I'd work at McDonalds over a benefit

Living the Labour ethos of decrying work former MP Georgina Beyer, now on an unemployment benefit says,

"I do draw the line at being a crew member at McDonald's. I'm a little bit past that sort of thing." Ms Beyer admits she has been told to "lower her sights", but says some jobs are off the agenda.

What happened to Georgina the inspirational role model? What sort of message is she now sending to young people?

Me, I'd be taking whatever there was instead of behaving like a sad sack.

And if I was a prospective employer I would be more likely to hire the person who was supporting themselves by any means possible than one who was turning down jobs beneath them to live off a benefit.

Poverty committee and more on work-testing sole parents

I am heartened. Audrey Young writes about how Finance Minister Bill English views the role of the new poverty committee, a concession to the Maori Party:

Asked what measure the committee would adopt for poverty, Mr English said measuring poverty was not a big issue.

"We are not looking at the possibility of large-scale cash injections that are going to move whole groups of people over some measure. That's not the recipe because we don't have the cash to do that."

He believed the public would not tolerate handing more money to low-income families and beneficiaries - or at least not until everything else had been tried.

Good for him.

That's what voters expect from a National government. The opposite of what Labour and the Greens would do. His statement is also a firm rejection of the Maori Party policy of giving the IWTC to beneficiary parents.

Earlier this week I questioned why National wasn't moving people off the DPB and onto the Unemployment Benefit when their youngest child turns 8 - as is the case in Australia. Yesterday the UK's Department of Work and Pensions released a report into how their new regime is working - moving lone parents onto the Jobseeker Allowance when the youngest child turns 7 - and it is fairly positive. A should at least make a submission pointing out this anomaly with the two countries NZ tends to policy-shadow the most.

UK unemployment

There is an excellent 'interactive' graph here that shows UK unemployment trends from the late 1980s to today.

What stands out is that the recession of the early 90s was a peaked mountain whereas the recession of today is more of a tabletop stretching over two years thus far.

What happened in the 1990s that isn't happening this time?

Paul Blair - this time in court, he loses

Paul Blair, Rotorua beneficiary advocate who has a record of forcing the state to pay more money to beneficiaries and getting funding for himself for 'research', has been given 4 months home detention and 200 hours community service for possessing and selling cannabis.

The sentencing judge said...

... Blair's work over many years as an advocate and spokesman for disadvantaged people in the community and voluntary work at the Community Law Centre was highly commendable.

Highly commendable?

Some excerpts from past posts:

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.

That was January 2005.

In the interim he applied for Families Commission research funding. It was granted and he went on to produce a report, 'Improving Work Life Balance for Domestic Purposes Beneficiaries Sole Parent Families'.

Anyway the report was signed off (according to Sue Bradford), peer-reviewed, ready for publication and PAID FOR when Mr Blair used an excerpt in a submission (no doubt opposing) the government's (then Labour)social security amendment bill.

Minister David Benson Pope was understandably most unhappy and suddenly the report was returned to the author as a 'final draft' for 'editing'. The report findings?

"It was felt that Work and Income was not forthcoming enough with extra assistance that might alleviate poverty and facilitate genuine personal and family development," the report said.

"On the whole, sole-parent DPB recipients felt that an emphasis on paid employment as the ultimate outcome ignored and devalued the work they were currently engaged in (as parents)."

And just last year I blogged:

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.

Blair has been happy to use the legal system to his own ends. Ironically this time the state used the legal system for theirs.

I do not relish anybody's prosecution for cannabis dealing but I am not sorry to see his ability to 'advocate' for more welfare somewhat limited in the near future. I suppose though he will be pulling another benefit while confined to home. He thinks the 'system' is against him. I think it is against us. Any which way the contributors lose.

National's welfare reforms in relation to sole parent work-testing

Now the onslaught of election policy from all parties has died down there is time to look at little more closely at what National is doing with welfare. A couple of things have caught my attention. For instance, parents with a youngest child 14 or older will be moved onto Jobseeker Support (previously Unemployment Benefit) and full-time work-tested. In Australia this happens when the youngest child turns 8. New Zealand has apparently chosen 14 because "children over 14 can be left without parental supervision. "

This poses a problem. Remember the rule for people who add a child to their benefit:

If a person has an additional child while on Sole Parent Support, they will be given an exemption from work testing for 12 months. This aligns with parental leave provisions.

After 12 months work obligations will be reset based on the age of their youngest child when they came on to benefit. For example, a beneficiary with a seven year old, who has another child, will be part-time work tested when their child turns one. A sole parent of a 14 year old who has another child will return to a full-time work expectation after one year.

So the additional child can be left without parental supervision whereas earlier children could not? Yes there may be older siblings available for supervising but that could have been said about any parent with more than one child who will continue to escape fulltime worktesting until the youngest turns 14.

The parental supervision law is an ass anyway ignored by most parents I am sure. But this anomoly will produce a challenge from anti-reformers.

Here is another stat I missed.

There are currently 19,100 people on DPB or Widow's Benefit with children aged 14 or over, or no children. The cost of supporting these people is around $400 million annually.

Not exactly pin money.

CPAG - sloppy finger-pointing as usual

Last week I linked to Karl du Fresne's column about Bryan Bruce's child poverty documentary. The column brought in some responses by way of letters-to-the-editor. Here is one.

OPINION: It wouldn't be possible to write a more inaccurate and polemic piece about child poverty if columnist Karl du Fresne tried. He is wrong on all scores; like the Welfare Working Group, he uses figures falsely and inaccurately, ignores the evidence in the documentary from Sweden because it doesn't suit his argument (a pity when facts get in the way of a story) and displays ignorance and prejudice in big doses.

There's a simple solution for him - he could read the evidence from New Zealand and internationally. But perhaps that is asking too much.

MIKE O'BRIEN

Co-convener, Child Poverty Action Group, Auckland

O'Brien gives no example of how Karl du Fresne or the WGG used figures "falsely and inaccurately".

In fact the only figures in the du Fresne column were these:

New Zealand in 1972 had 26 working people for every beneficiary. Today that ratio is down to 7 to 1 (in fact 3 to 1, if you include superannuitants).

The figures are neither false nor inaccurate.

52 percent of DPB recipients started there as teenagers?

That according to David Farrar in his most recent NZ Herald column.

The latest research shows that 52% of those currently on the DPB went onto it when they were a teenager.

Now I find this fascinating because I have tried to tease out this number for years. The Ministry has always maintained their records do not allow a definitive answer given they don't track back further than 1996. Then MSD researchers tried matching dependent children's birth dates against the age and benefit status of their mothers but even this wasn't satisfactory because some older children were no longer dependent and the data was still confined to a ten year period. So their best estimate was at least a third. My best estimate is higher. Probably a half. And just the other day I came across this fact from Michael Tanner's, The End Of Welfare;

“…nearly 55 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medicaid and food stamp expenditures are attributable to families begun by a teen birth.”

As New Zealand has the second highest teen birth rate only to the US (of developed countries) it stands to reason that a similar figure might apply here.

I've asked David twice for the source of his quote but haven't recived a reply. I note someone in the comments section of his column has also asked, "What research?"

Maybe he has pre-empted the release of new research. I hope so. It was always possible for the Ministry to put together a sampling survey that would provide a fairly accurate answer.

It is anyway a powerful piece of evidence that highlights exactly why welfare reform efforts need to be targeted at the young. Stop incentivising them to become mothers and see where that takes us.

Bennett losing Waitakere - wear it as a badge of honour Paula

Sue Bradford stood for Mana in Waitakere to play up welfare hysteria. Carmel Sepuloni was the feasible Labour candidate able to represent the anxieties Bradford stirred. Labour also did some shitty things to stir up fear and paranoia among beneficiaries. In the face of these two influences it is hardly surprising that a welfare-reforming Minister half serious about the job would lose electorate votes.

Sepuloni and Bennett were both single mothers on a benefit when they were younger.

Sepuloni fights in the left corner that tends to idealise DPB rcipients, their needs and motivations. She wants higher benefit payments, greater state assistance for training and education while on the DPB, and no work-testing. Hers is the social development vision that sees single parents as an inevitable part of the social fabric in need of state help to lead succesful lives.

Bennett fights in the right corner that has cognisance of all groups on the DPB but focuses on the young, vulnerable and lifestyle recipients. Bennett wants welfare to be the safety net it once was rather than the career (too respectable a word) choice it has become. She has no blinkers on and has managed to stay staunch (unlike Katherine Rich), while retaining her humanity.

Surely she will retain the portfolio. She deserves to.

Newspaper or junkmail?

Is it any wonder newspaper circulation is declining when they resemble junkmail more and more? Who wants to pay for what often gets thrown in the bin before it ever crosses the doorstep anyway?

In the first ten pages of today's DomPost page 4 is 100 percent ads; page 5 is 50 percent; 6 is 80 percent as is 7; 8 is 100 percent; 9 is 80 percent; 10 100 percent.

Throw in the ads on the first three pages and the total advertising space is over two thirds.

"Disgracefully simplistic, emotionally manipulative"

Karl du Fresne rips into Bryan Bruce's child poverty documentary describing it as "a disgracefully simplistic, emotionally manipulative programme." His column was published in the DomPost on Monday.

Only Greens can now do hysteria over "privatisation"

On the back of ACT's Confidence and Supply Agreement the Greens have been crying foul.

Privatising welfare not the answer: National and ACT’s moves to corporatise welfare will cost New Zealand more money for worse outcomes, the Green Party said today.

Labour cannot take this line of attack because during their term the Ministry of Social Development was contracting out services left, right and centre.

Radio Rhema asked me to do an interview on the subject with Aaron Ironside and have subsequently used a soundbite in their Shine TV Headlines (starts 00:34).

As I said in a previous post the Ministry already contracts to 150 employment services providers.

Hone 'Mana' Harawira on Whanau Ora and "shackin' up with the Devil"

Harawira puts the boot in:

The Maori Party is on the road - asking their members to let them go back into coalition with National because both Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples are desperate to not leave Parliament with the dodgy record that they have at the moment (Pete also said that he needs his ministerial salary to pay the mortgage on his new house).

Turia’s flagship was Whanau Ora. Launched after a big build-up by the Prime Minister himself, Whanau Ora got maximum publicity and became a new phrase in the public domain but in fact got very little.

Originally proposed as a $1 billion Maori welfare restoration programme, jealous Government Ministers forced Turia to turn it into a programme for all New Zealanders immediately reducing its effectiveness.

And then the budget got slashed to $134 million forcing Turia to have discretionary funding pulled from Maori providers around the country to prop up Whanau Ora, leading many to cut staff and at least one major provider, Amokura, to shut up shop all together. Before Whanau Ora came along, Amokura was one of Tura’s favourite Maori providers. After Whanau Ora it was dead.

Whanau Ora will limp on because Tariana is tough, but with limited funding it has become one of those programmes that Maori say is ‘designed to fail’.

More


Watch for the Maori Party comeback. They are donkey-deep in a 'damned if they do and damned if they don't' position.

ACT's C & S welfare concessions

As part of the confidence and supply agreement ACT has secured the following:

The implementation in this parliamentary term of the Welfare Working Group recommendations 27: Parenting obligations, 28: Support for at-risk families, 30: Income management and budgeting support, and 34: Employment services.

What are they?

Recommendation 27: Parenting obligations

a) The Welfare Working Group recommends that every recipient receiving a welfare payment who is caring for children be required to meet the following expectations:
i. ensure their children are attending school when they are legally required to;
ii. ensure their children participate in approved early childhood education once their child reaches three years of age; and
iii. ensure their children complete the 12 free Wellchild/Tamariki Ora health checks, which include completion of the immunisation schedule, unless they make an informed choice not to;
and that failure to meet these expectations after efforts to address reasons for non-compliance would result in the recipient’s income being managed by a third-party or some other means, such as a payment card; and
b) The Welfare Working Group recommends that systems be put in place to measure and monitor the compliance with the expectations set out in a) above.

Recommendation 28: Support for at-risk families
The Welfare Working Group recommends that:
a) all teenage parents under the age of 18 and other parents of at-risk families be required to participate in an approved budgeting and parenting programme and that access be provided to these programmes free of charge;
b) an assessment of risk to the well-being of children should form part of a more systematic assessment of long-term risk of welfare dependency and provide a basis for intervention through participation in intensive parenting support;
c) at-risk families and whānau with complex needs be provided with wrap-around services, preferably by single, integrated providers which address family and whānau needs as a whole. These programmes need to be responsive to Māori through culturally appropriate, holistic, and whānau-centred solutions. In addition, they need to meet the needs of other parts of the community, such as Pacific, migrant and refugee communities; and
d) at-risk families participating in an intensive early intervention parenting programme have access to quality early childhood education and childcare services from 18 months of age, as currently provided through Family Start.

Recommendation 30: Income management and budgeting support
The Welfare Working Group recommends that in situations where a parent receiving welfare has shown they have a clear need for budgeting support due to repeated difficulties in managing their budget, such that their child or children’s well-being is put at risk:
a) the person be given access to budgeting support services;
b) Government consider using a third party to manage the person’s income, on the understanding that that this income management would cease once the person has demonstrated their capacity to manage their assistance; and/or
c) this may entail provision of a ‘payment card’ programmed for use only on essential items, to ensure that children’s needs are properly met.

Recommendation 34: Employment services
The Welfare Working Group recommends that:
a) employment services be based on contestable, outcome based contracts; and
b) contract referral processes and contract payment structures be designed to financially incentivise contractors to achieve positive outcomes for those with greatest risk of long-term dependency.

A lot of this is already in place.

Private contracted employment services that work with the hardest to place. At August 2011 150 service providers were contracted to assist around 15,000 clients to find employment.

Contracted budgeting services. In 2009 83 members of the NZ Federation of family Budgeting were contracted to MSD to provide budgeting services.

Payment cards is National's policy for young beneficiaries. Once they are available I have no doubt they will be extended to other beneficiaries as per the Australian operation.

Beneficiaires are already sent to parenting programmes. I had a client who went on one (which seemed of dubious quality.)

Analysis of the Family Start programme based in Christchurch showed some gain for children of beneficiaries but not for parents. As I blogged a couple of days ago intervention that is not wanted (compulsory) can further entrench parents in a siege mentality which may put their children at greater risk. So I am very dubious about complusion. I concluded that post with the following:

But I keep coming back to two broad propositions for the state, which will continue to monopolise the problem for some time yet. It has got to stop incentivising childbirth and start incentivising prevention. Stop paying people to have children and start paying them not to. And it has got to stop counselling against adoption and get more children into stable and loving homes from the outset.

The massive escalating intervention - private, public or a mix - is usually too much, too late.

The concessions extracted by ACT represent more intervention and more paternalism which it can be argued are necessary on the back of an extensive benefit system that pays young women to become mothers.

They do not represent a reduction of the benefit system itself.

National's policy of worktesting mothers when their youngest child is 5 (or 1 if the child has been added to the benefit) better represents a reduction in the availability of benefits. ACT should have (and may have) pushed for the age to be lower, afterall they have extracted the promise that parents on benefits must ensure their children participate in approved early childhood education once their child reaches three years of age. Or time limits which was always part of their policy in the past.

Between them there is still no resolve to actually stop the welfare incentives that give New Zealand the second highest teen birthrate in the developed world.

More half-truths from Labour

In response to John Banks getting the Associate Education Ministership Labour's Education spokesperson Sue Moroney says:

John Key has used a bogus agreement with ACT to bring in education policies promoting bulk funding and privatisation that National were working on before the election, but did not tell voters about, Labour’s Education spokesperson Sue Moroney says.

“News today that the confidence and supply agreement between ACT and National includes plans to push on with a trial charter school system will come as a shock to most Kiwi parents.

“The ‘charter school’ proposal is bulk funding in drag. It is a model that has been blamed for the decline in educational achievement in Sweden.

An overview of trends in government in Sweden 2011 contains the following:

In Sweden, the proportion of pupils at compulsory school attaining the set knowledge targets, i.e. passing in all subjects, is rising.

On the other hand, surveys carried out in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that the proportion of 15-year-olds with poor reading ability increased from 12.6% to 17.4%, while the pupils' results in mathematics and science deteriorated, between the 2003 and 2009 surveys.

The proportion of pupils eligible for the national study programmes at upper secondary school decreased, mainly among pupils whose parents'education ended before upper secondary school.

The proportion of young people aged 20–24 who have completed upper secondary school in Sweden rose from 86% in 2000 to 88% in 2008. The corresponding EU averages were 77% and 78%. The proportion of Swedish pupils leaving upper secondary school with basic eligibility for higher education rose from 85% to 91% during the same period.

The number of students attaining first and higher degrees and diplomas in higher education, as well as PhDs, in the period 2000–09, increased. At the same time, the level of achievement in basic higher education fell slightly.

A mixed picture but hardly an all-out decline.

Child victims - no cut and dry answers

Three stories drew my attention today. Child death and child neglect and child neglect.

For ten years I have racked my brain over what can be done to either improve the lot of children who are born into circumstances of material and spiritual impoverishment, or reduce the likelihood of it happening in the first place. Initially I looked at the problem theoretically and philosophically, then I got involved at a political level, then a practical level for a number of years. And still I find myself without a single hard and fast answer.

I was prompted to reflect on this after a conversation yesterday with someone who continues to work for the community organisation I was a volunteer for. She told me that it has expanded significantly but wasn't necessarily more effective. Government funding was good but they were now getting compulsory referrals from CYF making the job different and difficult. In the past referrals came in on a voluntary basis which meant clients were amenable - well, initially at least. So the need is growing but the private/public mix isn't the silver bullet.

Scene-set. The CYF caseworker refers dysfunctional families to a community organisation that can provide volunteer mentoring. The government saves taxpayer money by harnessing an unpaid workforce. But to the dysfunctional family this new intrusion presents just another hurdle they have to jump over to continue to receive a benefit (or perhaps keep custody of a child). That's my take on it anyway. Every client I ever had in 5 years was on a benefit.

The idea that people need to meet criteria to receive state support is inherently a conservative one. What pains me about it is it legitimises state support where it shouldn't. But even worse it pushes already damaged people further into a 'them and us' mindset, a feeling of sullen resentment and alienation which drives an instinct to rebel and reject. That manifests in the way they treat their children.

So not only are we back to square one but possibly minus square one. The children are probably even more vulnerable than they were before extra pressure was brought to bear on (usually) the single mother.

Time pressure doesn't allow me to return to my volunteering and on the basis of what was described to me, I wouldn't want to.

But I keep coming back to two broad propositions for the state, which will continue to monopolise the problem for some time yet. It has got to stop incentivising childbirth and start incentivising prevention. Stop paying people to have children and start paying them not to. And it has got to stop counselling against adoption and get more children into stable and loving homes from the outset.

The massive escalating intervention - private, public or a mix - is usually too much, too late.

Earthquake in Wellington

About 7:20 a reasonably strong tremor brought both of the kids running and the dog has gone off into her own tremors and panting. Went for about 6-7 seconds getting stronger but no big jolt. Sam is 13 and that's the worst she has ever felt. Robert says no wonder the people of Christchurch can't sleep.

Update: 30 Km east of Picton 5.7

Reported as "biggest recorded in around twenty years."

Are you missing John yet?

Confession: I actually warmed to John Key during the campaign because he dropped the smile-and-wave persona and actually looked like Phil Goff was getting right up his nose. I heard commentators describing him as "looking like a coldfish" and "refusing to engage" and "hard-faced". To me he looked unsmiling and deliberately detached from the silly gamesmanship of Labour blaming National for the inevitable detrimental effect on New Zealand of the worldwide recession. He showed calm and concentrated discipline in the process. I started to empathise with him. This is the John Key I'd like to see and hear more from. But I'm an oddity.

So I suppose I am destined to miss the new John until his re-appearance in 2014.

Marcus Lush on David Shearer - what the listening audience doesn't see

Had been listening to Willie Jackson and JT yesterday and still had my radio tuned to Radio Live this morning . David Shearer popped into the studio on his way to the airport to talk about his prospects for leading the Labour Party. Marcus Lush made some interesting comments after his departure in respect of what the listening audience doesn't see. He was impressed that the guy had turned up in person and shaken hands with all the news staff. Said that Shearer obviously really wants the job. But there was something he was uncomfortable with. Whenever he was asked a question Lush said Shearer's eyes immediately darted to the right. Lush preferred someone to look him in the eye when conversing and suggested that it was a habit that Shearer would need to be "media-trained out of". Otherwise he came across as (I was waiting for the word shifty but Lush deliberated just long enough to leave the word loudly unspoken) "too politician-like."

And if I hear one more time about how Shearer negotiated with Somali warlords I will .... roll my eyes again. Has anyone asked whether his negotiation successful?

Cracked 9,000

Have been blogging for six years and never exceeded 9,000 visits per month. Last month the counter reached 9,500 and the stats through the year have been steadily climbing. Thank you for tuning in. Finding the time to blog is becoming increasingly difficult but the growing readership makes me resolve to keep it a priority.

What can the government do for the poor?

What ... can the government do to help the poor? The only answer is the libertarian answer: Get out of the way.

— Murray N. Rothbard