Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?
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And there is nothing like helping people to do their own laces up. Someone pointed out to me - and I realised I too hadn't seen it - that there have been no Adult Education classes advertised for Upper Hutt Colleges this year.
It really must have been floss for the dross.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Funding got cut to all those programs last year. Apparently, sitting in front of the television is preferable to actually learning anything.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I think the increase in the average wage is mostly due to the tax cuts. I believe the median wage has declined over the last two years.
Except that mean and median wages are measured gross, not net, in most calculations.
Also, don't mix up wages and incomes. Incomes includes transfer payments (super, benefit, etc), wages don't. So it's entirely possible, and legitimate, for median incomes to decrease while mean wages increase, and it's for the same reasons: increase in benefit recipients, decrease in part-time and low-wage workers, both due to the recession. And dragging up the mean is the upper deciles, such as our illustrious leaders who are a note-worthy fraction of the top decile. -
Che Tibby, in reply to
So it’s entirely possible, and legitimate, for median incomes to decrease while mean wages increase, and it’s for the same reasons
i think if they're measuring it off the HLFS or iLEED it's "incomes" as opposed to salary or wages - meaning that they ask about or measure how much you get in a year (iLEED is built off IRD data)
but could stand corrected.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Stats NZ reports on income from all sources and income from wages/salary. Not sure the source for those, but HLFS would not be sufficiently accurate for their purposes I suspect.
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Che Tibby, in reply to
that's the iLEED stuff. pretty much if you pay tax, it keeps swept up into the database.
administrative data, so it's pretty accurate.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
administrative data, so it’s pretty accurate
That's what I figured. Includes some of the grey economy, too, since not everyone who's getting income from illegal sources avoids paying tax. That's how they account for income from transfer payments, since IRD are the administrators of things like WFF.
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The census has now been cancelled. It could easily have been postponed for a few months.But gathering the nationwide data is really important and there were some new questions this year on subjects like disability. I don't think the government actually wants to know what is happening for people out there.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
The census has now been cancelled
Yeah, and that's a really, really bad look for StatsNZ. Relying on a single processing centre in an unstable city is stupid!
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I don't understand the need to cancel rather than postpone.
The myriad of uses for up-to-date statistical information, in the midst of a crisis and a recession...argh it just doesn't make sense.
However while I'd love to believe it is because they are not interested in facts intruding on their policies, it's almost certainly a case of stupid rather than evil.
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It was not clear what the cost of cancelling the census would be nor how much would be needed to hold it later. A decision was not likely before the May Budget. Bascand said they would meet any contractual obligations _ including paying temporary staff as required. The 7000 census collectors around the country earn an average $1200-$1500 for their work.
''We regret having to take this decision but I'm sure it is the right one. Census is a crucial part of New Zealand's information set, it's an iconic exercise... this decision has not been taken lightly, we're conscious of the consequences, the cost and the loss of information.''
The existing information would continue to use and would become dated and inaccurate, he said. Census data is used when deciding electoral boundaries and their five-yearly review would now have to be postponed. No decision has been made on when a replacement census would be held but it would not be this year.
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Sacha, in reply to
I don't understand the need to cancel rather than postpone.
I suspect it's pretty much the same thing in effect, just done for legal/admin reasons to clear all the contractual obligations. Can't imagine them revisiting all the prep work again, just the data gathering and analysis in 2012.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
However while I’d love to believe it is because they are not interested in facts intruding on their policies, it’s almost certainly a case of stupid rather than evil.
If what I've inferred about the CHC processing centre being "it" for the country are accurate, then it's very much the stupid rather than the evil. September's quake caused delays in releasing the quarterly information bulletin. If you have to have a single processing centre for a critical function, put it in Hamilton, or Palmy. Don't put it in a city that's seismically active!
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Robert Urquhart, in reply to
Christchurch -wasn't- particularly seismically active when they put it in.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
uh, Christchurch's instability is not new. Not having had a major earthquake in living memory is not the same as stability. The presence of faults under Canterbury has been known for decades.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
They didn’t put it in Wellington for precisely that reason. It had to be Auckland or Christchurch for population reasons (pool of temporary workers etc) and Auckland is just too expensive for this type of operation for a government agency, in terms of ground rent, wage differentials, cost of living etc.
As to faults under Canterbury, New Zealand is one big faultline, Even Palmy is not immune to quakes, and the two quakes in Chch were on unknown faults.
Stop trying to second-guess everything, Matthew. The decisions made sense at the time, whether you agree with them or not..
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Gareth Ward, in reply to
No decision has been made on when a replacement census would be held but it would not be this year.
This = postponed to me; i.e. there will be a Census held before the next "scheduled" one in 2016. It just seems to have been easier for them to "cancel" this one to buy them time to replan.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
Don’t put it in a city that’s seismically active!
I guess that would rule out Wellington for, well, pretty much anything critical.
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NBH,
Just for the record, I've dealt with the Census folk (and StatsNZ people generally) in a professional capacity and there is absolutely no way that this cancellation/deferral will have been in any way influenced by the Government. The Statistics Act specifically states that the Government Statistician (i.e. the CE of Statistics NZ) operates independently of the Government/Minister, and they take that independence (and quality of their data) incredibly seriously.
And +1 to NZlemming's post too.
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I can say that the McGs are very happy the census has been cancelled...
That quote, from a friend, has to be the highlight of my day.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I guess that would rule out Wellington for, well, pretty much anything critical.
Ideally, yeah. Certainly anything unique and new. Having Parliament there is good only for jokes about getting rid of all the politicians, especially since all the agencies of the Executive have little choice but to have their headquarters in close proximity to Parliament.
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Just picked up a listener, and was reminded what a shallow self-serving rag it has become. The editorial "'the country's pain' starts out pontificating about the chch quake, and very quickly moves on to the 'welfare working group's excellent report... meticulously thorough, thoughtful and persuasive...' and ad nauseum.
There's not a shred of argument or thoughtfulness in the article, just the bland self-righteousness of statements like: "One of the group's achievements is to make clear that it is not punitive to expect able-bodied people to work. In fact a good kick up the pants is just what the lazy bludgers need [edited for clarity of intent]" before supporting the conclusion we should get rid of the invalid and sickness benefits, replacing them with a single benefit 'based on the assumption that most people are able to work."
Gutless, frankly, that the smug @$#%$$$$ who write this tosh don't put their names to it. Glad we cancelled the listener, but still able to be shocked at what it's become.
Tying this drivel in with 'let's all work together' and 'we feel your pain, Canterbury' is a kick in the teeth. If we knew who wrote this drivel, I'd like to suggest we nickname THEM 'The Country's Pain'. -
Kumara Republic, in reply to
Gutless, frankly, that the smug @$#%$$$$ who write this tosh don't put their names to it. Glad we cancelled the listener, but still able to be shocked at what it's become.
Who do you reckon wrote it? P****a or J*****e? (redacted to protect the identity of the guilty parties)
It's easy to figure out who, faster than you can say Fidel Castro.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
I'm picking the latter, because the content was so thin and the feeling of being intellectually patronised so searing. But until they have the courage to put a name next to it, they are all equally guilty :)
[apology for ranting. tried to stop myself. bad for blood-pressure and those nearby. must not read listener again, despite good arts/books/tv pages.]
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