with as many people as have stood for George Floyd.
"I challenge the men to take over the organisations that work with intimate partner violence and take this burden off women who should not have to address your violence. It is your problem. 

Silence is assent tane ma."

Most of the people who read this blog are men. How do you feel about that?

I reject it. As an individualist I reject it on principle. This is yet another manifestation of a collective 'ism'  - sexism. How can racism be so wrong but sexism OK?

The vast majority of men are not violent.

So why by virtue of your gender must you own the problem? Worse, this clarion call that 'Silence is Assent' is a form of bullying, guilt-tripping and emotional coercion.

Shame on Agnes Loheni.

I understand how utterly devastating it is to imagine that child trying to defend his mother but her response is way off the mark.

The Simpson Report overwhelmingly biased

Simpson's Health and Disability Review has just been released. I've only considered the executive summary. Because it immediately reeks of racial preoccupation  I searched the following descriptors.

The word 'European' appears once; 'Asian' appears 2 times, 'Pacific' 9 times and 'Maori' 145 times.

And here are just two quotes to give you a flavour of the recommendations:

"A new crown entity, Health NZ, should be established to lead delivery of health and disability services across the country. A Charter for Health NZ would be developed that sets out shared values and aims to guide the health workforce culture and behaviours.
Health NZ should be governed by a board of eight members and a Chair, with 50:50 Crown-Māori representation, with board membership drawn from DHB board members in each of the regions."

"Each locality should have an indicative budget based on the age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic deprivation of its population, which is transparent to the public. This would ensure services address local needs."

Apprenticeship reality

MSD surveyed business about the wage subsidies and got a 25% response. The results were released yesterday. This caught my eye:

The Wage Subsidy Scheme has enabled businesses to manage cashflow, retain staff & continue operating. They were less likely to use the subsidy to continue workplace training/apprenticeships.

Son two years into an apprenticeship was made redundant.  He's turning that into a positive but it does call into question Labour's much heralded investment into ... more apprenticeships. The $1.6b Trades and Apprenticeships Training Package .That was announced the day after he was let go. We just looked at each other and shook our heads.

Having seen the confirmation of the non-use of the wage subsidy to keep apprentices I suspect there are likely thousands of young people who've been let go from existing apprenticeships because of the Covid response. They are also most likely first in line to resume employment if/when the economy picks up.

Or the government pays an employer to hire a new apprentice and keeps paying the old apprentice the dole.

State interference in the economy to keep it artificially afloat never fails to produce distorted outcomes.

Muller's speech

The following passages are those that stood out for me from Todd Muller's speech in Te Puna today:

I joined the National Party, rather than the Labour Party, when I became active in politics in 1988.... because I did not agree with the speed and indifference with which Labour had gone about the economic reforms.
I was in for a bit of a shock when my own party took over in 1990 and moved even faster, allowing unemployment to reach 11 per cent in 1992 – the worst since the Great Depression, but a record that will probably be broken over the next year...I believe the speed and sequencing of the economic reforms did terrible harm to the institutions of our communities, and to far too many of our families...

I do not believe that previous governments, or the current Government, moved fast enough or boldly enough to address the social deficit, or help the underclass, or however you describe the deep-seated social problems we continue to see all around us.
[Social investment, whanau ora and the Living Standards Framework] were historic steps by the last National Government – but we did not put them in place as fast as we should have.
So too, I believe successive governments should have acted faster, and more boldly, to achieve stable policy on issues such as:
· Climate change [and water management]

It's an odd juxtaposition.

He leans very heavily on National's track record of economic management yet criticises past National governments for moving too fast and then too slow.

On the whole it seems a speech designed to 'not frighten the horses' but I found it overly long, and somewhat muddled in its attempts to be all things to all people. Especially on the subject of families. It was like listening to one of those symphonies which signals the crescendo, the finale and you feel slightly relieved but then ... it continues on.

It isn't a speech for me though. I'm a committed ACT voter. I'm also a 'policy voter' whereas Muller seems keen to sell himself to the 'personality voter' as a People's  Prime Minister who will be "kind, competent and bold."

In fact, "I don’t think that kindness is a deep enough value. I was born in a town called Love."

He uses the word 'love' no less than 17 times.

You can't help but conclude he is determined to out-Jacinda Jacinda. That is a very risky and frankly, timid strategy. Dear Leader fans have got their woman. It's the ones she turns off who are looking for their man. And I doubt he will be the male embodiment of her.

The failure to police

 From the 2018/19 Annual Police Report:

Addressing cultural unconscious bias 

Police understands the potential for unconscious bias when it comes to the use of discretion and decisionmaking. For this reason, we have made the identification and management of unconscious bias a priority. The first step in managing bias is having all staff identify that they have them. People can then challenge their biases to understand how they influence their decisions and behaviours. To achieve this, we have started to roll out targeted unconscious bias training to key staff across the organisation.

Um. Training in unconscious bias. That sounds lucrative.

Here's a Wellington course at Vic. $595 for a day.

Nice work if you can get it.

Personally I'd like the taxes we pay for policing to be spent on .... policing. That would be novel.

It's a while since I've needed the services of the police but there is a constant theme on talk-back that calls about car theft or home burglary are logged and not much more. Looks like it's not just jungle drums either. From the report

Property crime - Percentage of victimisations where investigation is finalised within the year because Police determine ‘no crime has occurred’ or the ‘offender is proceeded against’: 13%

Sickly self-congratulations symptom of a society in trouble

Man am I over all this self-congratulatory stuff about beating Covid. Latest example yesterday from my local council:

Kia ora
We'd like to start this email with a thank you.
We should all be proud of our collective efforts to successfully stamp out COVID-19.

No need to nauseate you further.  You've all heard variations of it time and time again, especially from Dear Leader.

I don't buy it. Most of us just did what we were told to do (some less willingly than others). We do not deserve a medal, let alone constant meritorious mention.

I recently watched a 1968 news clip about the Wahine Disaster and was struck by how different the national psyche was fifty years ago. The stoicism, the pragmatism and practical response.Within hours the public were being advised of timetable changes to the Maori, Aranui and Aramoana sailings to accommodate bookings the ill-fated Wahine could no longer honour. No candlelit vigils, no maudlin social media preoccupation, no rahui on the harbour and no premature finger-pointing either. People just carried on.

Twenty years ago I sat in the end-of-year prize-giving audience at primary school. The list of recipients seemed endless. Each mounted the stage until there were more children upon it than left on the hall floor. It was ridiculous. Everyone's a winner. My son tells a story. He played soccer - or rather plodded after the last person in a group chasing the ball. Totally unsuited and he knew it. At the end of one game, after "Player of the Day" have evaded him yet again, the coach turned to him and said, "You can have a turn next week".

The accolade had become meaningless. Just as the current Covid congrats are.

The outcome of this foolish philosophy of embracing mediocrity is now rife. It's there in those dreadful Covid mental health ads that basically urge you to do nothing and feel good about it. Hang out in your PJs all day and pat yourself on the back for it.

It doesn't fly in my house. It isn't a preparation for real life. Nobody is well-served by this nonsense. And it needs to stop.

99 reasons to vote Labour

"100 reasons to vote Labour" just arrived in my email inbox.

Here's number 30:

Here's number 99:

It really should be titled, "100  99 reasons you are going to be paying a shitload of tax in the coming decades."

When race isn't a divisive issue

The following data is extracted from Ethnic Intermarriage in New Zealand using 2013 Census, the latest available:

With regard to the trend between 2001 and 2013, "Over the period, the number of Maori who have a Maori partner dropped from 53 to 48 per cent for Maori men, and from 52 to 47 per cent for Maori women."

When I reflect on friends and acquaintances over my lifetime these graphs are highly representative.

A pathway but not a panacea

Regarding the ongoing battle between some Maori and Oranga Tamariki:

Hands Off Our Tamariki spokesperson and researcher Alison Green has been comparing the state care systems in Canada and New Zealand.
The Oranga Tamariki legislation restricted mana motuhake, and Māori needed a system of their own like tribes in Canada, Dr Green said.
"We are ready for tribal governments," she said.
"For tribes to be able to enact legislation and for tribes to take over the jurisdiction and authority of their young Māori people and their families and take it right away from the state."

Regarding the Canadian experience:

 When I became a judge in 1976 they were just starting to talk about turning the control of child welfare agencies over to Indigenous groups. This changeover took place during the 1980s, and 90s. The theory advanced by Indigenous advocates was that there were far too many Indigenous children in care because white child care workers did not understand Indigenous culture and the Indigenous way of life. If only Indigenous workers and supervisors could take over, the numbers would go down. That didn’t happen. As the Indigenous agencies took over, the numbers went up instead of down. That remains the case today...

...the state of Indigenous child welfare is no better than it was when Indigenous child welfare agencies took over – by some measures it is a whole lot worse. Those neglected children have become pawns in the political games that are now playing out federally. Parents who have clearly failed their children are let off the hook by advocates claiming that it is not their fault that they drank and made a mess of their children’s lives – it is society’s fault, or it is because of colonialism or residential schools – or almost anything going back five hundred years that might have affected their long dead ancestors’ lives. The irresponsible parents are told that they are victims. Never mind acting like a grownup, getting off welfare and starting to support your family. To the contrary, accepting personal responsibility and changing one’s behaviour is considered an old fashioned and discardable notion. Forget the best interests of the child – permanent victimhood and racial politics are where it’s at. But I will stop.

As I said earlier, I know little about the New Zealand situation. I simply don’t know if there are similarities between Canada’s Indigenous situation and the Maori situation in New Zealand. But if I am allowed to give just one word of advice on the subject of child welfare, it is this: “A child is a child. Keep racial politics out of it, and just see to that child’s best interests.” 

Brian Giesbrecht was a Provincial Court Judge in Manitoba, Canada, from 1976 to 2007. During that time he served as Acting Chief Judge, and Associate Chief Judge. 

It was heartening yesterday to hear OT defending itself on two fronts. 1/  The latest report from the Children's Commissioner represents only 12 mothers - a tiny number of the cases dealt with annually and 2/ it focuses on the mothers and not the best interests of their children.

Spot the problem

Spot the problem with the following passage in an RNZ article essentially condemning the removal of Maori babies:

Judge Becroft said there were clear examples of the whānau experiencing racism and discrimination.
Māori babies aged 0-3 months were taken into state custody at five times the rate of non-Maori babies in 2019.
Findings of abuse have decreased overall, yet, more and more Māori babies are being assessed and removed earlier.

Update. No takers.

Here's the problem. That "findings of abuse have decreased" is the desired policy outcome. It is not a reason to rail against the policy.

A racist policy?

According to Work and Income:

If you or your partner have an uncleared warrant for criminal matters, you'll be told that unless it’s cleared, or you've taken reasonable steps to try and clear it, your benefit will either:
-stop, if you don't have dependent children, or
-reduce by up to half, if you have dependent children.
If it hasn’t been cleared within 28 days after its issued, you'll get a letter advising you to clear it within 10 working days. If you have an arrest warrant and the New Zealand Police considers you to be a risk to public safety, your benefit can be stopped or reduced immediately, without telling you first.
To clear your warrant to arrest you need to:
-go to the criminal counter at a courthouse. It’s best to go to the court where the warrant was issued, but it can be done at any courthouse. You can’t clear a warrant over the phone
-tell them you want to make a “voluntary appearance” to clear your warrant
-try to arrive early in the day. If you leave it too late you may not be able to clear the warrant that day.
-You can go to a police station to start the process of clearing your warrant if you can’t get to a court.

So the action to prevent a sanction lies wholly in the hands of the person receiving the benefit. Nobody else. And the actions required are laid out very clearly.

Here is an ethnic breakdown of sanctions on those with children. The 2019 stats are only up to June 2019.

Is this an illustration of a racist policy?

In the current climate many will say 'yes' because it disproportionately disadvantages Maori and their children regardless of the fact that the agency lies with the individual. The sanction is avoidable and you would think that with children involved, the motivation to do so would be strengthened. In fact the policy treats everybody the same.

The Left loathe the concept of the 'deserving' and 'undeserving'

A commentor on Kiwiblog drew attention to a Newsroom article by an Auckland University sociology professor:

Dr Louise Humpage was hoping Covid would help Kiwis better understand how tough it is to live off the benefit, but the newly unemployed are not being treated like main beneficiaries at all...

I became more suspicious of the Government’s intentions when it announced that 35 new unemployment centres would be established across the country, along with an employment service specific to those directly impacted by Covid-19, who are not on a main benefit.

Why? Work and Income already has offices in most towns and cities across New Zealand which focus on finding employment.

Could it be that they are either a) not very good at their job; or b) that the ‘toxic culture’ endemic in these offices is so awful that we couldn’t bear the shame of letting ‘ordinary’ (i.e., working) New Zealanders experience it?

I doubt the 35 new employment centres referred to will be places people walk into. Applications and grants all take place on-line. The new processing centres will be about boosting staff capacity to approve applications and attempt to redeploy workers.

The usual eligibility requirements she refers to as a “toxic culture” have been suspended because of the increased workload in processing new applications. Not because they were unfair.

She writes, “the base rate for the existing Job Seeker Support is $250 a week (before tax – yes, it is taxed) for a single person over 25.” Wrong. It is $250 after tax.

Essentially she wants all benefits paid at the same rate as the temporary Income Relief Payment saying, “a truly brave government would look voters in the eye and say ‘we want to treat all unemployed people, no matter when or how they came to be jobless, with the same dignity and respect that all New Zealanders deserve’.”

There are thousands of beneficiaries who have 1/ never worked 2/ made themselves unemployable through crime and/or drug and alcohol abuse and 3/ have no incentive to work because it pushes up their child support liability and income-related rent. This is the unfortunate reality of the benefit system.

In fact it would be preferable if the system could take more account of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ – not less, leading to greater fairness for anyone who is genuinely (temporarily or permanently) unemployed through no fault of their own.

Treasury predicts 1 in 6 on a benefit by June 2021

Treasury is forecasting 487,500 working age people will be on some form of benefit by June 2021 (16.2 percent).

At the moment it is nearer to 1 in 10 (11.7 percent).

Here are the numbers to May 22:

I haven't posted much about the data to date because the numbers are being kept artificially low by the wage subsidy AND now the new Income Relief Payment (IRP) which cannot be applied for until after June 8. 

Obviously Jobseeker numbers will stabilise as people apply for the better paying benefit but one has to assume that Treasury's forecast includes IRP recipients despite Labour insisting that the IRP is NOT a benefit.