Archive for the 'families' Category

Valuing children

Published
by
Dancer
on December 12, 2008
in families
. 21 Comments

I know I won’t be alone in being disappointed in the results of the Unicef survey, which says that “New Zealand has an appalling child poverty rate, spends too little on early childhood services for which there is unequal access, and lags far behind other developed nations in parental leave provisions, according to a new report.”

There are some real issues to grapple with here, especially around the use of child care for very young children. There’s a balance between economic necessity (family needs more than one income to survive) and what is in the best, long term interests of children. If agreement is reached that birth to three is the most important time for investing in children’s development and potential then surely we need to be looking at programmes and policies that support this.

To this end I heard an interesting item regarding the survey on National Radio (link to audio here) which suggested that in Sweden twenty years ago the use of subsidised care was widely used for young children but since their extended paid parental leave it’s now rare for children under 18 months to be in care. Surely that has to be a good thing for the children (and I would hope the parents too!). Contrast that to the UK and Australia where a majority of under ones are in some form of daily child-care.

This morning Dr Ian Hassall told Morning Report that there has been a lot of talk about women returning to the workplace, to increase New Zealand’s productivity.  He said that means that a whole generation of children are growing up in situations outside the home, without close family relationships. We may end up paying the price for this in ten or fifteen years time with a society that lacks cohesion, with higher rates of relationship breakdowns etc.

What are some of the options here in NZ? Remember last year when the Families Commission “proposed a three-stage increase from the present 14 weeks leave to six months initially, then nine months and finally 12 months by 2015.” At the time Judith Collins (spokesperson on family affairs) said she would take the Families Commission proposal to the National caucus.

“It would have to go to caucus and have the costings done and be weighed up against other initiatives, but I’m generally not against it,” she said.

What is their response now that there is growing evidence of the need for change, and now that they are in the position to do something about it? What about National’s pre-election policy on some of the key issues like extended paid parental leave? Difficult to say as it is hard to find on their website (indeed I can’t actually spot their policy at all!), but I hope that they accept the challenge to debate the issues. Given they decided to cancel the Family Commission conference, which was to look at how families were coping with the economic crisis, I am not feeling very optimistic.

Childish

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 18, 2008
in economy, environment, families and greens
. 64 Comments

We live on a finite planet. We can’t just keep adding 75 million people a year to the human population while also increasing the average resource consumption per person without collapsing the biological systems that support us. 

Current projections have the world population rising another 2-2.5 billion in the next 40 years to peak around 9 billion before beginning a gradual descent. But that is likely too be too little, too late. We are already well above the population carrying capacity of the world; we are consuming not only the natural resources we need but degrading the ability of the world to produce more resources that we can consume. Barring some technological miracle, the human population will start to fall. The only question is whether we manage the process by lowering our birthrates to significantly below the replacement level (2.1), which has already happened in many developed countries, or we wait until its too late and collapse is forced on us. 

Which is why it is such a shame that we can’t even talk about population management in our politics. Even the Greens’ policy to “Ensure that all potential and existing parents have full and free access to family planning services so that informed decisions about the number and spacing of children can be made by the parents concerned” has come in for attack as if it was some kind of call for a One-child policy. I expect that kind of reactionary, head-in-the-sand garbage that National and ACT came out with from them but the Maori Party disappointed me. There is also a long history of population management among Polynesian peoples and we can look to Polynesia for the classic example of what happens when population exceeds carrying capacity: Easter Island. I would have thought the Maori Party might have a more mature attitude to the need for our population to be in harmony with our environment.

The Greens do not, and would not, propose any kind of compulsory limits on birthrates. Like all Green politics at heart, the Greens’ population policy is about informing people and encouraging them to take responsibility to the consequences of their choices. It’s a tragedy that our political discourse is not mature enough to have that conversation.

Wrong time for short-term thinking

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 14, 2008
in climate change, economy, election 2008, environment, families, greens, health, housing, national and tax
. 89 Comments

National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me by Nick Smith, showed that insulating a State house saves $2 in health costs per $1 of insulation - it actually saves the Government money to invest in insulation. But National would cancel the plan. Their priority is tax cuts right now, not a myriad of benefits in the future. I suspect for Nick Smith, personally, this is another ‘dead fish’ he has to swallow to get back into power.

This is part of a disappointing trend from National. Under the Tories, we would see Kiwisaver gutted, R&D credits gone, and no money for insulating homes. These are all programmes that are a long-term investment in creating a wealthy, more high-tech, healthier, more efficient New Zealand but National would rather use the money for tax cuts for the rich (something like 80% of the extra money in National’s tax cuts goes to people on incomes over $100K). It’s this short-term thinking that got us into trouble in the 1990s. They attacked our public services, education, health, benefits and cut taxes for the wealthy. The effects are still being felt now as the children of the Mother of All Budgets reach adulthood.

Now, more than ever, I don’t think New Zealand can afford to be run by a party that refuses to make long-term investments in the future.

Trickle-down

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on October 12, 2008
in assets, bill english, economy, election 2008, families, kiwisaver, media, national, public services, slippery, spin, tax and workers' rights
. 10 Comments

A few thoughts from today’s Agenda:

Questioned about why National would introduce another tax rebate, having endlessly criticised Working for Families because of its complexity, English says ‘we do, in the long term, want a simpler tax system’. So, be on notice, Working for Families is under threat from National - they would ‘eventualy, but not yet’ replace these targeted tax rebates with tax cuts (for the wealthy, naturally)

English deseperately trying to defend trickle-down economics without naming it was a little sad. He must miss the 1990s, when he could just say what he believes.

He says National would stand behind the vulnerable. The most vulnerable workers (people on incomes from $14K to $24K, working families where the parents each earn less than $44K, and anyone on Kiwisaver) would be worse off under National. Meanwhile, the most wealthy New Zealanders would get higher tax cuts the higher their income. National would stand behind the vulnerable alright, as they pushed them over the cliff.

Rawdon, ‘the top 20 countries getting together and coming up with a unilateral solution’. Saying unilateral rather than universial or multilateral once sounds like a slip up. Doing it twice in a row suggests you don’t know what you are talking about.

I’ve read everything David Skilling’s New Zealand Institute has published. Universally, the work is poorly researched and provides threadbare arguments, usually lacking any empirical evidence, that lead to a radical, neo-liberal pro-rich ’solution’. Look at his ’solutions’ to the credit crisis - tax cuts for business, selling off public assets, tax cuts for rich expats coming back. Basically, tax cuts for the rich masked as an economic package. No evidence that these would do anything for growth and nothing for most Kiwis. But ‘radical economic package’ sounds impressive, eh?

Social Report shows Kiwis better off

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on August 28, 2008
in crime, culture, economy, education, election 2008, families, health, housing, human rights, social issues, wages and welfare
. 30 Comments

MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 and 2005-07; if it is shorter that measure has become worse.

[large version, p138] Nearly every metric shows signficant improvement over living standards a decade ago (obesity is a notable exception).

As you can see the ‘Population with low incomes’ metric has improved dramatically. This metric measures the portion of households with ‘low incomes’ (defined as 60% of the median household income, after housing costs); essentially, it’s the poverty rate. In the mid-90s, 23% of households were in this situation; today the number is 12%. For the first time since the Social Report started in 2001, the  figures show a reduction in income equality from a decade ago. The gap between rich and poor grew in the 1990s under National and has decreased under the Left-wing governments. Now, we have finally made up the ground lost under National.

There will be more posts once I’ve had time to read the report in detail. I recommend having a look; it’s an educating read. Nothing in it will stop the Kiwiblog Right claiming living standards in New Zealand are plummeting but then when did they ever let the facts get in the way of a good rant?

Cumulative Effect

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on May 23, 2008
in budget 2008, families and tax
. 60 Comments

The Press (Budget Doesn’t Impress Family) looks at the effect of the tax cuts on an average family with a combined income of $78,000 and two kids under 12 . They will have $42 more a week from tax cuts and boosted Working for Families tax credits come October 1.

That’s like getting paid for three hours extra work a week on their wages. Seems like a bit to me, and it’s only part of the picture. Here’s how this family’s tax bill is brought down by Working for Families and the tax cuts through to 2011:

Current Tax, per week: $280
WfF credits, minus $74: $206
Oct 1 2008, minus $42: $164
April 1 2010, minus $11: $153
April 1 2011, minus $25: $128

That’s a reduction of 55% on the tax bill for this family, worth $152 a week. More importantly, the Government has managed to do give those cut and put more money into public services, pay down debt, put away money for superannuation, and invest in infrastructure. These cuts have come without sacrificing spending and have targeted families on low to middle income.

I’m impressed.

[UPDATE (a_y_b) - Here's a graph of what the Gormans' tax reduction will look like. Figures on chart represent dollar savings. Total tax drops from $280 to $128, about 55%]

Telling porkies

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on May 22, 2008
in economy, education, election 2008, environment, families, health, housing, media, national and same old national
. 42 Comments

The Herald and National have started attacking every piece of government spending as pork-barrelling. Here’s some of what they’re calling ‘wasteful, needless spending’:

$750 million of new health spending ($160 million for elective services) -Pork
$700 million for Fast Forward Fund, food and pastoral sector research -Pork
$665 million to buy the national rail operations - Pork
$446 million for community organisations - Pork
$171.6 million in operational funding to schools - Pork
$164.2 million for cervical cancer immunisation -Pork
$150 million a year to keep young people in school or training until 18 - Pork
$72.1 million over 10 years to clean up Rotorua lakes - Pork
$46.5 million for home-based support for injured people - Pork
$35 million for a shared-equity pilot scheme for homebuyers - Pork
$22.4 million over four years for state house insulation - Pork

Of course, none of this is pork: it is money going where is is needed, not for electoral gain. No doubt there are legitimate targets out there (Winston Peters’ $9m subsidy for the racing industry springs to mind), but what National and the Herald are doing here is running a radical right-wing argument whereby every piece of spending, from R&D research to insulating homes for the poor, is a waste of money. National’s education spokesperson Anne Tolley even came out yesterday and attacked more money for kids’ education as ‘pork’.

So what does this all mean? If National says it’s pork, they obviously wouldn’t spend it themselves. So, we begin to see what a National government would do:

No more money for health. No money for R&D. No flood protection. No money for transport. No insulation for the poor. No more money for education. No money for search and rescue. No cancer immunisation. No lakes cleanup. No hand-up for young home buyers.

But, of course, plenty of real pork - huge tax cuts for the rich.

New Zealand, a great place to be a mum

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on May 12, 2008
in election 2008 and families
. 47 Comments

We hear an awful lot from the Right about how much New Zealand sucks: ‘crime is up’ they cry (when it’s down), ‘taxes are too high’ (when they’re down), ‘too many dole bludgers’ (when benefit numbers are way, way down), ‘everyone’s leaving for Australia’ (when fewer than 0.7% of people went last year), ‘labour costs are too high’ (you mean wages are up? No wonder Key “would love to see wages drop“).  So, it’s nice to take a break from National’s ‘New Zealand Sucks’ campaign and be reminded of what a great little country we live in.

Save the Children has released its ”State of the World’s Mothers” report. New Zealand was ranked the 4th best place in the world to be a mother, the 2nd best to be a woman, and the twentieth best for children. In each of those metrics, we are well ahead of Australia.

New Zealand ranked highly because it scored well in each of the areas that Save the Children looked at: Lifetime risk of maternal mortality, Percent of women using modern contraception, Female life expectancy at birth, Expected number of years of formal female schooling, Maternity leave benefits, Ratio of estimated female to male earned income, Participation of women in national government, Under-5 mortality rate, Gross pre-primary enrollment ratio, and Gross secondary enrollment ratio.

New Zealand doesn’t perform well in these areas by accident; the results arise from government policy. See how these following policies match with the measures Save the Children looked for: more money for health, subsidised GP visits, free morning-after pill, 20Free childhood education, interest-free student loans, Schools Plus, paid paternal leave, higher minimum wage, lower unemployment, Working for Families, modern apprenticeships, skills training, and gender balance in Labour’s List.

New Zealand is such a good place to be a mother and raise kids because the Government has made a concerted effort to make it so.

Know your Nat: Judith Collins

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on April 30, 2008
in families and same old national
. 44 Comments

If National were the Government, Judith Collins would be Social Services Minister. That should be enough to send shudders down the spine of anyone who is worried about ensuring there is a safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. Collins is rabidly anti the welfare state and a nasty piece of work. Whereas her predecessor as National’s Welfare spokesperson, Katherine Rich said “I’m not your DPB-bashing sort of person…most of the people I meet on the DPB are pretty motivated people who have the same dreams and aspirations as the rest of us. Beneficiary bashing is a most unsatisfactory practice. It doesn’t really take you anywhere”, Collins agrees with Key who spoke of women “breeding for a business”

Collins’ latest attack on our most vulnerable citizens, “Labour gives up on long-term jobless”, claims 60,000 people have been getting benefits for being “jobless” for more than ten years. She’s being deceptive and she knows it. Yes, 60,000 people, 2.3% of adults, have been getting benefits for 10 or more years. But 38,000 of them are invalids – that is, they have an ongoing physical or mental disability that prevents them from being part of the workforce. Of the rest, 16,000 are parents raising kids on the DPB, that’s not a task that’s over within a couple of years. 5,000 have a long-term sickness. Only 1,000 are on the unemployment benefit, and less than 300 have been on the unemployment benefit for the whole 10 years [data here].

What Collins doesn’t want you to know, because it wrecks her anti-welfare state argument, is that the number of long-term beneficiaries is decreasing rapidly (down 20% since December 2003).


A day after a report reveals that the only children left living in poverty in New Zealand are in beneficiary households and the Minister says we should aim to eliminate child poverty, all National can come up with is more hollow beneficiary bashing. Pathetic.

Child beating petition falls short

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on April 29, 2008
in child discipline, election 2008 and families
. 93 Comments

Family First’s petition for a referendum on reversing the amendment to s59 of the Crimes Act that removed the defence of reasonable force for assault on a child (try saying that three times fast) has failed to get enough signatures. It needed 280,275 signatures and seemed to have enough but the Office of the Clerk found many of them were multiple or fake names.

Now, the pro-beaters have 2 months to find the 15,000 extra signatures they need to force a referendum. On the surface, that shouldn’t be hard. Family First has the money to get people out to collect names and polling data from David Farrar’s company Curia to help targeting groups. But it remains to be seen whether they will be able to get so many more names in time, they were already scrapping the barrel to get the names they have and some of the energy must be lost from their campaign after this failure.

On child poverty

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on April 29, 2008
in families and labour
. 25 Comments

The Child Poverty Action Group has released a report [PDF, 400k] showing there were 185,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand in 2004. That’s a big number but it is out of date and already well down from the dark days of the 1990s.

It is estimated that higher employment, higher wages, paid paternal leave, and Working of Families have combined to reduce child poverty by 70% since 2004. On top of that, improved public services, free early childhood education, subsidised doctors’ visits, and cheaper medicine have improved the lives of all children but aren’t caught by the poverty line measure, which only counts income, not the social wage. Moreover, it should be remembered that the poverty line is a moving target; it is 60% of the median household income. Since real incomes are up 15% since National was booted out, even someone living on the poverty line is 15% better off than in 1999.

Notwithstanding all that, more can be done to reduce child poverty. After nine years of centre-left government, the only children still living in poverty are those living in beneficiary households, who can’t get Working for Families. Something can be done for these families. One option would be to restore benefit levels to what they were before Ruth Richardson slashed them in the 1991 ‘Mother of All Budgets’. Another option would be to increase the child tax credit portion of Working for Families, which goes to beneficiary as well as working families. Both these measures would have the added benefit of putting more money into the pockets of people who are hardest hit by the slowing economy, which would create demand and stimulate their local economies.

That child poverty has been reduced 70% is of great credit to Labour but there shouldn’t be any child poverty in a nation as wealthy as New Zealand. It’s good to see the Minister agrees. The only way to get there is with better assistance to families in need. Tax cuts alone won’t cut it.