Guest column: The usual channels

By Phil Lyth

At Parliament, some of the most important roles are filled by the MPs who preside in the debating chamber and who chair select committees. These roles are not for the hot-headed, and require people who are sticklers for proper process, and who can accept responsibility if they make a mistake. Today, we saw that National's Tau Henare, chairing the Maori Affairs Select Committee made not one, but five mistakes this week before, during, and after the committee meeting today. Followers were alerted when he petulantly tweeted:

Greens deny leave to progress 5 treaty Settlement bills from Maori Affairs select committee.

followed by several more tweets including "No Metiria, and I wont give leave for anything the Greens want."

So what happened? What went wrong?

The chair of a select committee has the responsibility for setting the agenda, and instructing the committee clerk to circulate the notice of meeting. At a meeting, the committee can only conduct the business set out on the notice, unless leave is given. Not all business before a committee is dealt with at every meeting. It is a long-established principle that notice has to be given the day before, including notice of any deliberation. This allows all members of a committee to prepare for the meeting.

The first mistake, on Monday, was to have a notice of meeting circulated that said the five Treaty Settlement bills would be "considered" (discussed), when it should have said "deliberated" (decided, by voting if necessary). At least one MP queried that. Tau could have fixed things by circulating an updated or amended notice of meeting on Tuesday. The second mistake was to fail to do that.

But remember, the committee can do things by leave? (That is, everyone agreeing - it only takes one objection to block leave.) You'll hear whips in Parliament sometimes talk about things which "have been discussed through the usual channels". They mean that there has been discussion beforehand, in the lobby or by phone, to get agreement where possible. And there are times when agreement is not found, so leave is not sought. Sometimes leave is sought without going through the usual channels, when an MP wants to make a point knowing that leave will be denied.

Tau's third mistake was to fail to talk to members of the committee before the meeting to see if leave would be forthcoming to deliberate on the bills this morning. His fourth was to charge ahead at the meeting, seeking leave as if it was his by right. He was brought up short when Metiria Turei rightly decided he needed an education, and denied leave. (After the event and in response to Tau's one of subsequent tweets, she replied:

next time Mr Chair, do your job and tell me first. Don't abuse process and complain later when you are snapped.

And Tau's fifth mistake was to attempt to blame another MP, in this case Metiria Turei, for his shortcomings as chairperson.

Is this a big deal? In some ways no. It won't stop Maori Affairs reporting the bills, nor will it delay eventual passage of the five bills. But it is an object lesson in how a chairperson should not conduct themselves. Lockwood Smith is big enough to apologise when he makes a mistake. Tau Henare would be wise to reflect on what happened this week and learn to do a better job in future.

Guest column: MMP: Just better

By John Parkinson

It has been 18 years since New Zealanders last voted in a First-past-the-post election. Not an eternity, but a long enough time for memories to have faded of why the country changed system in the first place.

The reasons were simple. The first was nine years of Muldoon governments that became seen as increasingly authoritarian, increasingly out of touch, yet which won two elections with a minority of the votes (possible under FPP, not possible under MMP so long as coalition plans are reasonably well-signalled in advance). That was followed by six years of Labour governments that were seen to betray everything that Labour governments were supposed to stand for.

In that environment, New Zealanders wanted two things: a system that put strict limits on the ability of politicians to do what they like; and one that ensures that parliament is broadly representative of the range of their views and experiences.

Proportional systems achieve the first thing by means of the second. Because parliament represents a broader range of views and experiences, it is much harder for a single set of view - a single party - to dominate the others. They have to reach out; they have to form alliances and coalitions; they have to argue for their points of view.

That worries some people. Those who value stable government made all sorts of dire predictions about the ghastly fate that awaited, pointing to Italy with its cavalcade of Prime Ministers. Has that happened in New Zealand? No. Not one government has failed to serve out its term, not even the Shipley minority government. Is first-past-the-post a guarantee that stable government emerges? No. Just look at Britain, with its present coalition of the unwilling.

Did the new system magically take the politics out of politics? No, of course not. Did it stop governments from upsetting some of the people all of the time? No, nor could it. But it did introduce dramatically more diversity into the House; and it thus forced politicians to build more coalitions of support in order to get their ideas through, and forced them to change ideas that could not attract enough support.

Check almost every claim about MMP made in 1992 and 1993 and you will find similar patterns. The world did not end. But nor did we enter some parliamentary Wonderland, strewn with rose petals and the sweet scent of reason. What New Zealand did get is a system that on all objective measures is fairer, more accountable, more deliberative. Not perfect, just better.

Guest column: Perspective

By Rich d'Rich

Looking at my Twitter feed and various websites, there has been much complaint about France implementing "three strikes" policies against Internet filesharing.

For those not following this debate, the French government, in an attempt to prevent minor copyright violations, is mandating that ISPs will be required to send warning letters to those sharing copyright files, and, should these warnings be ignored, to disconnect them if required by a judge.

In other news, the same government is deporting Roma travellers, including those who are EU citizens and have lived in France for many years. This is something that hasn't happened in Europe for over sixty years, and is a flagrant violation of the EU constitution and the ECHR. Indeed, preventing this kind of thing is a core reason why the ECHR was adopted and the EU created in the 1950's. Sadly, although the deportations are prima facie illegal and will probably be denounced by the courts, the slow speed of international justice means that this won't happen for several years, by which time many families will have been torn apart and people driven from their homes.

From where I'm sitting the outrage against putative Internet bans vastly exceeds that against Roma deportation. While I don't personally support punitive copyright enforcement measures against individuals, this seems a tad disproportionate. Surely throwing somebody out of a country on racial grounds is way worse than banning them from downloading Avatar? Much as technotopians think otherwise, you can't live on the Internet.

Guest column: Labour Day

By Stephen Day

I've always thought that there is something counterintuitive about unionists organising activity around Labour Day. Labour Day has come to mean, for most New Zealanders, a day off because, well, we deserve to have a day off. It's nice to have a place in our year dedicated to not needing to do anything, just taking a break.

Sure, during our early Labour Days we had big festivals, parades and sporting occasions. But these days Labour Day can quite happily be about little more than sleeping in, hopefully sitting about in the sun and maybe spending more time than you might usually with friends or family.

This year hasn't been the best one for workers and union members. Most employers, including the biggest employer of them all, the one we elect, have responded to the global recession by zipping up their wallet and bunkering down. It's tough times for employers as well as workers. On the whole workers, through their unions, have tried to work cooperatively with their employers within these new financial constraints. However some employers, who haven't faced tough times, who are in fact continuing to make large profits, are exploiting the situation to batter their workers and generate more profits. Many workers are still after all theses years still not getting paid enough to look after a family and live a decent life. Many face working conditions that are unnecessarily harsh, lacking in respect or dignity, or even downright dangerous.

But despite all that there are still things to celebrate. We now have paid parental leave. We have legislated meal breaks, breastfeeding breaks, four weeks annual leave and regular increases to the minimum wage. We achieved all these things in the recent past. We achieved all theses things by working together and campaigning for them.

Not everyone will get a holiday on Monday but most will, and another recent victory by working people and our unions means that those who don't still get a day in lieu.

My advice is don't spend Monday thinking about unions and working conditions. It's a holiday so enjoy it doing stuff you want to do. But the next day, Tuesday, go to say hello to the union delegate at your worksite and ask if there is anything simple you can do to help to win the next small improvement for workers and our families.

Guest column: Anti-smacking FAQs

By Conrad Reyners

"The law is confusing, it doesn’t define what a smack is or isn’t – parents don’t know what to think, we should just repeal it."

The law is very clear. Section 59(2) clearly states that it is illegal to smack your child for the purpose of correction. The law does let you grab your child to stop them from harming themselves, others, engaging in a criminal offence, or engaging and continuing to engage in disruptive behaivour. This means that parents can still be parents; they can still ensure that their child is behaving and isn’t a danger. But they cannot use force to punish a child after the fact. They can’t try and correct a child’s poor behavior by beating it out of them.

"The law isn’t working – good families are going to become the targets of police investigations and some already have been!"

Again, the law is very clear. Section 59(4) clearly states that the police have discretion to prosecute, and they will only prosecute when there is a clear public interest in doing so. But let’s look at the evidence that family first will try and raise: when Larry Baldock was asked by Sean Plunket on Radio NZ National of a case where he thought someone had been unjustly prosecuted – Baldock could only provide an example of where a grandfather had pushed a child out of a chair. Add that to the father who punched his child in the face, and the father who pushed his son over repeatedly at a rugby game – and you start to see that the NO vote really doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

"The numbers show that parents are getting a raw deal"

Don’t be fooled by their spin of the numbers. Using their own evidence found on their website, we can show that after a rise (indicative of extra police attention and reporting) total incidents of smacking, minor violence and child abuse have gone down, and are continuing to go down, since the passing of Bradford’s bill. Furthermore, the accompanying Police Press release (that Family First doesn’t mention) states "Activity remains "business as usual" for Police and confirms Officers are continuing to use a common sense approach to child assault events." It is true that there has been an increase in police investigations for Child Abuse – but surely this is a good thing? Especially given the No vote’s focus on attacking child abuse at its core, if anything they should be praising this statistic.

"Smacking is not assault, therefore its ok for parents to smack their children for the purposes of correction."

Wrong. Smacking is assault. It’s the physical and intentional application of violence towards another human being. A vulnerable, trusting and defenceless human being. The law is also very clear on what assault means. Section 2 of the Crimes act defines assault as follows:

assault means the act of intentionally applying or attempting to apply force to the person of another, directly or indirectly, or threatening by any act or gesture to apply such force to the person of another, if the person making the threat has, or causes the other to believe on reasonable grounds that he has, present ability to effect his purpose; and to assault has a corresponding meaning.

A smack quite clearly fits into this definition. If that doesn’t work – then pose the question; is smacking my wife assault? Is smacking a stranger assault? Is smacking my pet animal abuse? These questions nicely illustrate the absurdity of this Family First argument.

Lastly, Family First may argue that smacking is only light and transitory and is not meant to bruise – and therefore, it’s ok. But this again is a fallacious argument. The whole reason for smacking is that it is an infliction of pain, and the threat of further infliction acts as a deterrent. Smacking is designed to be violent, forceful and coercive; because if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t “work”.

"I got smacked, and I turned out fine – why should I not be able to smack my kids?" (Also known as the “I’m a good parent” argument).

There are two reasons why this argument is terrible. Firstly, societies change. One hundred years ago women were the property of their husbands, and until 1985 it was also legal for a husband to rape his wife. Just because something was once legal doesn’t mean its right.

Secondly, as a society, we want to protect children, and the prevailing academic wisdom is that in the long term children respond best to non physical correction. Hitting your kids because they won’t do what you say is archaic, outdated and brutal. Civilized society has moved on.

Lastly, just because you may have not been adversely affected by smacking doesn’t mean that everyone wasn’t. Just because you think you are a good parent, doesn’t mean that all parents adhere to the same high standards that you assume you live by. Some children live in fear of their parents – for whom a smack is a daily occurrence. Anyone who was smacked as a child will have felt the threat, fear and coercion of physical punishment. Knowing that someone who is supposed to protect you, but is larger than you, and more physically powerful than you – is about to physically “correct” your behaivour creates an unforgettable relationship of fear and distrust, regardless of how much “love” they profess to have for their children.

Parenting through fear is not good parenting.

"We want to tackle the root causes of child abuse; this law is a massive diversion."

For starters this position is hypocritical. Smacking a child is assault. It is child abuse by definition. So supporting this law is a damn good way of tackling child abuse. Trying to point out that child abuse is abhorrent but smacking is not is misleading and morally dishonest. It assumes that the person’s definition of what smacking is, is the only definition. But we can quite clearly show (and the case law supports us) that people under the old law, did not hold the same views as to what smacking was. For some people it was the application of force with a horse whip – others defined it as a few clouts with a vacuum cleaner pipe. If Family First really did want to help stop child abuse – then they would be supportive of increasing the tool kit that the police wish to utilize when they suspect child abuse. As we’ve already shown, this law does not stop good parents from being good parents. With that the case, surely people would want to support this law. Lastly, there is no reason why the root causes of child abuse can’t be steadfastly tackled with this law in place anyway. It seems unbelievably contradictory for someone to argue, I want to stop child abuse, but first you have to let me hit my kids.

"The law hasn’t stopped child abuse"

Well for starters, it was never claimed that the law would stop all child abuse straight away. The laws forbidding murder, rape and robbery haven’t stopped those crimes from occurring, but they sure have helped reduce the number of offences that occur. What this law does do, is it tries to protect children who were at risk of being abused, or who were being abused outright. Family First is correct to say that this law could probably not have saved the life of Nia Glassie – but this law can damn sure put in place a system whereby we can try to never let a situation like Nia’s happen again. Furthermore, it sends a clear message to families that violence is never a way of solving problems, dealing with stress or coping with family breakdown. Family First on their own website admit that domestic abuse and family breakdown are major causes of child abuse. However they fail to make the connection between children who are smacked – and then grow up to smack. Banning smacking for the purpose of correction helps to drive a wedge into the vicious cycle of domestic violence that is endemic in our country – and affects us all, not just our children.

So, by looking at the arguments above, and by looking at the responses below each one – we can quite clearly see that Family First, The Sensible Sentencing Trust and other ultra-right wing groups are trying to pull the wool over our eyes once again. There’s nothing new here, just violent, conservative individuals who don’t represent New Zealand, and who don’t represent the hundreds of thousands of decent, loving, and non-violent parents that New Zealand desperately needs more of. Please, VOTE YES in the coming referendum.

Guest column: Time to stamp out loan sharks

By Charles Chauvel.

Ever since I became an MP, an issue that I have supported is the regulation of so called "loan sharks". Loan sharks prey on the vulnerable with unscrupulous rates of interest and this includes many of our Pacific people. They are the scourge of our community and instead of lending a helping hand keep borrowers in poverty. It is common for payday lenders to charge interest at rates between "only" 8% and 15% per week, compounding well into four figures at a time when mainstream rates have declined. Tomorrow, I am expecting a ballot, and if successful, I hope that my Bill will make it on to the order paper.

Increasing numbers of people are pawning items like bikes and children's toys just to meet essential expenses like their power bill. I saw an elderly man taking his weed eater into a loan shark outfit in Wellington, and it was distressing to watch first hand. One of the worst cases I discovered was a person who borrowed to buy a $3,000 car. The car was repossessed after two months and the owner ended up owing $19,000! If that was not bad enough, Loan sharks use bullying tactics to recover debts such as turning up and parking outside borrowers' homes. I was present earlier this month at the home of a person who was on the receiving end of this kind of intimidation. The loan shark company had previously broken into this person's house illegally and taken property that did not belong to the owner.

New Zealand is now one of a very few western countries that allows this abhorrent practice to continue. In light of the global credit crunch, many other countries have cracked down on fringe/payday lender practices and implemented usury rate caps. Restrictions apply in Japan, Singapore, and many countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. In Australia, three States and the ACT have implemented interest rate caps at 48%, and two other States are in the process of doing so. A part of President Obama's economic plan is to cap interest rates at 36% right across the US. In recent months nine of Canada's ten Provinces have passed specific payday lender legislation or have regulated the industry. Almost all countries in Central and South America have implemented interest rate restrictions.

As you can see, the world has, or is regulating this sector, but here in New Zealand the sky is the limit, with payday lender rates now amongst the worst in the Western World. Market forces are clearly not an appropriate determinant of interest rates at this low end of the socio-economic spectrum. It's all very well to guarantee bank deposits and slowly roll out a nine-day fortnight. But this is something that would help those in real financial trouble. I call on the Government to do the right thing and take action in this area now.

To that end, I have drafted a Members Bill which proposes interest rate caps in line with most other western countries. Labour, Greens, Maori, and the Progressive have all agreed to cooperate in an effort to push for much needed legislation to prevent these unscrupulous rates of interest currently being charged.

My Bill, called the Credit Reforms (Responsible Lending) Bill has three parts. Part 1 proposes to amend the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003 by capping the interest rate lenders can charge under a consumer credit contract at 48%. It also renders a contract oppressive if the lender reasonably believes the borrower will not be able to repay the loan. Part 2 amends the Credit (Repossession) Act 1997 by limiting the amount a creditor can recover from a debtor. Currently, loan sharks can recover the value of the goods at the time they were purchased and my proposal to change this to the value of the goods when they are sold. Part 3 proposes to allow pawnbrokers to charge administration fees if they are registered under the Second Hand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 2004, so they can charge fees as well as interest, removing the need for exorbitant interest rates.

I have heard of fears that any caps to the interest rate would in effect become the established rate. But it's certainly not worse off to have the default rate of interest cut from 2000 to 48% In any case, I look forward to a detailed and thorough debate on this Bill. A copy of the bill is available here

However, a member's bill has to be drawn from the ballot, and even if the Bill is selected in tomorrow's ballot, there is no guarantee of success, although I am very confident. The best outcome is for the bill to be adopted by the Government and passed into law.

I believe this is an issue which all parties can cooperate on and I am looking to all parties in Parliament for support. So far however, the response from National has been lukewarm and the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Heather Roy (ACT) has said she is not interested at all as it may force fringe lenders out of the market.

I am always happy to hear feedback on this Bill, as well as your views on loan sharks; you can email me - loansharks@charleschauvel.com

Guest column: Complicity

By Iona.

I am upset.
I am concerned.
I feel sick.

Whichever of those gets your attention, I'm that one. Ignore the others. I am upset/concerned/sickened by the move to significantly increase double-bunking of prisoners in our prisons. Idiot/Savant on No Right Turn sums it up better than I can:

Quite apart from our obligations to run safe prisons under international law [...] allowing people to be beaten, brutalised, and victimised in prison - and indeed, establishing conditions which actively promote such treatment - rather undercuts the message of the law that that sort of behaviour is wrong.

There's no moral, ethical or crime-prevention justification for this policy change - it's all economics. When did the economy knock fundamental human rights the agenda? When did international law become a luxury?

When we allow this kind of thing to happen in our country, ordinary New Zealanders are complicit. The lawmakers are elected by the people, they represent us, and it's our duty as citizens to make them hear us and to demand accountability. Taxes pay for the prisons, whether those prisons are private or state-run, and for the Department of Corrections.

And, more directly, many of us are responsible because we have been jurors and may well be jurors again. Could you, in all conscience, declare someone guilty knowing that this meant they (or their cellmate) might well be beaten or raped? I couldn't. I will not.

Once a person is convicted, they have no control. They become the state's responsibility. They become our responsibility. To degrade prison conditions is brutal, offensive and inhumane. It's no secret that prison rape is rife in the USA and it happens here too. We should be taking every measure to stop it, not putting in place policies that are known to worsen the risk. Write to the Minister. Call an MP. Make an outcry.

What else can we do? Refuse to convict anyone for a crime where the punishment is imprisonment?

Because it's not about whether they're good or bad. It's not about whether they're guilty or innocent. When people are imprisoned, the punishment is loss of freedom. It should never be rape or other forms of torture. Rape is never okay.

This is about who we are - as communities and as a country. It's about our standard of human decency. It's about who we want to be.

Guest column: Consequences

From a guest poster who can't blog publicly because of his work

Are minor parties real? The Herald on Sunday doesn’t seem to think so. In its editorial yesterday, it insists that if a LPG + Maori Party coalition got a majority, it would have "no moral entitlement" to form a government, and that if it did, it would be a "seen as cynically corrupting the intentions of MMP", and its very existence "runs counter to the plainly expressed view of the people".

Let’s get some really, really basic facts straight. To form a government, you need the confidence of 50% of Parliament (excluding abstentions). There are distortions caused by parties not making the threshold, and by overhang seats, but by and large, 50% of Parliament represents 50% of voters.

It’s the assent of the majority that counts. Being the biggest party does not confer constitutional or moral rights of any sort. Nothing. Nada. Bup-dilliup-kis.

What the editorial is suggesting is that if Labour gets 40% and National gets 45%, we should forget about what the other 15% of the country thinks. Um… why? To state the bloody obvious – those are real voters casting real votes. Those votes count as much as any other. And if those people vote for parties or candidates that support Labour, then that’s their right. That’s why people have votes, remember? And then it goes into a sly endorsement of National:

And so, with a week to go, the polls suggest there is a mood for change. But the incoming Government needs to have a clear and unequivocal mandate.

A clear and unequivocal mandate to do what? To suggest that we need to give someone – anyone – as much power as we can do deal with the problem in whatever way they see fit is to ignore the real choice we face as voters.

The editorial reminded me of this quote from Canadian Bacon: "There’s a time to think, and a time to act. And this, gentlemen, is no time to think!"

But now is most definitely the time to think. We need to think about the real cost of the stimulus packages. Not just in terms of money, but in terms of consequences, because the packages offered by the two major parties are substantively different, and will take New Zealand down very different paths.

What will be the consequence of National’s plan to cut $3b out of Kiwisaver? A damn lot more than $3b. The point of cutting Kiwisaver is not just to free up the $3b dollars, but to encourage less saving and more spending. This is not spin. This is straight from National's fiscal policy paper:

Fiscal stimulus comes because… KiwiSaver members will have the opportunity to put a smaller proportion of their salary into their KiwiSaver accounts, and therefore have more in their pockets to spend.

This isn’t some sinister ploy, it’s just the National Party deciding that the benefits of a short-term consumption-driven stimulus programme outweighs the benefits of a long-term saving scheme. And it’s entirely possible that they’re right.

But it’s also possible that the consumption-driven part of the stimulus package will be ineffective, because most of it is spent on overseas goods. It could cause even more problems by reduce the power of Kiwisaver to offset external debt.

Even if it works as intended, the cost may still outweigh the benefits. Even when the economy is back on its feet, people would still be saving at 2%, or not at all. The consequence is that when the cost of the aging population hits, we may find ourselves with half as much savings as we would otherwise have had.

There’s an equally big chasm in the kinds of spending proposed. National wants to put money on broadband ($1.5b), roads ($750m), prisons ($315m) and schools ($500m). Spot the one that will never produce a cent for New Zealand. Thanks to their parole policy – easily the dumbest major policy produced this election – National will have to spend $315m on new prisons to house them.

However, IT, transport and education are the things that the OECD suggested as key barriers to New Zealand’s productivity growth, so their efforts in this area are commendable.

But it comes at the cost of things like the $1b home insulation fund, which was going to prop up the building industry – one of our hardest-hit sectors. It was also going to generate very tangible benefits immediately, by reducing home heating costs and improving health.

This is there the ideological difference shows through. National is single-minded about economic growth, and ideologically committed to lower taxes as the way to get there. Labour, on the other hand, sees growth as an end to social equity, and sees climate change as a fundamental factor in the future economy.

It’s not a clear-cut choice between nasty right-wingers and caring lefties, or of tired government and fresh new face. These are simply the trade-offs we have to make because we can’t have everything. But these are our trade-offs and risks, because we’re the ones who’ll have to carry the can.

That’s democracy for ya.

Guest Column: Abortion: Putting it back on the agenda

By Anita

Once, in staunchly Catholic Guatemala, I was asked if abortion was legal in New Zealand. In my halting Spanish I replied "Si, es legal, es un derecho": yes, it is legal, it is a right. The conversation stayed with me and the next time I had a chance I checked whether abortion was, in fact, the right I thought it was. I was disturbed how large a lie I had told: in New Zealand abortion is not a right — it is not even truly legal.

In 1977, after a divisive hard-fought campaign, a compromise made its way through Parliament. The Crimes Act maintains the original section imposing a penalty of 14 years on anyone who kills an unborn child but subsequent paragraphs now define some kinds of killing as not unlawful. The Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act then went on to create a structure around the control and oversight of abortion.

The key parts of New Zealand’s abortion law are:

• A limited series of grounds on which an abortion may be "procured": if the pregnancy would endanger the life, or physical or mental health of the woman; a high chance of the child being seriously handicapped; or if the pregnancy is the product of incest.
• A process which requires a woman to gain approval of two certifying consultants before an abortion.
• An Abortion Supervisory Committee made up of three political appointees which supervises and controls the process.

For years the ASC and certifying consultants have been interpreting the "mental health" grounds sufficiently broadly that women in New Zealand have effectively had access to abortion on demand. Abortion has not been uniformly available — famously West Coast women have had to visit certifying consultants in Canterbury or Nelson — but abortion on demand has been the norm in New Zealand for many years now.

On the surface we have found the perfect apolitical solution to the controversial issue of abortion. It appears to have removed the visible political hand from the abortion issue for most of the last 30 years; we leave the decisions up to a committee of experts and a couple of hundred certified doctors.

But the political element is as strong as ever; worse still, it is without public input or consultation. Every three years Parliament (in practice Cabinet) decides which three people will make up the ASC and supervise and shape the provision of abortion services. The recommendation is voted through Parliament without public input.

Last year in Parliament two failed amendments were attempted trying to replace the government's status quo nominees with anti-abortion ones. One attempted replacement was a doctor who has worked for an anti-abortion counselling service. The amendment was put forward by Peter Brown (NZ First) and supported by all the NZ First MPs who voted and 21 of the 36 National MPs who voted. His supporters included John Key, Bill English, Tony Ryall and Judith Collins — the four hoping to be Prime Minister, Deputy PM, and Ministers for Health and Social Development. The second attempted replacement put forward by Gordon Copeland gained similar levels of support.

If those amendments had succeeded, they would have restricted access to abortion without public discussion or comment. Restriction of abortion is only a parliamentary vote away.

Abortion is an intensely personal issue, one many of us would hate to see subjected to political and parliamentary drama. Yet the status quo benefits no-one. Whatever your personal position, a political appointment process which excludes public comment is not what we need.

We need to start the conversations and debates, start discussing how we want abortion to be in our country. We need to accept that the personal is political, as the political is personal. I'll be there arguing for the right I once believe existed, and many of you will be arguing against me. Maybe we will find a solution we agree on, and maybe not.

Either way we will have faced the issue and taken control back from a silent political process which can change the abortion rules in under two hours.

Guest Column: Election Funding: What's National up to?

By Nicky Hager

The great weakness of much journalism is a process-worker approach to assembling quotation-based stories. It often feels as if the journalist just holds a tape recorder up to the politician or other 'newsmaker' and says, "please give me your two sentences of spin on X subject now". The sentences are then inserted virtually unchanged into formulaic news stories or news bulletins, giving the status of news to what is really more in the nature of a press release. News would mean asking real questions, such as "what about such and such?", "when exactly did it happen?" and "what's your basis for saying that?" National's campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill has been aided greatly by this style of journalism.

For instance, John Key told the National Press Club that the bill is "a dangerous bill. It is dangerous for all of us as individuals, it is dangerous for our democracy, and it is dangerous for New Zealand." It is "an assault on what it means to be a New Zealander" and "an abuse of the trust we have in the government to protect the institutions that make us proud to call this country home." Good strong quotable quotes. There have been many more like them.

But does he really think this? Isn't that the first, crucial question to ask? Key and Bill English look more pleased with themselves than scared for the country when they talk about the Electoral Finance Bill. What's going on?

As has been well discussed by No Right Turn and others, the Electoral Finance Bill has some poorly drafted sections. In its effort to be broad in its definition of election advertising – so as not to leave loopholes for unregulated election spending – it became too broad. The wording of the sections covering election activities by 'third parties' (Exclusive Brethren-type campaigns) can, at a stretch, be seen as limiting legitimate political activity in an election year.

But I think that no reasonable person can believe that the Labour Government was actually trying to close down democratic debate in New Zealand under the cover of an electoral finance bill. This was not the first move before the Army moved in to close down television stations and newspapers. It was a simply a drafting error and was inevitably going to be fixed once the officials and politicians realised they had got it wrong.

From a publicity-hungry opposition party point of view, there was a small and totally legitimate point to be scored. This was clumsy drafting. Didn't the politicians read and understand those parts of the bill before introducing it to Parliament? Who was sleeping at the wheel that day?

That is, it deserved some “do-your-job-properly” criticism from the opposition parties. It warranted some news stories on clumsy drafting, how the Government had got it wrong and hopefully some comment on how best to fix the bill.

Instead we have got the current prolonged and strident campaign from the National Party. But I don't think for a second they really believe that democracy is in peril from this bill. It is laughable to argue that it is "an assault on what it means to be a New Zealander". They have spotted real faults in the wording of the bill that other people pointed out as well. But beyond that the campaign is insincere game playing.

What is going on? First and obviously, National has found an issue with which to batter the Government. This is about politics, not policy. By hyping the issue week after week, by making a mountain out of a molehill and dancing triumphantly on top of it, they look strong and the government looks weak.

Secondly, there is the benefit for National of having an issue to agitate about that has nothing to do with tricky things like health, education and privatisation – issues that might raise questions National prefers to play down. Thirdly, and most satisfyingly for National, it allows them to be taking the moral high ground in an area where they should be chastened and apologetic.

Here we come to the point. By focussing attention on the deficiencies of the bill's third-party wording, National has deflected attention away from the reasons why this bill was needed and promoted in the first place. This includes National's secret collaboration with the Exclusive Brethren, who pumped nearly $1,500,000 into advertising to try to get National elected, and National's subsequent untruthful denials over this collaboration. This is what the bill's third-party rules are about: stopping wealthy interests getting too much influence in a supposedly one-person one-vote election.

The bill's opponents don't acknowledge it (and some may not understand), but what's fundamentally at issue is the 'right' of very wealthy people and lobbies to use their financial power to gain disproportionate influence. The bill is designed to control only those who have many tens of thousands of dollars to spend promoting their preferred party or candidates. This is fundamentally different to freedom of speech. It is more like the freedom to speak louder than or even drown out ordinary people. Once the drafting errors affecting ordinary political activity are corrected, the remaining objections are not about human rights or democracy. To the contrary, they are about the opposite: about preserving the power of the very wealthy to gain an undue and undemocratic influence over the political process.

By stridently fighting drafting errors that are going to be fixed anyway, National has been able to look principled when actually it is acting out of self interest. Lost in the commotion is the fact that they are fighting worthwhile parts of the bill that are designed to reduce big money in elections, money that is most likely to be supporting National. Please notice what is going on. They are deliberately blurring their opposition to the drafting errors together with opposition to the good and important parts of the bill. Far from admitting past dishonesty and helping to stop this stuff in future, they are using their defence-of-democracy campaign to try to stop important democratic measures in the bill – measures they claim to support at the same time as calling for the whole bill to be torn up.

National has got away with this cynical and highly successful campaign because of too much uncritical journalism. All that seems to matter is that they are 'newsmakers' providing juicy quotations. Never mind that it is artifice and cynicism. It works if enough of the media don't ask challenging questions and pass on each successive set of contrived quotations uncritically to the public. That National has got away with this campaign to date is evidence of where some of the genuine problems of our democracy lie.

References:

Matthew Hooton: ‘You usually have to communicate through a cynical or even hostile press gallery [and] that demands constant strong messages to keep them busy’. The key is constant repetition of the main ideas. ‘The perception the [journalists] have of you will quickly be how the public also perceives you: the perception becomes the reality.’ (The Hollow Men, p.42)

Murray McCully: 'The big media coverage is always devoted to situations where there is a game on. Media invest most heavily in stories which will go somewhere, providing them with ongoing opportunity .... That means ensuring that we roll a story out over several days or weeks.... The media will provide good coverage when they are convinced that there will be follow-through from us (and therefore good stories and interesting column fodder for them). This process is important because the subliminal message is that we are earning our success, not having it gifted to us. It is in the nature of creating such a game that there must be debate and contest. In order to achieve the above, we need to be clear about the issues on which we wish to have those debates, and where we wish to avoid them. (The Hollow Men, p.129)

Guest column: firing Clint Rickards - is it really that hard?

By Anita

The Police and the government are doing a pretty good job of obscuring the issues around Clint Rickards at the moment. They're talking about employment processes, privacy, natural justice and so on. Actually the case is a pretty simple one; he's on record with totally unacceptable behaviour, and employment processes can be resolved in a timely manner.

The real questions, and the ones I can't answer, are:

1. why the Police are dragging the chain, and
2. why the Minister isn't doing anything about it.

But first, back to the beginning

Should he really be fired? Are there really grounds for it?

Damned straight!

Let's recap for a moment:

• Rickards has admitted that he, with a group of other police officers, had manipulative and inappropriate sex with vulnerable teenagers.
• Rickards has publicly said that this was not wrong. He has said he regrets being unfaithful to his wife, but otherwise he believes this kind of conduct is entirely acceptable for serving police officers. (Sunday Star Times, 4 March 2007)
• Rickards has stood up in front of a bunch of cameras and microphones and heavily criticised a police investigation. He publicly attacked not only his employer but also staff he wants to return to managing.
• Rickards has also publicly supported convicted rapists and questioned their convictions.

Each of those individually is worth a dismissal in combination there's no question at all.

An interesting exercise is to work out what you'd have to do in your job to behave equally unacceptably (and equally publicly), and then decide whether you'd still have a job. So far every person I know who has worked that out is totally sure they'd be out of a job.

But don't they have to go through a process?

Damned straight! :)

But a good, robust, effective employment disciplinary process can (and should) be reasonably fast.

Rickards has been on suspension for three years and eight months (since the 2nd of February 2004). The last case against him completed seven months ago (on 1 March 2007). A competent, well run process should have resolved this months (if not years) ago. We're talking about totally unacceptable statements made on the public record from someone whose positions requires a high level of public confidence.

Again, ask yourself the question: if you behaved as unacceptably, how long would it take for you to be dismissed? How long could you possibly string it out for?

But he was found not guilty!

Yep. I'm not arguing that he should be fired for rape – there are a whole bunch of other things he should be fired for.

There's an interesting discussion to be had about the difference between proof-beyond-reasonable-doubt and balance-of-probabilities, and which should be used for employment cases. That is not, however, a discussion relevant to this case – the Police can get rid of him without going there.

So why are the Police taking so long?

I don't know, but I have some possible theories:

1. Incompetence. Maybe they can't actually run an effective employment disciplinary process and Rickards' lawyers have them running round in circles.
2. The old boys' club. Rickards is a senior police officer with senior mates: maybe they're trying to protect him and find a way out which saves some face for him.
3. They just don't care. Maybe this isn't important to the Police hierarchy. It's clear that the sexual exploitation of young women wasn't important to them, maybe this doesn't rate either.
4. Cowardice. Maybe they just don't have the guts. It's not easy to fire someone, definitely not if he's a mate, nor to admit to the world that they've been so wrong for so long.

My personal hunch is the first, they've designed an impossibly convoluted disciplinary process, and now we're wearing the consequences. Combine that with having to admit to having screwed that up as well... .

Why should the Minister get involved?

The Minister shouldn't get involved in the employment process., at least not directly. Ministers absolutely shouldn't be messing about with individual operational issues.

The Minister should, however, get involved in fixing the underlying process when an individual operational failing exposes a fundamental problem within the department – and this one does!

So what now?

Tell the Minister, tell the PM, tell your MP, tell the Police – tell them that this is their job, that it might be hard, it might be unpleasant, but this is their problem and the need to fix it now.

The Wellington Action Against Rape postcards are available from Indymedia if you want to print and mail them. We'll be out and about again in Wellington this weekend, so email me if you're keen to join in or extend the action beyond Wellington.

Guest Column: The Case Against The Case Against Aid

Why common counter arguments against giving aid are mistaken.

By Terence Wood

In my previous post on New Zealand's need to give more aid I argued for increasing overseas development assistance both on moral grounds and with respect to our own enlightened self-interest.

These are, I think, persuasive arguments for increased aid. So it is unsurprising that critics of aid generally don't argue against them directly. Instead, they usually make one of three claims: (1) that aid doesn't work; (2) that trade not aid is what is needed; and/or (3) that corruption is the main problem in developing countries and that aid will do nothing to help this.

In this post I will examine each of these arguments in turn.

Aid Doesn't Work

The first and probably most common argument against aid is that it simply doesn't work.

Australian academic Helen Hughes (not to be confused with the New Zealander of the same name) made this argument forcefully in her polemic Aid Has Failed the Pacific [PDF]¹. Appealing at one point to research on the matter:

Aid appears to be inversely related to growth. Recent research shows that worldwide aid has not even been effective in countries that have adopted pro-growth policies.

Which sounds convincing until you realise that Hughes has engaged in a rather selective reading of the evidence at hand. It is true that there are some cross country regression analyses that show that aid has little impact on economic growth². However - and you won't read this in Hughes' polemic - the majority of recent empirical evidence actually shows the opposite: that aid does have a positive impact on growth (I've written more about this here, there's a good discussion of recent research here, a summary of much of the positive research here [PDF]³). I've noted elsewhere my scepticism of cross country regression analyses and I think they are a particularly problematic tool in assessing aid effectiveness. So my intent here is not so much to use the positive studies of aid effectiveness to make the case for aid, but rather to simply point out that people such as Hughes who cite "empirical research" in their arguments are telling less than half the story.

Another strategy employed by people who claim that aid doesn't work is to point to a failed aid project and then use this as an illustration of aid's inevitable worthlessness. Once again, at first glance, this can appear persuasive: the history of aid, it is true, is strewn with white elephants.

Yet people who point to aid failures as evidence that aid doesn't work are doing the exact same thing as those who selectively mine empirical research: they are engaging in a one-sided reading of the evidence.

In the long and winding history of development, accompanying the failures are numerous examples of aid success stories. Aid money was involved in the eradication of small pox and the near eradication of polio worldwide, and aid contributed to the control of river blindness in Africa. Aid money also funded oral rehydration therapy in Egypt which saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and aid appears to have played a role in the economic takeoff of Botswana, South Korea, Bolivia and Vietnam⁴.

If there's one lesson to be learnt from the history of aid giving, it is not that aid doesn't work. Rather, it is the simple point that aid given well is more likely to work, while aid given poorly is likely to fail. And, in New Zealand we are lucky in that we have a very good aid agency and so can be confident that much of the aid we give will actually help people.

Trade Not Aid

Another argument often employed in the case against aid is that, compared to the benefits of international trade, aid's impact is trivial. And because New Zealand has very low trade barriers we are already "doing our bit for development".

To me the central premise of this argument is flawed. Why does the fact that we are doing one thing right mean that we shouldn't do another? (And, while we're at it, exactly how again is trade going to stop that HIV epidemic in Papua New Guinea?) Worse than this though is the fact that the trade not aid argument is based on a misunderstanding of the role that trade plays in fostering development.

On the surface the case for trade as tool of development is persuasive. Theories of specialisation, and comparative and competitive advantage have a distinguished pedigree in economics, and one needs only to look at the impact of sanctions on countries such as Iraq and Cuba (not to mention self-imposed autarky on North Korea) to see the importance of international trade in building affluent societies.

The trouble is, however, that trading one's way to wealth isn't as simple as opening your borders, hoping everyone else will do the same, and then watching your GDP rise. In reality, the relationship between trade and development is more complicated⁵, with the countries that have done the best from international trade typically engaging strategically and often shielding their "infant industries" from competition. Perhaps the most important point though, is that the countries that benefit most form international trade are those that have the capacity to do so. And our low trade tariffs are of no benefit to countries that lack this capacity. At present capacity constraints can be found in many of the countries that we give aid to. Hopefully, aid and domestic reform may mean that these nations will one day be able to benefit fully from international trade. But, until that time, it is wrong to use the argument that our own near absence of tariffs means that we are doing enough⁶.

Corrupt, Corrupt, Corrupt

The final argument made by opponents of aid is corruption is the main obstacle to development and that until it is tackled in developing countries other efforts such as aid giving are going to be of little use.

Once again this argument has prima facie appeal: it can hardly be denied that corruption poses a challenge to development. And some of the world's most corrupt countries are also some of its poorest. However, a closer look shows that things aren't as simple as they appear at first glance. For a start, the relationship between poverty and corruption probably runs both ways: while corruption slows development, many poor countries are also more corrupt simply because they are poor and cannot pay their civil servants well. On top of this, corruption, while a challenge, isn't an insurmountable obstacle to development. Countries such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam are undeniably corrupt yet in recent years (outside a dip associated with the Asian crisis) these countries have all grown rapidly, and done a good job in reducing poverty [press play].

Corruption isn't the only hurdle for development, either. In his book The End of Poverty (see my footnotes for a full reference) Jeffrey Sachs shows that, after corruption is controlled for, African countries have still performed worse than other parts of the developing world. Something that he attributes to geographical constraints and disease burden (having neo-liberalism rammed down their throats by multi-lateral institutions can’t have helped either).

When it comes to the problems of overcoming disease and geography, the role of aid is obvious. Yet, aid can also play an important role in tackling corruption. Aid can be used to fund civil society organisations to act as watchdogs on their own governments. Aid also gives us leverage when working with governments and can be used as an incentive for reform⁷.

Finally, it is worth noting that poor governance is sometimes merely the result of inability rather than dishonesty on behalf of government officials. Aid can, by funding capacity building, be an important tool in overcoming this.

Conclusion and What You Can Do

Over the week that has elapsed since I wrote my first post on aid more than 200,000 children have died from diseases associated with poverty. Many more have been born into lives of extreme hardship and limited opportunity; likely to be denied even the ability to perform the simple task of reading that you are currently engaged in.

As I said in my first post, surely this is an intolerable state of affairs.

What's more the common critiques of aid are unconvincing. Aid can work. And the potential of trade and problems of corruption are no excuse for not giving more aid. While aid won't solve all of the issues of under-development it will help.

So the question remains: why do we continue to fail to meet our obligations in this area?

If you feel inclined to take action on aid giving there are currently two campaigns running in New Zealand around the issue of aid and development.

The first of these is specifically related to meeting our aid targets. This is the Point Seven Campaign.

The second campaign is Make Poverty History, which campaigns on aid alongside other development platforms.

Footnotes:

1. For a good critique of Hughes' paper refer to the conference paper by Ewan Morris on page 27 of this PDF.

2. Two credible, recent papers that purport to cast doubt on aid's impact on growth are "New Data, New Doubts: Revisiting 'Aid, Policies, and Growth'" (Easterly, Levine and Roodman) and “Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?” by Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian.

3. And for the enthusiast: a meta-study of aid studies that shows that a significant proportion of the positive research is robust and resilient to expanded data sets and changed specifications can be read here. Also worth noting is the point that GDP growth is not the only reason for giving aid. This paper [PDF] by Otago University academic David Fielding (and others) regresses aid levels vs other indicators of human wellbeing such as health and education and finds positive results.

4. My references for these claims are:

• Sachs, Jeffrey. 2005. The End of Poverty: how we can make it happen in our lifetime, Penguin, London
• Levine, R. & Kinder, M. 2004. Millions Saved: proven successes in global health. Centre for Global Development, Washington
• World Bank, 1998. Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, Oxford University Press, New York

5. And one which is too complicated to discuss in any depth in this post. A very good introduction to the reasons why carte blanche trade liberalisation isn't a good strategy for the Pacific is can be found here [PDF]

6. It is also worth noting that New Zealand's involvement in the arena of international trade is not wholly benevolent. In the case of recent Pacific trade agreements (and the accessions of Pacific Island countries to the WTO) our negotiators have often pushed for rapid and comprehensive liberalisation of Pacific countries without due concern for the costs associated with this.

7. This I should note is not as easy in practice as it sounds and may only work in certain circumstances. Nevertheless, with all but the worst governments, some form of engagement is usually better than none. In the case of the worst governments the dilemma then becomes whether pulling aid out will harm the country's most vulnerable people.

Guest Column: Still Failing the Poor: why New Zealand needs to give more aid

By Terence Wood

We live in a time of unprecedented material wealth: our planet is home to almost 800 billionaires; while there are over 8 million millionaires living in the United States alone. The Sultan of Brunei spent nearly US$30 million on his 50^th birthday party, while a single pen was bought at Harrods for US$265,000. Annually the world spends $US40 Billion on pet food [PDF] and the people of Europe spend $US 11 Billion on Ice Cream each year.

At the same time, according to the best available evidence, almost half the world's population lives in utter poverty, surviving on less each day than US$2.56 would have bought you in the United States in the year 2000¹ - in other words, almost nothing.

This is the sort of grinding poverty that dramatically reduces life expectancy and opportunities. This is the sort of poverty that leads to the deaths of 10 million children every year and which confines hundreds of millions of people to illiteracy.

This is the sort of poverty that is clearly intolerable in a world as wealthy as ours.

The question, then, is what is to be done? And, most importantly, what can we do?

The solutions to global poverty are complex and there is no one magic bullet that will rid the planet of the problem. A fairer global trading regime would help, as would debt reduction for some countries, as would reduced corruption. On top of this, however, more aid is needed. And this, sadly, is one area where – as Idiot/Savant noted – New Zealand continues to fail shamefully in the task of tackling global poverty.

In 1970 the United Nations adopted General Resolution 2626, through which the nations of the developed world committed to devoting 0.7% of their Gross National Product (GNP – now commonly referred to as Gross National Income or GNI) to Overseas Development Assistance (ODA, or aid). This commitment has been reaffirmed several times since but it has never been met. At present, collectively, the OECD donor nations don't even manage to give half this target – in 2006 a paltry 0.3% of GNI was given as official development assistance.

In New Zealand's case the news is even worse: in 2006 we managed to give just 0.27%. Or, to put it another way, our official development assistance amounted to a miserly 27 cents for every $100 dollars we earned.

Over the rest of this blog post I am going to outline 3 reasons why, as a country, we need to do better than this.

The Moral Argument

The moral case for meeting the 0.7% target is straightforward. The amount of money that is being asked of us is very modest – 70 cents from every hundred dollars of national income. Yet, given well, this money can make a huge difference to the lives of people whose needs are acute. Compared to other endeavours such as the invasion of Iraq, estimates as to what would be required to provide primary education, water and sanitation, and improved health care to everyone on Earth are remarkably small. Annually, US$55 billion alone would be enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals' health targets, as well as extend primary education, improved sanitation and safe drinking water to everyone on Earth who currently lacks it. If the OECD donor nations were to meet the 0.7% target almost US$140 Billion dollars of extra aid would be given every year - easily enough to provide sanitation, clean water, education and better health to everyone on Earth. This is something that would save the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people.

In short, the sacrifice being asked of us is so small, and the benefits associated with giving more so great that it is very hard not to see the current situation as being immoral.

Even more so when you consider that colonialism, with its arbitrary map drawing and establishment of extractive institutions [PDF], played a considerable role in the problems that confront the developing world today.

Enlightened Self Interest

No doubt, out there in the New Zealand blogosphere, there will be people to whom the idea that the wealthy are morally obliged to give money to the poor is heresy most dire. But even these people may want to consider supporting increased aid giving. After all giving more aid is in our own self interest.

While living in an increasingly integrated world brings with it many benefits it also brings risks – globalisation means that developed countries ignore the developing world at their own peril. To give you but one example, at present Papua New Guinea is in the early stages of a generalised HIV epidemic; if no action is taken it is highly likely that, within a decade, the economic and social damage wrought by the disease will be similar to that witnessed in Sub-Saharan Africa². It is also probable – given the region's high risk indicators – that if HIV goes unchecked in PNG it will spread outwards across the Pacific. And if this happens it is highly unlikely that New Zealand, with its strong ties to the region, will escape the impact. This need not take place though: countries such as Thailand have shown that well-planned health programmes can arrest the spread of HIV. Increased ODA could be spent on such programmes in the Pacific – preventing future problems before they arrive on our doorstep.

On a more positive note, ultimately, aiding the developing world ought to aid our own economy. Today's aid recipients can become tomorrow's export markets. This has been the case with South Korea whose economic lift off was assisted by aid and which was, as of 2004, New Zealand's sixth largest export destination.

International Standing

As a small country New Zealand relies on multilateral institutions and agreements to advance our interests. Yet when we fail to meet our own international commitments we undermine our own ability to argue that other countries should meet theirs.

Until recently, New Zealand's low ODA levels were afforded some cover by the fact that many other OECD nations were poor givers. This is no longer the case: New Zealand's ODA as a proportion of GNI is now the 6^th lowest of the OECD donor nations, and we are well below the OECD donor country average of 0.46% [PDF].

If we don't rectify this situation, if we continue to fail to meet our commitments, how can we argue that other countries should meet theirs?

Giving more would be the morally right thing to do, what's more it is in our own interest, the question then is why on Earth don't we do so?

One possible answer, and one which is trotted out regularly by aid's critics, is that aid doesn't work. Another is that it is trade, not aid, that is needed. A third response is that the developing world is poor because it is corrupt and that aid can't do anything to help this.

In my next post in this series, I'll have a look at these counter arguments and explain why they are mistaken.

Footnotes:

1. These numbers come from the World Bank's global poverty measurement project and are reproduced in Peter Singer's book One World. With regards to the World Bank's poverty lines several things should be noted: first, they are not exactly US$1 and US$2, they are US$1.08 and US$2.15; second, they are purchasing power parity dollars, this means that they take into account the fact that US$1 will buy you more in a developing country than it will in the US; third, they are inflation adjusted 1992 dollars – Singer provides an updated line for 2000 which is the basis for my $2.56 figure; fourth, they are arbitrary constructs taken by averaging the poverty lines of a bunch of poor countries (for more discussion see here [PDF]) - they are not constructed around any meaningful needs set and the US$1 a day line is so low as to be almost meaningless – as detailed in one of the articles here [PDF] the two dollar a day line is probably closer to a minimal set of health needs); fifth, World Bank figures most probably understate the level of global poverty (see Sanjay Reddy's article here [PDF]).

2. I have found no better illustration of the impact of HIV than this moving chart (click on the play button) plotting the fate of one of Africa's onetime success stories, Botswana.

Guest Column: Should we trade emissions rather than tax them?

By Brian Easton.

There appears to be a tendency to pose carbon taxes as the only economic way to address carbon emissions. But tradeable emission permits (TEPs) are a serviceable alternative which have both strengths and weaknesses over carbon taxes. Their greatest strength may be that they are politically more feasible.

TEPs, which permit emission of carbon (and without such permits no emissions are allowed), could be started off by grandfathering in recent levels of emissions so that current emitters got permits sufficient to allow them to emit their last year’s level, say. But each year the allowance attached to each TEP decreases so that at the end of the target period we got emissions down to our international target. This would force each emitter to reduce its level of carbon emissions unless it could acquire TEPs from others that had reduced their emissions more. Since the obdurate polluters are forced to purchase the TEPs from the reducing polluters, there would be a market incentive to seek technologies to reduce emissions, together with some demand side effects as the price of the products of carbon emitters would be forced up.

The scheme requires some development, particularly

1. How to interface with the rest of the world, and
2. How to deal with carbon sinks (one option is for the government to reward sinks with annual TEPs which they can sell to emitters, in effect offsetting the pollution with a sink).
3. Administrative mechanisms.

Typically there would also be an annual resource levy to cover the cost of management, enforcement and R&D in the scheme.

This proposal essentially involves a market mechanism, but it does not involve a tax. (The levy is not a tax but user-pays. However, corporate gains from the market value of TEPs may well be treated as income and thereby taxed.) So the rents do not, on the whole, go to the public purse (which many would think a pity). It is easy to show that there would be some inequities (but a tax-based system would generate them too).

The advantage of TEPs over a tax (other than one can target aggregate emissions with precision) is that the scheme is relatively politically stable. Had it been in place last year, the coalition partners would not have asked for a repeal because they would have been destroying the property rights of the holders of TEPs who, despite any doubts about the scheme, would lobby against its abolition (since the alternative might be worse).

Of course the TEP scheme is clumsy. All impure market schemes are – which is why one only advocates them when the market is failing to deliver (big time in the case of carbon emissions). But a tax-based system is also clumsy. My guess is the TEP scheme is not as clumsy as a tax-based one, although it does not have the advantage of revenue raising.

The point of this note, is that sometimes having lost a policy battle, the losers want to fight again on the same battlefield, so sure are they of the justice of their cause. Thus those concerned with global warming seem to want to return to taxation as the mechanism. But sometimes it makes sense to look around for other policy options which give a reasonable chance of the advocates winning the next bout. As TEPs may do. At worse one learns about the strengths and weaknesses of the previous policy and its resolution.

Guest column: 10/10: a Catholic view on the death penalty

By Muerk

On July 5 1902 in Italy an eleven year old girl was viciously attacked by a family friend. The little girl, Maria Goretti, resisted the attempted rape by twenty year old Alessandro Serenelli and in his rage he stabbed her fourteen times. Maria Goretti died in hospital the next day.

Serenelli was the type of criminal that many would like to see given the death penalty. Some would say that his crime was unforgivable, especially given that Serenelli was unrepentant. But before Maria died she was asked if she forgave him, she replied, "Yes, for the love of Jesus I forgive him... and I want him to be with me in Paradise."

Serenelli was sentenced to thirty years in jail, but if he had been given the death penalty our story could possibly have ended here as just another tragic story of brutal violence. Society could have felt complacent knowing that whilst the wrongs Maria suffered had not been righted, they had been punished. Revenge would have been satisfied by the murderer's death.

However, thankfully this story is not over. After serving seven years in jail Alessandro Serenelli had a vision of his victim.

He saw a garden. where a young girl, dressed in white, was gathering lilies. She smiled, and came near him, and encouraged him to accept an armful of the lilies. As he accepted them, each lily transformed into a still white flame. Maria then disappeared.

This was enough to convert Serenelli and after twenty-seven years in prison the first thing he did when released was to go and visit Maria's mother and beg her forgiveness. In 1950 along with her mother he was present at Saint Maria Goretti's canonisation. The Catholic Church believes that St Maria's final wish for Alessandro to be with her in Heaven is achievable. Anyone can repent and be forgiven, even those who have committed the gravest of deeds. But in order for that to happen people have to be left alive. All human life is precious, even someone like Alessandro, and no one has the right to end another person's life even to atone for murder.

Guest column: the new tactics of the right

By Greg Stephens

Over the past few years, New Zealand has seen a dramatic increase of politicians playing the person, rather than the ball. David Benson-Pope provides one of the most salient examples. However, the recent furore over Peter Davis’s sexuality (and then Helen Clark’s marriage) is perhaps unprecedented within New Zealand.

However, there is more to these scandals than simply nasty politicking by a political party unable to accept three defeats in a row.

The anti-government Right have a lot more to gain in attacking Clark, Benson-Pope et al. than just damaging their reputation. Indeed, there has been little immediate poll damage to Labour after each fresh attack. One would then have to ask whether or not they are actually playing the game right at all.

However, there are other reasons behind the attacks. Each smear is part of a much wider game being played, and that is a long-term game.

Each attack is about discrediting the specific MP, and much, much more. Each MP discredited is not so much about that MP, but about the public’s impression of MPs in general. One MP being involved in something dodgy is not going to have much of an impact on how the public sees MPs in total. Yet each new attack, each new smear, whether true or not, hits the confidence the public has with our politicians.

Well, what does this achieve? No sane person would place their life savings into a bank known to rip people off. Likewise, no sane person would want to pay taxes to a government which is run by dodgy, corrupt or tainted politicians. The smears against each MP are a smear against every MP. The neo-liberal Right want the public to distrust each and every MP. In doing so, they want each voter to head to the voting booth thinking "do I want my taxes to go to a pile of dirty politicians?"

Hence, Rodney Hide’s "perk-buster", or in reality "reputation-wrecker" persona is a legitimate tactic. So too is Judith Collin's “pervert” remark. I am not arguing that they are a 'good thing'. But they are, in the long term, an advantage for the Right.

The Right want to create a deep mistrust of the elites. It suits their aims in reducing the size of the government. Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson achieved in creating that mistrust in the 1984-93 period. Unfortunately for them, the public was able to turn that mistrust into electoral reform. While a clever tactic, they misread how to create that mistrust. Simply lying to the public means you can vote in the other lot (or turn to a third party such as the Alliance or New Zealand First as happened in the 1993 election).

The current anti-government Right seems to have a much better strategy. Taint anyone associated with wanting "big government". Smear them, smear their husband. Whatever it takes to make the public not trust the government with their taxes.

There are methods for the Left to recourse however. For a start, they need to be clean, whiter than white clean. Over-the-top laundry powder ad clean. However, everyone has a skeleton in their closet. So they need to be honest. David Parker provides the best example. He simply stated that he has had business problems. He didn’t hide anything. And guess what? It shut down the controversy. Those that do transgress, especially Taito Philip Field-style, need to repent, and be punished. Reaffirm the public’s faith in the system, don’t dismantle it further.

Trevor Mallard's comments are probably the worst thing Labour could do. Sure there are rumours going around about National MPs, but releasing them will not be in Labour’s long-term advantage. Indeed, it means the public are more likely to see the dirt as being on all MPs, rather than just a few bad eggs.

I am not arguing that running a smear campaign is a 'good thing' to do. However, it does have tactical advantages for the anti-government Right, and they have embraced it. The Left have also taken part in long term strategic moves – numerous Right-wing bloggers would label the Working for Families package in that light.

However, I do argue that the Right is playing politics in a substantially different manner. Politics in New Zealand, and much of the world, has traditionally focused on being about policy and ideas. The Right have abandoned those focuses at the moment – they would rather use alternative factors to gain votes. The New Zealand public may, or may not, be taken with their new tactic – either way though, we are beginning to see a different era of politics.

Guest Column - What Does The 2004 Living Standards Report Tell Us?

By Brian Easton.

The New Zealand Living Standards 2004 report depends entirely upon its "Economic Living Standards Index" (ELSI), first used in the previous (2000) report. At that time I expressed reservations about the index. Many have not been addressed. What I do here is set some down again, and then mindful of the ELSI's problems, and try to draw some conclusions of what the latest survey may be telling us about what happened between 2000 and 2004.

This may all seem a bit tedious. Who cares if the measure does not have any real meaning? Is it not better to use it for whatever (political) purpose we want without worrying about what the measure actually means? Don't we do that all the time? Do we need to have a detailed understanding of the meaning of time or income or whatever? Cant we just trust those who constructed the measures?

Well actually no. Typically scientists have spent much effort in constructing valid indexes. They are usually based on sophisticated theory, while each measure is verified by other scientists and is shown to have a practical significance related to things outside the narrow confines of the data which generates the measure. This is so routine for our authoritative measures that we assume it is true whenever someone proposes a new one. It may not be. Often indexes (i.e. measure of something or other) are not validated and amount little more than the opinions of the proponents.

Validation usually involves two stages. First, there is the underlying theory. Is it rigorous? How does the index relate to it? (Its construction often has to make compromises, but if the theory is well understood one can evaluate the extent to which they matter.) Second is a empirical validation. Does the index relate to anything outside the data from which it was constructed? (Two examples of my trying to empirically validate indexes – sometimes called ‘calibration’ – are at http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=229 and http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=460.)

Validating the ELSI Index

The ELSI is based on asking households (strictly an "Economic Family Unit" – EFU) a set of questions about what items they have or have not got, what restrictions there are on their social activities, what economising behaviour they have had to practice, and how they rate themselves. The household responses are then combined to give the ELSI index.

Note there are two stages. The first involves the questions asked. Are they the right questions? The second involves the aggregation of the responses. Has the right weighting (significance) been given to each response? How do we know the selection and weightings are not merely the opinions of those who construct the index, and that another set of "experts" would make different decisions? (For instance, the ELSI doubles the significance of some responses relative to others. Why not three times? Why not half?)

As far as I know, there has been little attempt to validate the ELSI. There is no reference to a satisfactory validation in either the report nor its bibliography. That does not mean the index is necessarily invalid, but we need to be most cautious when using it.

In my view the ELSI is a very poor measure of overall economic living standards (whatever that means). In particular, it is unlikely to be much use discriminating between those who are comfortably off. I should not be at all surprised if Bill Gates and myself would get much the same score, as might someone on the average wage and myself. That is because the questions are not designed to discriminate between the affluent. (There is not even a question on car ownership.)

Thus one can give no significance to the average ELSI for the whole public. (If everyone got a(n extra) car it would have to have no effect on their ELSI score – other than perhaps through changes in self-rated satisfaction.)

The difficulty arises because the researchers were focussing on the circumstances of the poor. So while we should dismiss the ELSI for the population as a whole we cannot be so dismissive of the index for those near its economic bottom. It is important if some people do not have a good pair of shoes (supposing that means "suitable for general purposes", rather than "for dressing up"), which was one of the questions.

So what I am going to focus on are those the authors describe as being in some or greater "hardship". That category includes those in "severe hardship" and "significant hardship". In my judgement their samples are too small and the measurement error too big for one to make comparisons involving them

Comparing 2000 and 2004

Famously, Moser's Law says that if a statistic looks interesting, it is probably wrong. Despite the rise in real incomes between 2000 and 2004 (which the report acknowledges) the ELSI decreases slightly. Which is surely "interesting", (I don't have a feel of the significance of the fall in the ELSI from 40.6 to 39.7 – out of 60. That is one of the consequences of not validating the index.) But given that the index is probably meaningless for the majority – say top two-thirds – of the population measures based on the whole population (such as the mean) are of little value.

What is more disturbing is the evidence that more of the population (that at the bottom) were in the hardship category. The rise in the proportion of the population in hardship rose from 23.6 percent in 2000 to 24.0 percent in 2004.

A useful table (C10) in the report, which gives the proportions for the total and a huge range of sub-populations, shows this difference is not statistically significant – that is it could arise from the vagaries of sampling.

There are a few cases among the sub-populations where there are increases and a handful where the difference is statistically significant (but remember that will happen by accident on occasions, given the way that statistical tests operate). You can pour over the table, and find some example that suits your assumptions. (For instance Labour-committed supporters will mention the decrease in hardship of the proportion of the Maori and two parent families. Those on the other side may draw attention to that there seems to be more employed and more of the elderly in hardship.)

At this point we could drop the whole exercise, concluding the changes in the ELSI over the four years tell us nothing. But there is a really interesting problem – one where the "probability" in Moser’s Law warns us sometimes happen. Sometimes a statistic can be interesting and not wrong.

The problem is this. The four years between the two surveys were ones of economic prosperity by almost all conventional welfare measures – higher real incomes and employment, lower unemployment ... – as well as common sense. Yet there is no improvement in the ELSI. The inconsistency is sufficiently strong to suggest that the ELSI is generally not valid. I have already argued that is true, so I am not surprised. At which point we could end the story.

What interests me though, is that where the ELSI might thought to better represent living standards – among those in "hardship" – there is no improvement either (indeed, a statistically insignificant deterioration). I find this much harder to understand. The ELSI cannot be that hopeless.

I tried to think of some technical reasons. Perhaps household fragmentation has had an effect. When a poor couple splits up only is one is likely to have warm bedding (one of the questions asked) at best. Perhaps the drift north has had an effect too (they were asked about having a warm winter coat). But such effects are likely to be trivial in the four year period.

The report acknowledges that beneficiaries had no real increase in their standard benefits over the four years, and some had reductions because some assistance (such as for families) was not adjusted for inflation. Would their lower real incomes be enough to increase their hardship and reduce the ELSI? Possibly.

There is also a tricky problem that the sub-populations change over time. Suppose a better-off beneficiary in 2000 joined the workforce by 2004. That would lower the ELSI of the beneficiaries who are left. It may also lower the ELSI scores of the employed since they ex-beneficiaries are likely to be at the lower end of the standard living of the employed. Bother, bother, bother.

There is another phenomenon which the ELSI does not deal with well. In each survey, respondents were asked whether they had a personal computer (for example). Now the options (to simplify a little) is "yes", "no" (because I cant afford it), or "I don't want one". The "don't want ones" are then netted out. Now it seems possible that some people who said "don't want one" on 2000 said "no because I cannot afford one" in 2004. Their ownership has not changed one iota, but the standard of living of the household measured on the ELSI will have decreased. Are there enough of such items in the survey to actually depress the score? Possibly.

What too about the family that has bought a computer because they now want (or think their children need) one and have made other sacrifices to fund the computer? The way the index works might depress the score. Indeed the additional purchase need not even appear in the survey. A household which bought a car (not in the survey) and sacrificed their annual holiday (in the survey) to do so. That would definitely depress the score. (And to complicate the story further, what if the car was necessary to go to work?)

Trickling Down Prosperity?

At this point one might become so uneasy about the ELSI, to judge of it of no value. However I think there is an interesting conclusion from the previous couple of paragraphs. To put it provocatively, during a time of prosperity, expectations may trickle down faster than income.

This proposition brings together two issues. For more than thirty years I have been advocating that we should use a relative poverty measure. This expectation effect illustrates its relevance.

Second, for some groups – the elderly and children – there is no automatic market trickle down effect, and that sharing prosperity requires some active intervention by the government.

The elderly have a trickle down through the (imperfect) indexation of New Zealand Superannuation to wages. Beneficiaries don't, because their benefit is indexed to consumer prices which rise slower than wages.

Children have suffered even more because their public assistance is not indexed at all. (There is a big lift in the incomes of some of them via the Working for Families package.)

I have argued that the benefit of the rising prosperity to those on social security has been to get an income increase from a job (not all of which disappears in the costs of employment and taxes and benefit abatement). Those on low earnings may also benefit from longer hours, higher pay and better working conditions, and upskilling. As pointed out, the ELSI can miss such improvements.

But I have to modify that conclusion. What the ELSI for low income people seems to be saying is that those that have not got a job have not benefited. Even if their real incomes are maintained, they may experience falling "living standards" if prosperity raises expectations but not their incomes.

The Real Issue

We can go on in this sort of speculation, but the first real lesson is not to trust changes in the ELSI which contradict common sense. However the study affirms one old truth, and challenges a more recent one.

We have long known there are some groups in hardship. According to the survey over 35 percent of our children are (compared to less than 25 percent of the population as a whole, including children). Interestingly, the hardship measure suggest proportions similar to those in the income poverty studies – the vast majority of the poor in income terms or in hardship in this study are children and their parents. (See various papers indexed in http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=152 for more details.) Perhaps this should be no great surprise, although it is satisfying to a researcher to have a rather different method coming up with similar conclusions.

The degree to which the government's recent measures to increase family assistance will markedly reduce hardship remains uncertain, because the support has been targeted on working families, rather than all families.

Which leads to a challenge to a more recent "truth". I think it was right in the early 1990s to place some emphasis on beneficiaries finding jobs. The conclusion, dimly seen through this report on living standards, is that after 15 years of doing so, plus a period of employment expansion and prosperity, there remains a rump who are still trapped into hardship. The policy strategy, which has succeeded for many, has failed them. If we are concerned about their hardship, and the often serious and longstanding (even inter-generational) deleterious consequences, we need to think about an alternative strategy which may be more income. It almost certainly is not to intensify a strategy which has failed them in the past.

Guest columns index

Guest columns by various people:

• 24/11/2011 MMP: Just better (John Parkinson)
• 24/09/2010 Perspective (Rich d'Rich)
• 26/10/2009 Labour Day (Stephen Day)
• 25/06/2009 Anti-smacking FAQs (Conrad Reyners)
• 17/06/2009 Time to stamp out loan sharks (Charles Chauvel)
• 19/03/2009 Complicity (Iona)
• 03/11/2008 Consequences (Anonymous)
• 10/08/2008 Abortion: Putting it back on the agenda (Anita)
• 28/09/2007 Election Funding: What's National up to? (Nicky Hager)
• 21/09/2007 Firing Clint Rickards - is it really that hard? (Anita)
• 15/04/2007 The Case Against The Case Against Aid: Why common counter arguments against giving aid are mistaken (Terence Wood)
• 08/04/2007 Still Failing the Poor: why New Zealand needs to give more aid (Terence Wood)
• 16/10/2006 Should we trade emissions rather than tax them? (Brian Easton)
• 10/10/2006 10/10: a Catholic view on the death penalty (Muerk)
• 22/09/2006 The New Tactics Of The Right (Greg Stephens)
• 03/08/2006 What Does The 2004 Living Standards Report Tell Us? (Brian Easton)
• 23/09/2005 Building Coalitions: The Banzhaf Index (Brian Easton)
• 31/08/2005 Tax cuts and social (in)equality (Anita)

If you would like to publish a guest column here, please email me and make a pitch.

(This is an index page so I have a central location to point to in future).