The Government has data from interactions with agencies such as education, health, welfare and police, to make, in the minister’s words, “a compelling case for targeted intervention. The IDI [Integrated Data Infrastructure] tells us that a 22-year-old with eight to 10 of these factors is, by the age of 27, 116 times more likely to have a child placed in care, 69 times more likely to have served a prison sentence, 22 times more likely to have been the victim of family violence and five-and-a-half times more likely to have been hospitalised for attempted suicide”.
“The difference to the taxpayer between a life in and out of the prison system and a life spent in productive activity is in excess of a million dollars. More importantly, for the individuals concerned, and their families, it can be the difference between a life of fulfilment and a life of misery.”
The minister’s answer is a Social Investment Fund and the new Social Investment Agency to contract with community organisations and iwi. Agree on the goals and let the organisations determine how they will deliver.
We do need a new approach.
In June this year, 11.2% of working age adults, 351,759 people, were on a benefit – 7137 more than June last year. It is not sustainable.
But in a free society, it is no business of the Government how we choose to live.
The minister said the new agency is attempting to answer questions like: what outcomes do we want? How do we know if it is working?
A third of the way through its term, the Government does not know the answers to basic questions. It is why as a minister, English never implemented social investment. It is asking the wrong questions.
The next election will be upon the Government before the new agency has achieved anything significant.
The right question is: how does the Government stop enabling people to freeload on the taxpayer?
I know four young people in Rotorua aged between 18 and 31 who met the minister’s criteria for being at risk. Two have been to jail. All four are able-bodied and on a benefit.
If the state was to require them to do work for their benefit instead of playing computer games all day and getting into trouble, they would find their own jobs. It would transform their lives.
The Government does not need a fund or a new agency. Peter McCardle in the Shipley Government introduced work for the dole. It was a brilliant success. People who had been on a benefit for over 20 years found the dignity and independence of work. The left went nuts. The incoming Labour Government dismantled it.
McCardle set up the Department of Work and Income. How to implement work for the dole is in the files. The Government could begin today. It costs more than paying people to be idle but it’s a social investment that keeps on making a return.
As a lawyer, I represented some of the minister’s at-risk 22-year-olds. Intervening at age 22 is far too late. We do not need the minister’s data. Plunket nurses have told me that they can tell which babies are at risk.
There is an invention that does work even for hardened gang members. Ensure the father witnesses the birth of his child. Then tell the father how important he is to the child he is holding.
They are obvious things; feed his baby when hungry, change when wet, play and talk with his baby and never ever frighten them. Do that to age 3 and that baby is unlikely to become the minister’s at-risk 22-year-old.
What is missing from the minister’s speech is the importance of parenting. An article in the Times last week by James Kirkup, senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation, states: “A 2010 paper in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society by Professor George Leckie of Bristol University showed that no more than 20% of the variation in a pupil’s achievement is explained by schooling.” Parenting is far more important.
James Kirkup says that many parents do not realise the importance of maths. I attended a parent-teacher evening where all the questions were about kapa haka and not one question regarding the awful maths results.
Providing information is a legitimate state function.
A good social investment would be parenting advice – not just intensive advice for the parents of children at risk. An authoritative parenting site that with the help of AI (artificial intelligence) can answer questions parents want to know. As a grandparent, I also have some questions.
Now that would make a difference.
