Guest Post: One Thing Leads to Another

A guest post on No Minister by Kerry Butler

When those in positions of power enact a policy that is meant to be “limited” to specific groups involving exceptional circumstances, such benevolence invariably ends up extending beyond the original intent.

We‘ve witnessed a classic example of this incremental creep in Welfare.

Maori Activists are very aware of the fact that when they push for “special” treatment of whatever sort for Maoridom, that’s really just about getting their foot in the door, i.e. knowing that it will lead to more.

Lindsay Mitchell: Study results baffle researchers

Fascinating news out of the US this week. The prevailing ideology - mirrored in NZ - is that poverty in and of itself harms children's development. That's the thesis behind welfare for poor mothers and more specifically, Ardern's impetus for her Best Start payments.

The US is a far more sensible country than NZ. It actually tests theories. Try to do this kind of research in NZ and academic ethics committees would be all over it like a rash. It'd never happen.

Lindsay Mitchell: Who relies most heavily on welfare?

This short piece is a partial answer to the question posed. It addresses the ‘who’ but not the ‘why’.

The following chart uses Census data from Statistics NZ and benefit data from MSD. Both sets are from March 2023.

Mike Butler: Don’t forget the old pioneers

The Pioneers – Makers of New Zealand, a new book by writer-publisher John McLean, reminds us of those who built New Zealand, tells how, and explains why their contribution should not be forgotten.

McLean descends from an unusual pioneering family of Scots who did a double migration, first to Nova Scotia in 1793, and then on to Waipu, in Bream Bay, Northland, in 1854.

The people behind contractors John McLean and Sons also descended from this group. This company built bridges, railways, most of Wellington’s wharves, the entire Auckland electric tramway system, as well as the early stages of the Otira Tunnel under the southern Alps, starting in 1907.

David Farrar: Mitchell fisks Hipkins on Welfare

Lindsay Mitchell applies a blowtorch to some nonsense from Chris Hipkins.

* Hipkins:  benefit sanctions make people “less likely they are to end up in sustainable long-term employment”

* Mitchell:  Under Labour verage estimated future years on a benefit grew from 10.7 to 13.6 years and the number of beneficiaries jumped from 289,788 in Dec 2017 to 378,711 by Dec 2023

Clive Bibby: “Money is for nothing”

That old Dire Straits favourite is a “tongue in cheek” parody of what we all know from personal experience.

However, one of our enduring problems is that a large percentage of the world’s population actually believes it has a place in society which they refer to as either “affirmative action” or welfare expenditure.

NZCPR Newsletter: Aspirational Reform

The last six years of inept management by the Hipkins-Ardern Labour Government has exposed a multitude of problems facing the country that need to be addressed.

Since poor public sector performance has become the norm in most policy areas, the lack of resilience of many New Zealand families to cope with the resulting adversity, is now a growing concern.

Nowhere is this more evident than in health, where the contrast between being forced onto a public hospital waiting list for specialist treatment, and having the resources to pay for private care, could mean the difference between life and death.

Hanna Wilberg: Forcing people to repay welfare ‘loans’ traps them in a poverty cycle

The National Party’s pledge to apply sanctions to unemployed people receiving a welfare payment, if they are “persistently” failing to meet the criteria for receiving the benefit, has attracted plenty of comment and criticism.

Less talked about has been the party’s promise to index benefits to inflation to keep pace with the cost of living. This might at least provide some relief to those struggling to make ends meet on welfare, though is not clear how much difference it would make to the current system of indexing benefits to wages.

Lindsay Mitchell: Increased benefit rates drive increased deprivation

Increased benefit rates drive increased deprivation.

This is no surprise to logical thinkers. Simply upping benefits doesn't mean the extra money will be well spent. Benefit increases have the effect of drawing more people onto benefits, away from work and the structure work brings to people's lives.

But the following admission from the Rotorua Lakes District Council nevertheless surprised me:

"Millions of dollars in welfare has to deliver the desired impact of hope and positive change, instead, Rotorua has seen a steady increase in deprivation since the onset of Covid-19, largely driven by increased benefit rates."

It's an odd sentence though and I wonder if 'has' in the first line was meant to be 'was'?

Mike Hosking: It is a crime to pay someone to do nothing

 

If you subscribe to the “numbers don’t lie” scenario, then we have to do something about those who don’t have work.

The stats last week were shocking: 115,000 on the dole for longer than 12 months. That doesn’t count the many tens of thousands more on the dole at all.

Fortunately, many move in and out of welfare and for them the system works largely as planned.

But all over the world we are seeing an increasing gap between the number of jobs that are available and the number of people who can’t seem to find one.

Peter Saunders: The moral case for a smaller state

The CIS believes in finding non-government solutions to society’s problems. But why not use government, given the resources and power it has to change things? Three answers are commonly given. The first is economic. Demands on government are potentially infinite, the budget keeps expanding and big projects often go wrong. There has to be a limit. But not everybody agrees. If something really needs doing, they say, government should find the money. Australian public spending is less as a percentage of GDP than in many other developed countries; we could spend more.

Mike Butler: Greens leader backs Maori dope trade

Maori in regions where jobs are limited who are growing and selling cannabis to keep their whanau fed shouldn’t be punished for their entrepreneurship, Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei told Maori TV on Monday night. “It has become an income supplement for whanau particularly in rural areas where they have very little income and few job prospects, particularly in the back blocks, and we have to very careful how we manage that,” Turei said on the Native Affairs show.

Lindsay Mitchell: Child sponsorship in NZ

Variety has started up a scheme for New Zealanders to sponsor a New Zealand child. The money involved is the same as international sponsorship - $35 monthly. I'm not going to write in criticism of the scheme. It's charitable and voluntary. Whether the 'need' being met could be sorted differently, or whether meeting the need will just grow more of it, are issues for consideration. But assuming donors have thought through these, it's their prerogative to give.

Mike Butler: Lessons in bungled evictions

What lessons can be learned from Housing New Zealand’s bungled attempt to evict three women from their Lower Hutt houses? Despite five courts ruling in Housing New Zealand’s favour in a battle that spanned more than two years and cost         $1,007, 670, the government landlord has had a change of heart and decided to let the women stay.

Five tenants, including Robyn Winther, Huia Tamaka, and Billy Taylor, were handed 90-day eviction notices after a violent incident involving Mongrel Mob members in Farmer Crescent in February 2009. Three male gang members had allegedly terrorised a woman and her children in their home, leading to the arrest of 10 people.

Lindsay Mitchell: Greens plan is a blueprint for poverty

The Greens plan to lift 100,000 children out of poverty is unworkable and defies reason on a number of counts.

First the definition of poverty is relative. It puts a number of children below a specified threshold. Arbitrary thresholds are exceedingly troublesome in their own right. The US is currently grappling with a new and better way to measure poverty. In the UK not so long ago hundreds of thousands of children were lifted out of poverty overnight simply by moving the threshold! A move no less silly than the Green's proposal as we shall see.