Making New Zealand a World Beater
act-new-zealand
Wed Mar 13 2002 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Making New Zealand a World Beater
Wednesday, 13 March 2002, 9:32 am
Speech: ACT New Zealand
Tuesday 12 Mar 2002
Dr Muriel Newman
Speeches -- Social Welfare
Speech To The Stokes Valley Rotary Club Tuesday 12th March 2002
In election year it's traditional for voters to examine more closely what the country has achieved during the term of the incumbent government. It's a time to reflect on whether we are in better shape now than we were before the election. In an age where the competition for talented workers no longer spans a country but the globe, it's also the time to consider whether the government's agenda is leading us to a rising standard of living and a more prosperous future.
My considered answer is that it's not. Not only has the government failed to get the economic fundamentals in place - and I will come back to that - but they have failed to address what I believe is the most serious problem New Zealand faces - that of increasing welfare dependency.
In spite of the so-called positive employment statistics, some 57,000 people - double the size of Upper Hutt - have not worked for the whole term of this government. That is an increase of almost 30 per cent.
To have fit and able young men and women being paid by our welfare system to sit around and do nothing is wrong. To have families being paid to split apart is criminal. To have children being brought up in communities where no one works for a living and where there are no role models of success, is immoral.
While this government's `soft' approach to welfare - where people no longer have to work if they don't want to work - is now making the situation worse, the core problems date back to the seventies.
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In the seventies, the Labour Government changed the incentives that underpinned the welfare system. As a result welfare ceased to be the hand up to work envisaged by its creator Sir Michael Joseph Savage. Instead, welfare for many, became a trap: by raising the benefit to a level akin to a working wage, the incentive to get a job was weakened; by making the benefit a universal entitlement rather than one which demanded `good moral character and sober habits', the state began funding the indolent, the lazy, those with drug and alcohol addictions.
In particular, the introduction of the Domestic Purposes Benefit drove a stake through the heart of the traditional nuclear family, eroding family values in the process.
If a couple were having a tough time the Domestic Purposes Benefit effectively sent a message to the woman: "don't bother trying to make your relationship work - the state will pay you to split up; the state will replace your husband as breadwinner; the state will become a father to your children".
Under the Domestic Purposes Benefit the state provides a regular income just so long as that mother doesn't work, doesn't marry, and doesn't let the father of the children see his children for more than forty percent of the time.
The result has been paternal alienation on a massive scale. We now have the most underfathered generation in our history. More children lose a father through divorce every three months than lost a father during the entire period of the Second World War.
We now have 27 per cent of families in this country headed by only one parent - and most of those are families raised by a woman on her own surviving on welfare. Deborah Coddington, a senior writer for North and South in a speech for ACT entitled `Liberal Feminism', put it this way: "how can a welfare cheque take the place of a father at football on Saturdays; watching his little girl in the nativity play at school break-up; helping construct trolleys out of pram wheels, huts out of car cases, surprising the kids at Christmas with a puppy?
"Where's the minister of social services at 4 in the morning when the washing machine's overflowing from a sink blocked with dirty nappies, the last clean sheets have been vomited all over by a 4-year-old, and Mum needs someone to take her in their arms and hold her while she has a good howl?"
And I ask, "Where's the Minister at 4 in the morning when the ashen faced, bleary eyed father stalks his dismal flat, his heart aching to hold his four year old, to love her, to comfort her and to nurse her back to sleep".
What we have done to the family is unforgivable. That's why ACT has called for a law change to introduce Shared Parenting, so that in the event of family breakdown children are ensured the support of both of their parents. Shared Parenting would protect their right to have frequent and ongoing contact with their mother and their father, their grandparents and extended family as well.
It is also why ACT has been calling for the Family Court to be opened, so that more people can understand the damage caused by our present laws which tear families apart.
On a daily basis, Family Court decisions defy logic. Just last week, at a Rotary Club meeting, a grandmother told how her newly separated son, who had never been aggressive or violent, and who voluntarily moved out of the family home to give his wife `some breathing space' was only allowed to see his three and four year old children for one hour a fortnight. How can that father retain a strong relationship with his young children in one hour a fortnight, she asked?
The answer is that of course he can't. So that dad and his parents join the ranks of the `walking wounded'. His children effectively join the ranks of the fatherless, all because of a secret decisions in a closed court, which allows no public or media scrutiny - it is an outrage. Because families do matter, two parents committed to their children are better than one, and marriage is still the most successful child rearing institution ever invented.
In fact, when you look at the end results of our country's long-term experiment in social engineering undermining marriage and the family, it's been and there are no other words for it, an unmitigated disaster.
Research now shows that parental separation causes children significant disadvantage which starts at birth.
Infant mortality rates are higher if a father is absent, and sole parenthood is the strongest predictor of childhood injury and hospitalisation.
Children from backgrounds of family disruption are the major victims of physical, emotional and sexual child abuse, as well as neglect. Their school performance is often poor and they are more than twice as likely to be expelled or suspended.
Family separation is a significant contributor to ill health, depression and suicide.
Young people from disrupted families often lack adequate supervision, effective discipline and emotional support. As a consequence, they are far more susceptible to peer group influence and more likely to exhibit the sort of anti-social and delinquent behaviours that eventually lead to criminal offending.
A 1999 study of some 500 youth files held by the Christchurch Police showed that youngsters who lived in disrupted homes without adequate supervision committed by far the majority of offences.
A number of international longitudinal studies have found that children from broken homes were more than twice as likely to have been convicted of serious offences than those from intact homes. The statistics are far worse for boys raised by an unmarried mother. Unfortunately, the government's relentless undermining of marriage will create more disrupted families, and as a result, those predisposed to criminal offending will become an increasingly larger proportion of our future society. That means that just as night follows day, crime in New Zealand will increase.
Studies of crime trends show that one in four young New Zealand males get into trouble with the police. Young single men are difficult for a community to control.
Yet if young men have jobs and money in their pockets, if they have a wife, children, and a mortgage, they are far less likely to commit crimes than young men with no jobs and no attachments.
Common sense tells us that welfare is at the heart of our crime problem. It is not right to pay fit and able young men to sit on welfare and do nothing in return. Leaving them with little money but lots of time on their hands is dangerous. Lacking the disciplines of work and the rewards of a good job, as well as the responsibilities of family, research shows that such young men are at an increased risk of criminal offending.
In its latest census of prison inmates the Department of Corrections shows that prior to sentencing 73% of female inmates and 49% of male inmates had been receiving a benefit. Almost a half had been on the Domestic Purposes Benefit or the dole.
While there is an obvious need to be cautious about interpreting such data, welfare beneficiaries are hugely disproportionate perpetrators of serious crime: a person who commits a crime serious enough to be imprisoned is six times more likely to come from the welfare system than the workforce.
At the last election, while 92% of New Zealanders wanted the government to get tough on crime, that should also include a focus on a reduction of the causes of crime. In my mind we should throw political correctness to the wind and expose the real link between welfare and crime. Welfare reform must become a national priority.
Of all of the groups harmed by family disintegration and welfare dependency, Maori have fared worst. Although they are only 13 per cent of the population, they make up over 50 per cent of the prison population. As well they are over-represented in all other negative statistics - poor health, educational failure, unemployment, family violence, drug and alcohol dependency.
At the heart of the problem is family breakdown - if present trends continue, by the year 2010 over three-quarters of Maori babies will be born into families where there are no fathers. No amount of `closing the gaps' money will fix the future problems for Maori nor the negative consequences for all New Zealanders - only welfare reform will do that.
But its important to remember that just as legislation was responsible for creating the problems outlined, so legislation can be introduced to turn the situation around. Other countries that have had similar problems have been successful in doing so - we should follow their example.
In particular, Wisconsin in the United States, a dairy state of some four million people, has had staggering success in transforming themselves from being an economic basketcase to being lively, vibrant and prosperous.
The key was a welfare reform programme that asked able-bodied welfare recipients to get into the habits and disciplines of the workforce. They were asked to participate in a full-time programme of activity designed to help them get a job. By supporting them to overcome any barriers that they had to work, such as child-care assistance, transport help and so on, when a real job became available that was more interesting and paid more than the benefit, they had a strong incentive to take it.
Wisconsin's results have been staggering: from over 100,000 people on the equivalent of the Domestic Purposes Benefit, there are now less than 2,000; there are more jobs available than there are unemployed to take them. Further, there have been significant reductions in child abuse, family breakdown, teenage pregnancy, youth suicide and all other negative social factors.
With the savings from welfare reform returned to taxpayers through tax cuts, and with a commitment to reducing compliance costs which held back the small business sector, their economy has boomed. Wisconsin now has one of the highest standards of living in the USA.
Ontario in Canada has achieved a similar economic transformation through welfare reform, cutting tax and compliance cost reduction.
New Zealand could follow their lead and transform ourselves from being a beautiful nation with a third world standard of living, to being a world beater. What we need is a three pronged commitment to welfare reform, tax reform and compliance cost reform.
That's why ACT's goal in welfare is to introduce a 40 hour week of education and training, community work, job search, CV writing, interview skills, adult literacy and numeracy training, computer skills - anything that gives people the habits and skills of workforce. That includes helping with child care, transport and other barriers to work. Along with time limits, an incentive would be created to encourage families on welfare to move out of poverty and dependency and into work and self-sufficiency.
But along with that, ACT believes that government should get out of the way of small business. Small business is the backbone of the country. It is small business, not government that creates jobs, growth and prosperity.
Government should make it easier to start and run a business: they should slash red tape and bureaucracy - RMA, ACC, OSH, as well as thousands of regulations that hold back small business. Further, to give New Zealand businesses a proper competitive advantage, they should lower company tax to a level that is at least lower than Australia.
Just recently the Institute for Economic Research warned that our economy is slowing on the back of lower demand for our export goods. As a result they are predicting that New Zealand's growth rate will slow to 1.7% by the year 2003.
Yet to maintain our parity with other western nations, we need to grow at 4%. To claw ourselves back into the top half of the OECD rankings within ten years - a goal set by this government - we need to grow at 7%.
With New Zealand being on track for 1.7% growth instead of 7% or even 4%, the government has clearly not got the basics right.
But while the government hasn't got the right fundamentals in place to create the future of prosperity and success that most New Zealanders aspire to, the ACT party knows what we have to do. All we need is to be part of a centre right government after the next election!
ENDS
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