Temporary Tent City?

Quite early this morning I went down to parliament to look for myself and get a feel for the mood.

Yesterday the police spent hours pushing back the crowd mere metres only to re-lose the ground and enflame the situation with 122 arrests achieved by picking off protestors one-by-one. This morning all that battleground has been covered with marquees and across the complex, more tents have gone up. I imagine by the weekend there will be no visible lawn left.

All of the roads immediate to parliament and alongside the National Library have parked lanes of vehicles, utes, campervans, buses, rigs and a couple of food trucks. Either they all leave in unison or nobody goes - anywhere.

And I don't think they are going anywhere any time soon. It's an occupation. And it seems totally fitting to me that the citizens occupy the land surrounding the workplace of their representatives.

The mood is pleasant, chatty, convivial BUT after yesterday there is much more preparedness for further action from the police.

I left feeling sure the police won't move today. A repeat of yesterday would be utterly futile. Worse, it would attract even more people who are first and foremost looking for trouble, which those protesting the vaccine mandates aren't. They are looking for a change of heart from government.

That would be the simplest solution to this unprecedented show of resistance which will only get stronger in the coming days. Any other 'resolution' doesn't bear thinking about.

Update: They were not in view this morning but now at least two very large banners are saying "End Mandates, We Go Home." It couldn't be clearer.

Our welfare system is not functioning well

In the clamour against Labour's proposed unemployment insurance scheme something odd has happened. The detractors are praising the existing welfare system as effective and well-functioning. I've heard business commentator Phil O'Reilly doing this and now Roger Partridge, from the NZ Initiative, in today's NZ Herald, writing:

More importantly, New Zealand's unemployment rate is consistently among the lowest in the OECD, thanks to well-functioning labour markets. And when it comes to long-term unemployment, that is, those who have been unemployed for 12 months or more, New Zealand's record is even better. Over the past two decades, the long-term unemployed made up only 11.9 per cent of total unemployment in New Zealand. This compares with 29.4 per cent for the OECD – and 44 per cent for the EU.

Respectfully I don't know what measure Roger is using but of the 187,992 jobseekers registered at December 2021, 62 percent had been continuously on the benefit for more than a year. Yesterday in parliament National MPs were making a noise about how the percentage is increasing.

Much of the proposed scheme criticism has been about how it will increase the time people spend unemployed because it is too generous. But the fact that the Jobseeker benefit has no time limits is the biggest contributor to long-term dependency.

Partridge continues:

With a well-functioning welfare system and the labour market producing comparatively good outcomes, there appear few good reasons for imposing the costs of an expensive new layer of welfare onto firms and workers.

I'd strongly disagree that our welfare system is well-functioning.

Why are 6 percent of the 18-64 year-olds receiving a jobseeker benefit when so many sectors are crying out for labour? Yesterday the Mayor of Westland District Council was on radio imploring people to go down and fill jobs. Yet there are 1,500 people on a jobseeker benefit in Greymouth and Westport.

It is too easy to get on and stay on welfare in New Zealand. Labour have enhanced that ease by reducing the use of sanctions to impose work obligations. They recently shifted thousands of jobseekers onto the sole parent benefit because they no longer had to look for a job. The policy settings changed. It is now OK to keep adding children to a benefit to avoid work. That is not a "well-functioning" welfare system.

So, while I hold no candle for Robertson's proposed unemployment insurance scheme, I'm not going to argue for the status quo either.

 

 

Oranga Tamariki statistics under new regime

CYF became Oranga Tamariki in 2017. There has since been a push to reduce Maori children in state care (not dissimilar to the push to reduce the prison population). Currently just over two-thirds are Maori.

So here's a quick stock-take on OT stats under the new regime.  The numbers are for the year ending June.

'Reports of concern' about a child come from schools, police, neighbours etc. 

These are trending down:

A report of concern can result in a 'further assessment or investigation'. 

These increased in the most recent period:

Next, I would have expected to be able to show you 'substantiated findings of abuse or neglect' but there are none at the OT site. The latest Annual Report provides none.

So finally, the number of distinct children in a care or protection placement (which could be family/whanau, non-family or a state facility.) 

These are trending down:

A breakdown in ethnicity for each category shows every stat declining for Maori including further assessments and investigations.

A couple of matters prompted me to check the most recent data: reports from the States that harm to children has increased during lockdowns, with absence from school and confinement within families under stress.

And closer to home Child Matters releasing data about the number of deaths from neglect and abuse increasing in number.

Last year, one child died every five weeks as a result of alleged abuse in New Zealand. So far this year, one child has died almost every week.

Ten children in one year is above the norm and the rate appears to be increasing.

Child deaths represent the most extreme abuse or neglect but may provide a clue to other underlying degrees.

The trends seem to be going in two different directions. 

It's hard to draw sound conclusions but it can be said fewer children are under the state's care and protection (now officially referred to as 'loving placements') and more children are dying. Whether the two observations are related is another thing.

Underneath the official unemployment rate announced today

Unemployment is now at 3.2 percent.

Wow.

Wonderful.

Can I think of another word beginning with 'W'?

Weird.

The percentage of people aged 18 to 64 claiming an unemployment benefit (Jobseeker) is 6 percent.

There's 188,000 of them.

In Northland the official unemployment rate is 3.3 percent, but 10.2 percent are on the Jobseeker benefit.

Lots of people are no longer 'unemployed' because nobody is requiring them to look for a job. OR they are content working a few hours (but not enough to affect their benefit).

The age of anxiety

 Not a worrier by nature I note with a degree of objectivity that the human brain is now constantly assaulted by messages designed to make people act out of fear. If you think I speak of covid you are wrong.

For example, a warning currently being read out during the weather forecast on NewstalkZB:

Heat Alert

Significant heat forecast for Lower Hutt on Sunday 30 January to Wednesday 2 February. Drink plenty of water, stay out of the sun, and avoid extreme physical exertion.

What earthly use is that? Our bodies tell us when it's hot and what to do - IF WE CAN. Thousands of outdoor workers cannot avoid the sun or physical exertion in it. I've been working up the back on our hill and the sweat stings when it runs in your eyes. Should I dash indoors, oscillate my folding fan and mop my brow? Truly the message is paternalistic poppycock.

But as I toil on with my radio earpiece in for company, I am subject to relentless advertising that is designed to make me feel worried and sad. 

You could face a large vet bill and be forced to put your beloved pet down! Which starts me thinking about all the beloved pets I've buried albeit at the end of their natural lives. Take action! Buy insurance.

Then ACC. If you get hurt think about who else gets hurt. Who'll bath you? Who'll walk your dog? Jesus, my dog again. 

Next up the friendly funeral directors. Can your family afford to bury you? Don't leave them with a massive bill. Pre-pay your funeral. Download our application form today. Plan it yourself. Be in control. Seriously? I want to control my own funeral? I'll be dead. What difference does it make?

An aged care facility says, we are watching your old folk as they sleep. Some days are hard, some days are sad, somedays are full of fun. But we care. And we are there. OMG. Lay it on me.

Change channels.

Are you over 50? Have you had a prostate test?? NO! Then have you had a breast scan?? NO!

Earthquake commission. You'll need 140 litres of water per person to get through in the event of a disaster. (How many water-filled coke bottles have I stored? Nowhere near enough. But we stopped buying plastic because of the plastic crisis. Aaaaggh. What am I going to store 140 litres in?)

Have you got an elderly relative who is showing signs of depression? Are they forgetting to empty the mail box and buy food? Good lord. We are all worried about our elderly parents in their 80s and 90s. I need a break ...

YOU can buy peace of mind if you get our mobile medical alert system. Peace of mind ... 

ARE YOU HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING???  No wonder. Sleep Drops is the answer.

Oh no. Here comes that absolutely doozy.

"Look again, look again" Waka Kotahi telling me how frightening intersections are. Like an incessant window wiper, "Look again, LOOK AGAIN." I would knock the woman on the head with my spade if she stepped out of the radio.

But back to water. Don't swim if you can't float on your back for an extended period. Swim only between the flags. Drownings are at an all-time high. Don't over-estimate your ability.

But it's so effing hot. 

Don't go near the Hutt River. Deadly toxic algae has been detected. It'll kill your dog. Ingested poisoned possum carcasses swept down the river and ending on Wellington harbour beaches will kill your dog.  Fat lot of good my pet insurance will be then.

I look at my faithful dog lying near at hand. I can't take much more. If I wasn't depressed, after listening to a day's worth of advertising I surely would be.

BUT but but there are oodles of numbers I can ring to get help. Ring help-line, 24 hour counselling, anywhere, anytime! Only $1.99 a minute. Phew. That's only ... $120 an hour!@#$%

What a dilemma. Pay for pet to live, my funeral, my peace of mind or counselling, which I am now in dire need of. Life is so stressful. My usual reason and calm have been clobbered.

As a friend recently observed, if there is just one good thing about getting older it's that we won't have to put up with this crap for much longer.

When words say so much

 According to RNZ the PM is a covid close contact and has to isolate. The following sentence made me laugh:

In line with Ministry of Health advice she will be tested immediately tomorrow and will isolate until Tuesday, a press statement said.

Doesn't that beautifully sum up this government? Doesn't know the difference between 'immediately' and 'tomorrow'. 

A sample of the protestors

312 responded. Margin of error plus or minus 4.6%

Most aged over 41

Labour was the most common vote at last election

Maori representation almost double their share in the population. 

Slightly more women than men.

Largest share come from provincial NZ.

Just over three quarters are unvaccinated.

Source

Bizarre new world

The term 'pod' applied to human beings first made itself known to me when I was 'inducted' (as a volunteer) into Rimutaka prison. There are two basic unit types. There are those that replicate and fan out from a central arm. These are higher security, most akin to what you expect if your prison knowledge is confined to TV watching. Two storey, interior balconies and stairways, and small high-walled exercise courtyards.

These are referred to as "the pods".

Now though the term is in wide usage to describe how events will deal with red light restrictions. For example:

"Racing Minister Grant Robertson confirmed on Sunday that sporting events could continue under the red traffic light system, with multiple separate spaces of up to 100 people in attendance. We’re working through the logistical exercise of adjusting our plans to switch to table service for food and drink, with distinct entrances, security, amenities and totes for each pod of 100 guests." 

So where did 'pod' come from? As Sports Minister, Grant Robertson uses it all the time. Freudian?

Wellington Cup Day will see the hoi polloi ensconced in their pods while 1000m away society's outcasts are locked up in theirs.

Notwithstanding the difference in their circumstances, both are heavily subject to government control.

Keep remembering it isn't whatever-latest-virus making the world a bizarre place. It is the way governments react.

How does this claim stack up?

 Some more background on this claim from the MSD Minister today would be useful:

"People on a benefit for 1-2 years and four years or more getting into work increased by 96.9 percent and 93.2 percent respectively. Those on a benefit for 2-4 years saw the year-on-year exit into work rise by 129.8 per cent."

That level of data depth isn't publicly available.

The only data I can immediately access shows that in the Dec 2020 quarter, 26,992 people left a benefit for work. In the Dec 2021 quarter the figure increased to 27,423 - or 431 individuals. 

That's a 1.6% increase between the two quarters.

For three duration of dependency groups (1-2, 2-4 and 4+ years) to show an average increase of "getting into work" of 106.6 percent their absolute numbers must be very small.

Looked at another way, it appears the vast majority of people on benefits who left for work in the Dec 21 quarter had been on welfare for less than a year

Eradicating 'NZ' from the public service lexicon?

This is bad news in my book.

MSD has always used 'prioritised ethnicity' recording. If a client records they are Maori and other ethnicities, Maori is prioritised and the individual is counted as Maori. The same applies in the health and justice systems (unless that has changed also).

The advantage of the prioritisation method for recording is individuals are counted once.

It's going to get messy henceforth as individuals and ethnicities will sum to in excess of 100% (see chart below).

But there is another change.

New Zealanders with a European heritage have previously been categorised as 'NZ European'.

Now they will be labelled just 'European'.

I think that's a misnomer. If ethnicity is now about 'cultural affiliation' (according to MSD) is the culture of New Zealand the same as the culture of Europe?

The announcement itself refers solely to the country as 'Aotearoa' so I cannot help but get the feeling dropping NZ is more than a statistical convenience.

Here's how statistics will be affected in the future:

Total recipients in the second chart sum to 388,020 (even though there are only 343,920 individuals) and ethnicities sum to 114%.

It might be useful to have some data on Asians (though the term is broad eg includes Fijian Indians) I'm not sure how useful.

Equally I am unsure why the 'total response' reporting is an "improvement" beyond it apparently "reflects best practice".

Gangs: We get what we pay for

In 2016 the government provided you, the public, with a valuable insight into what gangs are costing us.

When I went searching for an update on the 2014 data, there was none. And that rather highlights that this Labour government doesn’t see gangs through the same lens as the last National government.

The absurdly mis-named Ministry of Social Development described gangs thus:

“The harm inflicted by gangs is a serious issue in New Zealand. We have a complex gang problem that spans social, economic and justice issues.”

In 2014 there were 3,960 adult gang members known to police.

Last year, in 2021, it was reported:

“As of June 30, there were 8,061 gang members on the list curated by police, up from 5,343 at the end of 2017.”

Burgeoning numbers?

Some would argue the toss.

Jarrod Gilbert, sociologist and gangs expert says there is a methodological issue:

"It's incredibly easy to get on the [gang] list because the police identify someone wearing a patch and so their name goes onto this database. But if people leave the gangs - and so many people are - it's very, very hard for police on the street to identify when someone's left."

That’s the first I’ve heard that it is easy to leave a gang. Two anecdotal cases spring to mind.

A friend told me how she had to smuggle money into a prison to pay a gang boss to let her partner leave.

Another friend told how he got “stabbed up” on his doorstep when other members got wind of his impending desertion.

It is notoriously difficult to extricate from gang life. There is no ‘unsubscribe’ button.

In something of a contradiction Gilbert is also on record as saying leaving gangs could be difficult, especially because of the physical marks members carried such as facial tattoos. Although getting a tattoo wasn’t compulsory, there was a “pressure” for young people to get one.

Gangs are not ‘friendly societies.’ It is grasping at straws to draw analogies between Rotary and Black Power to justify non-application of association laws. But people do it anyway. I expect one can safely resign from Rotary though I have no evidence to back that up.

Anyway, back to 2016.

You, Dear Taxpayer, working in jobs you hate or love, but always contributing to the wellbeing of your fellow man, furnish much of the gangs’ budget.

Over an examined twenty-one year period 92 percent of gang members received a benefit at some point with the average duration of receipt at 8.9 years.

You contributed to their rent through the accommodation supplement and their food, through hardship grants. Not to forget income-related rents and repairs to Kainga Ora (whose reputation has recently spiralled into a black hole.)

You also paid their ‘partners’ single parent benefits and child tax credits. Their weekly ‘package’ sometimes amasses to more than $1,000.

Gang members do not itch to attach themselves to clever, educated, and independent wahine. Gang women are often themselves the female offspring of gang parents and learn their parenting in situ.

According to MSD, in 2014:

The alleged perpetrator of abuse or neglect of gang member’s children was more often recorded as the child’s mother than the gang member father.

So how much abuse or neglect are we talking about?

A total of 3,516 children of gang members were recorded as being the victims of abuse or neglect that had been substantiated on investigation by Child, Youth and Family. This is 60 percent of the total 5,890 known children of gang members.

Children growing up in gang families are more likely to be abused and neglected than not.

Authorities officially acknowledge:

There are in the order of 6,000 to 7,000 children known to be associated with gang members who are growing up in welfare recipient families, and are subject to high rates of abuse and neglect.

It is bad enough that the situation is allowed to continue, or even deteriorate based on the numbers.

But it is abominable that those who decry the misery visited on these children are simultaneously compelled to pay for it through the tax system.

Imagine an excel sheet recording the allocation of the taxes you paid last week. Make sure you head up a column with ‘Financial incentives for gang procreation.’

It is important to gang members to father children, and they do it more frequently than non-gang members. According to MSD 2,337 gang members had benefit spells that included 7,075 dependent children. But this is only part of the story. Many gang female partners or ex-partners would be receiving their own benefit to which children will be attached.

A portrait of Kawerau in 2010 explains this proclivity:

A gang rules the bedroom in many of the homes in New Zealand's DPB capital - Kawerau.

"We have one gang in our town, the Mongrel Mob," said a community leader who asked not to be named for fear of the Mob.

"Every Mongrel Mob man creates a line - that is the number of children they can produce. So they will have a couple of girlfriends and they might have a wife, and they will have mistresses, and they will be in on-and-off relationships," he said.

"When you are born and raised with that mentality, and we have second and third generations raised like that in this town, what that turns out is sole parents."

At that time, in a town of 7,000 there were 661 DPB recipients and 624 unemployment and sickness benefit claimants. At September 2021, since benefit name changes, only 300 parents are receiving the sole parent support benefit BUT 1,008 people are dependent on job seeker support (which will include a number of sole parents.) Not much appears to have changed in Kawerau. A vignette from early 2021:

“Kawerau Mongrel Mob leader Frank Milosevic, 52, has been sentenced to 17.5 years imprisonment after being found guilty on 16 drug and money laundering related charges. He has received a minimum non parole period of eight years and nine months.

Slobodan Milosevic, 30, was sentenced to 16 years and nine months imprisonment with a non-parole period of seven years and 10 months…

After Slobodan received his sentence, people in the public gallery began barking and jeering.

Slobodan is the father of three children, and his partner is due to have a fourth child later this year.” (my emphasis)

No doubt with an incarcerated partner (and serving an associated home detention sentence herself) the expectant mother of three will now be dependent on the generosity of the taxpayer.

As only one of thousands of gang mothers receiving benefit income in their bank accounts each pay-day, we shouldn’t be so hard on her. Afterall it’s a lifestyle government after government has condoned by financing it.

She will be able to access the Prime Minister’s Best Start payment for her new-born intended to ensure the child is well-nourished, safe and thriving. Of course, breast milk, tactile care and attention would achieve the same and come without a price tag. As Coco Chanel apparently said, “The best things in life are free.”

Unfortunately, the father is not and whether his absence in the child’s life is a curse or a blessing will always be an unknown factor. He is though the son of a gang member himself. The abiding presence of his father did not have a happy outcome.

You should now add another column to that excel sheet headed ‘Prisons’. Between them the father and son will be requiring around a quarter of a million dollars annually in upkeep and ‘rehab’. Or a cool cumulative $4m if they both serve their minimum sentences.

There’s been a great deal of bally-hooing over the deported 501s and their contribution to escalating gang and gun violence. But isn’t that a mere smokescreen? New Zealand does very well in amplifying its homegrown problem through strong welfare incentives and weak child protection services. While both are heading in the wrong direction, we are destined to keep getting what we pay for.