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Poverty
advocates are crying foul over the fact that the government is
even raising the idea of linking the immunisation of children
to benefit receipt, even though it is an established practice
that works well in many other countries. This is a discussion
that is taking place in the wider context of the
government’s initiative to better protect vulnerable
children. Requiring beneficiaries to immunise their children
– unless they are opposed for conscience reasons - is surely
part of their obligation as parents. Those who fail to do so
are putting their children at risk.
While immunisation rates have improved markedly over the last
few years due mainly to a concerted effort by health
authorities and other government agencies, there is still a
way to go. For preventable disease transmission to be
effectively controlled in a community there must be high
immunisation coverage through an uptake of vaccination
programmes of about 95 percent. Accordingly, the goal of the
Ministry of Health is for 95 percent of two-year-old children
to be fully immunised by July 2012. The latest data from June
2010 showed that immunisation coverage for New Zealand
children at age two years was 87 percent. For five-year-olds
it was only 67 percent.[1]
By six-months
old, New Zealand babies should have had a series of three
immunisations – at six weeks, three months, and five months
- covering Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping cough, Polio,
Hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and
Pneumococcal. Statistics
show that by March 2010 only 67 percent of New Zealand infants
had achieved their six-month immunisation milestone – 72
percent of European babies, 64 percent of Pacific Island
babies, and staggeringly, only 53percent of Maori babies.
The fact
that so many children are not protected from preventable
disease is part of a bigger issue of parents failing to take
responsibility for the proper care of their children. Last
week stories emerged of children in Northland who were found
scavenging for food in slops buckets meant for pigs. An absurd
reaction by some do-gooders to this news was to call for a
tightening of regulations around pigs’ food - to ensure that
such children aren’t at risk of food poisoning! The proper
response, of course, is to require parents to take their
parenting responsibility seriously and ensure their children
are suitably nourished and well cared for.
While
scavenging in slops buckets is clearly an extreme case, the
incidence of children going to school hungry has become so
widespread that increasing numbers of schools are now
providing breakfast. In some cases, they provide lunch as
well. While the availability of free food will have definitely
increased the demand, the issue that is at the heart of this
problem is entrenched irresponsible parenting.
Of
course cases of extreme hardship will always arise as a result
of the most unfortunate of circumstances, but in most of the
cases where children are continually hungry, welfare will be
part of the equation, and the hardship will be largely caused
by poor budgeting and bad decision-making. In too many of
those cases, the needs of children are overshadowed by the
desire for cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, even Sky TV, rather
than food, medical care, and rent.
It is to
help these at-risk families re-align their priorities with the
needs of their children that the Welfare Working Group - the
advisory body established in 2010 to determine the best ways
of reducing long term benefit dependency in New Zealand -
recommended ‘Income Management’. They suggested that
Income Management should be used as a last resort to assist
welfare recipients, who have demonstrated on-going
difficulties in managing their budgets, to meet their own and
their children’s basic needs and get their lives back in
order. This scheme
would remove control of a recipient’s welfare payments to a
third party, such as a case manager, who would ensure that
essential services such as housing, power, and debt repayments
are taken care of through direct debit arrangements or
vouchers. Funds for food, medical care and other basics would
be available on a Payment Card. Access to such things as
alcohol and tobacco would be restricted.
Income
Management is one of the initiatives that will also be used to
assist unemployed youth and teen parents, but in addition,
cash incentives will be used as well.
Conditional
cash transfers have replaced unconditional cash payments in
many countries around the world including Latin and Central
America, the United States, Indonesia and Cambodia. The scheme
makes use of small payments to reward recipients for achieving
specific goals such as ensuring children attend school, have
regular medical checkups or pass exams – the sorts of
benefits that not only assist the individuals, but improve
society as well.
Our
government has announced that such cash incentives will be
used to encourage teen parents to attend parenting course,
complete budgeting programmes, and stay in education. Given
that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of teenage
motherhood in the OECD, reform of the system to ensure that
young people do not stay on welfare must be a priority –
especially as almost a third of sole parents on welfare
started off as teenage parents, with almost 40 percent of
those going on to have additional children.
The
reality is that New Zealand has one of the most generous sole
parent benefit levels of all western nations along with some
of the weakest work expectations. Is it any wonder that
113,000 sole parents are presently receiving the Domestic
Purposes Benefit and that some 222,000 children live in
benefit dependent homes? Such are the perverse incentives
inherent in the system that there is ample anecdotal evidence
of parents not only splitting up to access the DPB, but of
mothers having more children to increase their benefit
payments.
It is in
addressing this latter problem that National has created yet
more outrage from poverty advocates. Following the
recommendations of the Welfare Working Group, National has
already announced that women on a benefit who have an
additional child will be expected to be available for
part-time work once the baby is a year old. This will align
the welfare system with requirements of the workforce, where a
mother is entitled to take 12 months of extended parental
leave after the birth of her baby, before having to go back to
work.
But the
second part of this policy recommendation is to provide women
on benefits with access to free long-acting, reversible
contraception in order to help them make better family
planning decisions. This policy is expected to cost $1 million
and will also be extended to include teenage daughters in
benefit dependent households - another group at serious risk
of poor life outcomes.
With
free contraception readily available in New Zealand the
response of the various parties to the policy announcement was
quite remarkable. Labour objected because they said that
access to the contraceptives should be free for everyone. The
Green Party feigned outrage, yet hypocritically promote a
population policy based on the need to limit population
expansion by regulating the size of families and the spacing
of children!
The
approach of the Maori Party to this issue, according to Clare
Trevett of the New Zealand Herald, is “refreshingly
blunt”. Their policy consists of “encouraging people to go
forth and multiply, especially if they are Maori”.[2]
Similar
outrage erupted a few weeks earlier when a Labour Party
Private Members’ Bill to extend Paid Parental Leave for
working women was drawn from the Parliamentary ballot. The
bill proposes to extend the leave provisions for mothers with
new babies from the present 14 weeks to 6 months. With Paid
Parental Leave presently costing taxpayers around $150 million
a year – up from the $57 million estimated by Labour when
they introduced the policy in 2002 – Sue Moroney’s
extended entitlement would cost in the region of $300 million
a year.
National
said extending the leave is unaffordable and gave notice that
they would invoke a financial veto on the bill on the grounds
that it would have more than a minor impact on the Crown’s
finances. Such a veto would come into play at the third
reading of the bill - if it gets that far.
The
matter of whether Paid Parental Leave is good policy is an
interesting one. At a time when the disastrous situation in
many Eurozone economies - where government spending programmes
have grown to unsustainable levels - is clear to see, it is
important to examine the deeper implications of such policies.
While it is undoubtedly a big help for families with new
babies to have the $459 a week coming in to their household
courtesy of taxpayers, the fundamental issue of whether it is
right that taxpayers should be paying new mothers to stay at
home and care for their babies, should be considered.
This
week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, welfare analyst Lindsay
Mitchell, questions the wisdom of such middle-class welfare,
asking whether families should accept responsibility for their
own affairs:
“Paid
Parental Leave, a relatively recent innovation, is an example
of social spending 'creep' across the developed world. When
advocating for PPL protagonists
play countries off against each other describing
various provisions as
'generous' or 'inadequate' creating an upward race. But
why should New Zealand be blindly emulating welfare states
whose high taxes and generous entitlements are currently
coming home to roost?
“Extended
PPL is essentially more middle class welfare (in the same vein
as Working For Families which John Key once described as
"communism by stealth".) Because it is not
means-tested high income mothers qualify. This results in
upward income redistribution. That is, a low-income single
person or small business owner is paying tax to fund
relatively wealthy mothers to stay at home with their
newborns. These circumstances are unjustifiable.” To read
Lindsay’s article, please click here
>>>
The road
to reform in major areas like welfare is far from smooth. But
it is a necessary path for New Zealand to go down. Generous
welfare entitlements have created a debilitating dependency
culture with a hard core of families that may say they care
about their children, but fail to provide even the basics for
their well
being. If the reform initiatives currently being promoted by
the government can e
This week’s poll asks: Should
Paid Parental Leave be extended to 26 weeks, kept at 14 weeks,
or scrapped?
Click here for poll >>>
Footnotes:
1.Ministry
of Health, New
Zealand Immunisation Schedule
2.Claire Trevett, Minister
sets off collision of taboos
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