Rich enough for policy?

The dangers of thinking completely within the private sector box are amply demonstrated by King of the Blog David Farrar today.  He is worried about taxpayer funded groups being able to lobby government on policy issues - what he describes as "sock puppet" groups.

No organisation which spends say more than 25% of their time or resources or lobbying should be eligible for government funding. They should be forced to split into totally separate organisations if they provide genuinely useful services which should remain funded, but this should not be used to have the bureaucracy use sock puppets to lobby Parliament and MPs on what the laws should be.  Lobby groups should be funded by their members and supporters, not by taxpayers.

Now I'm not denying that this National Government putting law up for sale is of concern to me - but let's just imagine for a moment that Women's Refuge couldn't lobby government around domestic violence, because they receive taxpayer funding to, oh, keep families safe from domestic violence.   Would our laws on domestic violence instead be formulated by talking to Destiny Church say?

Family Planning?  We don't need to hear about what's happening in sexual and reproductive health from you, what with your clinics all over the country and the capacity to hear from young women directly about what they need, not with that government funding you get.  I think we'll ask, mmm, how about Family First?  Similar name, no government funding, easy.

Sexual violence you say?  But doesn't the Government fund agencies to help survivors after they have been raped, and deliver programmes to people with harmful sexual behaviour?  I know it's not enough money, and there are wait lists and gaps all over the country, but it should stop their national network working with government to develop more effective and ethical responses to rape and sexual abuse, right?  Especially when actually there are so many people we could hear from instead - former All Blacks say, or former National MPs?

Hell, there are no end of people we could be listening to which the taxpayer isn't funding to, you know, actually work with real people experiencing and recovering from the real issue.  Our policy and law would be so much better off if we stopped listening to under-funded community groups performing miracles on complex issues and just listened to rich people.

Why don't young people wanting contraception and sexual health advice just pay for their own lobby group?  Survivors of sexual violence - work longer hours.  And as for you children escaping domestic violence or sexual abuse - start saving your pocket money if you want to influence public policy in FarrarWorld.

Political Parties and Family Violence

Jared at Left Wing rants has written an excellent overview of political parties and their attitudes to/policies on reducing family violence:

The most worrying thing for me is the lack of discussion around education. Something that has struck me in my research is that many people aren’t aware of what is actually health in a relationship. This is something that people should be educated about in school (similar to with sex education) to prevent them being trapped in an unhealthy relationship without knowing. This would make it easier for people to talk about it and seek help when they need it, as well as making it more likely that perpetrators would seek help. But overall, Labour, the Greens and Mana have good policies focusing on support for victims as well as prevention. National, on the other hand, have more punishment, while ACT don’t seem to care. The Māori Party seem to fit somewhere in the middle.

Check out the whole post.

income splitting: discrimination against sole-parents

from my professional reading at work (and it's no doubt been in the news as well), i see the IRD is doing work on income-splitting. yeah, it's late ok, and i'm too tired to look for the links.

just in case you haven't heard about this particular policy, it's where a couple get to split their total income between the two partners, thereby reducing their tax rates. it works well when one partner is on a high income, and the other is on a low income. so if one partner earns $80,000 they would be on a tax rate of 38% for income over $70,000. if the other partner earns only $20,000, total family income of $100,000 would be split to $50,000 each, thereby avoiding the top tax rate, and in fact having more of that income taxed at lower rates.

it's been a united (future) policy for years, and the new government has decided to investigate further with a view to implementing. interestingly enough, business nz doesn't support this policy.

i have lots of objections to it, but the one i want to raise here is that the policy discriminates against sole-parents. why should parents who are in a relationship get an extra tax break that sole-parents don't qualify for? especially when we know that sole-parents face greater poverty levels than those in relationships.

i'm thinking there may be a human rights claim here, much in the way that the child poverty action group took a case on the in-work payment being discriminatory to children of beneficiaries. what do others think?

why measure inequality

i also received by email this paper on inequality, written by sophie elliot. the paper has received much positive feedback. it's quite academic in focus, but well worth a read. some excerpts:

The concept of equality is multifaceted; the literature on theories of equality is immense and the application of these theories is complex. Nevertheless, the great philosophical and legal minds of our time recognize that a comprehensive investigation of equality, and its measurement, is vital in the quest for justice. In this essay, I consider some of the major theories of equality as defined by various players in the literature, each of whom attempts to answer the question, 'What type of equality will promote equity in society?'

[...]

The equality of relative success requires that people are equal in the degree to which they fulfil their goals. However this is a problematic formulation. Imagine two people with identical qualifications, jobs, incomes, assets and families, but differing in that the standards of the first are as low as the standards of the second are high. The first believes he has achieved the perfect life: he wants for nothing and is happy. The second believes herself to be a failure, feeling that she has added little value to the world. The disparity between these two individuals is a difference in their beliefs, not a difference in their lives. Does anyone really believe the 'failure' deserves more resources than the 'success'?

[...]

But how should a social decision maker decide who is disadvantaged? Perhaps a `normal life' is not something that can be pinpointed, but instead a distribution of capabilities, where a disadvantaged person is below some sub-average threshold of this distribution. Dworkin notes that no transfer would be capable of compensating completely for certain disabilities. Consider, for example, how much you would be willing to pay to avoid full body paralysis. For many of us, the answer is, 'everything I have'. This suggests there may be no upper bound on compensation, and thus no way to ensure that handicapped people, through resource redistribution, have the same opportunities as able people.

[...]

Sugden argues that the pure equality of opportunity theory does not protect people against advantages or disadvantages arising from luck in the form of unanticipated market outcomes. Surprise outcomes spring from various sources: risk-taking entrepreneurs who introduce new products to markets, not knowing ex ante how successful the available technology will be in production or what people will be willing to pay; industry- and firm-specific risk that is born by workers who make the gamble of changing jobs; the choice faced by a high-school graduate of whether to obtain specific training in a field that suits his talents, sacrificing time and money with no guarantee of employment at the conclusion of years of effort.

i also liked this bit in the "afterword":

Economics is a moral science, and economists need to understand the consequences of different concepts of equality. Many of the ambiguities and disagreements about economic policy stem, not from differing views about how the economy works, but from differences about the underlying values.

Quick hit: 2008 Report on the Global Gender Gap

The full report, compiled by the World Economic Forum, can be found here. New Zealand comes in at #5 behind Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland. The study focuses on data related to economic participation and opportunity (7th), educational attainment (1st equal), political power (6th) and health and survival (69th).

Stoopid

In a comprehensive defeat for common sense, the Nats have today announced their plans for youth offender bootcamps.

To me, this is everything that's wrong with the populist politics National seems so keen to engage in. The Nats must know there's no evidence that bootcamps reduce offending or produce any social benefits at all - they're just throwing a bone to the rabid right, who are motivated by a punitive urge that borders on sadism.

When a young person - or any person - commits violence or another serious crime, it shows that they don't feel much connection with the society around them. Forcibly removing them from that society, intentionally degrading them and subjecting them to punitive treatment is hardly going to foster their empathy. In fact, it's going to feel a whole lot like state-sanctioned bullying - and that never motivated anyone to be a good citizen.

It's my hope that no responsible, ethical social service worker will be involved with these bootcamps. But this could in itself cause problems: unqualified people may end up responsible for the care of kids with a complex range of needs. Many of these kids will be dealing with abuse or drug or alcohol problems - not the stuff of amateur hour.

Concern for youth offenders aside, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to foresee problems with teaching youth offenders military skills. Would it be desirable for the likes of Liam Reid to have combat training? Antonie Dixon, perhaps? Not that these kids will need much help from the military experts: putting 40 accomplished offenders together creates a formidable criminal workshop.

I have no doubt whatsoever that bootcamps will actually increase crime. To so-called 'justice' and victims' rights advocates, this seems a reasonable price to pay for the joy of vengeance. That's more than a little ironic.

Crime tax?

To my surprise, my first reaction to National's proposed crime tax wasn't entirely negative, although I've certainly got some concerns. It's suggested that all those convicted of crimes will be fined $50 to go towards a victim compensation scheme. The scheme will help victims with crime-related costs not currently met by the state, such as the costs of funerals or traveling to court.

Victims deserve support, and someone's got to pay for it - sounds fair enough so far. But, as with all policies, the devil will be in the detail. My questions/concerns include:

- Perhaps the most dodgy aspect - it is proposed that compensation awarded to prisoners for human rights abuses suffered in prison will be immediately confiscated and put into the scheme. This makes a mockery of the concept of 'compensation', suggests that prisoners shouldn't have the same human rights as the rest of us, and reduces the deterrent against prisons treating inmates inhumanely.

- People who get heavy sentences are unlikely to be able to pay the fines, meaning minor criminals (whose actions cause less hardship to victims) will end up carrying the can. Although it's called a tax, what's being proposed is really a punitive measure - and it doesn't seem fair that the young guy who gets done for possessing a bit of cannabis pays as much, or more reparation than the person who commits murder.

- Could such a scheme be administered without descending into absurdity or poor taste? Could it result in WINZ-like situations where claimants had to show three quotes for the funeral costs of someone who'd died as the result of a crime?

- All sentences impose hardship on the families of the people sentenced - that's a given, and a whole different issue. But if a man is convicted of domestic violence and has to pay an additional $50 in crime tax, his wife/partner/kids end up sharing the added financial burden. They end up being victimised twice.

If the more objectionable parts of this scheme - like the confiscation of prisoners' compensation - were taken out, would it be a good thing? Is there a better way to support victims of crime? What do you lovely THM readers think?

What about teh menz?

Cross posted

The Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill is open for submissions, and as is usual, the bill has been reviewed to assess consistency with the Bill of Rights Act .

The bill proposes a significant increase in police powers. Specifically, police will be able to issue orders to force an alleged offender to leave the home (remember, this is a domestic violence bill) for up to five days. In effect, it's a temporary eviction order.

Idiot / Savant is upset about the increase in police powers. He thinks they already have enough power to deal with domestic violence, via their capacity to arrest alleged offenders, and that given the history of police in New Zealand as heavy-handed, it's a dangerous extension to their powers to punish people, and a serious infringement of the fundamental human right to due process.

The thing is, there's another set of human rights that comes into play here, and that's the right to live without suffering violence and without fear of violence. I/S points out that we need to balance up the right to due process against the right to live without violence. He comes down on the side of due process. I come down on the side of the right to live without violence. I don't think this is an unreasonable extension of police powers, and nor do I think that it will significantly erode the right to due process.

It's worth taking a step back, and thinking about why we might want to give police these powers i.e. the power to remove people from their homes. More than just a step back - let's take a look over the Tasman, at the Tasmanian "Safe at Home" initiative.

The idea behind "Safe at Home" is that women and children should be safe in their own homes. When women and children are forced to leave their homes, due to domestic violence, then the wrong people suffer. If anyone should be required to leave home, in order to keep women and children safe, then it should be the person who is perpetrating the violence.

Under the Safe at Home intiative, Tasmanian police officers have the power to issue orders removing alleged perpetrators from homes for up to 12 months. The orders can be appealed and revised, through a standard appeals process. A similar regime is in place in Western Australia, whereby perpetrators can be removed for up to 3 days.

Okay.... let's start the countdown. How long before someone makes a comment to the effect of "But men are victims of domestic violence too? What about TEH MENZ?!!!"

First up, the Tasmanian and Western Australian legislation talks about alleged perpetrators without being gender specific. Nevertheless, it's clear that the legislation and the various measures that may be taken are aimed at men. That's because research shows that
href="http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/119-1228/1817/">more domestic violence is perpetrated by men against women and children.

Study members were asked in separate questions about their mothers being “hit or hurt”, or threatened and then their fathers “hit or hurt” or threatened by the other partner. Of the 236 exposed to violence, 171 (73%) reported mothers being threatened, and 158 (67%) reported mothers being physically assaulted by the male partner.

One-third (33%) of those exposed to violence reported threats to the father, and 29% reported that the father was physically assaulted by the female partner. Altogether, 39 (16%) of the exposed group reported violence by the mother only, 67 (28%) by both partners, and 130 (55%) by the father only. When physical assaults only were considered, 23/181 (13%) were by women alone, 46 (25%) involved both, and 112 (62%) were by men only.

(That's from an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal reporting on results from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study. That's the study where they are follwoing a very large cohort of Dunedin children from birth onwards. If you don't regard that as a reliable source, then clearly we are just not even on the same planet.)

Second, I don't like the idea of a 12 month exclusion either. That strikes me as far too long, creating a serious problem for the man removed from his place of residence. There's a review of the Tasmanian legislation going on right now and an early report has identified the length of time for which orders may be issued as being problematic (PDF here).

However, that doesn't mean that all exclusion periods are necessarily bad. It just means that you need to have a careful think about how long any exclusion period should be, and what structures you need to put in place to make sure that they work effectively.

I think the exclusion period needs to be 72 hours. That's just enough time to cover a Friday night eviction being appealed in a court on the following Monday morning. That seems to me to be reasonable.

That means that there need to be properly resourced courts to hear appeals very, very quickly. In other words, this is a "money where your mouth is" moment for the National government that introduced the bill. If they are serious about protecting women and children, then they need to put in place measures that will enable these protection orders to work effectively. And that means resourcing courts properly. There will almost certainly need to be easy access to legal assistance for men who have been removed from their homes, and for women who are trying to ensure that they and their children are safe.

Then there needs to be a place for the men to go to, somewhere that is not a prison cell. I/S has suggested that police have all the powers they already need, in the power of arrest. But that means an alleged perpetrator ends up in a cell, which seems to me to be far more of an infringement against due process than being told to stay away from your place of residence for up to 72 hours. So this is another resourcing issue: police officers who issue restraining orders need to ensure that the man who is removed has somewhere to go to, and if necessary, they need to find accommodation for him. If that means putting a man up in a motel for 3 nights, then so be it. Better to do this, than to have a violent person hanging around a house where vulnerable women and children are living.


It's a balance thing. Absolutely, being removed from your home is an infringement against your rights. But we infringe against rights all the time, in the elaborate system of compromises that makes up our political state. Equally, living in fear of violence infringes against human rights. And I do like to think of women as being human beings, and so entitled to human rights after all, even if, as Catharine MacKinnon argues, all the evidence suggests that no one takes human rights for women very seriously at all.

So I support the move to introduce police orders that exclude perpetrators of domestic violence from their homes, although I think the period of exclusion should not exceed 72 hours. I think that forcing the victims to leave means that the wrong people suffer. And although the perpetrator's rights will be compromised, there are ways to minimise the disruption. And wouldn't it be nice, if just for once, women could be counted as human.

Proportional representation? More please!

In their manifesto, the Nats promised to 'hold a binding referendum on MMP no later than 2011'. I don't know where the impetus for this came from, but I'm guessing it's from residual first-past-the-post hardliners who'd like to see a return to the 'good old days'. I'd quite happily see electoral reform too, but in the other direction - much more proportionality.

During the referenda in the nineties, there was hand-wringing from FPP supporters who said that a move to proportional representation would affect the stability of government. They felt an undemocratic, minority government was a reasonable price to pay for stable government - defined as single-party government which could ram through legislation as quick as it liked, without regard to the public or its own election promises.

Even if you accept that it's OK to trade off democracy for stability in this way, the stability argument is a crock. Muldoon's government fell apart when Waring crossed the floor to vote with the Opposition. The fourth Labour government which followed combusted in a screaming pile of shite, with three leaders in six years. The pre-MMP National government which followed had its own internal ructions between the PM and Minister of Finance. Stability, my arse. And while MMP did get off to a rocky start, with much 'waka-jumping', it a) was not necessarily worse than the earlier system, and b) seems to be improving as the style of politics changes in response to the need for parties to cooperate more.

So if I could wave my magic wand and reform the electoral system, I'd do two things to enhance proportionality. First, I'd lower the 5% threshold which parties must cross to be elected, unless they win a candidate seat. I dislike NZ First and ACT alike; but it seems patently unfair that the not quite 1 in 20 who voted for Winston and co have no representation, but the much smaller number who voted ACT have three MPs (who in fact hold ministerial portfolios).

Second, I'd get rid of electorate seats. As far as I can tell, they serve very little purpose under the current system except generating the annoying overhang, which produces unfair situations like the NZ First/ACT one. I think the reason we have MMP, and therefore electorate seats, was that when we changed our electoral system in the 90s, a jump to complete proportionality was too scary and radical - no one could be entirely sure how it would pan out.

Now here we are, more than a decade later, and the way we express our political selves has changed - including as a result of the net. For example, if I had some burning issue of particular interest to me - a women's reproductive health issue, for the sake of argument - I wouldn't take it to my local MP. The very notion of discussing such things with Trevor Mallard is appalling (if strangely amusing). Rather, I'd simply email an MP I thought would be sympathetic - probably one from a party which more closely represents my beliefs.

Electorate MPs ultimately aren't there to pursue local issues either. Some do; others don't. Very few would pursue an issue that conflicted with the policy of their own party, particularly if they were in a senior position; ie a Cabinet minister. That would not be career-enhancing.

I can only think of two reasons for retaining the electorate seat aspect of the system we have now: it may produce some geographical spread of MPs across the country, and the overhang has delivered a stronger Maori voice in Parliament. The geographical benefit can be overstated, though. A political candidate can stand outside the electorate s/he lives in, and even if s/he lives in the electorate s/he represents, there's no guarantee his/her party will take these regional concerns seriously. And the stronger Maori voice in Parliament might also be achieved by adjusting whatever formula might be used as the basis of a more proportional system.

What do you lovely readers think?

I like ACC

As Mike Moreu's rather gruesome cartoon suggests, the government's announced increase in employees' ACC levies suggests they're setting out to make the Corporation unpopular - so we won't miss it when it's privatised. The government's use of urgency to pass a range of legislation - just before Xmas, making it harder for the public to make any organised objections - gives me the unsettling feeling that the rug could be pulled out from ACC (and God only knows what else) with very little warning.

Well, I like ACC. It may be an imperfect beast, like the husband who leaves his socks on the floor despite being asked a million times not to, but the prospect of being without its loyal and comforting presence is daunting.

Here's why I like ACC:

- It insures unpaid workers (eg, mums) who have little or no income and might be unable to afford private accident insurance.

- ACC has a brief to protect the public's health. Private insurers don't. ACC runs campaigns telling us how to avoid accidents and injuries. Private insurers don't care.

- Private providers have to create a profit for their shareholders. Profit is maximised by paying out on as few claims as possible.

- ACC doesn't suffer from that paradox of private insurers: competition encourages them to drop their premiums, but the less they collect in premiums the less they can afford to pay out in claims. Competition creates a worse insurance product, not a better one.

- The no-fault compensation offered by ACC replaces our 'right' to sue each other, which sadly includes the right to behave like litigious arses and line the pockets of lawyers.

In the last 25 or so years, privatisation has been justified in the name of enhanced consumer choice. But choice is only as valuable as the options you have to choose from. I'd rather put up with a state monopoly that more or less does the job than be free to choose between a wide range of shit private providers.

The very definition of a perverse outcome

Something I find really frustrating about about Garth McVicar and other advocates of tougher sentencing is that they present justice as an either/or issue. Either you're 'on the side' of the victims, or on the side of the criminals. If you raise concerns about the treatment of criminals, it shows your lack of empathy for those affected by crime. Obviously, this is a false dichotomy: we can and should care about both.

There are humane reasons to be concerned about how our society treats criminals; and, as today's Dom Post article makes clear, there are also some very practical ones. National's 'tough on crime' policies are set to have a host of perverse outcomes which no one has really considered. Crowding of prisons means inmates may have to share cells - a situation which leads to increased violence and bullying, requiring more prison staff to keep order.

To those like Garth McVicar, violence inflicted on inmates isn't a problem. Once you enter the prison walls, you're fair game - any abuse or degradation dealt out to you serves you right. More crime - the likely outcome of tougher sentencing - doesn't matter when it takes place amongst people who don't matter.

Leaving aside the ethical dimension of this, increased violence amongst prisoners may produce a range of flow-on problems. The need for more prisons and staff requires more state spending. More importantly, it's hard to imagine that taking people already disconnected from mainstream society - as shown by their anti-social behaviour - then brutalising them is going to make them feel more committed to playing a positive role in the community. And what will an upsurge in prison violence do to recidivism?

Maybe our new government needs to learn something from the short life of Liam Ashley, the seventeen-year-old child beaten to death in a prison van. He didn't live long enough to learn the lesson that tougher sentencing is supposed to teach.

Parenting classes?

Normally this sort of thing is anathema to lefties like me - the repressive bourgeois state poking its nose in, telling poor people how to raise their kids. According to the Dom Post (http://www.stuff.co.nz/4767579a6479.html), the Ministry of Education last year began running parenting classes, where the parents of kids exhibiting antisocial behaviours are referred, often by the courts or Probation Services. Hundreds of parents have attended these group classes since they began, and the Nats have indicated their support for increasing these numbers as a means of addressing child abuse and a range of other negative social outcomes. The Dom Post reports that, so far, the classes have resulted in improved behaviour from 75% of kids whose parents attended.

I can't bring myself to disagree with the idea of parenting classes. It's not that I think there's a sinister underclass out there - a seething horde of useless parents breeding dysfunctional children. Rather, it's that no one is born naturally knowing everything about how to be a good mum or dad. Everyone learns a little bit along the way, myself included. Other parents, public health messages, even crappy Supernanny-type TV programmes, have got me thinking - reflecting on how I can do a better job. But not everyone gets the same opportunities to learn about parenting as I've had. And not everyone is set a good example by their own parents.

Initiatives like parenting classes are often criticised for taking one idea of what constitutes good parenting - usually a middle class, Eurocentric idea - and trying to impose it on everyone else. Most often, mothers bear the brunt of schemes aimed at better parenting, and these schemes can be punitive. These are fair criticisms. When the state gets it wrong, the consequences can be dreadful. I'm reminded of Plunket's policy of insisting that mothers put their babies to sleep on their tummies. When they changed this policy, the cot death rate was slashed, suggesting many babies needlessly died because of Plunket's poor advice.

The devil is, of course, in the detail. What kind of values and techniques should parents be taught in parenting classes? Contrary to what our PC-gone-made-get-the-nanny-state-out-of-our-lives friends may argue, how you parent is not a matter of personal choice, where almost anything goes. Society has a right and a responsibility to be assured that kids are being raised healthy and happy. There may be no single 'right' way of parenting, but there are certainly some wrong ones. Child abuse, whether or not under the guise of 'discipline', cannot be tolerated. Everyone should be able to agree on that much.

If we accept there's a need to intervene to ensure parents raise their kids well, we're faced with two options: the carrot or the stick. There's plenty of 'stick' available in the law already - for example, the ability to fine parents whose kids are truant. Parenting classes could potentially be carrot or stick. They could be a stigmatised affair, with connotations of failure, surrounded by the nasty racist discourses which surge after events like the terrible death of Nia Glassie. Or, they could be an expression of the truism that no parent knows it all: that every one of us needs, and deserves, a bit of help and a pat on the back from time to time, and there's no shame in asking for either.

Giving parents the support of the community is vital. Parenting classes - offered in a spirit of encouragement, not punishment - have the potential to be one way of providing support. It's important, though, not to pin all our hopes for children's wellbeing on a few state-run courses. Poverty, health and education - all crucial factors in how we care for our kids - need our urgent attention too.

Loose morals? More like loose assumptions

I must admit I have a bit of hard time taking Family First seriously. For start any organization that ranks Winston Peters as New Zealand's most "Family Friendly" party leader clearly is a couple of cans short of a six-pack. But more than anything I hate that they think they speak for my family when the advocate policies that have little to do with what my family believes in.

Fuck them.

And fuck the sub editor who came up with the title Loose morals costs NZ $1b a year.

I thought that New Zealand had moved on from the 'good old' days when shotgun weddings were the norm for teenagers who found themselves up 'the duff' and didn't go on a mysterious holiday in the country only to return a bit out of shape a few months later. Because apparently according to Family First's Value of the Family report the teenage birth rate reached its peak in 1972, a full year before the DPB was instituted and dropped off significantly over the next decade and has continued to trend downward since then.

But Family First is right. Just because our teenage pregnancy rate has trended downwards doesn't mean that we still don't have a problem with rates of teenage pregnancy. After all New Zealand has the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the developed world after the United States. So you'd think that this organization would have a lot to say about preventing teenage pregnancy. Unfortunately it does. Not only does Family First want to replicate Abstinence only sex education that has been such a disaster in the United States but it also doesn't want sex education taught in New Zealand schools because it is "family" (read parents') territory.

In an ideal world parents would tell their kids all they need to know about sex and relationships so the stuff they learn at school would just supplement parents teaching. Unfortunately too many parents don't and neither do our schools. Thus New Zealand has a high teenage pregnancy rate, high abortion rate and high number of STIs. Contrast New Zealand's sorry state of sexual health to the approach taken in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe where kids are taught about sex from a young age in school. Not only do Dutch teenagers have a lower teen pregnancy and abortion rate because they are more likely to use contraception but they also had sex later and with fewer partners. What is more interesting is that Dutch girls take the initiative as often as boys and affection for a partner is the most common reason for their first sexual experience as opposed to curiosity, alcohol or the pressure of others, an interesting contrast to New Zealand where 'ladies' don't have nor enjoy sex while real 'men' constantly want to hump your leg.

Of course Family First's answer to all this mess is marriage at any costs lest we forget that divorce is the cause of $1 billion of unnecessary government spending and the breakdown of society as we know it. Married couples, and married couples only, deserve all sorts of tax breaks and must keep their legal union together at all costs. Yet I can't help wonder what the costs of forcing couples to stay in abusive or dysfunctional relationships and the demon offspring such a union would produce. But what's a bit of domestic abuse between spouses?

Perhaps I am slightly biased about not viewing divorce as a bad thing considering my current partner is counting down the days until his is finalized. Although the ex-wife may be financially worse off than when she was married, she is hardly living a life of poverty. She earns double my salary on top of which she gets a huge chunk of child support and free childcare from her mother. Thus even with a child to support she has far more assets and disposable income than single gal ex-expat because she earns more money than I do. Because contrary to the 'loose morals' brigades belief that being a single parent that makes people poor in and of itself, it is not earning enough money to support yourself and your family that is the problem.

We shouldn't expect social problems like crime and poverty are going to magically go away with a wedding ring like some fucked-up version of Pretty Woman. Real life doesn't work like that. And the sooner we put away our 1950s morality and the Cinderella fantasies that go along with that and actually start dealing with the root causes of poverty; a lack of education, expectation and opportunities, we might actually fix some of problems instead of making them worse. Because if marriage is the answer to all of society's ills, what the hell was the fucking question?

Ht: Cactus Kate

Partner rape

An Australian organisation, Women's Health Goulbourn North East, has just released a report on partner rape, available at http://www.whealth.com.au/pdf/raped_by_a_partner.pdf .

It's described as follows:

Women who are raped or who suffer domestic violence are somehow thought of in the popular imagination as a stereotype. According to this, the women are asking for it, dressed inappropriately, provoking it – responsible for it. While this is clearly uninformed, our sample provides yet more evidence that any woman is vulnerable to rape. We do not need to be a certain 'type' of woman, or to behave in particular ways, or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Partner rape is prevalent in our society. This research is based on over 70 interviews with women, police and health professionals and has implications for health professionals, GPs, ministers, community members and anyone who works with them.

The research report was written by Debra Parkinson. The literature review was written by Sue Cowan. Interviews were conducted (in pairs) by Debra Parkinson, Kerry Burns, Claire Zara, Sandy King and Julie Tyler.

Nuttier than nutty: United Future's family policy

United Future's family policy has all the vacuous moralising and disingenuous use of research that right wing Christian lobby groups specialise in. The policy has three major planks:

1# The Family Court will be empowered to force DNA testing to prove the parentage of kids, so that fathers can be sure the children they're paying child support for are their own.

2# The child support system will be reviewed.

3# My favourite: UF will make shared parenting the 'default position' for child custody arrangements made through the Family Court. Why? UF cites the following statistics, drawn from the work of Massey University economist Stuart Birks. Apparently, children raised in fatherless homes are:

• 5 times more likely to commit suicide.
• 32 times more likely to run away.
• 20 times more likely to have behavioural disorders.
• 14 times more likely to commit rape
• 9 times more likely to drop out of high school.
• 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances.
• 9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution.
• 20 times more likely to end up in prison.

Now I don't know Stuart Birks or his work from a bar of soap, and I don't know why an economist would do social research of this sort, but if United Future have represented his work correctly then this research is seriously awful. Even if Birks' figures are corrent (and I have my doubts), he doesn't seem to have much grasp of that basic research tenet: correlation does not indicate causation. If 'fatherless' kids are at greater risk of all these outcomes, it may have less to do with paternal absence and a great deal more to do with the poverty and stress which so often affect sole mums and their families. To say nothing of the effects of having your family denigrated by conservative Christians.

What exactly is UF's attitude to the role of dads? To some extent, it seems proprietorial: "Those kids are half mine, dammit, and I'm going to have my share through the Family Court". This irrespective of who was the primary caregiver to the children before their parents split, who has the closer emotional relationship with them, who is better able to provide care. And let's not forget that the Family Court deals only with that 5% of families whose disputes are so acrimonious that they can't sort custody out privately.

On the other hand, UF seem eager to absolve fathers of responsibilty for kids not biologically their own. This seems odd to me. Leaving the issue of financial support aside, if a man has a loving parental relationship with a child not biologically his own (perhaps through a blended family relationship which has gone awry), would it not make sense to foster that relationship rather than promoting the idea that 'if it's not your genes, it's not your responsbility'?

Whatever UF thinks about the role of dads, their low opinion of sole mothers is pretty clear. It's these women and their apparently deficient parenting which are producing the drug addicts, rapists and school drop-outs of the world. Somehow, a child's relationship with their biological father - no matter the quality of that relationship, or whether the child actually wants it - is supposed to remedy all this.

In my humble opinion, the problem underlying UF's thinking on families is that it regards raising kids as a purely private responsibility between two parents - a responsibility characterised by ownership and control. If you think about parenting in this way, you get hung up on who pays bills and gets property rights - as if kids were like some other jointly owned bit of property, a house or a car. You forget about the role of the village in raising the child, and the right of the village to be assured that children are being cared for well, not torn apart by parents motivated by property rights.

We've got magic to do

Poverty is a lot like childbirth - you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it. -JK Rowling

I thought I'd start off my thoughts on the policy everyone is talking about, National's new DPB policy by quoting from the world's most famous DPB mum, JK Rowling. Btw if you haven't had a chance, please do go and read Rowling's speech at the Harvard commencement right now. Don't worry, I'll still be ranting when you are done.

I should preface my rant by saying that through luck and, yes through 'hard work,' I have never had the 'privilege' of having to going to WINZ cap in hand for a benefit. From all the second-hand accounts I've heard, not one person has said how easy and stress-free it was. In general the consensus seems to be that applying for and receiving a benefit is a heinous and demeaning process. I suppose there will be many in the blogosphere that would say the process is too easy given the large numbers on benefits. But I wonder how many of them have ever actually been through the process personally or know of people that have or have actually had to make ends meet on benefit.

As I have mentioned, some members of my extended family haven't been so lucky and indeed on the odd occasion when I was younger my immediate survived on a combination of welfare (back when the family benefit was paid), raiding kids' bank accounts and the odd under-the-table job to make ends meet when I was younger. I'm not saying this for sympathy, but more so to demonstrate that membership of the middle class, or for that matter the so called 'underclass', isn't always stable. Circumstances can change for the worse and sometimes as JK Rowling's story demonstrates they can change beyond your wildest imagination. And sure enough, according to the national party's figures most will be off the DPB within four years.

One of the 'dead rats' we have to swallow in order to enjoy the fruits of a capitalist economy is a certain level of structural unemployment in order to keep wages down and the labour market reasonably flexible. Some of my more socialist readership might say that we should go back to the days of government-backed full employment. Having been to North Korea where they practice such a policy, I can say that despite the pitfalls our system is far superior. But just because we are doing good doesn't mean we can't do better.

And perhaps the most pressing area where our economy needs to do better is how to accommodate raising our future generation of workers while at the same time ensuring that we get the most out of the skills and talents that our current generation have. Combining work with childcare is something that mothers of all levels of society struggle with whether they have a PhD or no formal qualifications at all. Even as recently as last Friday, Deborah Hill Cone who is hardly a poster girl for welfarism, was lamenting that part-time mothers first on the chopping blocks when economic times are hard. However the ones that don't have the luxury of a partner to provide back up when the kids are sick or the belt needs to be tightened, the struggle to maintain paid work with childcare responsibilities becomes even harder.

So I am curious to know where exactly these DPB recipients will work. Is there a sudden glut of employers who need part-time workers only during school-terms that thousands of New Zealand women have been previously unaware of? How will those coming off the DPB be supported to ensure that the gains of their new-found employment aren't eaten up by childcare and transportation costs?

Because much as we all like to talk to about work magically lifting people out of poverty (and I don't dispute that it does), we can't conjure up work that doesn't exist. But we can legislate for more family-friendly workplaces that employers seem so unwilling to offer and we can have a discussion on how to support and if necessary re-skill those on welfare back into the workforce. Those are subjects that are worth us muggles exploring further.

Get those sole parents working

Cross post

I'm inclined to see the National party's plan to work-test sole parents as a good thing. We've been told a number of times that National has comprehensive policies prepared, and that it will release them during the election campaign. We know it's not really a matter of money - after all, the policy will only save the government about $20million each year, so I'm guessing that the point of the policy is one about the value of working and supporting yourself and your dependents. I'm going to assume that given that the policy is about ideas rather than the money, National has some comprehensive policies that will need to be in place to make this particular policy work.


The detail (so far) of the policy - sole parents will be required to look for part-time work (15 hours a week) once their youngest child has turned six, and presumably is at school. The advantage of waiting until then is that this solves some of the childcare issues for sole parents.

So what is going to be required to make this happen? First up, there's going to have to be a number of employers who are prepared to offer 15 hours work a week, during school hours. There's no point in requiring sole parents to work 15 hours a week if no such jobs are available, so I'm assuming that National will be putting some sort of incentives in place to encourage the creation of such jobs.

Those jobs will need to be provided by employers who don't mind too much if a worker works say, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday one week, and different days the next, in order to look after sick children, or to attend events at school (parent teacher interviews, school sports days, all the usual commitments that come with having kids at school). So the work will need to be very flexible.

And the work will have to be just in term time. Kids do need to be supervised in school holidays, or otherwise, as Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony Helen so fetchingly puts it, they will end up building meth-labs in the back yard. It will probably take a bit of legislation or maybe incentives for employers to make this happen too, so that might be another dead rat that National needs to swallow, given that traditionally, they're all about "keeping government out of business" and "leaving people free to make their own decisions" and "cutting compliance costs for businesses."

Alternatively, if employers prepared to offer flexi work can't be found, then National will need to look at developing some serious out-of-school care services, and paying for them. At present it can be rather hard to find out-of-school care, and state schools are not required to provide it, so parents can be left struggling. Of course, state schools are not resourced to provide out of school care, and many of them don't have suitable spaces for it. Classrooms aren't available - they are teachers' working spaces, and contrary to popular belief, most, if not all, teachers are at school working before 8am each day, and there until 5pm in the evening. School halls often don't have toilet and kitchen facilities handy, and they are often too big to be heated easily. And even then, out-of-school care programs don't really work for teenagers, so you're into the meth-lab problem again.

You see, here's the critical thing about sole parents. They are, for whatever reason, sole parents. That means that they have no other back-up, they have no one else who can step up and help in an emergency. The other parent is, by definition, not there. And most times, family members aren't available to help either. They are busy working themselves. That means that if the state is going to require sole parents to work, then the state will need to ensure that conditions are such that sole parents can work.

I'm assuming that in order to make the work for the DPB policy effective, National has some comprehensive policies about the provision of childcare and out-of-school care too. I'm also assuming that they will be paying for them, because there's little or no point in forcing sole parents to get part time jobs, but then turning around and taking the income off them through high childcare fees.

I see this as a fantastic outcome of National's "work for the the DPB" plan. If the state gets serious about creating the conditions for flexi-work and providing good access to childcare, then all working parents will benefit. All working parents will be able to access good, low-cost childcare.

So I see the "work for the DPB" plan as a good one. It entails a whole lot of other family friendly policies too, and I'm delighted to think that the National party is prepared to put them in place.

Unless of course, the policy is all about bashing sole parents.

A culture of non-violence

Dr Cindy Kiro is a woman with incredible grace under fire. I can't say I agree with every policy proposal she's ever made, but her stoicism in the face of atrocious behaviour is impressive. As the Children's Commissioner, her support for progressive pro-child policies, including the ban on smacking, have drawn opprobrium from a range of people (many of them far-right fringe lunatics, but very vocal nonetheless). She also speaks out about the effects of poverty on children and families. If you look around the blogosphere for references to Kiro – and I strongly suggest you don't – you'll find her branded a range of things, from a time-waster and apologist to a parasite and protector of child killers. You'll also find racial slurs directed against her, and even derogatory comments about her weight.

What is it about opposition to violence against children generally, and Kiro specifically, that works the rednecks into a frenzy? Today, Kiro spoke in support of an initiative launched by Chris Carter, aimed at combating bullying in schools (http://www.stuff.co.nz/4605504a10.html). As she put it, stopping bullying is part of 'build[ing] a culture of non-violence towards children. That includes at home, in schools and other community settings'. Some of the remarks posted on Stuff give clues to why Kiro is so disliked by some:

Yet another social activity that should be taught at home to take away valuable learning time. Bring back the cane.

We got the strap in school in my day, the spectre of the strap weighed heavy when thinking about being nasty to other children....

Schools and teachers need more teeth, parents more common sense and taking responsibility and no 'No smacking" laws … no more 'Namby pambying. The Police could also do with some teeth and leeway with these scumbag youth gangs.

Advocates of corporal punishment of children see no contradiction between using violence in the form of caning to control violence in the form of bullying. They believe they have a natural right to use violence – and that somehow, when violence is permitted (by God, parliament, or whoever), it no longer counts as violence or represents a form of bullying. They draw a moral distinction between good and bad violence, and feel entitled to inflict the 'good' sort. And it seems that nothing irks these people more than being told by a young Maori woman that they don't have this right after all. As some of them clearly believe, Maori are the cause of family and other violence, not contributors to the solution.

Many of Kiro's critics, including Family First, claim that they are motivated by concern for abused children. This is bullshit of the most transparent sort. Insofar as these people have any argument at all, it's that by failing to hit children, we encourage them to be violent towards others. Using this 'reasoning' (which is really nothing more than a disingenuous ploy to disguise Christian fundamentalist values in secular clothing), some of Kiro's web critics actually blame her, and others of her political ilk, for child abuse. The blog tirades against Kiro make clear just how little her opponents care about the welfare of children or indeed anyone else. I can't imagine how nakedly racist sentiments expressed in a public forum do Maori kids any good, for example.

For what it's worth, I support Cindy Kiro's vision of a culture of non-violence, and I see stopping bullying and smacking alike as integral to the creation of this culture. There is no place in such a culture for derogatory and racist personal attacks made in the name of children's welfare.

Why I don't want a tax cut

Tax is boring. You could say that tax is to blogging as Weetbix is to cuisine. Still, it's an important matter, especially for women. Bear with me.

We've heard a great many arguments for tax cuts. Increasing petrol and food costs are placing pressure on families, and it's easier for politicians to put more cash in our pockets through cutting taxes than by raising wages.

There have been fewer arguments raised against tax cuts. The most important of these is surely the underfunding of our public services and infrastructure. Sure, everyone wants more take-home pay; but we also want an assurance that, if we need medical treatment, an adequate health system will be there to provide it. The $16 per week tax cut my family can expect will buy us very little, but combined with everyone else's cut it represents a large loss from the public purse. Beneficiaries, who most need extra money, get nothing from tax cuts – and increasing redundancies means more beneficiaries.

Tax and public spending have different consequences for women and men. The state isn't always a girl's best friend – it's easy to point to countries with repressive policies in areas like reproductive rights and divorce laws – but, by and large, states offer women protections and opportunities we would otherwise lack.

The state is a large employer of women: nurses, teachers and social workers are predominantly female. In the public sector, women have at least a nominal claim to pay parity. The large majority of solo parents are women, and a great number of these rely on tax-funded benefits to survive. As mothers and caregivers, women do most of the interacting with state institutions that keeps our families and society ticking. We liaise with schools, sit in Accident and Emergency waiting rooms with our kids, help run kindergartens and so on.

Women have a large stake in maintaining public institutions and the tax take which funds them. Calling for tax cuts may prove to be the equivalent of biting the hand that feeds.

How not to get women's votes #1

What on earth is Act New Zealand smoking? I don't think they want women to vote for them at all.

Sir Roger Douglas has just suggested that under an Act government, the first $10,000 income would be tax free. Currently, the headline tax rate on the first $10,000 of income is 19.5%, but the impact of the low income earners rebate means that in effect, the first $9,500 of income is taxed at 15%, and the next $28,500 is taxed at effectively 21.5%, so that by the time income reaches $38,000, the overall tax rate on that $38,000 is 19.5%. Ka pai? Got that? It's not all that complicated, really, but if you don't want to do the maths, just remember that at present, if you earn $10,000, you would pay about $1,500 tax. Under Act's policy, you would pay nothing on that first $10,000. So there you have it - what looks like a generous tax break from Act.

But there's a catch. Only full-time earners would get the tax break.

And who is most likely to work part time? Why, that would be women, and some men, and in particular, women (and some men) who are primary care givers for children. Under Act's policy (according to Sir Roger), these part-time workers would be subject to a higher tax rate on their limited income than higher earning full time workers. Act is sending a loud, clear message to women (and some men) that caring for children is not valued, because if you reduce your work hours so that you can be the one who picks up the children after school, can spend some of each day with your baby, can do the parenting yourself, instead of contracting it out to childcare centres and nannies, then you will be taxed harder on your reduced income. It's a disincentive to try to juggle work and the needs of children.

Does Act actually want to get any women's votes? If it does, then maybe it needs to think a bit harder about the gendered division of full-time and part-time work. I know, there are some men who work part-time, or work from home, but by and large, it's women who fit work into the interstices of their days. And no doubt there are many men who would like to be able to reduce their work hours so that they can spend more time with their families, but Act is telling them that they will suffer a tax penalty if they do.

There are other people who will be affected by this sort of policy too - seasonal workers, people who suffer from some sickness or other disability so that they can't work full time, older people who have reduced their work hours rather than retiring completely. I guess Act doesn't want their votes either.

Of course, it's highly unlikely that Act will get to be the government, and at most, it might be a very junior party in a coalition government. However, I suggest that if they want to have some influence on government policy, then they need to think through their own policies a little more carefully first.