Fresh Python

Terry Jones - Nice one, George

Rotorua, trespass, and the BORA

Dean Knight has an excellent post on the Rotorua Disrict Council's plan to punish serial criminals without trial. While he disagrees on whether the punishment is retrospective (its clearly a punishment, and it didn't apply at the time of the offence, which makes it clearly retrospective; in addition, it is being applied after conviction and in addition to any sentence imposed, by an entirely seperate process, making it double jeopardy as well), he concludes that it almost certainly violates the BORA's affirmation of freedom of movement. On the way, he says better than I've been able to what is wrong with using trespass notices to bar people from public streets:

The ability to use roads and footpaths facilitates so many other basic citizenship rights and activities that people undertake, ie travelling to the dentist, shopping for food, walking to the City Council to exercise civic participation rights etc. In contrast to issuing trespass notices to a discrete, demarcated space like Parliament which is effectively self-contained, trespass notices issued in relation to the network of roading and footpath infrastructure prevents a person from entering spaces which they are not prohibited from entering. The flow-on effect of trespass notices is so much greater than their actual scope.

While we're on the subject, several news stories have mentioned a similar attempt to use trespass orders in Kaitaia in the 90's. I've done some digging, and the only place I can find any mention of it is in New Zealand's Third Periodic Report under the ICCPR. According to this, it happened in 1993 and was known as the "Kaitaia Shoplifter Trespass Notice Scheme". Shopowners in Kaitaia clubbed together and authorised the police to issue trespass notices on their behalf to anyone apprehended for shoplifting - meaning that accused shoplifters would be barred from every participating business. The police ended their participation in the scheme after the Solicitor-General gave an opinion that it was

an abuse of police power because its application was excessive and out of proportion to the risk of further offending by those involved, and because the conditions required by s4 (2) of the Trespass Act were not met in all cases.

I've sent out a couple of OIA requests seeking further information on this, but if the police can't use trespass notices to keep suspected criminals out of only participating stores, then its difficult to see how they can use them to bar people from public streets.

Revenge from the grassroots

Last year, peace activist Walter Wolfgang was thrown out of the UK Labour Party conference and detained under anti-terrorism legislation for heckling. Now, in an act that can only be described as revenge from the grassroots, he has been elected to Labour's national executive committee. Wolfgang is promising to use the platform to speak out against Blair's disastrous Middle East policies, and his plans to replace Britain's nuclear weapons, as well as pressuring the PM to resign.

Ah, revenge is sweet...

Failure in Iraq

It's official: the dream of a democratic Iraq, spouted by Bush and Blair as a "justification" for their illegal war of aggression, is dust. Instead, according to the outgoing British ambassador to Baghdad, the most likely result is civil war - or worse:

Mr Patey wrote: "The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy.

"Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq - a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror - must remain in doubt."

In other words, Iraq is fast on the way to becoming a failed state, like Somalia, only with more oil. Was that really worth forty thousand dead civilians?

The disaster in Iraq ought to be a reminder that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that trying to impose democracy at gunpoint is unlikely to succeed. Unfortunately, the lesson doesn't seem to have sunk in to the NeoCons yet; according to Salon, they're raring for another go, and trying to widen the war in Lebanon to include Syria and Iran in a desperate bid to show that their ideas are something more than dangerous fantasies (a kind of "double or nothing", played with innocent people's lives). And worse, Bush seems to be listening to them...

Reminder

The Wellington Palestine Group will be holding a protest against Israel's bombing of Lebanon and Gaza tomorrow.

When: Friday, 4th August, 12:30
Where: Cenotaph on Lambton Quay

If you're outraged at what is going on in the Middle East, and the lack of action by the international community, then its a good time to show it.

Update: There is also a demonstration in Auckland on Saturday, organised by Students for Justice in Palestine. It starts at 13:00 in Aotea Square,a nd will march to the US Consulate for "a die-in and a mass flag burning".

Bad news for wind

The past two years have been a boom time for wind farming in New Zealand, with almost a gigawatt of new generation announced, and even larger facilities on the way. But according to this week's Independent, all of that could be about to come to a crashing halt.

The main problem is the low dollar. While good for farmers, as they receive a higher effective price for exports, its means that imported goods are more expensive. And the problem for power companies interested in wind farms is that the turbines are imported. Higher prices have already caused Trustpower to put its proposed 300 MW Mahinerangi wind farm on hold, and others may follow. On the plus side, its unlikely that generators will pursue gas or coal projects instead, as they also rely on imported equipment and will be similarly affected by the low dollar. Instead, we'll just see projects deferred, or built at a slower rate - with a consequent effect on security of supply.

But its not just a question of exchange rates; several wind farm developers are quoted as expressing concern about the uncertainty around carbon prices in the wake of the government's dumping of the carbon tax. This makes it more difficult to predict profitability (will a future government impose a price on carbon, or will wind farms be undercut by environmentally subsidised coal and gas?), and has put the shift to a more sustainable electricity system - which looked to be well underway - in doubt. While the government has said that it wants more renewable energy, unless it comes to the party with price or regulatory mechanisms to favour renewables over dirty generation, the policy will be just like their forestry-based Kyoto policy in the 90's - so much hot air.

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.

Outright discrimination

I don't watch New Zealand Idol, but I'm appalled by their decision to dump a contestant from the show because she was pregnant. As Maia points out, it's a grossly paternalistic intrusion into a decision which is really none of the producer's business, predicated on the idea that they know better than the woman herself what is good for her and her (eventual) child. But it is also simply outright discrimination. "Sex, which includes pregnancy and childbirth", is the very first item on the Human Rights Act's list of prohibited grounds of discrimination, and the main upshot is that you can't fire someone because they are pregnant. I'm not sure whether Ms Patea would be able to take South Pacific Pictures to the HRC over it (they might be considered an employer under the Act, as they benefit from her unpaid work, but it would be dicey), but I'd encourage her to try - this sort of shit simply cannot be tolerated, whether from a traditional employer or a TV show like "New Zealand Idol".

New Fisk

Entire Lebanese family killed in Israeli attack on hospital

Self-serving arseholes

Great. Ron Mark gets filmed repeatedly making obscene gestures in Parliament (video here) - and the speaker, Margaret Wilson, goes after TV3 for showing it. And politicians wonder why the public think they are a pack of self-serving arseholes...

Help the Red Cross help those in need

The New Zealand Red Cross has launched an appeal to help the victims of Israel's war against Lebanon. In keeping with the Red Cross's commitment to impartiality, they will be assisting those in greatest need regardless of race, nationality, or religion, including those forced to flee their homes on both sides of the border.

You can donate online here, or you can make a $20 donation by calling 0900 31 100.

Drawn

A special ballot was held for Member's Bills today, to fill the slot vacated by the postponement of Georgina Beyer's Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill, and the following bill was drawn:

• Regulatory Responsibility Bill (Rodney Hide)

I covered the bill last week, here.

This is the third bill Rodney has had drawn from the ballot, out of 23 so far this year. Maybe I should start talking about ACT ballot mojo as well as the Greens'...

Ashamed II

And as if one bunch of dickheads wasn't enough, now we have people spraying anti-semitic graffiti around synagogues as well. Again, I'm ashamed that this sort of thing is going on in New Zealand; this country is supposed to be about tolerance, not hatred.

New Fisk

A Nato-led force would be in Israel's interests, but not Lebanon's

Postponed again

Almost two years ago, Georgina Beyer introduced her Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill, with the aim of preventing discrimination against transgendered people and transvestites. Since then, its been parked at the bottom of the Order Paper, Labour being too afraid to pursue it for fear of being labelled "PC". The latest deferral expired today, meaning the bill would come up for a first reading next Member's Day, but it has now been deferred again, this time until the end of the month. Something could be read into the fact that this was a short postponement rather than a long one, but given the way things have gone, its looking likely that the bill will simply be deferred again, and again, and again, until either Labour grows a spine, or National a sense of decency. unfortunately, I don't really regard either as likely.

In the meantime, the deferral means there will be another ballot tomorrow. As usual, I'll post the results when I receive them.

Shooting themselves in the foot

That's the only way to describe National's actions this afternoon in denying leave for the Green Party's motion to censure and demand an apology from Taito Phillip Field. National has spent the past ten months chasing Field and trying to get him to accept responsibility for his actions and admit some wrongdoing. To then turn around and prevent him from doing just that makes it look like they're not really interested in the substantive issue of corrupt or at least grossly exploitative behaviour by a Member of Parliament, but are rather simply trying to keep a scandal alive and milk it for all it is worth. They seem to think they've won some political battle by doing this, but I really don't think the public are going to see it that way. Instead, the entire thing will be written off as just another case of petty point-scoring - when there is a deadly serious issue at stake. Thanks, National.

Add to that National's political bumbling - Don Brash apparently told the Greens he would support the motion, only to be overruled by Gerry Brownlee (who then undermined him further by shoving him back into his seat during Question Time so he could be first to put a point of order) - and National couldn't have looked stupider and more hypocritical if they'd tried.

Dealing with Field

How to deal with Taito Phillip Field? In the absence of a thorough police investigation or him showing a shred of decency and resigning, the options are rather limited. The Speaker can't do anything - Standing Orders define contempt only as "obstructing or impeding the House" and do not include corruption. Likewise, the limits on the powers of select committees mean that they probably can't do anything either. Given these limits, the Greens have proposed effectively a motion of censure, calling on Field to apologise to the House for "not ensuring a clearer separation between his private business and his duties as an MP", and asking him to recommit to that principle. They're planning on trying to put this to a vote today.

So, what are the odds that Labour will deny leave...?

New Kiwi blog

Students for a Democratic Aotearoa.

Oh dear

Cuba has discovered oil. Quite a lot of it in fact, and US oil companies want a slice of the profits. The Washington Post is speculating on what this will mean for the 45-year old embargo , but given current US policies, I'm wondering how long it will be before Cuba is added to the "Axis of Evil" and Dick Cheney is claiming to have satellite photos of Osama bin Laden sunning himself on a Havana beach, right next to a pile of Saddam's WMDs...

New Fisk

'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'