Appreciating our essential services

 A courier driver gets caught short and pees out of sight of the road on a plant.

The property owner is disgusted and in her fury releases the footage to the media.

Now that's what I call appreciation for our essential services.

John Bishop: "Smiles all very well but we need a bold vision"

That's the title used in a column by John Bishop (father of National MP Chris Bishop) published in today's DomPost.

I used to think the PM so loved her position and the cheers of the adoring crowd that she would not do anything that risked losing or lessening her position at the pinnacle of admiration.

I have now moved away from that to the much less charitable view that she doesn’t know what to do. She has no real vision of what she wants New Zealand to be like, beyond the usual clichés.

I shared the second view when she was an opposition MP with the social development portfolio and have never had reason to change it. 

First Jobseeker data of the year

MSD's first jobseeker data for the year shows that on New Years Day there were 212,441 people receiving a Jobseeker benefit. Just a week later that had risen to 213,755 - a net difference of  1,314. That's a heck of a jump in just a week.

BUT benefit numbers always spike over summer.

So to make a meaningful comparison I've charted the difference in Sept and Dec quarter Jobseeker numbers for the last 5 years:

Clearly, and not surprisingly, this summer is different.

(The 31/12/20 number is not available yet so I used 1/1/21).

"Clear consequences" aka sanctions

Below is an extract from a Government policy statement:

Given today's Labour varietal you may be surprised to know that statement came from PM Helen Clark and Social Developemnt Minister Maharey in 2001, from Pathways to Opportunity.

Subsequently reliance on the unemployment benefit did decrease markedly:

HOWEVER reliance on invalid and sickness benefits increased (with a good part of the growth in mental health incapacity)...

...and DPB dependence reduced only slightly:

Anyway, back to the "clear consequences" aka sanctions.

The Labour government elected in 2017 was an entirely different kettle of fish.

Here is Simon Bridges in 2018 basically singing from the old Labour hymn sheet:

On TVNZ1's Breakfast yesterday, Mr Bridges said sanctions on benefit payments gave expectations and incentivised people to work, and the loosening of the rules was "unfair".  

"It's unfair on taxpayers who work hard and expect to see their money well spent. But it's also not fair to the beneficiaries frankly."

....When asked if she agreed with Mr Bridges about using sanctions to incentivise people to get off the benefit, Ms Sepuloni said there was "a lot of evidence to show that actually in many cases they don't work".

The application of sanctions reduced substantially. So what hppened next?

To be fair to Sepuloni I've only extracted data to pre-covid:

On the evidence presented here I believe Clark and Maharey were correct; Simon Bridges was correct and Carmel Sepuloni is whistling dixie.

Pharmac under the gun

Stuff 's editorial stance now is to inspect every institution from a grievance angle.

In the process their journalists are actually practising racism.

Pharmac has only 3 staff who identify as Maori. This is apparently "absolutely appalling" for a "...drug-buying agency vowing to prioritise Māori leadership and uphold the Treaty of Waitangi as a way to ensure better health outcomes for Māori."

The inequitable access by Maori to medicines is implicitly, at least partly,  the fault of Pharmac decisions. Therefore the existing Pharmac workforce doesn't care about Maori. That's racist thinking right there.

Pharmac is an agency tasked with making impartial and objective decisions about medicine funding as their very core task.

The 'representation argument' taken further would require that Pharmac address why only 32% of their staff are male. And less than 4 percent are Asian. But nobody is jumping up and down about those realities. (I note that one in five staff does not disclose their ethnicity which leads me to suspect they don't see the relevance. There may be Maori among them.)

BUT like the many arms of the public service, Pharmac are succumbing:

Pharmac was also focused on developing cultural competency across the organisation and ridding itself of “unconscious bias” recognising “systemic racism” was a key determinant of Māori health, Simpson said.

Simpson is the Pharmac's inaugural chief Māori advisor.

So not insubstantial sums from Pharmac's budget are already being spent for training when they should be used for medicines.

For Maori and anybody else who needs them.

 

Only one in five victims attends a FGC

From Oranga Tamariki: 

Youth justice family group conferences (FGCs) give the child or young person – with their whānau, victims and professionals – a chance to help find solutions when they have offended.

But victim participation rate in Family Group Conferences - the holy grail of youth justice - is very low. Hence, I imagine, the reason OT commissioned Behavioural Insights to study why.

Only about one in five victims physically attends.

The reasons given by interviewed non-attendees are not being able to take time from work and non-compenastion for travel,childcare costs incurred etc. Fear of retribution rates a mention. Also victims were unhappy with reparations or lack of for stolen, damaged or destroyed property. This makes perfect sense.

Another obstruction uncovered was that non-Maori co-ordinators had trouble "understanding te ao Maori, engaging effectively and providing culturally appropriate support to young people, whanau and victims." The implication seems to be a failure on the part of non-Maori (also referred to in the presentation as 'white') a pattern of blame becoming increasingly familiar.

Moving along, the  immediate concern must be the diminished usefulness of FGCs with no participating victim, and the message that non-participation sends to the offender.

According to Andrew Becroft (ex principal Youth Court Judge, now Children's Commissioner):

Most importantly, the FGC provides the opportunity for a face to face encounter with a

victim, which can be very emotional and raw. This is the restorative power of the FGC.

But in eighty percent of cases that potential cannot be realised.

The economics of unskilled work versus benefit

 Straight from the horse's mouth. Harry Tam long-time Mongrel Mob member on why more young people are joining gangs:

“Their parents and grandparents have never worked, they've been on the benefit because they're either unskilled or low-skilled. The economics doesn't make it worth their time,” he said.

This situation has only been aggragvated by our stupid Labour government which has linked benefit rates to wages. 

MSD 2014:

Nine out of every ten gang members have received main benefits.

Ninety-two per cent (3,627) of the total 3,960 known gang members received main benefits from MSD at some stage between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2014.

The 3,627 gang members spent on average 8.9 years on a main benefit (not necessarily continuously). Over half the time was receiving job seeker-related benefits and nearly a quarter of the time was receiving health or disability-related benefits.

Eighteen per cent of all gang members had received a main benefit for a total of over 15 years, whereas 13 per cent received main benefits for two years or less, and eight per cent had not received main benefits at all.

Add to this that benefits have disrupted family life by fuelling a sole parent industry. Young men joining gangs are either following in  their father's footsteps or don't have one.

Gang expert, Jarrod Gilbert:

“These young people are often raised without the presence of their fathers or other positive male role models."

 The state has actively created and cultivated conditions whereby gangs will grow in numbers.

Kiro made Dame Companion - And didn't she deserve it!

A prophetic post I wrote just under 12 years ago. 

(The petition referred to would have been that opposing the criminalisation of smacking).

Where America goes...

 The saying used to be "Where Britain goes..." but with identity politics paramount NZ is just as likely to follow American thinking and practice. Here's an article from the New York Post. Doesn't take much imagination to draw the parallels with this country and recent political developments in the child protection arena:

"Child-welfare agencies’ rush to go woke is terrible for the kids"

How do we prevent child abuse? First, we have to stop racism. That message has lately invaded the child-welfare system. The triumph of today’s fashionable ideological nonsense in this particular field carries exceptionally high costs — and abused kids will pay them.

More 

Holiday quiz

Here's a holiday quiz for you.

Read the following article to identify what is 

1/ Factually wrong with the headline and;

2/ What is the missing statistic?

Another taxpayer-funded talking head

 If I have a New Year's resolution it is to stop using the word 'we'. I was about to start this post with the sentence, "We appear to employ some very woolly thinkers in highly paid roles." But I am not part of the 'we'. I disagree with the existence of the role and I have nothing to do with selecting the incumbent.

But I was reacting probably to her use of 'we' constantly. 'We' seems to mean NZ as a country. Today it is the Equality Commissioner who has made statements that don't stand up to scrutiny. 

“The aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdown had been a chance to improve society in terms of equality, she said, and the country blew it.

“We all talked about the recovery being the recovery for everyone. Well, that’s not happening now and unless there’s some significant intervention, we’re moving into a more unequal New Zealand, and that’s not the New Zealand we want. 

We made that decision during Covid to pay people who had lost their jobs a different rate to those people who were already on the benefit. It’s kind of like we had this moment in time, we went back to who’s worthy and who isn’t worthy.

“We’ve got to somehow get rid of that, we’ve got to somehow move on from that past thinking to considering every person to be equally worthy of life and of dignity.”

A higher payment rate was based on the outgoings of those who became unemployed during Covid. It was also temporary in nature. So if the Commissioner's framing was sound, people were more worthy for 12 weeks and less worthy thereafter.

Secondly the welfare system moved on from the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' under-pinning decades ago after the Royal Commission on Social Policy of 1972 that embraced everybody's right to participate in society in a meaningful way. New Zealand then started financially supporting people whatever the cause of their inability to support themselves. Those who rendered themselves unemployable would be carried indefinitely. Those who made themselves unmarried, unemployed mothers would be carried indefinitely.

That has not changed.

New Zealand is a country that prides itself on this fact: everybody who cannot support themselves will be supported by the collective by law.

The 'deserving' and 'undeserving' premise under which the welfare state was initially designed (hence dependents stayed low for many decades) was long ago abandoned.

The Equality Commissioner is wrong in her belief that it's alive and kicking. I accept she could provide some sketchy examples eg different rates for different ages, but these distinctions are largely pragmatic. The benefit system is a no fault - and no blame - security system (which continues to cause controversy and political division.)

What she is actually calling for is the philosophical status quo with much higher payment rates. No need to dress it up in sentimental sermonising.

Silly street names

 It is Xmas day and if you didn't laugh..... 

According to the Adam Smith Institute newsletter, "... Birmingham unveiled new street names such as ‘Diversity Grove’ and ‘Equality Road’, though there was no mention of ‘Hard Work Hill’ or ‘Courage Crescent’ or ’Self-Help Square’ or any other virtues that might help us out of this mess."

 It's true.

And not far away, in West Yorkshire, Anarkiwi reports about police defining hate incidents (which are BTW "non-crimes".) From their website:

Examples include:

Verbal or online abuse, insults or harassment, such as taunting, offensive leaflets and posters, abusive gestures, dumping of rubbish outside homes or through letterboxes, and bullying at school or in the workplace.

Jeepers. It is entirely possible that a 'Hard Work Hill' sign falls under the category of  "offensive poster" by some nutter's standards.

Don't choke on your Christmas pud. There'll be a lot more of this coming our way in 2021!

Happy Days.

Admission and redaction

 Yesterday the build up of prisoners on remand made headlines on Stuff:

The chief ombudsman has raised the alarm over the growth of people waiting in prison that have yet to be convicted of a crime, which are set to be more numerous than those who have already been sentenced by 2029.

In his annual report, published this month, chief ombudsman Peter Boshier​ said the remand population, people in custody awaiting their case being heard in court, already made up more than four out of every ten prisoners in New Zealand.

 I 've blogged about this previously.

So I thought I'd have a look for any relevant commentary contained in the Briefing to the Incoming Justice Minister:

An admission that delays are causing "stress and physical and mental harm." But then frustratingly a redaction. Ironic when the prior sentence refers to improving the public's confidence in, amongst other things, a "transparent" court system.

This situation represents yet another failure of government to deliver the services we are taxed for. It's repeated in housing and mental health, which are both associated with criminal offending. Significant problems escalated under the last govt and I can't see the current one doing much but playing catch-up in the forseeable.

Sex with impunity

Sex with impunity is a jolly good idea. Apparently vasectomies spike after Xmas when Dads have spent a great deal of time around their children. I suspect the real reason is that people often enter the new year resolving to get around to things they had been putting off.

Snip Clinic has even offered vouchers for Xmas presents.

Vouchers for vasectomies... Where could we go with that without getting into deep shtuck?

What the heck. Let's go further. Reward points! Cash!! Serious cash even!!!

It's a fact that prisoners have more children than average males. Lets start there. Six months prior to likely release. The inmate could then re-enter society with a serious dollop of money instead of the paltry Steps to Freedom grant of a couple of hundred. In any case 'steps to freedom' by definition would most definitely include sex with impunity - probably the first item on his tick list of  'to-do's'.

Gosh. What a splendid suggestion.

(For the often and easily outraged I have one word - VOLUNTARY.)

Update. My 22 year-old daughter tells me this is a racist post... or, when I batted my corner, could be construed as such. Just returned from 4 years study in Dunedin some interesting household conversations are on the cards.

At face value, an odd juxtaposition

 A couple of days ago I blogged some trends from the Briefing to Incoming Minister for Corrections which included:

- a growing proportion of the prisoner population who have histories of extensive methamphetamine use – associated with significant and lasting impacts on mental and emotional function, including anger control 

-  Levels of violence in the community - the number of violence victimisations recorded by Police has increased steadily over the last five years.

The latest prisoner stats have ben released and show:

A rapidly falling prison population could be the result of a number of factors: fewer admissions, more releases, shorter sentences...whatever, the net number is dropping and it's not the result of more community sentencing which is also decreasing.

Given the widening gap between forecast and actual numbers a significant policy change must be in play.

Andrew Little promised to reduce the prison population and it was an electon year afterall. 

The blue line is odd in another way too inasmuchas I do not know whether to read it as good or bad.

 

Is a return to the bad old days of high inflation on the cards?

 Government will lift the minimum wage to $20 an hour on April 1, 2021:

“This minimum wage increase will lift the incomes of around 175,500 New Zealanders – which means $44 more each week before tax for Kiwis working 40 hours a week on the minimum wage.”

Down the track it will lift the incomes of many more now that beneficiary rates  are linked to wage inflation.

 “Signalling the minimum wage increases over three years has helped give businesses much needed certainty. Next year I will outline what changes we are intending to make in the coming years to give businesses time to plan ahead,” Wood said.

It makes life harder for businesses and there is no increased certainty about supply of labour if benefit payment rates are competing. Earlier Henry Cooke calculated, "...benefits will go up between $27 and $46 a week by April 2023 - between $10 and $17 a week higher than they would under the old formula."

To maintain relativity employers will be pressured to raise the wages of those above the minimum wage and are likely to pass their increased costs along to customers and nobody will be any the better for it.

It's going to be difficult for the Reserve Bank to keep a lid on inflation.

Revised forecasts

 

PREFU = pre-election fiscal update

HYEFU = half year economic fiscal update

"...the number of people receiving a working-age benefit (WAB) (Working-age benefits defined here as Jobseeker Support, Sole Parent Support and Supported Living Payment) is expected to be lower than was forecast in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) 2020. This is mainly because the number of people on Jobseeker Support has been lower than expected. Since the PREFU 20, we saw fewer COVID-19 Income Relief Payment (CIRP) recipients than expected and also a smaller proportion of CIRP recipients transferred to JS than was expected, which contributes to the lower forecast number of JS recipients for HYEFU 20. We also did not see significant growth in the number of JS recipients following the end of the Wage Subsidies."

Source 

My crystal ball is no better than anybody else's. 

But so much activity is predicated on borrowed money.  

Sensationalism?

The hard copy DomPost leads front page with headline:

Abuse in state care 'astounding'

 "As many as 655,000 children went through different care institutions between 1950 and last year and up to 39 per cent of them could have been abused..."

Not included in the lead story was that 1,332 people actually came forward to the royal commission (it appears later in the paper almost as an afterthought).

What interested me was this:

Andrew Sporle, who teaches statistics and research design at Auckland University, says the report risks giving credence to numbers that are far from established.

“If you say these are the results of research they get some sort of veracity that isn’t justified by the source of the data or what is done with it,” he says.

“The problem with that is, once it comes out with somebody’s name on it, then it becomes almost fact because people won’t look at the criticisms, they won’t look at the peer review. It will come out as fact because it’s got the royal commission’s name on it.”

Sporle points out that the Australian royal commission into sexual abuse refused to produce a report on the numbers because the data wasn’t strong enough. He believes the royal commission here should have taken a similar stand.

“That should be the statement – sorry, the data is crap,” he says.

“Their methods don’t take into account the completely different age profiles between Māori and non-Māori, which means there are completely different population dynamics over the last 30 years. Which means they’re massively underestimating the impact of this on Māori society.

“If one of my stage 3 students had done that, I would have failed them. Seriously, it is that bad.”

Corrections - violence increasing

I've been browsing through the various Briefings to Incoming Ministers here and here.  All I've looked at contain redacted sections which is probably ops normal but belies the claim to being the "most transparent government ever" nevertheless.

Here are some interesting trends noted by Corrections:

- an increase in the proportion of the prisoner population who are gang affiliated (now 35%), which mirrors growth in gang membership in communities. Gang members are over-represented in acts of disorder and violence in prison

- a growing proportion of the prisoner population who are on remand, with a strong association between being on remand and incidents of disorder within prison

- a growing proportion of the prisoner population who have histories of extensive methamphetamine use – associated with significant and lasting impacts on mental and emotional function, including anger control

-  Levels of violence in the community - the number of violence victimisations recorded by Police has increased steadily over the last five years.

In addition to this, over 75 per cent of the prison population have convictions for violence in their offending histories, and more than 90 per cent have had a lifetime diagnosis of a mental health or substance abuse disorder.

I've blogged in the past about how the ratio of 'on remand' prisoners is growing rapidly. That trend also rates a mention and this table is provided:

 

Then there is a sub-heading, 'Responding to extremism' :

There has been an increase in the number of people we manage identified as potentially holding extremist views or displaying risk factors and indicators specific to radicalisation or violent extremism. Corrections has taken several steps to respond to this, including by: 

• Establishing a Prisoners of Extreme Risk Directorate – we recognise that additional measures are needed to safely manage those who present an ongoing risk of harm and the potential to influence others to engage in serious violence. 

• Making violent extremism an intelligence priority – Corrections Intelligence operates in support of the Government’s National Security and Intelligence Priority (NSIP) of Terrorism, engages in prevention and disengagement initiatives with partners (government, community and academia), and has supported the development of individualised treatment plans for people displaying extremist views.  

 But then the final paragrapgh is again redacted

Iwi working constructively with OT

The media is always looking to beat-up on Oranga Tamariki. That their Chief Executive is moving on to Internal Affairs is reported thus:

Grainne Moss has confirmed Oranga Tamariki deputy chief executive Hoani Lambert has resigned, but she herself is not stepping down.

A clear inference is made by the framing of the resignation.

Anyway I shall report some positive news about OT to redress the balance.

On December 7 they formed their seventh agreement with Iwi.

This is an agreement to work TOGETHER.

Named Developing Te Rangapū Ahi Kā Roa, the strategic partnership agreement looks to build a sustainable and effective relationship between Oranga Tamariki and Wellington region iwi. It was signed by Helmut Modlik, Chief Executive Officer Te Rūnanga O Toa Rangatira, Wirangi Luke, Chief Executive Officer Te Rūnanganui o Te Āti Awa and Oranga Tamariki Chief Executive Gráinne Moss at Parliament on Thursday...“We want to ensure that tamariki are thriving in the protection of their whānau, hapū and iwi and our strategic partnerships are helping us to continue the downward trend of tamariki Māori coming into state care.”

 

It would appear that some Maori - the radical separatists - want the resignation of Grainne Moss while others do not.