Canary in the Mine

The RSA has made some stinging criticisms of New Zealand's defence strategies in a major analysis document, released yesterday. "Our current defence policies gamble upon assertions of a benign future. This is inconsistent both with contemporary experience and with historical lessons.""Our forces can no longer be deployed into harm's way unless protected entirely by others. Yet we also distance ourselves from the very allies we need for that purpose’.

A history exam question that infuriated the National Party should have been set differently, Secondary Principals Association president Paul Ferris says. Parliament's education and science select committee is holding an inquiry into allegations of political bias at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority over the Level 1 NCEA history question. Mr Ferris told the committee yesterday he believed there was no space for questions that challenged students' "emerging political, religious or moral formation". At high school age, many students' views on those matters were received from their families. Questions that could be construed as biased, by singling out a group in an unfavourable light, would automatically alienate some students. In setting the question with reference to a political party, the NZQA had failed to apply proper quality standards, he said.

A Bill by United Future's Larry Baldock to define marriage as between a man and a woman, has been drawn from the parliamentary ballot. "It is necessary, in the light of the Civil Union Act, to clarify once and for all that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and not between persons of the same sex," Mr Baldock said. The Bill would also prevent overseas civil unions or gay marriages overseas being recognised in New Zealand.

It's been a busy week for Larry. Earlier, he tabled a 203,000-signature petition in Parliament calling for changes to the Prostitution Reform Act. He slammed the Government for failing to honour its pledge to police child prostitution which has blown out since the Prostitution Act, with one in five Auckland street workers now underage. "The recently released Prostitution Law Review Committee report stated that in Auckland city alone there are 243 businesses of prostitution and 360 street workers, 20 percent of whom are underage, yet there is only one police officer working in this area, and able to offer just 45% of their time," Mr Baldock said.

Progressive MP Matt Robson's proposed law change, which among other things seeks to raise the minimum alcohol purchasing age back to twenty years of age, has also been drawn out of the ballot.

Raising rates of home ownership is one of Labour's key goals in the next two years. It plans more state houses, rent-to-buy schemes, and home deposit assistance. Home ownership rates are dropping, but particularly in the 20 to 30 age bracket, with almost 60,000 fewer people in this age group owning their own home now than 10 years ago. The main planks of the New Zealand Housing strategy are: To build, buy or lease at least 2000 extra state houses, most of them in Auckland; to review the effectiveness of the accommodation supplement and the possibility of paying Government rental assistance directly to landlords; incentives for landlords or developers who create "social housing"; funding for additional emergency housing, particularly for youth; extending financial assistance for low-income people to do essential maintenance on older homes; and providing incentives for developers and architects to work on affordable home projects and make room for them in new sub-divisions.

The carbon tax to be introduced on April 1, 2007, (as part of NZ's Kyoto agreement) is expected bring in $360 million in its first year. The rate announced by the Government yesterday was the expected $15 a tonne of carbon dioxide. Petrol is expected to rise 4c a litre and electricity 1c a kw/hour as a consequence.

Single mothers are two-to-three times more likely to seek help for mental health problems than are married mothers, a Canadian study has found. Compared to married peers, single mothers were more than twice as likely to suffer from anxiety disorders, almost four times as likely to suffer from substance abuse disorder, and more than twice as likely to suffer from multiple mental health disorders. The researchers concluded that single mothers were not over-using mental health services, but their use reflected their higher rates of illness.

Washington state is set to add "family preservation" classes to the high school curriculum, so that students can learn how to form and maintain loving relationships, resolve conflicts, and deal with stress, grief and disappointment. Some other states, including Florida, New Jersey and New York, have either passed or are considering similar legislation.

Meanwhile, only 38 per cent of a sample of 500 Australian parents felt that raising children came naturally to them, while 70 per cent perceived "a lot of community pressure to get parenting right". The survey, by the Australian Childhood Foundation, found that a quarter of parents feared negative judgement for admitting they had problems.

A new study from France has confirmed that abortion increases a woman's risk of delivering future children prematurely. Dr Caroline Moreau of Hopital de Bicetre and colleagues concluded that women with a history of abortion were 1.5 times more likely to give birth prematurely (under 33 weeks gestation) and 1.7 times more likely to have a baby born extremely pre-term (under 28 weeks).

New Zealand is well on the way to becoming a cashless society, according to a survey. Consultancy firm KPMG’s 19th survey of financial institutions out today showed a 10.6 per cent increase in the number of eftpos transactions in 2004 over 2003. This followed a 14.9 per cent increase the previous year. There was also a 25 per cent increase in the number of customers doing banking over the internet.