Michael Laws On The Māori Issues The Mainstream Media Won’t Cover

Michael Laws chats about the Māori issues the Mainstream Media won’t cover


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Ele Ludemann: Families failing

Crime, drug addiction, educational failures, homelessness; poor health, poverty, violence, welfare dependency . . . the main contributors to these and many of the other woes facing us are often the result of families failing.

Being brought up in a loving, stable family where children are taught manners and respect for themselves and others; where education is valued; they’re given boundaries and face consequences when, as inevitably happens, they’re breached; doesn’t guarantee a model citizen, but the chances of becoming one are greater.

Dr Michael Bassett: Who is responsible for young offenders?

At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram raids that enables 12 and 13 year-old offenders to be charged in courts. One submitter declared that young offenders in state care would feel “under attack” by the bill. The measures were not going to be “good for our rangatahi and tamariki,” said another. A third young Maori who admitted to coming from a violent, drug-ridden home, implored MPs to address the causes of youth offending. “I really beg you to consider what you are doing, you are punishing us for your generation’s mistakes”.

David Farrar: The welfare dependency crisis

The Herald reports:

The estimated time that work-ready Jobseeker recipients will spend on income support until they reach retirement age has jumped by 23 per cent since 2019, amid a “worrying” slowdown of the benefits system that could strain government finances and trap thousands of people in poverty.

Growing up in a household where no adult is working, is one of the main indicators of likely problems later in life.

Bryce Wilkinson: Increased working-age welfare dependency is a problem

New Zealand’s welfare system is a problem for beneficiaries, taxpayers and others. Think of those affected by the reported problems in Rotorua from emergency housing in motels.

At its most concerning, welfare dependency is associated with inadequate housing, mental illness, child poverty, drug dependency, inability to budget, obesity, poor parenting, household violence, school absenteeism, and the intergenerational transmission of misery.

Lindsay Mitchell: Welfare and the wasted opportunity

MSD released its annual report for 2022/23 yesterday. There is bad news. The average future years expected on a main benefit has increased yet again.

The crosses below indicate failed direction of trend which is explained with: "This KPI did not meet the direction because of less favourable economic forecasts (including higher unemployment rates), lower exit rates and changes in our client mix from those requiring support during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Lindsay Mitchell: The disconnect between unemployment and welfare dependency

The disconnect between the unemployment rate (3.4% or 99,000) and the number of people on a benefit (11.3% or 353,904) has many scratching their heads. I get asked about it a lot. There are some differences in concepts, parameters and other nuances but keeping it simple...

At December 2022 the Jobseeker Work Ready (JS-WR) total was 98,766. Pretty well on the mark.

But this leaves a quarter of a million working-age people over and above the officially unemployed count and receiving an income from the state.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Should those on the benefit get the Working for Families tax credit?

If we don’t watch out, we are going to end up in a situation, if we haven’t already, where we make the gap between getting the dole and getting paid for work become so small, that it again ends up being a smart move to just stay at home and collect free money rather than work for a living.

Right now, the Government is considering a change to Working for Families that will only exacerbate this problem.

Working for Families is money that is paid to families who work; the clue is in the name.

But now the Government’s considering also giving the in-work tax credit to families who don’t work, families on the dole.

NZCPR Newsletter: Labour's Deepening Dependency Trap

Last week’s benefit increases delivered on promises made by Labour’s Finance Minister Grant Robertson in the 2021 Budget.

During his speech to Parliament at the time, he harked back to the past: “This Budget is set against the Budget delivered 30 years ago this year, the so-called ‘Mother of All Budgets'. It was the Budget that finalised the benefit cuts… We will restore dignity and hope for some of the lowest income New Zealanders by righting the wrong of those benefit cuts by boosting main benefit rates by up to $55 per week.”

Former Finance Minister Ruth Richardson had responded to his criticism explaining: “My budget was driven by a desire to lift economic growth and to make employment attractive. Grant Robertson’s budget is overtly driven by politics and the desire to pay off Labour supporters… The tragedy of this approach is that it locks in intergenerational state dependency with benefits becoming more attractive than jobs.”

Lindsay Mitchell: MSD - "What's happening to the number of sole parents on a benefit?"

Until the welfare reforms of 2013 most sole parents on a benefit relied on the DPB - not exclusively but mainly.

Since the introduction of the Sole Parent Support (SPS) benefit, which sole parents only qualify for until their youngest child turns 14, it's been harder to track how many sole parents are actually reliant on welfare. Far more are now receiving Jobseeker support.

Usefully MSD released some research in September, "What's happening to the number of sole parents on a benefit?" Numbers have been increasing - in part due to the economic effect of lock downs  - and they wanted to predict whether the growth trend will continue. More on that later.

NZCPR Weekly: The Dependency Budget

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

In this week’s NZCPR newsletter we examine Budget 2021 and raise concerns about the underlying incentives to increase dependency – as well as providing a brief insight into the Government’s $55 million taxpayer-funded public interest journalism fund, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Professor Robert MacCulloch explains why the Budget’s failure to address the extraordinary rise of the regulatory state is so significant, and our poll asks whether you would give Budget 2021 the thumbs up or thumbs down.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

NZCPR Weekly: Labour's Dependency Trap

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look into how the Labour-led Government is deepening the dependency trap, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Clive Bibby explains why the Government’s free school lunch programme is socialism by stealth, and our poll asks whether you support Labour’s policy of taxpayer funded free school lunches.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

NZCPR Weekly: Soft on Welfare

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look into why the number of people on benefits is rising when there’s a critical shortage of workers, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Lindsay Mitchell outlines the case against more generous benefits, and our poll asks whether you believe the Labour Government has gone soft on welfare.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

NZCPR Weekly: Deepening the Dependency Trap

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we examine how the policy agenda of the new Labour-led Government - that puts the demands of the unions ahead of the needs of young people and the unemployed - will deepen the dependency trap, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Kerry Jackson explains how poorly designed public policies have made California the poverty capital of the United States, and our poll asks whether you are optimistic or pessimistic about the future of our economy under the policies proposed by Labour.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

Lindsay Mitchell: Almost half of sole parent beneficiaries are Maori

47.4 percent of Sole Parent Support beneficiaries are Maori. In the Youth and Young Parent category the proportion rises to 49.4 percent.

I've charted the latest June data below:

Lindsay Mitchell: Too many children continue to be born into welfare dependency

If there is one statistic that epitomises the state of modern family under decades of benefit influence it's the following.

Each year I put the same question to MSD (adjusting dates obviously):

At December 31, 2014, how many benefit recipients aged 16-64 had a dependent child born in 2014?

This time the answer  is 11,149 - or 19.4% of all children born in 2014. Still nearly one in five.

Peter Saunders from the UK: Free movement of labour bad for Britain's youth

More than a quarter of British people who voted in the recent elections to the European Parliament voted for the UK Independence Party (UKIP). I was one of them. UKIP wants Britain to leave the EU. It also supports immigration controls in place of the free movement of labour required by EU membership.

A left-wing friend challenged me on this. Wasn't I being inconsistent, arguing in favour of free   markets yet voting for a party that wants to shut down Europe's free market in labour? My answer was that free movement of labour worked well when EU countries were at roughly comparable levels of prosperity (which was the case when the European Economic Community was first set up). But today, the EU encompasses poor countries as well as rich ones. Romania's average wage levels are about one-fifth those in Britain.

Lindsay Mitchell: Shearer on "hand-outs"

Ex Labour leader, David Shearer has made some surprising comments in a column published in the NZ Herald today.

Despite sponsoring a private members bill to feed children in decile 1-3 schools he obviously has major misgivings about it.

Since my Food in Schools Bill - to provide food to lower-decile schools - was drawn out of the Parliamentary ballot in October, I've been rethinking this course of action.

Lindsay Mitchell: Complaints about ECE care

In my article Vulnerable Children bill: Will it make a difference? published a few days ago, I wrote:

Today abuse is split into four categories; emotional, physical, sexual and neglect. In 2012 emotional abuse made up 56 percent of substantiated findings, physical – 15 percent , sexual – 6 percent and neglect, 22 percent. Child, Youth and Family record data about the nature of substantiated findings. Unfortunately information about the relationship between the offender and victim is not available.

Lindsay Mitchell: Child abuse rates in the beneficiary population: MSD cover-up by omission

Warning: laborious statistical workings below...

I've hesitated to label a new Ministry of Social Development factsheet a "cover-up" but having chewed over it for a few days I've decided that's exactly what it is. For the first time MSD has examined a "birth cohort ever present in New Zealand" and the overlapping contact with the benefit system, care and protection or youth justice services in the years to age 17. They used 1993.