Welcome to my personal website. This is largely a holding site with background information about me and my ongoing projects, rather than something frequently updated. More information about those projects can be found on the Inequality and About Me pages. The About Me page also has my contact details in case you want to get in touch. Thanks for visiting.

Experts have clashed over whether Wellington should emulate Auckland and amalgamate its local councils, in a public seminar jointly hosted by Victoria University’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies and the Centre for Accounting, Governance and Taxation Research.

Introducing the debate, Graham Sansom, an adjunct professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, noted that the chances did not look good for super city proponents. Communities “usually vote against mergers when they get the chance”.

He also said there was no “straight-line relationship between the size of a council and its efficiency, and that mergers “usually fail to deliver the projected savings”. That said, the benefits of amalgamation – including enhanced strategic capacity – tended to “emerge over time”, and communities often were happy with the new structures, once change had settled down.

Shared services and joint planning arrangements – a popular alternative to amalgamation – were “often fragile … and fail to deliver solid results”.

Speaking against the super city, Philip Barry, a director of consultants TDB Advisory, said plans for full-scale amalgamation were “asking ourselves the wrong question”. The right question, he suggested, was “what should we amalgamate and not amalgamate in terms of the different functions that local government does?”

Despite claims that Wellington was doing badly, the city sat at the top of quality-of-life rankings, and in terms of regional GDP per person had outperformed Auckland over the last six years.

The three key criteria for any local government reorganisation, Barry said, were cost effectiveness, promoting local democracy and promoting improved economic performance.

When it came to cost effectiveness, the Local Government Commission’s analysis showed that the super city – which would produce $58 million in net present value benefits while incurring $210 million in transition costs – was greatly inferior to “stronger regional delivery”, which would incur benefits of $199 million and costs of just $129 million.

There was little evidence to suggest that larger councils were more efficient, Barry said. In the international research, 29% of studies found that middle-sized councils (of around 50,000-100,000 people) were most efficient. 39% found no relationship, 24% found councils became less efficient as they got larger, and just 8% found larger councils were more efficient.

When it came to promoting democracy, Barry said he was “very sceptical” that the proposed local boards would have any significant powers. “They can’t own property… they can’t raise debt, they don’t have power to regulate. They really are more a lobby group.”

In terms of improved economic performance, he said there was no evidence that the size of local councils affected the strength of the local economy.

Ultimately, Barry said, there were “smarter ways” to achieve improved regional cooperation where it was needed, on issues such as roading, the three waters and public transport.

Speaking in support of the super city, John Shewan, a former PwC chairman and current spokesperson for the Better Wellington lobby group, said the debate was about “what structural change allows the region to act in a more efficient and coordinated way”.

The current model didn’t deliver that, and would struggle even further with oncoming challenges around infrastructure, changing demographics, the environment and social pressures.

Amalgamation would give “far greater scope for improved economic performance”, and create the right incentives for local politicians to plan and execute and deliver on core services. It would also force the region to plan on a coordinated basis for natural hazards and disasters.

The proposed local boards would enhance local democracy significantly, with “more teeth and power” than their counterparts in Auckland.

“Although there is a risk with any model, this model is well grounded in theory and practice,” Shewan said, pointing to the way it drew on the experience of Auckland’s reform. “If you talk to the Auckland business community, and citizens, people are now coming around to saying, actually, this is delivering.”

A super city would allow quicker progress on projects such as Transmission Gully and the airport extension, and avoid local authorities “paddling their own canoe” on where to locate new housing.

The super city would also eliminate inconsistencies in the application of regulations across the region, and greater size would give Wellington “a much stronger hand in negotiations with government agencies”.

While others might hope that benefits could be gained by encouraging local councils to “play nicely together”, Shewan said he had seen too many promising ideas founder on councils’ inability to work collaboratively.

I was at a conference recently about co-operatives and their role in the twenty-first century, and heard something interesting from Girol Karacaoglu, the Treasury’s chief economist.

Karacaoglu, who used to run what is now the Co-operative Bank and has been a big supporter of this conference, was chairing a session entitled ‘Cooperatives as an alternative to state owned enterprises’.

The idea – which has been used by the UK Conservative party – is that public agencies could be spun off into separate bodies, but rather than simply being privatised, they could be turned into co-operatives in which every staff member has a say in running the organisation.

The idea has had a mixed reception even among people who like co-operatives, because they see it as part of breaking up the state and something that will end up with privatisation anyway, because these co-operatives will (in most cases) have to compete for contracts with much bigger multinationals, and inevitably lose out.

Anyway, Karacaoglu’s presence was a clear signal of Treasury interest in the idea. And when asked directly, he said Finance Minister Bill English had been in the UK two years ago, heard about the idea, and come back and said: “This is something we should be looking at.”

Not that action was imminent, Karacaoglu added: “Nobody in New Zealand as far as I know is very interested in it … It’s a matter of putting these arguments in front of decision-makers … Yes, there’s interest, but at the moment no-one is actively pursuing it.”

So it was hardly a ringing endorsement – but even a minimal level of interest (by Karacaoglu, if not his colleagues) is interesting.

Karacaoglu’s other comment of note was on the possible sale of state houses to community groups – and, if that fails, to companies interested in running state housing.

Since charities may not want (or be able) to buy state houses at their current market value, ministers have been asked if they will sell them off at bargain basement prices, as happened in the 1990s.

So far ministers have been a bit coy on that question, but Karacaoglu was more direct. “Government is willing to wear the valuation consequences of that [sell-off], if we can get to the right solution,” he said.

“We are fully aware that the transfer could be painful in a valuation sense.”

That sounds like a below-market-price sell-off is in the works, then.

Novel community-based methods of delivering public services can have the “perverse incentive” of replacing paid public sector staff with volunteers.

That was the message of a lecture delivered by Dr Jonathan Scott, head of the Centre for Strategy and Leadership at Teesside University (UK), in a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies.

Scott was discussing the Northern CE project, in North East England, designed to get ordinary members of the public acting as “community entrepreneurs”  and finding new ways to deliver public services to alleviate child poverty.

These community entrepreneurs were supposed “to help bridge the gap between the community and local councils to get things done”, Scott said. By playing an active part in the process, it was hoped they would inspire their own children to have higher aspirations.

The Northern CE project also “prefigured” other British initiatives such as the Big Society, which aimed to get more services delivered by community and voluntary groups and to create “an innovative approach to alleviating local social problems”.

However, the project had suffered confusion over the role of the community entrepreneurs. Many had thought they would simply be trying to get parents back into work, rather than setting up long-term public service projects. They were keen to identify projects that could happen, but not necessary to run them, which some regarded as still being the role of local councils.

The entrepreneurs also felt they had ended up “doing several other people’s jobs for less money”, and were performing functions that council staff were supposed to carry out.

“The perverse incentive of community enterprise is that it is a way by which such employees’ jobs will be replaced by volunteers working for social enterprises and these community-based enterprises.”

Another problem was that when the entrepreneurs did identify innovative solutions, they were sometimes blocked by more traditional council processes.

Evidence for the impact of this work on the entrepreneurs’ children was “mixed”, Scott said. And despite the “entrepreneur” tag, none of the employment schemes that flowed from the initiative appeared to be “actually making money”.

Scott said that behind the Northern CE project “is this agenda to cut public spending, particularly to reduce the expenditure of councils”. The voluntary sector was seen as “a way to spin out services to reduce costs”.

New Zealand is likely to face increased concentrations of wealth, inequality and power in the twenty-first century, according to newly assembled data.

Economist Geoff Bertram, in a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, where he is a senior associate, said data he had assembled showed New Zealand fitted the pattern of other countries set out in Thomas Piketty’s groundbreaking work Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Noting that concentrated wealth and power among elites was the norm for non-capitalist societies, Bertram said Piketty’s work asked the question, ‘Are capitalist societies different?’. Piketty’s answer was an “essentially pessimistic” one, predicting the emergence and entrenchment of a wealthy capitalist elite across the major developed countries, though he did not present data for New Zealand.

Some wealth holders might originally have been entrepreneurs, but as their wealth accumulated, they rapidly became “rentiers”, earning profits simply by virtue of owning assets.

Piketty also showed that the level of wealth in a society, measured as a multiple of the income generated by that society in a given year, was determined by the economy’s savings rate divided by its growth rate.

This implied that the share of national income going to the wealthy was not determined by its “productive contribution” but was essentially fixed as a result of other variables.

Neo-classical economists had justified returns on assets by arguing that wealth contributed to productivity and economic growth, but Piketty’s data showed that wealth levels fluctuated hugely during the 20th century without any apparent connection to growth rates. “The entire body of neo-classical growth theory has simply been parked out of the way,” Bertram said.

Piketty’s key insight was that standard savings and growth rates would tend to drive the level of wealth towards an equilibrium with a “very high” level of inequality. If the savings rate could be assumed to be 12% a year, and growth 2%, the level of wealth would stabilise at six times a country’s annual income – a figure similar to that seen in nineteenth-century Europe.

One key driver of this widening inequality was the fact that the rate of return on wealth was – with the exception of the mid-twentieth century – generally much higher than the growth of wages and salaries.

Neo-classical economists had argued that this effect would taper off, because as more wealth was amassed, the abundance of it would drive down its returns. However, this was not true if, as Piketty argued, accumulated wealth could displace labour “out of productive employment”, taking “a larger and larger piece of the action”.

And because so much wealth was held by “a subset of the population”, this would in turn drive widening income inequalities.

In New Zealand, income inequality had been relatively stable in the last decade, but this masked growing wealth inequality of the kind Piketty had identified, Bertram said.

A very large rise in income inequality from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s had translated into a concentration of wealth at the top, and Statistics New Zealand research showed poor households borrowing large amounts while wealthier households saved, exacerbating existing inequalities.

Data assembled by Bertram showed New Zealand’s stock of wealth following a similar pattern to the countries in Piketty’s work. In particular, it had risen sharply in the 2000s, as households had taken “a decade or so” after the sudden rise in income inequality to watch their balance sheets either improve or decline.

New Zealand’s wealth concentration was converging to the same level as those of the major world economies covered by Piketty, Bertram said. This was not surprising given that New Zealand’s economy was “as open as you can get” to foreign wealth, individuals and ideas. Also, the factors determining wealth inequality – such as the savings and growth rates – tended to become equalised in a globalised world.

This implied that local policymakers who had contributed to New Zealand’s increased inequality – including politicians such as Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson – were merely “riding the wave” of growing world inequality. “[Local] institutions and policies matter, but they are countervailing forces, not the prime drivers.”

Guy Standing’s 2011 book, The Precariat, made headlines by identifying what he called “a new dangerous class”. Marx had had the proletariat; now the most important class in the modern economy was, Standing argued, the precariat, the millions of people working in short-term, casual, precarious jobs. It was a brilliant term, and a powerful piece of analysis. It was relevant around the world, and here in New Zealand, where we know that at least 30% of the workforce, and probably more like 40%, are in this kind of precarious work. As elsewhere, the work they do can be deeply damaging to their lives, and they are increasingly denied rights and privileges afforded to other citizens. (In fact, Standing argues, they are less and less ‘citizens’, and more and more ‘denizens’, people who live somewhere but do not have the rights of its citizens.)

The Precariat Charter, Standing’s follow-up, tries to chart a path to the future, one in which precarious work is abolished and the people who do it regain their full status as citizens. It is a noble aim; it’s just shame he makes such a terrible hash of the attempt.

Standing’s Charter has 29 articles, and it’s there that the problems begin. With so much ground to cover, every subject is, inevitably, dealt with in a brief and very sweeping manner. It doesn’t help that the book, as the author acknowledges, “does not reproduce many statistics” but is designed to increase empathy and prompt people to “reach out” to the precarious. On the one hand, the lack of statistics makes a lot of its claims difficult to accept. On the other, Standing’s tone and high-handed manner are exactly calculated not to increase empathy with anyone.

The Precariat Charter is a very black-and-white book, filled with things that “must” be done and people who “must understand” this, that or the other. Anyone who doesn’t like, for instance, a universal basic income has only a very tenuous hold on their “progressive credentials”, apparently. And the prose doesn’t help Standing’s cause. Perhaps the worst sentence, though it is by no means exceptional, is the one where he lays into Third-Way Labour parties’ “Faustian bargain” with global capital, declaring: “Like all Faustian bargains, the orgy had to end.”

There are some interesting ideas in the book, such as a proposal for giving every citizen a certain amount of money to spend on national election campaigns through the party of their choice, or organising a national ‘deliberation day’ to be held two weeks before a general election and devoted to public debate. There are some worthwhile challenges, too. Standing makes a good point that every new social problem finds its solution not in old institutions and organisations, but in the new ones that arise as part of the struggle. This presents an interesting question for trade unions, and others, as to what kind of institutions are needed to help those in precarious work. Unfortunately, as is generally the case, Standing is far better at diagnosing the problem than providing a sensible or helpful solution.

New Zealand should be taking a leadership role in international efforts to promote open and transparent government, Dr Michael Macaulay said in a talk to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies.

Macaulay, the institute’s incoming director, attended a recent Asia-Pacific Summit for the Open Government Partnership, which was launched in 2011 with eight countries and now has 64 signed up.

Every participating country has to produce an action plan for increasing transparency, accountability and integrity in government, with measurable commitments. The plans are then evaluated through an independent review process. Some 45% of all partnership commitments have so far been achieved.

The partnership had a number of “grand challenges” and core values, Macaulay added. The grand challenges were: improving public services; improving public integrity; and more effective management of public resources; creating safer communities; and increasing corporate accountability.

The core values were transparency, citizen participation, technology and innovation, and accountability.

New Zealand, which joined the partnership in December 2013, is drafting its initial action plan, to be submitted later this year.

Macaulay said New Zealand “can and should take a leadership role” in the partnership, given its long-standing reputation for being an open and transparent country.

The recent summit had shown that New Zealand was “clearly very highly respected”. But that created “an attendant danger” that it could fail to live up to that reputation and that its efforts could look “half-hearted”.

In addition, the pace of technology was such that policies around e-government were “getting a bit out of date”, as other countries were increasingly talking about m-government, short for “mobile government” accessed through smart phones and the like.

The summit had also shown that collaboration was “king” and governments needed to listen more. This was especially important as fewer than half of participating countries had adequately consulted on their initial action plans.

Civil society organisations were crucial to the partnership project, especially in the long term, Macaulay said. “This is not a one-off. This is a long-term, iterative process.”

However, some key questions remained unanswered, such as how an action plan would translate into specific commitments, and what would be the “participatory infrastructure” to allow input from those groups.

In developing the initial action plan, the State Services Commission had held meetings in Wellington and used the online discussion software Loomio. That feedback had been collected and presented to ministers.

Commission members in the audience for Macaulay’s talk conceded that there had “not been enough” consultation, but promised there would be “full and proper” processes put in place as the partnership work developed.

Progress on a new global treaty on climate change will happen through countries making voluntary pledges instead of signing up to mandated emissions cuts, according to Dr Christina Hood of the International Energy Agency.

Giving a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Hood said the next big step in international climate negotiations was a treaty to supersede the Kyoto protocol, to be agreed in Paris in December 2015.

Kyoto, which mandated cuts, had covered just 13% of world greenhouse gas emissions. But the new treaty was likely to allow countries to set their own approaches, in the hopes of getting greater coverage and therefore more reductions.

A full negotiated text of the new agreement should be tabled by December this year, with countries submitting their “intended nationally determined contributions” in the first quarter of 2015. “This has really good legs, this idea that countries are in a position to know where they can go,” Hood said.

The promises that countries made could be “very different” to those made under the Kyoto protocol. They could include carbon budgets, renewable energy targets, and targets for long term transformations via infrastructure investment.

“There will be a lot more uncertainty about where things are headed. But Kyoto only provided certainty for a limited number who were willing to participate. We are sacrificing a little bit of foresight about where we’re going, in exchange for more action.”

A total world carbon budget would still be part of the process “implicitly”, she said. The combined national contributions would have to be assessed on whether they were consistent with the 2° scenario – and that could be done only with reference to some kind of carbon budget.

In the agency’s own scenarios for limiting world temperature increases to 2°, the greatest contribution – 42% – came from energy efficiency. On a per-sector basis, the power sector was targeted for the biggest reductions.

When it came to specific policies, carbon pricing was central, because it “levels the playing field” and drove emissions reductions across-the-board, rather than relying on government to target every sector separately.

Far from being “dead”, carbon pricing was being seriously looked at by many countries, including South Africa and China. “Carbon pricing, despite having a bad rap, is progressing at pace around the world,” Hood said.

In addition to carbon pricing, which would make many emissions-reducing policies economically viable, there were policies that were already cost effective but not being implemented because of a lack of knowledge or political will. For instance, on current projections, around two thirds of the emissions-reducing potential of currently cost-effective measures would remain untapped by 2035, even with some new policies.

Setting out policies that would reduce emissions at zero cost to GDP, Hood said tackling four areas – energy efficiency, limiting the use of coal power, reducing methane emissions from coal and gas, and the partial removal of fossil fuel subsidies – would get the world 80% of the way to the 2° target.

Long-term investments in much more expensive policies, such as solar power and electric vehicles, were also needed.

However, progress towards clean energy was “too slow in almost all technological areas”. In particular, infrastructure either already built or planned by 2017 “would, if allowed to run for its natural lifetime, use all the energy permitted under [the] 2° [scenario]”.

That meant that anything built after 2017 should have zero or negative emissions – but also that existing inefficient infrastructure needed to be “retired early”.

Delaying emissions-reducing policies was a false economy, Hood added. Every dollar saved between now and 2020 by delaying spending would cost countries $4.30 in the long run as they made up the lost ground.

The British government’s decision to sweep away the ethics framework for local councils has left the country without an adequate system for ensuring that corrupt and inappropriate behaviour is dealt with, according to a visiting academic.

Gary Hickey, who had formerly worked for the UK’s Standards Board and is now an academic at Kingston University and St George’s, University of London, was giving a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies.

He said the ethics framework had been set up in the 1990s following scandals in both local and central government, and because people increasingly recognised that ethical standards were vital in maintaining the public’s faith in local democracy.

The first ‘phase’ of the ethics framework had involved a national code of conduct for local politicians, creating the Standards Board as a national watchdog, and setting up standards committees for each local council, which were staffed by councillors and members of the public.

However, this system was seen as “too centralised” because the dominance of the Standards Board marginalised the committees, and the system became clogged up with “trivial” complaints, as when a parish councillor complained about another one “digging up their carrots”.

The second ‘phase’ responded to these concerns by giving the standards committees a greater role to play.

However, this process was seen as being too cumbersome, as complaints had to be dealt with by an array of sub-committees, Hickey said: “There were far too many committees involved.” It also still dealt with too much trivia and was “quite costly”.

Nonetheless, there was growing public support for the code of conduct, and the behaviour of local councillors had improved measurably under the framework. “The framework, for all its flaws, was doing something – and it was working.”

However, in 2010, the Conservative-led government swept away most of the framework, including the Standards Board, the committees and the national code of conduct. In its place were put “monitoring officers” who were supposed to watch over councils, and codes of conduct for each local council.

However, a 2012 survey of a small number of monitoring officers had showed that most doubted the new system would allow poor behaviour to be adequately punished. A number of scandals had already arisen, including one in which councillors were allegedly working as consultants to advise firms on how to get around council planning rules

Instead of sweeping away the system, the government should have been reformed it by making clearer its principles and how it was supposed to function, Hickey said.

That would have involved a commitment to dealing with complaints more quickly, local councils taking responsibility for their own arrangements, using a greater range of tools – including mediation and informal resolution of disputes – and setting the bar for complaints higher to discourage trivial complaints.

“I think that would address all the criticisms of the previous framework,” Hickey said.

The New Zealand government spends more than most OECD countries – but with a smaller number of public sector workers than its counterparts, according to the OECD’s Szuzsanna Lonti.

Giving an Institute for Governance and Policy Studies lecture earlier this week, she said general government expenditure as a proportion of GDP was 49% in New Zealand, against an average of 45% across the OECD. New Zealand’s spending had increased notably 2009-11, but “the main explanation would be that by 2011 the spending due to the earthquake started”.

However, compensation for government employees was “below average”, and the number of people employed in government as a percentage of the total labour force was just 9.7%, against an OECD average of 15%. Some countries, such as Norway and Denmark, had levels of around 30%.

Outlining other findings from the OECD’s recently released Government at a Glance programme, Lonti said there were many areas where New Zealand performed better than the average, including:

The proportion of people who have confidence in their national government

New Zealand: 61%
OECD average: 40%

Amount of fiscal consolidation required to get government debt down to 60% of GDP by 2030

New Zealand: 2% of GDP
OECD average: 3% of GDP

Female MPs as a proportion of all MPs

New Zealand: 33%
OECD average: 25%

Time taken to process tax refunds

New Zealand: 28 days
OECD average: 40 days

There were also some areas in which New Zealand performed at around the OECD average, including:

Percentage of citizens using the Internet to interact with public authorities

New Zealand: 50%
OECD average: 50%

And there were some areas in which New Zealand performed below the OECD average, including:

Earnings advantage (net present value) for men of having a tertiary qualification

New Zealand: US$38,000
OECD average: US$105,000

It’s sometimes said that people living in poverty just need to try harder, but I’m not sure how much more Amy Scott, profiled today in The Press, could be doing:

Amy Scott and her two children have moved houses five times since the earthquakes. Scott lost her job after work as a bartender “dwindled off”. She lost her mode of transport in a minor accident.

She is now on the benefit, and after paying rent and power, she has $70 a week to spend on food.

“It’s a struggle; each week I have to choose which bill I’m going to pay. It’s really hard, especially when you’re used to earning,” she said.

She had been seeking work since losing her job in July, but was finding it hard to compete with the influx of other candidates for the positions.

“I’ve been to every bar, every retail place, supermarkets, The Warehouse … in the past month I’ve handed out 30 CVs.”

She pulled her daughter from Girl Guides because she could not afford the fees. She could not afford to send either child to relatively inexpensive activities, including swimming lessons.

Once again this makes the point that being in poverty is so often about having constrained choices, not the luxurious range of wonderful free choices that are supposedly on offer.

The price of unhealthy processed food needs to rise by at least a fifth, if New Zealand is to tackle diet-related problems that threaten to be just as bad for our health as smoking, Gareth Morgan says.

Morgan, an economist, public policy analyst and philanthropist, was giving a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, about his new book, Appetite for Destruction.

Poor diet was now the “number one killer” in New Zealand, he said. Portion sizes had risen 30% in 50 years, and people ate far too much processed food, which was “energy dense and nutrient poor”. This was affecting people’s health right across the population, not just among those “who on the surface appear to be overweight”.

Morgan said: “Processing has fatally changed the balance of nutrients and energy … This is just as much a problem for [food sold in] supermarkets as fast food outlets.”

Arguing that people will eat 70% more snacks if they are readily available, he said this energy rich food was “just everywhere. It is very hard to avoid and we are not adapted to deal with that environment. It’s very difficult to get through the Koru lounge without stuffing your face.”

While some argued that exercise was equally important, only 20% of the rise in, for instance, obesity could be explained by changes in rates of exercise, he said. It would take an hour of “walking fast” to work off the effects of consuming just one bottle of a sports drink.

The scale of the problem meant drastic action was needed, Morgan said. “We have a smoking-sized problem and we need smoking-sized solutions.”

Part of the solution was restricting the supply of unhealthy food. That included items such as high-sugar cereals, he said, noting testing had shown that the sweetest cereal on sale in New Zealand was 41% sugar.

The cereal aisle in supermarkets “should have a rope across it. It’s desert food, most of it.”

More generally, he said, New Zealand needed to increase the relative price of unhealthy processed foods “by at least 20% – and use the revenue to bring down the price of whole food. Therefore you mitigate the income effects. If you close the loop on the revenue, it shouldn’t affect the poor.”

Morgan also argued for “pretty simple” food labelling to complement the complex dietary information currently provided on food packaging. All food should come with one of three labels: “eat this often”, “eat this sometimes” or “try to avoid this”.

The diminished power of local councillors, election booklets that have “passed their use-by date” and uncertainty over amalgamation all helped drive turnout to a record low in this year’s local council elections.

That was the verdict of Mike Reid, Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ)’s principal policy advisor, in a lecture given to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. 

Turnout in this year’s elections was 41%, continuing a trend of turnout falling from around 50% in the 1990s. Within that wider figure there were some differences, Reid said, with turnout at 49% for councils serving populations of under 20,000, against 36% for larger councils. The highest turnout was 63%, in Westland, while the lowest, 30.5%, was in Waikato.

There were 13 women mayors out of 67 – roughly one in five – and 30% of councillors women, unchanged from recent years. “It has almost, if you like, hit a glass ceiling,” Reid said.

LGNZ surveys from the early 2000s showed that the reasons influencing people not to vote included:

• Didn’t know enough (31%)
• Not interested (14%)
• Forgot or left it too late (24%)
• Too busy (14%)

It did not help, Reid said, that the candidate information booklet provided to voters “has passed its use-by date … it’s getting harder to distinguish candidates from their 150 words.”

But a more serious problem was the “diminishing” power of local councils, which were being overridden by central government: “Why would you spend time voting, when the people you’re voting for can’t make any decisions?”

The voting process had also become more complicated, the uncertainty created by the amalgamation had deterred many candidates (and thus made election campaigns less interesting), and the large size of New Zealand local councils make them relatively distant from voters, Reid said.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that strong personalities helped increase turnout. This led to the not entirely serious conclusion, Reid said, that “we should encourage John Banks to stand again”.

Another way to encourage greater turnout would be to devolve more power to local councils. Councils could also be supported to engage their communities better, Reid said, pointing to the example of Brisbane, where councillors held regular neighbourhood clinics with support from council officers.

He also noted the promise by the new Christchurch mayor, Lianne Dalziel, to delegate more powers to community boards, and the success of the ‘Vote Auckland’ website in disseminating information on candidates.

However, he warned that more local government mergers would probably drive turnout even lower. In the future, people would be saying: “I don’t think we’ll ever be back to the great days of 40% turnout.” 

Wellington City Council looks set to become the country’s first Living Wage council following last night’s election.

Last year it voted in principle to support the idea, and put aside $250,000 for it. Now, on the new fifteen-strong council (including the mayor), nine are in support.

Six councillors who voted for the Living Wage in June were re-elected: Celia Wade-Brown, Ray Ahipene-Mercer, Paul Eagle, Justin Lester, Helene Ritchie and Iona Pannett.

Of the six new councillors, Sarah Free and David Lee are both Greens, and Mark Peck is Labour, and are understood to support the Living Wage.

Also elected were three existing councillors who voted against the Living Wage – Jo Coughlan, Andy Foster and Simon Marsh – and three new councillors who either oppose the Living Wage or whose position isn’t known: Nicola Young, Simon Woolf and Malcolm Sparrow.

The time is right for New Zealand to consider adopting a Committee on Standards in Public Life and a code of conduct for MPs, to ensure it remains relatively transparent and free of corruption.

That was the message from Michael Macaulay, the deputy director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, in a lecture on whether New Zealand should have its own version of Britain’s Committee on Standards in Public Life.

The committee – which acts as an advisory body – was set up in the 1990s in the wake of various scandals, including one in which MPs were caught taking cash for asking questions in Parliament. The committee has an independent chair, six independent members, and three members nominated by political parties.

Its “very substantial” achievements included getting seven core ‘principles of public life’ – selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership – “adopted by almost every public body in the UK”.

It had created an “ethics infrastructure” and led to much greater transparency on political donations, Macaulay said.

However, as an advisory body, it relied on political will to have its recommendations adopted, and this was “not a priority” for the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. “More recently their [the committee’s] advice hasn’t been taken … indeed in some cases their advice has been ignored.”

In New Zealand, although the country continued to be seen as highly transparent, there was “a feeling of complacency … because New Zealand continues to be highly regarded, internally it’s letting itself slide quite a bit”.

Macaulay said the absence of a code of conduct for New Zealand MPs was “really astounding – in this day and age, it’s the least of the arrangements you should have.” A code of conduct would cover a register of gifts and hospitality, declarations of interest, and how MPs were handling their dealings with lobbyists. 

New Zealand should also consider creating a standards committee, he said. It should not have enforcement powers, but it did need to be independent of government and be “bolder, more far-sighted, strategic and proactive” than the UK version. “It needs a little more bite, frankly.” 

While New Zealand already had various oversight bodies – including the Parliamentary Privileges Committee, the Office of the Ombudsman and the State Services Commission – a standards committee would add “an extra layer of independence”.

That could imply that the committee would be an independent crown entity, although other options included making it an office of Parliament or extending the powers of another body such as the ombudsman.

However, Macaulay said, there was “only so much” any committee could do. Driving out corruption “requires genuine leadership, and it requires behavioural solutions as well”.

The New Zealand media is like “a junkyard dog”, sometimes ferocious but with a short attention span, according to Otago University politics lecturer Bryce Edwards.

Giving an Institute for Governance and Policy Studies lecture, Edwards discussed his report on the media for the New Zealand National Integrity Assessment, an exercise that looks at the transparency and integrity of public life.

Different surveys of the media gave different results, he noted. While New Zealand ranked in the top ten in the Reporters Without Borders survey of press freedom, a recent poll of New Zealanders showed the country as one of only four countries out of 107 where the media was regarded as one of the most corrupt institutions.

With such different results, it was “hard to see where the truth lies”, he said. 

However, for the integrity assessment, he had spoken to “experts and industry” as well as reviewing academic writing on the New Zealand media, and had given it scores out of five on a range of issues:

For providing a variety of perspectives – 2/5. The media lacked diverse ownership and ideologies, and was dominated by four media companies. Being “the most liberalised media market in the world” meant there was little regulation to encourage diverse ownership.

For safeguards against external interference in reporting – 4/5. The ‘Teapot tapes’ saga notwithstanding, the media generally escaped political interference.

For accountability of the media – 3/5. Mechanisms such as the Broadcasting Standards Authority existed, but were “complex and outdated”.

For provisions to ensure the integrity of reporters – 2/5. The industry had no sector-wide code of ethics, and conflicts of interest did not have to be disclosed.

For investigating and exposing corruption – 4/5. The media were “extremely vigilant about the abuse of power or other improprieties”, even to the point of sometimes “exaggerating” the level of corruption. Investigative journalism, however, lacked funding.

In total, he gave the media a ranking of 66 points from a possible 100. But feedback from the audience at the lecture – made up partly of academics, public sector workers and some media representatives – indicated that even that relatively low score was too generous.

Summing up, Edwards said the media was perhaps neither a watchdog nor the lapdog of politicians but “a junkyard dog … the media is more about infotainment, an increasing focus on the trivial and the scandalous.

“The media is not so much about protecting politicians [as some claim]. It’s about ratings, it’s about the tyranny of ratings and profits. That leads to a focus on the gaffes of politicians. The media is not reverent towards politicians.”

A “green” economy is the only realistic way to reverse environmental damage while improving living standards, says a visiting public policy expert.

Professor Daniel Fiorino, a leading writer on environmental and public policy issues at the American University in Washington, DC, was in New Zealand as the second Sir Frank Holmes Visiting Fellow. The fellowship is run by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies.

In his lecture, Fiorino said a green economy allowed people to achieve their aspirations while respecting “the finite limits of ecosystems”. It was a “creative middle ground” between the traditional oppositions of environmentalism that argued for no or reduced growth, and the view that environmental limits could be continually expanded.

Research indicated that if just 2% of world GDP was invested in green growth, it would be enough to create an economy in which growth was achieved within ecological limits, Fiorino said. A green economy could, if done right, create more and better jobs than the traditional “brown” economy.

The key points of a green economy included valuing “natural capital” and the “services” it provides, such as the water purifying carried out by freshwater eco-systems; integrating the economy and the environment in decision-making; and ensuring environmental considerations entered into “all aspects” of human and economic life.

Fiorino said a green economy recognised that many parts of the natural world had great economic value: for instance, the global value of insect pollinators, such as bees, was estimated at US$200 billion.

Claims made for the green economy did possess a “have your cake and eat it too” quality, he admitted, which made some people doubt its validity.

It was often criticised for being too human-centric and valuing nature only when it benefitted humans economically, rather than for its intrinsic worth. It could also been seen, from the left of politics, as legitimising capitalism and a way to avoid radical change – or even as a kind of “greenwash”.

It was also “derided” by some on the right of politics because it implied a more active government, and – by embracing some form of economic growth – took away the right’s ability to claim that environmentalists opposed progress.

But in fact, it was “the only realistic path to reversing eco-system degradation” while allowing some kind of growth, Fiorino said.

A more radical “de-growth” agenda, while suitable for some environmental issues, was not “politically feasible”, in the United States at least. In contrast, a “relative decoupling” of the environment and the economy would allow for policies like carbon taxes, energy efficiency standards, removing subsidies for activities like irrigation, emission and effluent trading, and incorporating social harm into the cost of resources.

“This strategy of relative decoupling is absolutely essential if we are to live a good life on a finite planet.”

Fiorino added that he was encouraged by recent US poll results showing more people were seeking a life “in which being wealthy is no longer the sole measure” of success.

“Fear and hostility” towards religious values is leaving public debate impoverished, according to Andrew Bradstock, Director of the University of Otago’s Centre for Theology and Public Issues.

Professor Bradstock, who is returning shortly to Britain, said the media were often “indifferent” towards religious perspectives, and members of the public frequently feared that religious speakers sought to dominate or impose their views on others.

But there was a role for contributions from religious perspectives made “confidently and with conviction, but in a spirit of promoting general well-being”, rather than trying to defend a particular religion’s interests.

Contrary to arguments that the world was becoming inevitably more secular, religion was experiencing a “re-emergence”, Bradstock said, in a lecture at the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies.

Religious perspectives had much to add to current debates, having the ability to imbue them with “a depth and moral gravity… that can take us beyond a debate that is stuck in arguing sectional interests”.

That did not make religious views an “alternative” to robust evidence, he said. Rather they brought “fresh concepts” and a way of asking different questions.

For example, in the debates on climate change, a quotation from Psalm 24, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ helped suggest that the planet was something to be stewarded, not exploited.

Religious views also encouraged people to explore questions of virtue and morality, Bradstock said. Issues such as abortion were not value-free and could not be resolved without thinking about their underlying moral and religious implications.

People with religious convictions also had a right to be heard as a matter of justice, if for no other reason than that they were a significant part of the population and provided many of its social services.

Nor did they have to “translate” what they had to say into a form that removed all its specifically religious elements, he said. That would be to “discard the beneficial capacity of what they are trying to contribute”.

People with religious convictions had “the right to speak” rather than having to speak “in the right voice”, he added. For example, the idea that people were “created in the image of God” could not be fully conveyed in an argument about human rights.

Bradstock also suggested that the current definition of a “secular” society was too narrow. He urged a “procedural secularism”, in which religious convictions were not privileged but were acknowledged as representing an important moral basis for certain citizens.

This “noisier and untidy” secularism – “inclusive, not exclusive” – would create a richer set of public debates, he added. “Many of our public and political debates are quite shallow.”

There’s been some good news over the weekend, with the government announcing tougher penalties for people found to be exploiting migrant workers.

There’s been a lot of coverage of this in recent weeks, including stories that workers in Auckland are being paid as little as $4 an hour, or exploited by the firms that bring them in from overseas.

So it’s good to see the government tackling this. A significant part of the story of inequality is that many people work in industries where there are very few protections for them as workers. These moves start to tackle that – as long as they are properly resourced, of course. One of the lessons of Pike River is that it’s hard to protect people and enforce standards if there aren’t enough inspectors to do the work.

One of the many things obscured in last night’s The Vote about children’s issues was the simple fact that incomes aren’t high enough at the lowest end for parents to give their children a decent start in life.

The figure of $30,000 being ‘poverty’ for a family with four children was tossed around as if it wasn’t real poverty, but no-one broke down the figures for what it’s like to be on a minimum income.

A two-parent family, even with just two children, living on one full-time minimum wage salary of $540 a week (2012 figures), has around $460 after tax, and maybe $790 with Working for Families and the accommodation supplement.

Rent can easily be $250, feeding a two-child family well – by meeting nutritional guidelines in the cheapest way possible – costs about $260, running a car is around $85. Power costs can often be $50.

So once bare survival is taken care of, just $145 a week may be left for everything else: $5 a day per person to cover clothing, a phone, replacing or repairing appliances, healthcare costs, and so on.

Since that’s obviously not enough, something has to give. And that’s why children come to school without having had breakfast, or proper clothing; that’s why they live in houses that aren’t properly heated.

This is why people say there are 270,000 children in poverty: they are the children living in families like the one above, families with less than 60% of the income of an average household in New Zealand.

Not only is that – as Russell Wills pointed out – an internationally standard definition, it’s also the amount that focus groups with real New Zealanders have shown to be the minimum amount to have a vaguely decent life.

So yes, anything under that is poverty.

Wellington City Council has just voted to support the Living Wage ‘in principle’, put $250,000 in the budget to research and implement it, and – crucially – has extended it to cover contractors not just in-house staff.

It’s a great moment: not 100% of the way, since they haven’t put aside all the money needed, and there are some more hurdles to clear, but a huge step.

The council voted unanimously to get officers to prepare a report, by November, on the Living Wage and what it would mean – and they could easily have stopped there.

But 10 out of the 15 also voted to support it in principle – even before officers report back – and to put the money aside for it.

The 10 who supported it were: Celia Wade-Brown, Ray Ahipene-Mercer, Stephanie Cook, Paul Eagle, Leonie Gill, Justin Lester, Bryan Pepperell, Helene Ritchie, Iona Pannett, and John Morrison.

Those who didn’t were Ngaire Best, Jo Coughlan, Andy Foster, Simon Marsh, and Ian McKinnon.

It’s worth noting that Morrison supported it, since he’s the principal challenger to Wade-Brown in this year’s mayoral elections, so it bodes well for the Living Wage surviving past October, whoever wins the election.

Of those who opposed it, Ngaire Best is understood not to be running again, although that’s not confirmed.

Paying contractors the Living Wage is a massive step, because it would have been so easy to stop at in-house staff. Shows the principle is getting through.

Also significant that a plan to limit the Living Wage to those with 4000 hours already at WCC was dropped. That would have given other councils a major ‘out’: they could have also taken half-hearted steps. Now the trail is clearly blazed, and one can only hope that others (esp Auckland) will follow suit.

Anyway the bottom line is a big win for equality and fairer pay all round.

I’ve just been sent this image by some good people who have put this sign up in the Waipu area.

Nice and simple … and effective.

Great news: Wellington City councillors have voted unanimously for a report on the Living Wage to be prepared, as follows:

“to inform the annual plan deliberations on a proposed Council commitment to support a Living Wage. The report should advise on the following key points:

·       Whether Wellington city council should support the principle of a Living Wage for Wellington

·       The costs and benefits of Council moving to a living Wage for all directly employed and contracted staff, and possible options for a staged implementation plan

·       The most appropriate roles for Council to play to support an encourage Wellington businesses citywide to become Living Wage employers.”

It seems like a majority of councillors back not just the report but also the bigger step of actually implementing the Living Wage, so fingers crossed…

Today the campaign for a Living Wage – an $18.40 an hour pay rate for hard-working New Zealanders – took another big step forward with an amazing presentation to the Wellington City Council.

A huge delegation, one of the biggest the council has seen in a long time, was led by St Andrews on the Terrace minister Margaret Mayman, who urged the council to become New Zealand’s first Living Wage council.

“We love living in this beautiful and vibrant city, and we want everybody to be able to participate fully in everything that Wellington to offer its citizens,” she said.

Many council staff – “your people” – earned little more than the minimum wage, Mayman said.

To tackle that, the council was urged to: take the lead in making Wellington a Living Wage city; work with the Living Wage movement to provide an implementation plan to ensure all staff, whether directly employed or by contractors, get the Living Wage; and support local businesses to become Living Wage employers.

Councillors will vote this afternoon on whether to accept the above ideas.

Phil Jones from Thames Publications added his support. “I believe that if we don’t pay our society the wages they need to live, we are in strife,” he said. Thanks to having better paid and trained staff, his firm had low turnover, and more money circulating in society was good for business in general.

Maliki Rahman, a WCC contract cleaner on $13.85 an hour, said: “It’s a struggle to keep up with living costs, to provide healthy food, decent clothes, and coming into winder, the bills are going up.” To give its staff “a better and decent life”, he urged the council to adopt the Living Wage.

Finally, Justine McDonald, the principal of Kelburn Normal School, said teachers were constantly seeing children affected by poverty, and it stopped the school from providing “a starting platform for all children”. Children were coming to school hungry or not properly clotherd because their parents didn’t earn enough to make ends meet.

The school helped cover some costs, but parents “don’t like having the hand-outs” and would rather earn the money themselves, she said.

In conclusion, Mayman referred to remarks by John Key that Wellington was “a dying city”, and said, “Not only is Wellington a living city, but I think we can look forward to Wellington soon being a Living Wage city.”

For well over a year now, I’ve been asking the Department of Corrections to give me its two full business cases for building the new public private partnership (PPP) prison at Wiri in South Auckland. And for well over a year, it’s been refusing. So the question is, why’s it holding things back?

The reason I want to see the business cases it that they set out the key numbers around the prison. In particular, they compare the cost of building the prison under a PPP (in which a private company designs, finances, builds and operates the prison for around 30 years) as against the normal way.

What often happens with PPPs is that they get delivered to the price that the government agreed … but only after the private company concerned has managed to get the price lifted during or before negotiations.

PPPs are also more expensive because it costs private companies more money to borrow than it does the government, so they have to make that up with “efficiencies” elsewhere – which can be genuine or they can involve cutting corners.

So I want to know how much Corrections thought the prisons would cost at the outset. Corrections will give me the business cases – but only with all the numbers blacked out!

I’ve complained to the Ombudsman, but in the meantime, it’s interesting to ponder what might be in those blacked-out sections.

My suspicion is that they will, as above, put the numbers on just how much more expensive the PPP will be upfront – and that the department’s initial estimate of how much the prison will cost will prove to be much lower than its final cost.

The department says the figures are commercially confidential, but that makes little sense. In these business cases, it is just producing an artificial, simulation-based model of how much something would cost. No real company has been anywhere near these figures, or put in a quote, or anything like that. So there’s no commercial confidentiality to protect.

People sometimes say that this kind of deal increases transparency for the taxpayer. Well, not so much.

The idea that most of the world’s failings are down to irresponsible poor people is a familiar one, but rarely has it been dealt with better than here.

On a Stuff story about people failing to recycle, a commenter has somehow managed to wedge in their own angry views about feckless poor people, to wit: “Yep, its all the poor and lazy people, who don’t know how to recycle. These people shoud be heavily finned for putting rubbish in the bags or the bins.”

To which the response was, by another commenter: “Man, I’m poor and often lazy but I would LOVE to be heavily finned. I would get SO MUCH swimming done.”

Genius, no?

New Zealand companies are failing to capitalise on the country’s reputation for being open and transparent, even though it’s a genuine competitive advantage – unlike our ‘100% Pure’ brand.

That was the verdict of Suzanne Snively, the executive chair of Transparency International, speaking at a panel session organised by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies and the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand.

Snively was speaking ahead of the May 8 launch of the findings of the Integrity Plus assessment, an in-depth examination of just how open, transparent and free of corruption New Zealand really is.

Citing New Zealand’s international reputation for having little corruption, she said: “There are a lot of competitive advantages we trade on, including 100% Pure. This one is true.”

Snively said there were seven key economic advantages of being seen as ethical and corruption-free: a good reputation, a low cost of doing business, a low cost of capital, easier access to overseas markets, the higher return on capital achieved by ethical businesses, the greater appeal to staff of working somewhere ethical, and greater customer satisfaction.

But while it was “amazingly easy” to work with public organisations in this area, it was “very challenging to build some sort of partnerships with the private sector – and yet if anybody has anything to gain from this, it’s the private sector.”

Noting that New Zealand’s economy had once relied on money “coming to us” from Britain, she added: “We have been eating our tail for the last 40 years … The reality is that it doesn’t come to us anymore, so things like being good at compliance and managing costs are not enough. We have to think about making our assets work better for us and here we have a real asset.”

The public sector had become “lean and mean so that the private sector can pick up the slack”, she said, adding: “Well, they damn well better start picking up the slack!”

Snively also warned that New Zealand was increasingly trading with more corrupt countries such as China: “New Zealand’s trading markets are changing from the less corrupt countries in Europe and North America to more corrupt ones.”

China coveted New Zealand’s marine zone, the seventh largest in the world, Snively added. “We want to do business with them, but they need to do it on our terms, and this [an integrity assessment] helps us define those terms.”

Liz Brown, the Integrity Plus project manager, agreed that there was “a real danger of importing corruption”.

However, the project team had had to go beyond standard assessments of corruption and devise its own, more stringent assessment for New Zealand, because there is a common perception that “we quite simply aren’t corrupt enough” to register on the standard versions, she said.

The project’s aim had been to “dig a bit deeper” and examine New Zealand’s institutions, laws and processes to see if the examples of corruption played out in the media were “the tip of the iceberg” or not, and to investigate the different forms that corruption may take in New Zealand.

Asked about the recent furore over the appointment of GCSB head Ian Fletcher, Brown said: “We’re revising our reports almost daily … There has been a good deal of discussion between us on precisely the appointments process.”

Helen Sutch, the chair of the project’s research advisory board, noted that good governance had both economic and social virtues. It supported social cohesion in an increasingly diverse society and fostered public trust in institutions – and trust “clearly” had an economic benefit.

For example, if people trusted the IRD, then compliance in filing tax returns was high, returns were filled in accurately and fewer inspectors were needed. The result was greater revenue, fewer administrative costs and lower transaction costs for IRD and taxpayer.

“Good governance fosters a high trust society and economy,” Sutch said.

Asked whether there had been an erosion of trust in institutions in recent years, Sutch said: “Those issues are going to come up very strongly [in the Integrity Plus report].” Tax statistics showed that normal levels of compliance might already have been eroded, she added.

Summing up New Zealand’s international reputation as being a low-corruption country, she said: “It isn’t that we’re the best. We’re the least worst.”

• For more details on the May 8 launch, see: http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/events/Upcoming%20events/index.html

New Zealand has too many Cabinet ministers and too many government agencies – but more departmental mergers is not the solution, Labour MP Trevor Mallard said at a joint lecture for the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies and the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand.

Mallard, a former Minister of Education and State Services Minister, said New Zealand’s government was too fragmented, with “Crown entities for Africa” and agencies like Work and Income New Zealand that were “a body with no brain”.

Too many ministerial positions had also been created to tie caucus into Cabinet, he said, and most of the “talent” in a Cabinet was in the top half. Under Helen Clark, the Cabinet committee of the 10 most senior ministers “worked extremely well … Those ministers were much more likely to have read – which is a good start – and understand – which is even better – the papers they were being asked to consider.”

The “ideal” Cabinet, Mallard said, would have 10 members and 5-6 positions outside Cabinet “with training wheels attached”. However, he admitted this was not a popular view among those ranked 8-20 in his own party.

Mallard also rejected the idea of wholesale government restructuring, saying its effect on morale and productivity made it unattractive. “I don’t have a major appetite for shape-of-government reform. The whole system is not coherent or logical, but the idea of spending years reviewing and changing is not appealing at all … I’m much less a fan of structural change than I was 15 years ago.”

Asked about alternatives, he said: “A lot of it goes to the ability of agencies to work together and have multi-agency budgeting.” Government also needed to relax the “very tight” chief executive responsibilities that inhibited change.

For example, when choosing a new computer system for WINZ some years ago, its senior management had not acknowledged that it needed to work better with IRD systems. They had instead taken a decision in WINZ’s interests only, Mallard said, adding: “We have got to work harder at avoiding that sort of approach.”

On ministerial appointments, Mallard took a softer line on the GCSB scandal than some of his Labour colleagues, saying the prime minister “had the right to make the appointment” of Ian Fletcher, and could have refused to answer questions about the GCSB.

However, he also noted that under Helen Clark, Cabinet “never” declined a State Services Commissioner’s recommendation.

The process then for appointments was that a deputy State Services Commissioner would talk to the relevant minster, “generally with me in the room”, about the skills and attributes that the minister wanted in his or her chief executive. But, Mallard said, “My rule was that ministers were never to mention names of persons who could do the job.”

Asked about Novopay, Mallard said it was “my fault”, since, as education minister, he had felt that the previous arrangement with Datacom left the ministry “captured by an outside organisation who could basically charge us what they wanted”.

An in-house solution was then investigated, before the decision was made to go to a new outside system, Novopay, “because allegedly there were $10 million worth of savings over a number of years and people thought that was important at the time … It was the victim in our time of short-term-itis.”

However, he added, Labour’s planned roll-out had been more careful. “There was to be a pilot, it was to be introduced regionally, and the old system would run in parallel.” National Party ministers, he said, “didn’t bother reading earlier decisions” before they approved the eventual Novopay roll-out.

In general, Mallard said the public service should rely less on contractors “who are here one day and gone tomorrow”. It should also create paths for public sector workers “to work independently of their teams across the public sector”. The public service needed to identify the next generation of leaders and allow them to “shift between agencies as they move along their career on a temporary basis”.

A couple of recent reports have shown that even New Zealand’s pensioners – who do relatively well financially, compared to other age groups – are increasingly threatened by the spectre of inequality.

The first, by Kay Saville-Smith of the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment, argues that many young people will not be able to afford to buy a house in their working lifetimes.

As a result, they will face “privation” in retirement as they have to pay market rentals on a state pension, which while adequate – it works out at around $18,000 for a single person – is hardly generous.

Of course, this doesn’t affect those better off workers – the top 10% – who will keep on being able to buy houses.

Another report, for the Commission for Financial Literacy, argues that inequality among pensioners is set to rise. One of its authors, David Preston, told a recent conference: “What you have is a peculiar situation where the two extremes of the retired population are both growing rapidly.”

While people who had been in well paid employment would enter retirement with Kiwisaver nest eggs and their own homes, those who had not – especially beneficiaries – would be moving into retirement “in a poor financial state”.

What all this points to is that even New Zealand’s better achievements, such as the way we keep most pensioners out of poverty through a universal benefit, have relied on invisible support: notably, home ownership.

The fact that most people own their own homes is what has allowed them to have a decent standard of living in retirement. Now that easy access to home ownership has been taken away, that reliance has been exposed.

Once again, inequality in housing is shaping up as a critical factor in how we live in New Zealand – and the case for concerted house building is becoming ever stronger.

Labour MP and former education minister Trevor Mallard has suggested that the school system might be spending too effort on working with the bottom fifth of students at the expense of “the most talented kids”.

Giving a lecture in Wellington on Tuesday this week, Mallard noted efforts to make sure the school system responds better to – and is shaped by the needs of – Maori and Pasifika students.

But, he added: “I’m not certain that working with the bottom fifth, who are disproportionately Maori and Pasifika, is as important as working with the top fifth of Maori and Pasifika to make sure they achieve their potential.

“One of the anxieties I have is that at the end of my time [as education minister], and since, we have had a disproportionate focus on the bottom end, and we are missing out on ensuring some of the most talented kids, Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha, are achieving their potential. We are losing just about as much with them not achieving their potential [as we do at the bottom].”

The Herald has an opinion piece from Auckland Council’s chief economist, Geoff Cooper, about inequality and why education offers the best route to tackling it.

Now, it’s great to see an economist, and one working for an increasingly influential body, talking about income gaps.

But, just like the Treasury, he’s arguing for a very limited – and, I think, flawed – view of what inequality is and how it can be reduced.

He rightly identifies that higher skills are needed to get people into better jobs and help the economy hum along smoothly. In the upcoming book that I’ve edited, Inequality: a New Zealand Crisis, we have two chapters on education and improving skills training.

But Cooper and others tend to stop there. Only things like education, they argue, can reduce inequality while imposing no overall cost on the economy; other measures are too redistributive, too costly, too old-school.

But I think they’re wrong in a number of crucial ways.

First, education doesn’t explain that much about inequality. It’s very often a story of the top 1% pulling away from the rest, and the top 1% aren’t that much better educated than anyone else. In any case, New Zealand has had the western world’s largest increase in inequality, but our ‘degree premium’ – the extra income you get for being educated – is one of the lowest, so that can’t be the explanation.

Second, increasing educational levels does nothing for people in low-skilled jobs who work incredibly hard but don’t earn enough to get by. Cleaners, for instance, will be left to struggle on $14.10 an hour, regardless of investment in skills, so an emphasis on education alone is an argument for leaving those people in desperate circumstances.

Third, and most important, Cooper and others are wrong to think that other pro-equality measures will harm the economy. Ideas like wage-led growth makes the obvious point that if you pay people better, as long as other structures are set up properly, then people work harder – because they feel more valued – and so you generate more income.

There is no good evidence linking higher pay for the general workforce with lower economic growth.

So, arguments like Cooper’s are a good start – but far from enough.

An IGPS/IPANZ Panel Discussion on the Governance of Local Government, 5 April 2013  

People’s ability to shape their own community is under threat from several sources, a panel of experts argued at an event last week co-hosted by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies and the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand.

Wellington City Council’s deputy mayor, Ian McKinnon, admitted that local government is “probably not as efficient or as effective as it could be in all areas”. But, he asked, “what are the trade-offs you make when you go about improving it? You could have greater central control, but the trade-off is you denigrate the word local.”

Victoria University professor of public policy Claudia Scott said policy-makers needed to take a much more “comprehensive” look at how to improve local government rather than passing a series of “piecemeal legislation”.

They also needed to improve collaboration between different levels of government, she said. When central government produced its Better Public Services report, for instance, “nobody [in local government] knew it was coming”. That reflected a “really big issue” about the role of local government, and whether it was a partner to central government or just a delivery vehicle.

It was also “worrying” that central government was not helping local councils be more resilient and capable, and was instead using its lack of capacity as an excuse for “taking over”.

“We can anticipate that happening in other areas – and I don’t want to see that happen,” she said.

Local Government New Zealand’s principal policy advisor, Mike Reid, quoted British academic Geoff Mulgan as saying he had looked at local government in the UK, “and it’s neither”.

In New Zealand, both the genuinely ‘local’ aspect and community autonomy were under threat from amalgamation and central government intervention, Reid said.

“I can’t see much of a future for small councils. I think the dice has been set … Whether we can make it [local government] work within larger councils… The jury is still a bit out. It may work, it may not. But the notion of the community having a say in how the community runs, electing their own mayor and their own councillors, is history to some degree.”

Reid said the “biggest threat” was the “willingness of Cabinet ministers to give themselves the power to overturn local government decisions”. If ministers overrode the decisions of local councillors, it removed local accountability: “We can’t hold those councillors to account anymore.”

UK research showed that people didn’t vote in local elections because they didn’t think local councils had any real power, Reid said. Central intervention just exacerbated that situation, he added, drawing an analogy with Russian dictatorships.

“I’m reminded of Stalin redrawing the boundaries between the Soviet Union and Romania,” he said. “I’m told he used a very thick felt tip pen … and [after the redrawing] the Romanians discovered they didn’t have any oil wells anymore.”

Rounding out the speakers, British academic Michael Macaulay, a new addition to Victoria University’s School of Government, warned that while successive UK governments had claimed to praise local government, “they all actually seem to want to bury it.”

The UK’s 2011 Localism Act, for instance, has a “noble principle” of returning local decisions to local people – but was accompanied by 30 per cent cuts to local council budgets. “I suspect there could be a degree of double standard here,” he said.

A concern for local democracy was also evidenced by the extension of academy schools – similar to charter schools – in which private funders could take schools out of any form of local council control.

British ministers were now perceived as forcing councils to accept particular sponsors, he said.

In the question and answer session, Macaulay added that rethinking local government was not just about “the relationship between central government and local government. It’s about the relationship between all forms of government and people. What they can expect in terms of participation, what rights they have.  Arrangements must be focused on local people first, and then [we should] worry about how to spread that out.”

Elsewhere, it was pointed out that New Zealand has around 1,000 councillors and mayors – compared to 12,000 in Norway, a similar-sized country.

Ian McKinnon noted that ministers were advancing their reform agenda by “blanketing the whole parcel of territorial authorities with the problems of some”.

Finally, Mike Reid said that the Department of Internal Affairs has “on its wish list” something to address the fact that while most legislation has a regulatory impact statement, if a proposed law affects local government, “there is no estimate of the costs that creates for local ratepayers. So it’s a free good [for ministers] because the cost is borne not by them”.

A government that relies too much on anecdote, doesn’t have enough specialists in top positions and isn’t properly held to account.

That was the disagnosis from Len Cook, who used to be head of statistics for both the New Zealand and the UK governments, and who gave a very entertaining – but also worrying – talk last night on how our government runs.

Speaking at an IPANZ and IGPS seminar, his argument was that several problems are seriously hampering New Zealand’s ability to foot it in the twenty-first century.

The first is that our government isn’t currently dealing with a world that is becoming much, much more complex – we’re still trying to make decisions on the back of an anecdotal, ‘she’ll be right’ approach that might have been fine 50 years ago, but isn’t now.

“This country has made so much policy on the basis of anecdote and a lack of evidence. It isn’t clear that our future can be so dependent on serendipity and received wisdom.”

In particular, we don’t go back and look at what went wrong, Cook argued. “The absence of a commitment to evaluate [the success or failure of policies] in New Zealand government is extraordinary.”

New Zealanders were “amazed” by how much evaluation the British government did, he said. “We do very, very little … We need a proper review of things that go wrong as part of our culture.”

New Zealand was also behind in terms of how much it spent finding out about how its ‘non-traditional’ trading partners – such as China – functioned. While New Zealanders were very comfortable in, say, the UK, they didn’t put much effort into understanding countries less similar to theirs.

The second big problem is in the way government departments are run. Senior public sector workers now have to do so much managerial work, Cook said, that the amount of time spent on making sure that good-quality advice is being provided is correspondingly reduced.

The government also recruits too many “generalists” to run departments, so that “you have to go down three levels [in a department] before you find someone who knows what they are talking about”.

Senior public leaders were also failing to develop the next generation of leaders in the way they had done in the days of greater cooperation and the “college of cardinals” approach among chief executives.

The third big problem is that the government isn’t properly accountable for its actions, Cook said.

Ministers often haven’t been required to actually answer questions – except more recently under Lockwood Smith as Speaker – and select committees don’t have the “grunt” and the power they do in the UK.

In short, for the last century, Cook said, New Zealand had traded in well-known markets with long-established partners, and had been able to get by on ideology and beliefs – but no longer. “We have to develop a more enquiring capacity to analyse what’s happening.”

After his speech, people in the audience backed up some of these concerns, and expressed others. One public sector worker, in particular, talked about how the quality of policy advice was being compromised by “the desire to please ministers”, and cuts to budgets that took place “to the detriment of good advice”.

Because policy analysis was increasingly being “retrofitted” around what the minister had decided, often in the absence of good evidence, ministries now produced “policy-based evidence” rather than “evidence-based policy”, the public sector worker said.

The wit and wisdom of Len Cook

On cross-party liaisons being forbidden: “In recent years, it’s become important to sleep in sheets of the same colour, whether you’re at home or not.”

On ministerial competence: “We have a great political system, but it’s like giving the keys to the car to teenagers on Saturday night – and they do wheelies with it.”

On government being so fragmented by the 1980s and 90s structural changes: ministerial responsibilities are “a random scattering, a bit like pick-up sticks”.

On Sky City: “20 years ago, I fired a mid-ranking public official who spoke to one of the parties [in a tender] and gave them information he shouldn’t have. Did I make the wrong decision?”

On inquiries: New Zealanders look for “a safe pair of hands” to run a review, whereas the British want to be “done over by the best bastard”.

In one of life’s great ironies, it’s just come to my attention that Talent 2, the company behind Novopay, was the sponsor last year of an award for ‘public sector communications’.

The award itself was well-deserved: it went to the Department of Corrections for making prisons smokefree and the way they got staff and inmates on board. But how ironic that Novopay, which has barely fronted to the media – quite on top of producing a disastrous bit of software – should be sponsoring the award.

As the Institute of Public Administration awards website puts it: “The Talent 2 Award for Excellence in Public Sector Communications recognises the design and delivery of innovative public sector communications strategies that have significantly increased public awareness of a government objective. This may be a public information campaign, a public engagement strategy, or the communication of a specific initiative, change of policy, legislation or regulation, and may be in a variety of mediums.”

Well, Talent 2 have certainly increased public awareness of the importance of getting teachers paid in time, if not in the way the award envisaged.

In one of last year’s editions of the journal Public Sector, Talent 2’s general manager, Peter de Boer, says, “We look forward to some equally exciting nominations next year.”

Maybe they could nominate themselves?

A rather disturbing report on Wellington’s health services shows that central government policies have led directly to people already in poor health getting even lower priority.

‘From Great to Good’, by professor Don Matheson, explains how – under pressure from central government targets – the Capital Coast District Health Board (C&CDHB) has increased spending on hospitals relative to GP and other basic health services.

The report, based on official information act requests, says that the health system already gives less to those at the bottom (despite what the public might think), even though they need more support.

Treasury figures show that an upper middle class household receives on average almost $11,000 of health services a year, whereas the households with the lowest income receive on average $6,000 of health services – despite their greater need.

The latest New Zealand Health Survey shows that one million New Zealanders had “unmet need” for primary health care in the last year – and this is worst among Maori, Pacific and low income groups.

Our health system is less equitable – that is, it does little to help those most in need – compared with those of Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Only the USA has a more unfair health system.

The sad thing is that before 2008, Wellington’s health board was making progress in narrowing these health inequalities and helping those on the bottom. But since then, the report finds, the board has become focussed on meeting centrally imposed hospital targets.

While getting more operations done is important, it shouldn’t have come at the expense of funding frontline GP, maternity and other services – which have been cut by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and which most affect low-income households.

As the report puts it: “C&CDHB’s direction … decreased in scope and became increasingly focused on the Minister of Health’s targets.

“This narrowing of focus crowded out the previous focus the Board had on equity for the population that it serves. While previously it had led performance in addressing equity, it is now actively disinvesting in the providers that helped secure that leadership position … while at the same time push[ing] costs onto patients who could least afford to pay.”

Another day, another study showing how an unfair tax system is helping widen the gap between the rich and the rest. It’s a US study this time, which finds that the biggest reason for widening wealth gaps 1991-2006 is the capital gains and dividends going to the top 1%.

These kind of windfalls are taxed at only 20% or so, whereas Americans who get their income from salaries can be paying 39%. It’s strikingly unfair, and has been for a long time.

Of course in New Zealand, as a rule you don’t pay tax on capital gains at all, so our system is even more extraordinarily unfair. It also means that whatever figures we have for wealth gains by the top 1% will be massively understated, since we don’t collect data on their capital gains.

The study’s also interesting as it’s another rebuttal to the idea that widening income gaps are caused by things beyond our control: impersonal, global forces like free trade, or the way that technology makes some jobs redundant and others more valuable, or the increasing premium for education.

This study builds on a lot of recent work showing that that’s not so. Take the education story – the idea that inequality widens because people with degrees earn more. It’s a seductive theory, because fixing it sounds so easy, relatively speaking. Just get more people to get degrees: job done.

But if in fact the main problem – as it clearly is in the US, at least – is the profits going to the top 1%, education is not the problem (or the answer). The top 1% are not better educated than the rest of the top third, say, of your average country. This is not about ‘returns to education’, as people like to call it.

Instead, it’s about really difficult but political – not impersonal – choices, about how the tax system treats different classes of people differently. And that’s what needs to be solved.

The Treasury has just released a paper outlining its thoughts on inequality (as part of its wider work on Living Standards). Now, it’s great to see the Treasury acknowledging that it matters how income is distributed – not just how much of it we generate. Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite faced up to the full reality of the problem, which leaves its account very weak, and in places incoherent.

The Treasury says its starting point is “the ability to participate in society”, which is a fabulous place to begin. The whole point about inequality is not just that people need to be lifted above an absolute level; inequality means they are left out of things that other people have, unable to join in with the rest of society, in way that is determined by how much other people have.

Unfortunately, the Treasury doesn’t seem to realise what that really means, because its proposals are then focussed almost entirely around improving social mobility. Now, social mobility is important: people need opportunities to earn more, or to live better than their parents did. But it isn’t enough by itself.

Even if people can move freely up and down the ladder, there is obviously still a ‘down’ – and being in that ‘down’ spot is miserable. To put it differently: even with mobility, there will always be people who are very poor and don’t earn enough to participate in society – even if they are doing useful work. Tamara Baddeley, a woman whose story will be told in the Inequality book, cares for the elderly, is paid $14.81 an hour – and can’t afford to go to the movies. To talk about ‘opportunity’ and mobility’ is meaningless here.

What is needed is direct action to tackle inequality now: action to raise her salary, so that she can participate fully. The Treasury’s view, which seems to be that it doesn’t matter if people are desperately and unfairly poor, as long as it’s not for long, is woefully inadequate – not least because, by its own measure, people need more income – right here, right now, whatever they are doing – if they are going to be able to participate in society (like being able to go to the movies).

In addition, the Treasury seems to have missed the obvious point that if you want to increase social mobility and offer equal opportunities to all, you need greater equality of incomes. To state the obvious, if some people have far more wealth than others, their children will get a much better start in life. In addition, some whole communities become cut off from opportunity because, when poverty is concentrated, there are few jobs going, their communities aren’t adequately invested in, and they become characterised by hopelessness and despair.

The international evidence is that, across countries, more equal societies have better mobility (far more people make it out of poverty in Denmark than they do in the US), and that, across time, as inequality increases, mobility decreases. The US shows this: as gaps have widened, people’s ability to escape poverty has fallen.  Again, the Treasury’s paper fails to take into account this basic point.

Another problem with the paper is that it gives an extremely biased account of why inequality has risen in New Zealand, discussing technological change and different household patterns, but not mentioning little things like lower taxes on the very wealthy and reduced benefits for the poorest. Nor does it mention the decline in union membership, which some overseas research suggests is responsible for up to one-third of rising inequality. The failure to even mention this factor is just staggering.

Still, it’s good to see the Treasury engaging with the issue. As with The Economist’s (similarly partial) special feature on inequality last year, the fact that the issue can’t be ignored now is a huge positive in itself.

Vicious reviews of amateur singers, ambushing Robert Muldoon and interviewing gnome collectors … Wellington magazines have done all this, and more, over the years.   

“This magazine … is made to sell.” Such was the philosophy of the flamboyant Charles Nalder Baeyertz, editor of the literary, musical and cultural magazine the Triad, which he ran from a villa in Mt Victoria after moving north from Dunedin in 1909. And sell it did, thanks in part to Baeyertz’s notorious frankness as a critic. He once described a sermon as “adding nothing new to our ignorance of God”, while one set of poems submitted to the magazine was returned with the note, “Publish it? No! Poison yourself first; you’ll be glad of it after.”

Despite expanding into the Australian market in 1915, the Triad eventually collapsed in the late 1920s under the weight of misdemeanours by drunken writers, the difficulty of trying to appeal to audiences on both sides of the Tasman, and lawsuits from offended tenors. (The magazine managed to survive one lawsuit after it described a singer as having a voice like “a pig’s whistle”, but lost heavily when it compared another to “a trussed turkey”.)

Read the full article here: FishHead – Wellington magazines history – July 2012

Thousands of Wellingtonians use Meetup.com to make new friends, explore hobbies, and even build new communities. So what’s the deal with the site – and is it for you?    

When Scott Heiferman built a website to help his New York neighbours come together in the wake of 9/11, he expected a number of things to come from it. But not, one imagines, a zombie flash mob. Still, that’s what he got, thanks to the enthusiastic embrace of his site Meetup.com by the thousands of Wellingtonians who use it on a weekly basis.

Heiferman had been a tech entrepreneur with a string of successful businesses behind him – including the online ad agency itraffic – when those planes crashed into the twin towers. In the aftermath of the disaster, he was struck by the way people connected with each other. “For a little bit there, New York became a pretty friendly place,” he told a conference several years ago. “I talked to more neighbours in the days after 9/11 than I had in recent years of living in New York, having moved to New York from Iowa, a few years earlier.” The result is a global phenomenon that has drawn in over 11 million people in 45,000 cities.

Read the full article here: FishHead – Meetup.com – January 2013

What would marriage ceremonies look like if men had their way?   

Most weddings, when it comes down to it, are pretty much the same. The bride wears white, or maybe cream. The groom wears a suit, uncomfortably, and gives the impression that it’s the first time in his life he’s met this novel form of attire. The groomsmen follow suit (pun intended).

The ceremony itself features readings of either the passage from Corinthians (“Love is patient, love is kind”), The Prophet (“Let love be a moving sea, etc, etc”), Shakespeare (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments”), or, in some cases, all three. Then you get the same speeches, the same meal, and more or less the same music afterwards.

This sameness arises, I feel, from two factors: the need to satisfy a wide range of views, among parents, friends and wedding organisers, as to what makes for a good marriage; and the way in which the ideal of the perfect marriage, and all its traditional trappings, is drummed into every young girl from an early age.

Read the rest of the article here: FishHead – Weddings – September 2012

Wellingtonians love their weekend food markets – but do they realise that much of their fruit and veg comes not from the stallholders’ own soil but from a warehouse in Johnsonville?   

It’s a clear, sharp-edged morning at Harbourside Market, where, in the shadow of Te Papa, the fruit and veg stallholders are doing a brisk trade in cauliflowers, capsicums, oranges and broccoli. This is, supposedly, one of the more intimate ways to buy food: outdoors, away from the sterile air of the supermarket, and with a vendor who has some kind of personal connection with their wares.

And yet, at Harbourside, as little as one piece of fruit in five will have been grown by the person selling it; the rest is bought midweek from the wholesalers in Grenada North – and that food can come from anywhere in the country, or indeed the world. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. But it does raise the question of just what we think we’re getting when we reach our hand into that basket of broccoli.

Read the rest of the article here: FishHead – The truth about food markets – Nov 2012

Walking unseen among us are thousands of homeless, mentally ill and otherwise vulnerable people – many of whom will never get the help they need.  

On a cold, flat winter’s day, just before dawn, the doors of the night shelter on Taranaki Street spring open, propelling their guests out onto the streets. And so, at 7.30am each morning, begins what these homeless people know as ‘the circuit’.

Their first stop is the soup kitchen on upper Tory Street, where bread and soup are served from 8am. Then the day passes in visiting the Central Library, especially the second floor, which stocks the newspapers; sleeping and hanging out at Courtenay’s drop-in centre, just down from the Majestic Centre on Willis Street; or simply wandering the streets, begging and otherwise killing time. At 4.45pm the soup kitchen starts serving dinner; then it’s back to the night shelter before it closes at 9pm.

And the next day it begins again.

When you work, as I do, at the soup kitchen, this world comes into sharper focus, and it’s easy to think then that you know something about homelessness. But when you probe more deeply, you realise that, paradoxically, those following the circuit are far more visible than the thousands of ‘hidden’ homeless and other vulnerable souls: the people who are not at the night shelter, nor sleeping rough, nor in the care of the state, but who have nowhere permanent they could call a home and receive little help with their many problems. These are the people living in boarding houses – cramped, dirty, often dangerous places that are almost entirely unregulated and charge up to $270 a week for board and food; the people living in terrible overcrowding, sometimes two or three families to a house; the people sleeping in cars, garages and abandoned flats; the people suffering mental health problems supposedly too minor to attract state aid; the people couch-surfing or staying with friends. Behind closed doors, in short, there lies a world of problems.

This sort of homelessness is not the same as the street kind, but it does overlap. Many people on the streets have come from these living situations; many return there. People cycle from couch-surfing to the night shelter to squatting, and back. Both worlds are precarious and unstable, full of lives that have little leeway to cope with sudden shocks.

Not everything, of course, in these two worlds is grim. Many of these people are eventually helped to get the housing and support they need, or they help themselves. Nor are the authorities totally blind to the problem; in fact, Wellington City Council has recently renewed its drive to reduce homelessness and its associated ills. But the problems are many: affordable housing is chronically undersupplied, financial woes are forcing ever more families into desperate measures – and, just when people need more support, some government agencies are withdrawing the hand held out in aid.

***

Though we have not traditionally had reliable figures on vulnerability, statistics to be published later this year will show that in the 2006 census, several thousand people in Wellington were ‘severely housing deprived’, a term that covers both the worlds outlined above. (Given the current economic climate, that figure will only have risen.) Within that, the consensus is that there are 30 or so rough sleepers – people actually living on the streets – at any one time; more broadly, Wellington City Council says the city has 200 ‘homeless’ people, on a narrow definition, up from 160 a year ago.

For a few thousands of people, there are dozens of reasons why they end up where they are – and it is precisely the combination of things, the piling on of many burdens, that does the damage, as can be seen at the extreme end of homelessness. On the day I went to talk to Mike Leon, who has run the night shelter for the last 17 years, he showed me a list detailing the 22 new visitors to the shelter in April. Some had felt unsafe in their previous home; others had been kicked out by family and partners; yet others had been released from jail with nowhere to go. Although a lack of money always hovers in the background, Leon said relationship breakdowns were the greatest problem. People who have few reliable friends and no family ties – which in our atomised world is increasingly common – don’t always have somewhere else to stay when they are kicked out. Even then, one problem is often manageable. But when there are multiple problems, as when someone’s relationship breaks down and alcoholism consumes all their money, or when they have diabetes and a criminal record that makes getting work nigh-on impossible – and then those problems are exacerbated by a sudden shock, like being evicted – it’s then that people fall into the world of homelessness.

One particular problem, of course, is the lack of affordable housing in Wellington: many people are simply unable to afford a place to stay. Beneficiaries who can’t get into a council or Housing New Zealand home have no chance of paying market rents, not when a bottom-end Aro Valley flat can easily cost $150 a week, and the dole plus the accommodation supplement is $300 a week at best. (Internationally, it’s accepted that no one should pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent.) There’s more on offer in, say, Wainuiomata, but that’s little comfort if you can’t afford the bus fares every day. Even a flat in Northland for $100 a week can be unaffordable when transport costs are included. A couple on one minimum wage salary, meanwhile, would be paying half their weekly $500 income on rent if they wanted to live in a bottom-end Aro house.

It doesn’t help that beneficiaries in particular don’t always get the support they deserve. On another day I visited Graham Howell, who runs a benefits advocacy service in Newtown, and he showed me an internal Ministry of Social Development document revealing that only half of all beneficiaries eligible for emergency grants actually get them, because Work and Income (WINZ) staff don’t always inform people of their entitlements.

Duncan, a 30-year-old homeless man who had been in Wellington for two weeks when I met him, told a similar story. He was trying to get on a Salvation Army course to combat his alcoholism, which had lost him his job as a DOC ranger in the South Island, but he had no money left for accommodation or food. The first time he went to see WINZ, the case manager said they could do little to help him while he waited for his benefit stand-down period to end. But when he went back a second time, hungry and desperate, a friendlier case manager helped him get an emergency grant and a food voucher – both of which he’d been entitled to all along.

Of course, in the current climate, WINZ workers have troubles of their own. One Wellington region staff member, speaking anonymously, described to me a culture of staff cuts, constant restructuring and severe stress. Six staff members had left in the last 18 months and not been replaced, and his colleagues often couldn’t take time off because no one could cover for them. Meanwhile, staff were abused on a daily basis because beneficiaries couldn’t get appointments. This, he said, was serious trouble on the frontline.

None of which is to say that the vulnerable people themselves are blameless in all this. Many of their wounds are self-inflicted, to an extent. But Philippa Meachen, who runs the soup kitchen, reflected a widely held view when she told me that the more she sees of homeless people, the more she respects them. Many have had violent or abusive childhoods, or mental health problems, or other things that make them not very employable; yet they keep trying to find work. We may think of ourselves as very different from these vulnerable people, but were it not for a few things, as one soup kitchen volunteer put it, we could easily be on the other side of that kitchen counter.

There are, of course, many different kinds of homelessness. The 22 men on Mike Leon’s list might have all (bar one) been on a benefit or had no income at all, but nothing much else united them. They were all ages, from teens to 57-year-olds. They had come from all over the country, including Auckland, Palmerston North and Foxton, and from different living arrangements – rough sleeping, often, but also boarding houses and living with friends. Many were only temporarily homeless. Though 20 new people turn up at the shelter each month, some do eventually move into permanent housing; others just drop off the radar. The Downtown Community Ministry (DCM) deals with 180-plus people each quarter who are homeless, but not all of them remain so. A very few people sleep rough for decades, but most shuffle in and out of different homes, never quite finding a place to rest.

***

It would be nice to think that, in an economic slump, central government was doing more to help people struggling to cope. After all, the need is there. The number of food parcels being handed out nationwide has doubled since 2008. The Wellington City Mission alone helped 4000 people last year, many of them from working families no longer able to make ends meet. Yet a couple of crucial government agencies are, if anything, cutting back on the services they provide.

The first is Housing New Zealand, which, even though it is the agency that owns and runs most of the country’s social housing, no longer believes it has a social mandate, and has handed social housing policy over to the Department of Building and Housing. Staff who visit tenants in their homes have been instructed to stop helping them with the wider social problems they encounter, and to refer them instead to other government departments. When I questioned them about the move last year, Housing New Zealand was unable to say how the referral system would work or how it would be funded. (The agency refused an interview request for this article.) Housing New Zealand also rejected requests to send a staff member to Wellington City Council’s homelessness forum in June. Elsewhere, the agency has tightened its eligibility criteria: women suffering from domestic violence, for example, are no longer automatically accepted for emergency housing. A shift from staffed offices to call centres has seen people seeking help put on hold for 45 minutes or an hour. And the agency no longer puts lower priority applicants on its waiting list, thus removing thousands of people from the statistics.

The other agency is the Capital Coast District Health Board (DHB), which runs the area’s mental health services. The board has been in the news recently for cutting $270,000 from the budget of the Newtown Union, an organisation that provides healthcare – and in particular outreach clinics for people who wouldn’t normally visit a doctor – to some of Wellington’s poorest families. The board has also cut funding to groups working with refugees and other services as it struggles with a budget deficit caused by the new Wellington hospital and health funding not keeping up with inflation.

But in addition to these well-publicised cuts, the DHB has also slashed mental health budgets and is planning further changes that many fear will spell yet more cuts. They currently fund around 190 ‘supported’ beds, which provide supervised housing for people with mental health problems, but are believed to want to reduce that to 100 as they encourage more patients to rent their own homes and call on services only when they need them. (The DHB also refused to be interviewed for this article.) No one working in this field objects to the overall aim, which is part of the long journey away from locking people up in institutions towards independence in their own home. But the health board is, according to NGOs in the sector, refusing to guarantee that all the funding for supported housing will be transferred to the so-called ‘wrap-around’ services under the new model. The suspicion, inevitably, is that the policy change will be used to drive down the cost of the contracted support services, and the savings used to reduce the health board’s deficit.

One mental health NGO, Wellink, has already had its $8 million budget cut by one-third in the last two years. And it’s not as if funding was generous to start with. Wellink’s chief executive, Shaun McNeil, told me that Wellington – and New Zealand – services have always concentrated on the 3 percent of the population with the most severe mental illness: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and so on. Countless people with lower-level disorders receive no treatment. At a conference in June on post-prison reintegration there were heartbreaking stories of NGOs trying to work with ex-inmates who were self-harming and attempting suicide, or intellectually disabled, or – in one awful case – terrorising their own mother so badly that she fled town. Yet none of these obviously disturbed people fitted the mental health criteria, so the health board teams turned them away. (The lack of support for ex-prisoners is a story all of its own. The Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Trust (PART), a group funded to help ex-inmates, has only enough money to devote one day – eight hours – to each person released from prison in Wellington. Another problem: many inmates come out of prison with no photo ID, so they can’t set up a bank account – and no bank account means no benefit, which means no income and, often, a return to crime; and so the cycle resumes.)

Wellington City Council’s forum in June canvassed a range of ideas to help tackle or even eliminate homelessness, many of which are outlined opposite (see box). But there are obstacles even at the highest levels. New Zealand has no national strategy to coordinate action on homelessness, for example. And at the local level, the city council – unlike, say, British local authorities – has no legal duty to house the homeless. That means there’s no coordinated assessment, sifting or categorising of homeless people, and no shared central register, as well as few emergency housing options.

Action can still be taken, of course, and the council is particularly keen to break the daily ‘circuit’. Not only is it dull and monotonous, but it maintains rather than lifts people out of homelessness. The council has offered to fund a review of how the night shelter could offer government services onsite, provide more activities for its guests, and move more people into permanent housing. Of course, the shelter might have done all this already, but for a lack of funds. However, a more holistic public service approach could see the Department of Corrections, for example, funding the shelter to provide support for ex-inmates. Similarly, there are questions over whether the drop-in centres – such as Courtenay’s, and Catacombs on Manners Street – could do more to help people out of homelessness. The Downtown Community Ministry’s Lukes Lane headquarters, meanwhile, could be turned into a central ‘hub’, housing all the services that homeless people need under one roof.

But perhaps the single biggest obstacle to ending homelessness – and to helping the legions of people in severe housing need – is the lack of affordable and alternative housing. There is, of course, some already: the city council has 2350 houses, where rents are set at 70 percent of the market price, while Housing New Zealand provides just under 1900, with rents at 25 percent of an individual’s income. (Another 100 or so houses are in the hands of NGOs such as the Wellington Housing Trust.) Nonetheless, over a thousand people are on housing waiting lists in the Wellington region. Both the council and Housing New Zealand have got rid of a third of their stock since the mid-1980s, according to the Wellington Housing Trust. And even though the capital’s population is expected to grow by 55,000 in the next few decades, neither organisation has any plans to build a meaningful number of houses.

Even if there are affordable flats around, many homeless people – and the agencies that work with them – report covert discrimination: landlords will find ways to avoid giving flats to beneficiaries or homeless people. And in truth, some chronically homeless people are incapable of living alone, and would be a trial to any ordinary landlord. What they need is supported housing, which, as mentioned above, Wellington already provides for people with mental health problems. As DCM’s Stephanie McIntyre is forever pointing out, Wellington has a very narrow range of options. Even a wet house for supervised alcoholics seems to be too difficult.

Still, the measures that came out of the June forum, if taken together, would represent a major advance: a real chance to end, rather than manage, homelessness and its associated ills. Because although Ben Hana became a kind of folk hero – to his own and others’ detriment, many would argue – most street living is not romantic. Recently I met one streetie – to use his term – who steered clear of his fellow rough sleepers. Underneath any kindness, he found, was an ulterior motive: someone who offered cigarettes one day would want twice as many back on the next. Many rough sleepers sleep alone, because it’s not always safe to trust the others. Some streeties will stand over others for protection money, or attack them; steel-capped boots are often the weapon of choice.

But then the general public isn’t above a bit of abuse. Mike Leon told me he knew of several cases of members of the public attacking or abusing homeless people. In one deeply disturbing night-time incident, three young women, drunk and dressed up for a night on the town, urinated and defecated on a comatose homeless man lying on the ground just outside the night shelter.

Yet not all is ill; there is kindness, too, and solidarity. One evening I stopped in at the Catacombs drop-in centre, above the Cosmic Store on Manners Street, which is a high-ceilinged, run-down old set of three rooms with a TV and some other basic facilities. It wasn’t very cheerful, but the people there were getting along peaceably enough. One of them, who even had a house of his own, said he came there largely for the company. So, too, did a man who, I discovered, lives in a garage in the Aro Valley, having previously stayed in an abandoned building and in the service area of a multi-storey car park. He’d once had a flat out in Northland, but couldn’t afford the bus fare into town, he said, and no one came to visit, so, rather than die of loneliness, he gave it up. Now he has a door he can shut behind him, a candle, some matches, a sleeping bag, a duvet, and a roof over his head; and this is happiness of a kind.

That same night, I was walking home along Tory Street by the Harvey Norman store when I sensed as much as saw ahead of me the familiar tread of a soup kitchen guest. He was moving with the slow, halting gait of those who have nowhere particular to go, a tread so very different from the hurried, purposeful step of people with places to be and deadlines to meet. I watched this man – 40ish, heavyset, limping – walk haltingly across Tory Street towards Restaurant 88, where a party of young women stood outside, prattling under the neon lights; then he pushed past them into the darkness of Ebor Street. As it was on my way home, I followed him along that road, round its bend and onto Vivian Street. Then he turned into a car park between two buildings and, looking for a place to rest that night, was lost in shadow.

Those following the circuit are among Wellington’s most vulnerable people, individuals who not only lack a place to live but are also often battling drug and alcohol addictions, poor physical health and low-level – or indeed severe – mental health problems. And yet they are curiously hard to see.

Though their circuit may have all the hallmarks of the middle-class daily commute, with its early rising, routine journeys and nightly return, the two patterns of living are like a pair of rings that fit through each other but never touch. Though we may pass sightlessly by one another, almost close enough to touch, luck – or individual effort, depending on your point of view – keeps the two sets of lives apart. And so the most vulnerable people, except the semi-legendary figures like Ben Hana, have a strange kind of invisibility, hidden in plain sight, living literally and metaphorically in shadow.

Wellington is under increasing pressure to import Auckland’s supercity model. So is amalgamation really the answer to all our problems? 

(First published in FishHead magazine, April 2012) 

The area’s local councils say there’s no need for such sweeping changes: a gradual process of sharing more services will do the trick, they say. But others claim that the councils’ scattered responsibilities and dysfunctional relationships are stopping the region from being well run, and exacerbating our weaknesses compared to Auckland.

Read the article here: FishHead – Case for Wellington supercity – April 2012

This is an article I wrote for the National Business Review, describing how a government regulator who clashed with NZX, the body that runs the stockmarket, was ushered out of his job – despite his complaint’s being upheld.

A PDF copy of the article is available here: NBR – Whistleblower out after NZX clash

The recent fate of UK leaders in New Zealand highlights the difficulty of parachuting in managers from one country to another.

Every country has different rules for its public services – which is why UK civil servants aren’t always a hit overseas.

“An unexpected journey” is the subtitle of the first Hobbit film, New Zealand’s latest contribution to world cinema. It’s also been the fate of Lesley Longstone, the senior British civil servant who was recruited to head up New Zealand’s Ministry of Education, and who is now returning home just over a year into a five-year contract.

Longstone’s abrupt departure follows that of Janet Grossman, who returned to the UK last year after only nine months as the head of Work and Income New Zealand, a frontline benefits and work support agency.

It is often assumed that public managers can move seamlessly from one country to another, especially if they possess a shared cultural heritage and similar political systems. But these two recent departures rather give the lie to that idea – in particular Longstone’s experience, which was marked by a series of disasters.

An attempt to increase class sizes, in order to redirect money into teacher training, resulted in a humiliating backdown after parents and teachers revolted. A move to merge schools in post-earthquake Christchurch was just as badly handled, with parts of it struck down by the courts. To cap it all off, a new private sector system for paying teachers, called Novopay, has been a near-total failure – so much so that it is known in some quarters as Novopain.

Not all of this is Longstone’s fault, of course. New Zealand’s education minister, Hekia Parata, new to the job, is widely regarded as being out of her depth, and was described by the main teachers’ union as “aloof and autocratic”. It is no surprise that the two women had the “strained” relationship that was cited as the main reason for Longstone’s departure.

In the words of Brenda Pilott, the head of New Zealand’s Public Service Association union, Longstone became “the fall guy for an inept minister”.

But several factors counted against the British import. First, despite having held senior positions in Britain, Longstone apparently had no actual experience of running a department or the all-important matter of managing a direct relationship with a minister. In particular, she may not have appreciated how difficult it would be to work for Parata.

Moreover, she had no personal knowledge of the way the New Zealand public sector works – which is, in some key ways, quite different from its British equivalent. Civil servants at all levels in New Zealand have a much closer relationship with their minister than is the case in most countries. Its chief executives, in particular, are more obviously accountable for their performance, through private sector-style contracts and set objectives.

In Longstone’s case, that accountability translated, rightly or wrongly, into having to front up to the media to defend key decisions, after Parata failed to show – something that UK permanent secretaries, for example, would rarely, if ever, have to do.

The reasons for Grossman’s departure are less clear, and may have been partly personal. But it cannot have helped that her minister, Paula Bennett, suddenly appointed a board of outside “experts” to oversee Work and Income’s operations. Internal power struggles between Work and Income and its parent body, the Ministry of Social Development, are also rumoured to have played a part.

For neither Longstone nor Grossman would any of these internal issues have been clear from afar. These issues might, however, have been picked up by people who knew the terrain better – including those who have made the cross-country transition more cautiously.

After all, many of New Zealand’s public sector leaders are originally from the UK. But the successful ones have usually gone out there for the long term and worked their way up through the hierarchy, rather than being parachuted in.

As Pilott put it, the New Zealand government “needs to think long and hard about making overseas appointments, and consider the unique complexities, demands and pressures of the New Zealand context”. Nonetheless, the trend continues: Kevin Lavery, the chief executive of Britain’s Cornwall county council, has just been appointed to run the city council in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington.

Lavery, whose time at Cornwall has been controversial, may of course prove to be a good appointment, especially if he has done his homework. But if not, recent history suggests that he may end up, in the words of the Hobbit’s original subtitle, going “there and back again”.

First published in The Guardian

I’ve just written a piece for an international project aimed at improving governance – the way countries are run – known as the Sustainable Governance Indicators.

The piece is about our rising inequality, and how it threatens some of the things we hold dear: a relatively free and transparent political system, for example.

It’s here: http://news.sgi-network.org/news/details/1301/the-fair-society-and-its-enemies/ and in an abridged version on the OECD’s site:
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/2013/01/the-fair-society-and-its-enemies/

Greg Duncan – an American academic with three decades’ experience researching poverty, welfare dependency and childhood development – will be giving several public lectures in Wellington next month about the long-term damage caused by child poverty.

Duncan, a distinguished professor from the University of California, Irvine, has spent his career examining the long-term impacts of childhood poverty on adult productivity, health and wellbeing.

He has investigated the role of school-entry skills and behaviours on later school achievement and attainment, and the effects of increasing income inequality on children’s life chances.

His public lectures are as follows:

Thursday 15 November: 7.00-9.00pm, Public forum on The Cost and Challenge of Child Poverty followed by questions and discussion, St Johns in the City, Willis St

Wednesday 21 November: Lunchtime lecture at Victoria University, School of Government (12.30pm-1.30pm): Solutions to Child Poverty, Government buildings, lecture theatre 2

Monday 26 November: 5.30-7.30, Evening lecture at the University: The Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty, Rutherford House, lecture theatre 1

This week’s Listener carries an account of three weeks I spent in a cold, dirty boarding house in Wellington, researching the lives of people who have ended up at the bottom of the inequality spectrum, and how they are treated.

It was an eye-opening experience, and I urge everyone to read the piece, out tomorrow (Friday 5 October).

It’s also an experience I will never forget, thanks in part to the rug in the photograph below. It was a present to me by one of the other residents in the boarding house, given in an attempt to make my room look more cheerful. He gave it even though he had very little himself, and at the same time as the boarding house’s landlord was cheerfully maintaining me in a damp, foul-smelling room.

When I left the boarding house, its original owner wouldn’t take it back, despite repeated offers, so I brought it back to my flat and, after giving it a good clean, have installed it as pride of place in our living room.

And so it sits there, serving as a permanent reminder of the generosity of those who have very little, and of the relative comfort in which the rest of us live.

(NB: Attentive readers may have realised that someone living in a boarding house is not ‘homeless’, as the term is normally understood. But I am using the Statistics New Zealand official definition of homelessness, which includes anyone living in temporary accommodation, including boarding houses.)

Our first talk on inequality at Te Papa, on September 13, was a huge success: a great crowd of well over 200 people, and a fantastic array of speakers setting out all the reasons – personal, social, and economic – why we should worry about the widening divide.

Now, we’re gearing up for the second talk, on October 4, this time looking at solutions. The event blurb is below. All welcome!

Forums for the Future: Between Rich and Poor – the Solutions / October 4, 2012  Soundings Theatre, Te Papa, 6.30-8pm

The widening gap between rich and poor is damaging our families, our economy and our shared social fabric, and threatens our traditional values of fairness and egalitarianism. But we can do something about it. At this event, four leading speakers will discuss the way that education, a stronger economy, fairer workplaces, and a more supportive welfare system could help close the gap between rich and poor.

Speakers:

• Cathy Wylie, chief researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research – on education and its role in reducing inequalities

• Ganesh Nana, chief economist, BERL – on tackling inequality and creating a stronger economy

• Prof Nigel Haworth, Auckland University – on people, work and fair rewards

• Associate Prof Mike O’Brien, former head of the Alternative Welfare Working Group – on tax, benefits and redistribution

A recent paper from Britain’s Fiscal Studies journal has some sobering reading for people who think that education alone can solve the problem of how to create more opportunities and greater social mobility for all.

Looking at the UK’s massive rise in the number of people getting degrees, it points out that most of the extra people doing degrees have come from the top fifth of the population; the number of people with degrees in the bottom fifth only rose from 6% to 9%.

Second, the study shows that people with degrees have started to earn far, far more than non-qualified people in recent decades.

“Putting these two together (more education for people from richer backgrounds and an increase in the pay-off to this education) implies increasing within-generation inequality. By reinforcing already existing inequalities from the previous generation, this has hindered social mobility.”

Now, this story isn’t exactly the same in New Zealand, where the earnings gap between qualified and non-qualified people is extremely low by world standards. But the wealthiest have benefited most from the expansion of tertiary education, here as elsewhere.

This doesn’t mean that expansion was a bad idea; in fact, it was probably essential. But, as with many things, it has been badly handled; and – unsurprisingly – this investment in opportunity has failed to help many of the families it was designed to assist. We have instead a self-reinforcing educational elite, what Colin James calls a privileged group or class, bequeathing their educational advantage to their children.

That’s not to say that education is never a vehicle for opportunity and mobility. Of course it sometimes is. But only if you do it right – and just increasing the number of university places is not doing it right.