Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Some Numbers | Sep 13, 2005 11:05

Spring showed up yesterday. I took a break and lay on the grass above Pt Chevalier beach, reading Keith Sinclair's autobiography, Halfway Round the Harbour; aptly, the chapter about growing up on "the Point". It's good that small boys can still swim there.

Ours did, at his own suggestion. He's 11 and back home because his being at school wasn't working out for anyone. He's very bright, but also mildly autistic, and thus emotionally (or perhaps neurologically) ill-equipped for school, and had become powerfully antagonistic towards the idea of being educated. His anxiety levels have fallen since he came home - his suggestion that we venture out was testament to that - and hopefully we'll be able to make a fresh start before too long.

In the meantime, we have an application in for Correspondence School support, thanks to the assistance of someone who, according to Bill English, is part of the problem: an education "bureaucrat", perhaps. We and the school (where the principal has been a champ) have leaned quite heavily on such people this year. So perhaps you can understand why I am quite angry that their work has been derided in the interests of making National's promise to painlessly shave $350 million (the additional cost of introducing compulsory bulk funding) from the education budget look credible. Yesterday, English further claimed that the 33% parental contribution to school costs could be eradicated by simply redirecting money from those same bureaucrats and giving it to schools.

Really? No Right Turn has done something that no one in the proper media has done: gone and looked at the numbers. He concludes:

But more importantly, when we look inside the Ministry's funding, we find that precious little of it is actually spent on bureaucrats. Of the Ministry's $1,371.667 million budget, $971.729 million goes on "provision of school sector property". $624.589 million of this is the capital charge (essentially depreciation on school buildings, repaid to the government in the name of transparent accounting), and the rest goes on maintenance, upgrades, and new construction. $163.295 million goes on the Special Education Service, which provides educational support to children with special needs.

The remainder - $236.643 million - covers everything else: administering education regulations, administering the resources, making sure that school boards of trustees didn't spend all their money on a holiday on the Gold Coast, making sure that schools meet curriculum requirements and academic standards, answering Bill English's questions ($3.7 million worth!), planning, and policy advice. That's your education bureaucracy right there. Even if it was completely disestablished, it would save only 2.8% of the total education spend, or 6.7% of the amount we spend on schools - far short of the 33% shortfall estimated above.

Basically, Bill English's claim that culling "education bureaucrats" would result in significant funding increases at the frontline are simply a fantasy. The only way he can produce the required funding increases would be either to spend vastly more money (impossible given National's tax-cut plans), or dramatically slash capital and maintenance spending, and run the schools into the ground again - exactly as National did in the 90's.

I have always respected Bill English. But I suspect even he doesn't believe what he's saying at the moment. It is a complete fantasy. There are some things in National's education policy that might help us, but there are also truck-sized holes in it. Take the promise on school zoning:

Improve choice by relaxing rigid zoning restrictions
National will put an end to rigid zoning. Some schools will want or need to restrict their intake with enrolment schemes. Because a school is a community in its own right we believe its members should have an influence over the enrolment scheme for the school. National will balance local and national interests and protect the reasonable opportunity for students to attend their local school. We will also take account of parental choice in allocating capital for school expansion.

What exactly is the "reasonable opportunity for students to attend their local school"? Is it like being "reasonably" pregnant? You either have the right for your child to attend your local school (ie: school zoning) or you don't. It's bullshit, and I care because kids like mine would be the first to miss out.

As this fawning editorial in the Herald noted in May (even as it "presumed" its way across the gaps), National's policy would direct resources to successful schools, and away from "weaker" schools, which would eventually go belly-up and duly be colonised by the good schools (which otherwise could not grow). It sounds easy when you say it, but what it means is that the policy is not only tolerant of school failure, it's predicated on it. Nice theory: in practical terms, it seems extraordinarily risky.

Revisiting another Hail-Mary policy: National's plan to DNA test everyone arrested by police (and then destroy samples where there is no conviction). First, Anthony Trenwith got back to me with an update:

Having the opportunity to hear Richard Worth speak at a meeting last week, I made a point of specifically raising the issue of the DNA sampling. I basically put to him what was posted on Hard News. He then essentially (and, I must say, to his credit) admitted that they may need to have another look at their costings on that one...

As an aside, on the question of parole, he admitted that National's non-parole policy would have to have built into it an incentive "discount" for good behaviour. The next day, I repeated this to a colleague who said: "What, you mean parole?"

Stunning. I've since tried to see whether the numbers, just on the DNA testing policy, add up. Tony Ryall insisted in an interview with Noelle McCarthy that the policy had been budgeted, to the tune of $15 million, which seemed to be a three-year figure. (Then John Key appeared to tell Scoop that it hadn't been budgeted for at all, but we'll go with Ryall's number.)

Okay: there are about 130,000 people arrested every year, who would all be swabbed on arrest. We assume, generously, that about 30,000 of them have already been tested or won't be convicted. That leaves 100,000, a slightly more than tenfold increase over the present level of testing. To be useful, a DNA sample must be analysed and banked by ESR - otherwise it's just spit on a stick. The present marginal cost of that is $200 per sample. That's $20 million a year. And that's not even to explore the additional human and physical resources required, or whether ESR can actually attract enough analysts to cover a tenfold increase in work.

Certainly, the number of those already tested would climb in succeeding years, eventually to the point where only the 40,000 never-previously-arrested people every year would need to be sampled. On the other hand, the cohort from the early 90s baby boom is just now reaching crime-committing age (expect many panicky headlines about an explosion in youth crime in the next three or four years).

There's another practical element: crime-scene testing for DNA is a lot more expensive than dusting for fingerprints - actually using the proposed universal DNA database as a matter of daily practice would be vastly expensive. However you dice it, it simply doesn't seem to add up. Once again, it would be nice to see a newspaper do these numbers. It's not that hard.

Newsweek has a story headed How Bush Blew It, which ought to be compulsory reading for anyone who thinks public anger about the handling of Hurricane Katrina is some sort of liberal plot. It's everything you ever thought. AmericaBlog excerpted the bullet points.

Wallace Chapman had an amazing interview with former Black Panther and Katrina Survivor Malik Rahim on 95bFM.

Blogger Bob Harris made himself a graphic showing the New Orleans parishes mentioned in Bush's pre-storm declaration of emergency - and the ones that weren't. It's completely insane, and Harris admits he's been trying to convince himself he got it wrong - but no luck so far.

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Gadzooks! | Sep 12, 2005 09:21

I have previously noted an association between the Sunday Star Times and the abuse of statistics. Well, look what the frog has got. The small sample size and Friday-night-only calling aren't the only odd things about the Fairfax poll that had National seven points ahead. But I'll let frog tell the story:

UPDATE: Well, the Sunday Star-Times poll showing National 7% ahead is even dodgier than I thought. Go have a read of political editor Helen Bain's column on A10 (not online, sorry), and you'll see that she refers to National being two points ahead of Labour in the latest Sunday Star-Times poll, not the seven reported.

My only guess at explaining this discrepancy is that there are, in fact, two polls: one that was reported and one that wasn't. The Sunday Star-Times did its usual poll, but sampling was completed before the Brash gaffe/dishonesty. It showed National ahead by 2%. So, the paper decided to do an additional poll on Friday night to see what damage National had sustained as a result of the Brash gaffe/dishonesty.

Problem is: the new poll showed National extending its lead to 7%. This left the paper two options. It could report on both polls, and open itself up to ridicule (how on earth could National get a five point bump after its leader was exposed as misleading the country?). Or it could pretend like the first poll didn't exist. It opted for the first option, except that it forget to edit Ms Bain's column.

If this suspicion is accurate, then today's poll with National 7% ahead shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt so much as with a truckload of salt. Also, it has to be said, if the Sunday Star-Times has just done what I suspect it has, then it has just indulged in a piece of pretty shady reporting one week out from a general election.

Well, I can't think of any other reason that Fairfax's only poll leading into the final week of the campaign would be a hasty little half-sample job on a Friday night …

[Reader David Jacobs has a little more on this bizarre business: "Yes, you and Frogblog are right. I was phone polled early last week (Monday I think) for the Sunday Star Times and was told that the results would be in the paper yesterday."]

Meanwhile, the Herald on Sunday snap poll (another small sample, but taken on Friday and Saturday) has Labour 42.1 to 38.5 and the One News Colmar Brunton has National shedding six points in a week with the Brash whoopsie yet to fully feed through. The wild card is the apparent confusion within New Zealand First as to exactly what last week's statement on support arrangements means.

The busy little amphibian also posted this yesterday:

The plot thickens. The anti-Green leaflet distributed by the Exclusive Brethren businessmen is almost identical to an anonymous leaflet attacking Green Senate candidate Christine Milne, during her successful campaign last year in Tasmania. The two leaflets are reproduced below so you can see quite how similar they are.
Yet Greg Mason, one of the Exclusive Brethren businessmen behind New Zealand's anti-Green leaflets, said in [the] Herald on Sunday today that his 'Green Delusion' pamphlet was created from scratch, without international inspiration. After comparing the pamphlets below, I'm sure you'll agree that Mr Mason's claim can only be described as absolute garbage.

Frog is quite right. And Mason is a liar. I fail to see why anything those men say should be trusted. Their contempt for the rest of us is quite evident. (My favourite part of the 'Green Delusion' pamphlet is the claim that the Greens would: "Offer financial assistance to cannabis growers for alternative employment." It's based on their support for the development of industrial hemp ...)

More information on lying god-bothers: As the Fundy Post, Hard News and others have noted, people associated with the conservative Christian lobby (including erstwhile Herald columnist Sandra Paterson) have been spreading a seedy little canard; telling their people that a vote for any other party than National will be wasted, and that if they vote for a minor party their votes could be reallocated to a party they don't like. Bryan Dods of Maungaturoto has a sighting:

I am living in the Maungaturoto area (Northland electorate). For a few days now, I have heard people talking about votes for minority parties being transferred to larger parties if their original choice fails to reach the 5% threshold.

Someone referred to a pamphlet, and others to a public forum held around the Warkworth area, where "an MP" told them this as fact. I have been unable to pinpoint the source of this information, but these same people are adamant that this warped STV/MMP hybrid is the case in this coming election.

It is a frightening thought that people are being misled with such authority. With only one week left a public correction could be of benefit to all, but how?

Without wishing to get overly conspiratorial, this would seem relevant to theories that National's high-stakes game-plan has been to wipe out minor parties (ie: Act and NZ First) and thus grab a majority with, say, 45% of the original vote after the "wasted" votes are taken out. Perhaps I just need a lie-down.

Tim Selwyn has his own odds and those of the major offshore betting agencies and some interesting speculation about the dollar and inflation.

All right. Last word (failing any further revelations) on the Exclusive Brethren business: there is "no relationship" (Gerry Brownlee last Monday) between the sect described as "brutal" and "sinister" by a prospective National Cabinet minister and the National Party itself.

Except for the EB leadership meeting several times with Don Brash and discussing its plans to spent half a million dollars on a nationwide pamphlet campaign against National's political opponents; sect members putting up National Party billboards and distributing National Party leaflets; and now, according to the Herald on Sunday, the sect having its children spend their nights conducting clumsy push-polls intended to try and sway voters towards National. Apart from that, no relationship at all.

Furthermore: Don Brash knew the pamphlet campaign, whose cost amounts to one seventh of National's entire campaign budget, was coming, but did not think to mention it to anyone else in his campaign team. No one in his team thought to enquire what he had been discussing at his meetings with sect leaders. Even after the story broke on Monday, Brash did not discuss the leaflets or the Exclusive Brethren with anyone else in his party. And by late last week both Brash and his deputy leader Gerry Brownlee had not found time to read any of the pamphlets, despite having copies of them.

Ahem.

Tracey Watkins, the Dom Post's political editor, has similar things to say.

The New Zealand Herald's editorials through this election campaign have been dreadful. This morning's effort, headed Time for serious reflection, is no exception. The only policy it examines is fiscal, which suits National just fine - but what about all the other policies? After all, National proposes redrawing the constitutional map and erasing Maori distinctiveness. Would a word about that be out of the question? Perhaps a look at whether National can really make a painless $350 million cut from the education budget? Whether Labour can really afford its student loans policy? Are market rents in public housing as awful an idea as the evidence suggests? Is abolishing parole a credible or even a wise idea? Nada. Meanwhile, John Roughan takes a broader view and appears to decide he'll vote for the Maori Party.

PS: I wasn't terribly impressed with "Generation Jones" consultant Jonathan Pontell when he was interviewed last week by John Campbell and Linda Clark. He seemed a bit glib. The obvious assumption was that he was working with National to offer insight into winning over a key generation (mine, as it happens). But Don Brash's chief of staff Richard long swiftly called Clark to deny all knowledge. And then on Friday, The Press ran a story quoting Long and suggesting that Pontell was in fact a hoaxer. He's just been on Clark's show again, furious, and saying that he'll take legal action against the National Party and The Press. He gave the impression that he regarded himself as still bound by a confidentiality agreement with the party he did work for, and also said he understood that a party would not want to acknowledge receieving international strategic advice in the current climate. Labour, the Greens and NZ First all say it wasn't them. National's campaign manager Stephen Joyce has reiterated that the party has never heard of Pontell. Would Act like to offer a denial as well? How bizarre.

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In Brief | Sep 09, 2005 10:11

David Herkt's 50th birthday party at Hydrant was worth missing the leaders' debate for. Everyone was nice and the music was a fabulous four-decade sweep of formative tunes. I met Anna Hoffman, and Zero from the Suburban Reptiles. Nice one David; it's been a pleasure to have made your acquaintance in recent years.

So it's No Politics Friday on Hard News. I feel like a break from all that. Although, I guess anything you could say about Katrina is political. The Daily Show, naturally, made me laugh about something that isn't really funny.

Here's a sign of the times: check out this week's No.1 MacOS X Dashboard Widget. (Hat tip: Christiaan Briggs.)

Google has hired Vint Cerf as Chief Internet Evangelist. I have no idea what the job title means: I think maybe they just thought it would be cool to have Vint Cerf in the building.

Murdoch's second run at the Internet gathers pace: while he waits to see if his shareholders will let him spend half a billion bucks on MySpace, he announces that he has plonked down $650 million on the gaming network IGN. I'd love to know who's advising him and what the strategy is. There's a Financial Times story with some speculation.

Have a good weekend …

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Interesting day | Sep 08, 2005 10:15

On Monday, David Slack noted that the odds-setters at Centrebet were sitting tight and waiting for a big bang in the election campaign. I wonder if yesterday was it.

There was, of course, the TV3 poll, which suggested a staggering turnaround in party fortunes: Labour 45, National 36; with the Greens clocking in with a screaming 7% for a Labour-Green landslide. This may simply mean that you can't trust the polls in this election, but it wiped out any hint of a feelgood factor from Sunday's Colmar Brunton poll.

And then there was Winston, who yesterday declared that he would not go into coalition with anyone, but would remain on the cross benches. He would discuss an offer of support on confidence and supply with the highest-polling party.

Winston's decision makes perfect sense for him. On Sunday's poll Labour would be irrelevant, but he'd risk a collapse in support if he declared for National. On last night's poll he's irrelevant as a coalition partner.

It's a really horrible scenario for National, which (unless United Future suddenly trebles its vote) could at best hope for support on confidence and supply and a lame-duck life of issue-by-issue votes thereafter. It would be quite possible for a National government to be outvoted on most of its policy programme.

And then there's the Exclusive Brethren business. Talking to Noelle McCarthy this morning, Don Brash answered the question he refused to answer yesterday: when he met with Brethren leaders two weeks ago, did they discuss the sect's campaign activities? Answer: yes, the Brethren leaders told him that they would be distributing their anti-Green-and-Labour leaflets. So why did National spend days pretending it had no idea who was behind the pamphlets?

I spoke off-air to two callers to my bFM show yesterday who were emphatic that EB members (who do nothing without direction from the sect leaders) were putting up National Party billboards in Auckland. I've since received three emails claiming that EB members are distributing not only their own literature, but National's as well, in Christchurch and Dunedin at least. This one, from someone who doesn't usually lie to me, was quite funny:

Yesterday a close friend was talking with a member of the Nats. Apart from the EB's own pamphlets, they apparently have been used to distribute Nats' literature as well, as it is so hard to get Nat volunteers to do the letter dropping, whereas these cults, that's what they do to pass their time...

Now, it's a democracy: individuals and organisations can and should participate in the political process. But Gerry Brownlee's declaration that there was "no relation" between National and the Exclusive Brethren seems disingenuous at best.

This isn't to do with churches getting involved in campaigns either. The centre-left has had church backing of various forms (Ratana included) in the past, and churches represent real communities of opinion. But the Exclusive Brethren simply is not just another church. Some quotes:

The public face of the church is a group of hard working, honest people who keep very much to themselves and do no harm. But there is a more sinister side of the church which is involved in extreme forms of psychological blackmail that is used to rip families apart in the name of Christianity … The church organised a mass turnout of cars and church people to intimidate the couple and prevent them from taking back their children … even more upsetting was the knowledge that their children had been brainwashed … a sinister underlying agenda … Ex-members refer to it as the three F's - family, fear and finance - and these three weapons are used with brutal force … commercial blackmail and people being driven to suicide … the huge financial resources that the church will put in to ruin anybody who dares to speak out … I suggest that we should not become so tolerant that we condone, by our silence, extreme intolerance … I believe it is time Parliament revisited key aspects of our family law to provide greater protection against sects of this type.

These quotes come from two speeches made to Parliament by National MP Nick Smith. But that was 1992. It's not your Dad's National Party any more.

National is just a bit closer to this outfit than I am personally comfortable with a mainstream political party being. Brash concluded his interview with Noelle by saying: "I'll accept support from anybody at all who wants to get rid of this lousy government." He may come to regret saying that.

Anyway, final word to PA reader Nat Curnow:

Why can't they just vote like everybody else?

You want policy, not conspiracy? Alright. An excerpt from Brash yesterday, in conversation with Linda Clark (actually, the whole thing's worth reading):

Clark: Let's talk about housing, because your housing policy came up earlier in the week. Rather quietly. National is promising a return to market rents for state housing, yes?
Brash: What we're saying is that income-related rents have caused huge distortions. They're only available in Housing Corporation accommodation and of course as a consequence, the Housing Corporation waiting list is huge. Everybody wants income-related rents; they can only get them from the Housing Corporation, and that generates a huge demand for their accommodation. What we're saying is, healthy, affordable housing is of critical importance to our society. It should be available in both the public and the private sector, and we want to deliver that benefit primarily through the accommodation supplement.
Clark: Which is what National did in the '90s.
Brash: And we did it very effectively.
Clark: Do you know what the impact of that policy was in the '90s?
Brash: I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Clark: Well, do you know what the social impact of that policy was in the '90s? Pretty straightforward question.
Brash: I don't have a comprehensive study there, but I know that it got many people into affordable housing.
Clark: The Child Poverty Action Group, which was formed essentially on the back of that policy, says that when market rents came in last time under a National government, the level of child poverty in this country was tripled.
Brash: I certainly don't regard that group as an objective group assessing anyone's policy. Certainly not the National Party's policy.
Clark: Well, one of the health researchers who's involved in the meningococcal B campaign for the Ministry for Health at the moment said, about three years ago, that the meningococcal epidemic began at the same time as market rents were introduced, and one of the complicating factors of--one of the consequences of market rents was overcrowding, and one of the contributing factors to that epidemic was overcrowding.
Brash: Well, we've still got the epidemic, Linda, and we've had income-related rents for the last six years.
Clark: So you don't accept that poverty was increased by that policy?
Brash: I want a situation where every New Zealand family has access to healthy and affordable housing.
Clark: Everyone wants that.
Brash: Okay. Now the question is: What's the best way of doing that? I think the public sector--that's Housing Corporation New Zealand--and the private sector, both have a role to play in achieving that end.
Clark: And that's what happens now. Have you studied the policy in the '90s?
Brash: Not in detail, no.
Clark: Do you not think it would have been a good idea to study the policy before you went back to it?
Brash: Linda, we've committed to ensuring that New Zealanders have access to affordable, healthy housing, and we're committed to make nobody who's now getting subsidised housing through the Housing Corporation, worse off.

The commitment at the end there does not feature in the policy released on Monday; it was conjured after the fact by John Key, and I don't believe it is viable. What Key proposed - apparently off the top of his head - was some sort of special welfare benefit only available to state house tenants, which represents a major new spending commitment. It's just not credible.

Anyway, what does the research say about our last fling with market rents in public housing? I interviewed Charles Waldegrave from the Family Centre about this yesterday (MP3 file here). Excerpts from what he had to say about market rents:

I think all the evaluations have shown that it was absolutely disastrous, the market rents policy …

And we were part of groups that provided research and worked extraordinarily hard for a decade to get back to income-related rents, and they have been so successful in helping those households who've received them.

When they moved to market rents they said they'd make up for it by providing an accommodation supplement. But our research showed that when you put the accommodation supplement together with the market rent, in the cities on average people were paying 40% of their income in rent - that's a 15 per cent jump - and there were 15-16% who were paying over half their income in rent.

My real concern with this is, that policy caused enormous misery in New Zealand for many households and many innocent children really suffered through that, and I just think it is an extraordinarily backward step, against all the evidence, that they would consider re-introducing this

"I honestly think it hasn't been thought through. It's not a coherent policy, what they're putting forward. And what has been achieved in the turn back to income-related rents has been so successful and so helpful to families that it's just really quite vicious, the implications of the turn back to market rents. It seems more ideological than practical …

"I don't think you can do policy in the hop like this. I don't think it'll work its way through the public systems that are necessary for it. And I think it's extremely dangerous. And we're now getting a combination of these things. It's not just the market rents for low-income people. They've also removed the last part of Working for Families, the family support package, which is $10 for each child in 2007 … that's being removed also from the poorest people.

"I honestly don't think that they've really studied it. Clearly from what Dr Brash and John Key were saying, this is not something that they've personally worked on. So it's policy that's just coming through, and it's a group of people who aren't ready, aren't ready to govern in these particular policy areas, because they're clearly not on top of it. It would be disastrous. I'm sure all the advice they would get from officials who work in this area would be against adopting this, which is really quite an extreme policy.

Couple more things: poor old Sean Plunket. I thought his interview with Jeanette Fitzsimons was swaggering and poorly judged in comparison to the matey follow-up with Gerry Brownlee. But that's Sean. Suspension seems way over the top, even in the extra-sensitive setting of an election campaign. [NB: Word from RNZ now says the suspension is an "employment issue" and nothing to do with the interviews.]

And finally: The National Party Billboard Maker is the people's art, totally. One of the Public Address bloggers is holding steady at number four with a stylish and subtle effort, and I'm loving this geek joke. And another geek joke. I like geek jokes. Hey! There's even an All your base are belong to us joke! It's just like Slashdot! (Petrolhead version here.)

This effort is rather coarse, but has the gritty charm of a British TV drama.

Nice to see a culinary theme. I find food metaphors satisfying. medical theme. And finally, a policy wonk theme.

Oh, and … heh.

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