Monday, July 25, 2005
This is a long extract from an interview with UK Labour MP Frank Field (former Minister for Welfare Reform), but his views on how welfare can be overhauled are an important contribution to the debate. Field is author of a book titled "Neighbours from Hell":
"Over a 200-year period in Britain, we marched towards respectability, reaching an apex by the middle of the last century. What sort of people we were was shaped by two major forces. The first was the evangelical revival, which instilled a deep feeling of personal responsibility into an ever-growing proportion of the population. People felt they were responsible and would be accountable for their actions.
"The other great force was the discipline the labour movement imposed on the membership of its mutually owned welfare state. Bad behaviour did not rule for the very simple reason that it risked the welfare of the entire membership.
"Anti-social behaviour is now one of the major issues which concerns voters. The surprise is not its current dominance but that good behaviour and a reasonable degree of civility continued to be taught in families long after the evangelical revival became a spent force, and that our mutually owned welfare state was ruthlessly confined to the history books.
"Now we are reaping a whirlwind of bad behaviour due to our failure to consider the most basic of all political questions. What kind of character do we want our fellow citizens to have?
"Addressing this question constitutes the new politics of behaviour. But because in the past our national characters were largely formed within families whose values were determined by civil society politicians took a back seat. Voters are now demanding that politicians take control of the steering wheel.
"What can politics do when a growing number of families fail to teach their children a set of common decencies? Those common decencies not only make family life tolerable, but enable children to navigate successfully the outside world. The politics of behaviour is essentially about how we reteach these common decencies.
"One of a number of proposals put forward in Neighbours from Hell is to transform welfare from a rights based entitlement to a contract. Each contract would spell out what society is to provide and the other side of the contract would specify what kind of behaviour society expects in return.
"Given that most children are not now baptised, an obvious place to begin this reform would be to convert the registration of a birth into a public ceremony. At that event the registrar would welcome the child into the wider community, spell out what society wanted to help the family achieve for that child, and in return give a basic outline of the responsibilities of parenthood. In this way welfare would become a teaching force akin to what religion did for Victorian society.
This could just as easily be written of NZ as Australia: "Tax and welfare reform are on the agenda. Given the government’s newly-won control of the Senate, most attention is focused primarily on the next 18 months, but it is important to think longer term about the kind of tax and welfare systems we shall need over the next few decades. This paper analyses how the welfare state might be transformed to give ordinary people more control over key areas of their lives which are currently managed for them by the government. Saunders demonstates that, to a large extent, we no longer need the welfare state. Most people could afford to buy most of the services they need if they weren’t taxed so highly to pay for the services the government wants them to have."
For an earlier release on the same topic, see here.
Labour politicians of today frequently criticise the "failed economic policies of the 90s." But Jim Eagles examines each one and asks, if they were failed policies, why are they still all in place today?
A bipartisan task force on the United Nations has released a report that found the world body is in very bad condition. Task force member Edwin Feulner, said the UN has problems -- starting with the secretary-general and working its way down. "In terms of the management structure," Feulner said, " I think it is fair to say the United Nations is a mess." Another task force member, Rod Hills of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.N. needs a chief operating officer. "It was our judgment that the General Assembly should insist that the new secretary-general have some real management skills," he said. "And that those management skills would be used to appraise the capacity of the people who report to him." [Considering that Helen Clark is said to be angling for the Secretary-General's job, one would have to ask how well she is really qualified for the task.]
Ony 4% of Auckland and Christchurch primary school children can jump, skip and do the other 10 movements they should be able to, a survey has found. The study, for the Ministry of Education, found only 17 of the 423 children tested could complete the 12 "fundamental movement skills". The children were aged under 13 and only two girls had all 12 skills - including jumping catching and kicking - which children should be able to do by age seven. North Shore schools last week told the Sunday Star-Times many pupils could not sit up straight or concentrate because of a lack of motor - or movement - skills. Some blamed early childhood centres for focusing on the three Rs rather than play. Some physical education experts say the push to improve literacy and numeracy has led to children missing out on the "physical literacy" important for well-rounded development. Lifestyle changes are also blamed.
Touching kids is OK for primary teachers, new draft guidelines suggest - but a look might still be enough to get them into trouble. Primary teachers are debating the draft drawn up by the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) designed to replace its controversial eight-page, hands-off code of physical conduct introduced in the mid-1990s after the Christchurch Civic Creche case. Instead of saying teachers should avoid touching children and being alone with them, the guidelines say physical contact is "perfectly acceptable". But they still warn about squeezing students' shoulders and hugging or eye contact that might be misconstrued. Michael Neville, a Levin teacher who was last year found not guilty of sexually assaulting four former pupils, said the draft was fraught with problems, particularly where it prescribed against eye contact. Teachers were afraid to look at children for fear of inadvertently looking at their chest or groin. "I just find that absolutely absurd," he said. Auckland University education lecturer Alison Jones, whose research has found anxiety over sexual abuse has become embedded in the school system, said the climate of panic had disastrously put young men off teaching. In the past decade the proportion of men in primary teaching has steadily declined - from 21% to 18% in the past 11 years.
Soaring fuel prices have added $500 a year to the cost of running the average car, the Sunday Star-Times estimates. research on the fuel economy of the most popular new and used cars shows $20 of petrol took a car 45km further two years ago than it does now.
I have wondering why nobody seems to be overly worried at the long-term implications of the current price of oil, or the prospect that it could even go as high as $85 in the near future. Compare with the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, when there was a huge panic. A look at the BP energy survey for 2004 shows that in 2004 dollars, the 1979 price at one stage went up to about $82. So we're not far behind that peak. I suspect a major difference this time is that we are more assured of continuity of supply for the foreseeable future. But I would not be surprised to see a few SUV's coming onto the market prematurely.
A stream of complaints about offensive advertisements has been overturned by an advertising watchdog, but media commentators say adverts are increasingly pushing boundaries. The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled on four advertisements this month, including Toyota's "sheep shagger" and Volkswagen's "peeing boy", which attracted complaints from offended viewers. Volkswagen has decided to replace the opening sequence of its advert, after numerous complaints about its "sexualised" content, which one viewer said encouraged paedophilia. The ad features a series of shots of a young boy, beginning with him standing naked urinating into a potty and later eyeing a woman in a short skirt. Victoria University media studies lecturer Tony Schirato said areas that were once taboo, such as bodily functions and pornography, were making it into mainstream media. "These days there isn't much that's forbidden."
Children as young as five are being treated at a counselling programme for sexual abusers. Wellington Stop manager Hamish Dixon said children as young as five had been referred to it after "quite serious abuse on other children". Mr Dixon said their behaviour went beyond the typical sexually curious "play" of many children. It was common for children to be interested in the opposite sex's genitals, but inappropriate behaviour could involve penetration and causing the other child to feel frightened or forced. Children on the programme showed a greater awareness of sex than typical young people and had often been victims of abuse themselves or had seen explicit pornography. [When you sexualise a culture, don't be surprised at the unintended consequences.]
Could this be the last fling of the Labour government before the election? Sue Bradford's Bill to ban smacking says in the Explanatory Note: "The effect of this amendment [repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act] is that the statutory protection for use of force by parents and guardians will be removed. They will now be in the same position as everyone else so far as the use of force against children is concerned. The use of force on a child may constitute an assault under section 194(a) of the Crimes Act." She would see parents exercise the same amount of authority to discipline their own children than total strangers normally have: none. The Bill to repeal Section 59 will not just ban smacking: it will ban any and all use of force. It will mean that effective parenting is basically outlawed.
"Over a 200-year period in Britain, we marched towards respectability, reaching an apex by the middle of the last century. What sort of people we were was shaped by two major forces. The first was the evangelical revival, which instilled a deep feeling of personal responsibility into an ever-growing proportion of the population. People felt they were responsible and would be accountable for their actions.
"The other great force was the discipline the labour movement imposed on the membership of its mutually owned welfare state. Bad behaviour did not rule for the very simple reason that it risked the welfare of the entire membership.
"Anti-social behaviour is now one of the major issues which concerns voters. The surprise is not its current dominance but that good behaviour and a reasonable degree of civility continued to be taught in families long after the evangelical revival became a spent force, and that our mutually owned welfare state was ruthlessly confined to the history books.
"Now we are reaping a whirlwind of bad behaviour due to our failure to consider the most basic of all political questions. What kind of character do we want our fellow citizens to have?
"Addressing this question constitutes the new politics of behaviour. But because in the past our national characters were largely formed within families whose values were determined by civil society politicians took a back seat. Voters are now demanding that politicians take control of the steering wheel.
"What can politics do when a growing number of families fail to teach their children a set of common decencies? Those common decencies not only make family life tolerable, but enable children to navigate successfully the outside world. The politics of behaviour is essentially about how we reteach these common decencies.
"One of a number of proposals put forward in Neighbours from Hell is to transform welfare from a rights based entitlement to a contract. Each contract would spell out what society is to provide and the other side of the contract would specify what kind of behaviour society expects in return.
"Given that most children are not now baptised, an obvious place to begin this reform would be to convert the registration of a birth into a public ceremony. At that event the registrar would welcome the child into the wider community, spell out what society wanted to help the family achieve for that child, and in return give a basic outline of the responsibilities of parenthood. In this way welfare would become a teaching force akin to what religion did for Victorian society.
This could just as easily be written of NZ as Australia: "Tax and welfare reform are on the agenda. Given the government’s newly-won control of the Senate, most attention is focused primarily on the next 18 months, but it is important to think longer term about the kind of tax and welfare systems we shall need over the next few decades. This paper analyses how the welfare state might be transformed to give ordinary people more control over key areas of their lives which are currently managed for them by the government. Saunders demonstates that, to a large extent, we no longer need the welfare state. Most people could afford to buy most of the services they need if they weren’t taxed so highly to pay for the services the government wants them to have."
For an earlier release on the same topic, see here.
Labour politicians of today frequently criticise the "failed economic policies of the 90s." But Jim Eagles examines each one and asks, if they were failed policies, why are they still all in place today?
A bipartisan task force on the United Nations has released a report that found the world body is in very bad condition. Task force member Edwin Feulner, said the UN has problems -- starting with the secretary-general and working its way down. "In terms of the management structure," Feulner said, " I think it is fair to say the United Nations is a mess." Another task force member, Rod Hills of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.N. needs a chief operating officer. "It was our judgment that the General Assembly should insist that the new secretary-general have some real management skills," he said. "And that those management skills would be used to appraise the capacity of the people who report to him." [Considering that Helen Clark is said to be angling for the Secretary-General's job, one would have to ask how well she is really qualified for the task.]
Ony 4% of Auckland and Christchurch primary school children can jump, skip and do the other 10 movements they should be able to, a survey has found. The study, for the Ministry of Education, found only 17 of the 423 children tested could complete the 12 "fundamental movement skills". The children were aged under 13 and only two girls had all 12 skills - including jumping catching and kicking - which children should be able to do by age seven. North Shore schools last week told the Sunday Star-Times many pupils could not sit up straight or concentrate because of a lack of motor - or movement - skills. Some blamed early childhood centres for focusing on the three Rs rather than play. Some physical education experts say the push to improve literacy and numeracy has led to children missing out on the "physical literacy" important for well-rounded development. Lifestyle changes are also blamed.
Touching kids is OK for primary teachers, new draft guidelines suggest - but a look might still be enough to get them into trouble. Primary teachers are debating the draft drawn up by the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) designed to replace its controversial eight-page, hands-off code of physical conduct introduced in the mid-1990s after the Christchurch Civic Creche case. Instead of saying teachers should avoid touching children and being alone with them, the guidelines say physical contact is "perfectly acceptable". But they still warn about squeezing students' shoulders and hugging or eye contact that might be misconstrued. Michael Neville, a Levin teacher who was last year found not guilty of sexually assaulting four former pupils, said the draft was fraught with problems, particularly where it prescribed against eye contact. Teachers were afraid to look at children for fear of inadvertently looking at their chest or groin. "I just find that absolutely absurd," he said. Auckland University education lecturer Alison Jones, whose research has found anxiety over sexual abuse has become embedded in the school system, said the climate of panic had disastrously put young men off teaching. In the past decade the proportion of men in primary teaching has steadily declined - from 21% to 18% in the past 11 years.
Soaring fuel prices have added $500 a year to the cost of running the average car, the Sunday Star-Times estimates. research on the fuel economy of the most popular new and used cars shows $20 of petrol took a car 45km further two years ago than it does now.
I have wondering why nobody seems to be overly worried at the long-term implications of the current price of oil, or the prospect that it could even go as high as $85 in the near future. Compare with the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, when there was a huge panic. A look at the BP energy survey for 2004 shows that in 2004 dollars, the 1979 price at one stage went up to about $82. So we're not far behind that peak. I suspect a major difference this time is that we are more assured of continuity of supply for the foreseeable future. But I would not be surprised to see a few SUV's coming onto the market prematurely.
A stream of complaints about offensive advertisements has been overturned by an advertising watchdog, but media commentators say adverts are increasingly pushing boundaries. The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled on four advertisements this month, including Toyota's "sheep shagger" and Volkswagen's "peeing boy", which attracted complaints from offended viewers. Volkswagen has decided to replace the opening sequence of its advert, after numerous complaints about its "sexualised" content, which one viewer said encouraged paedophilia. The ad features a series of shots of a young boy, beginning with him standing naked urinating into a potty and later eyeing a woman in a short skirt. Victoria University media studies lecturer Tony Schirato said areas that were once taboo, such as bodily functions and pornography, were making it into mainstream media. "These days there isn't much that's forbidden."
Children as young as five are being treated at a counselling programme for sexual abusers. Wellington Stop manager Hamish Dixon said children as young as five had been referred to it after "quite serious abuse on other children". Mr Dixon said their behaviour went beyond the typical sexually curious "play" of many children. It was common for children to be interested in the opposite sex's genitals, but inappropriate behaviour could involve penetration and causing the other child to feel frightened or forced. Children on the programme showed a greater awareness of sex than typical young people and had often been victims of abuse themselves or had seen explicit pornography. [When you sexualise a culture, don't be surprised at the unintended consequences.]
Could this be the last fling of the Labour government before the election? Sue Bradford's Bill to ban smacking says in the Explanatory Note: "The effect of this amendment [repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act] is that the statutory protection for use of force by parents and guardians will be removed. They will now be in the same position as everyone else so far as the use of force against children is concerned. The use of force on a child may constitute an assault under section 194(a) of the Crimes Act." She would see parents exercise the same amount of authority to discipline their own children than total strangers normally have: none. The Bill to repeal Section 59 will not just ban smacking: it will ban any and all use of force. It will mean that effective parenting is basically outlawed.
