families

Categories under families

Paul Henry’s jokes about women, deaf people and infant deaths, proudly brought to you by TVNZ

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, October 9th, 2010 - 59 comments

Here’s a compilation from TV7’s Russell Brown from April this year, highlighting the value for money taxpayers get from paying Breakfast Bigot Paul Henry $300,000+ per year: ridiculing the appearance of guests whose opinions he disagrees with, ridiculing deaf people, women, and the disproportionate rate of infant deaths in developing countries – “but they’ve got […]

Sir Peter and his DonKey

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, August 20th, 2010 - 13 comments

Sir Peter Gluckman wants more investment in early childhood. $1 invested in young children now gives $13 in adulthood, but his day-trader DonKey’s short-termism sees only cuts and short-change for our greatest resource.

Child support

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, July 9th, 2010 - 48 comments

According to the headlines “Inland Revenue is owed more than $1.8 billion by parents who have shirked their financial responsibilities”. Dig a bit deeper and the picture is not as bad as it looks. “Absent dads” don’t need to be demonised by the likes of Bob McCoskrie.

State housing decline will leave families out in the cold

Written By: - Date published: 6:41 pm, July 7th, 2010 - 11 comments

Stuff reports that under Minister Phil Heatley, Housing NZ will manage additions of only 275 houses for each of the next two years. Under the previous government 8000 state houses were added between 1999 and 2008. In a recession, with household budgets stretched, state provision of high quality, affordable housing is even more important for […]

Appreciating parenthood

Written By: - Date published: 3:26 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 10 comments

A thought provoking piece from Bryan Caplan ponders “”Having kids—what’s in it for me?” An economic perspective on happiness, nature and nurture provides an answer: Parents’ sacrifice is much smaller than it looks, and much larger than it has to be.”

Should he have stayed or come home?

Written By: - Date published: 2:47 pm, May 8th, 2010 - 29 comments

Today, all the Herald’s political commentators talk about Key’s decision to come back from his Middle East trip after the ANZAC Day helicopter crash. My immediate impression was that it was right for the Prime Minister to come back after a national tragedy. But the revelation that Key’s return meant Tim Groser had to stay with the delegation despite his mother’s death changes things.

Another blow to families

Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, April 28th, 2010 - 42 comments

Not content with raising the cost of living through a GST increase, the Nats are clearly planning another blow to young families. In a move that breaks yet another election promise, Bill English is preparing the ground for the axing of 20 hours free early childhood education.

Between a rock and a hard place

Written By: - Date published: 2:58 pm, January 18th, 2010 - 14 comments

At the end of the month the new kindergarten year begins. Reading this article in the SSTimes from yesterday reminded me of just how hard the question of childcare is for many parents: The Kiwi tradition of sending pre-schoolers to kindy is losing favour, as growing numbers of parents seek all-day care for their children.The […]

Recession’s ‘rough edges’ hit families – no help from govt

Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, July 20th, 2009 - 48 comments

Labour leader Phil Goff has called for a temporary relaxation of the rules for getting the dole. Too many Kiwis on low and middle incomes are losing their jobs but are not able to get any assistance from the Government (despite having paid taxes for years) because their partner has a modest income. John Key […]

“Creeping communism” a success

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, July 20th, 2009 - 6 comments

Missed this from a couple of days ago: For the first time in 25 years, the incomes of those in lower brackets grew more quickly than those on higher incomes, the Household Income Survey by the Social Development Ministry found. It credits Working for Families with the turnaround and says it also helped avert a […]

Going Backwards II

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 8 comments

A recent piece in the New York Times highlights the absurdity of going backwards with the apparent reorganisation of the Families Commission around nuclear families. Gender involves a lot of gray area. And efforts to legislate a binary truth upon the wide spectrum of gender have proven only how elusive sexual identity can be. The […]

Veitch saga shows it really is no longer OK

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 pm, April 19th, 2009 - 22 comments

I know it’s not The Standard’s style to follow the media in the disgusting practice of turning real people’s lives into soap opera but there is a political aspect of the Veitch saga that is worth commenting on. 30 years ago, a story like this would have been swept under the carpet. Family violence was a private […]

Tax cuts no help for those worse off

Written By: - Date published: 7:59 pm, February 24th, 2009 - 73 comments

According to RNZ: Official papers confirm low income families will be worse off under the National Government’s tax cut package, compared with Labour’s. Radio New Zealand‘s political editor says papers obtained under the Official Information Act, also show higher earners will be better off. From April 2011 a person with children earning $40,000 per year […]

Walk the walk

Written By: - Date published: 7:07 pm, January 28th, 2009 - 8 comments

Parents around the country are counting down the days until school starts for the year – but for some the NZHerald had some alarming news, stating “cuts in government funding [from MSD]could force 24 after-school care programmes run by Kidicorp to close….The after-school School’s Out programmes run in Auckland, Taupo, Rotorua, Taranaki and Hawkes Bay […]

Valuing children

Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, December 12th, 2008 - 21 comments

I know I won’t be alone in being disappointed in the results of the Unicef survey, which says that “New Zealand has an appalling child poverty rate, spends too little on early childhood services for which there is unequal access, and lags far behind other developed nations in parental leave provisions, according to a new […]

Childish

Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, October 18th, 2008 - 64 comments

We live on a finite planet. We can’t just keep adding 75 million people a year to the human population while also increasing the average resource consumption per person without collapsing the biological systems that support us.  Current projections have the world population rising another 2-2.5 billion in the next 40 years to peak around […]

Wrong time for short-term thinking

Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, October 14th, 2008 - 90 comments

National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me […]

Trickle-down

Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, October 12th, 2008 - 11 comments

A few thoughts from today’s Agenda: Questioned about why National would introduce another tax rebate, having endlessly criticised Working for Families because of its complexity, English says ‘we do, in the long term, want a simpler tax system’. So, be on notice, Working for Families is under threat from National – they would ‘eventualy, but […]

Social Report shows Kiwis better off

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 31 comments

MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 […]

Cumulative Effect

Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, May 23rd, 2008 - 60 comments

The Press (Budget Doesn’t Impress Family) looks at the effect of the tax cuts on an average family with a combined income of $78,000 and two kids under 12 . They will have $42 more a week from tax cuts and boosted Working for Families tax credits come October 1. That’s like getting paid for […]

Telling porkies

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, May 22nd, 2008 - 44 comments

The Herald and National have started attacking every piece of government spending as pork-barrelling. Here’s some of what they’re calling ‘wasteful, needless spending’: $750 million of new health spending ($160 million for elective services) -Pork $700 million for Fast Forward Fund, food and pastoral sector research -Pork $665 million to buy the national rail operations […]

New Zealand, a great place to be a mum

Written By: - Date published: 4:02 pm, May 12th, 2008 - 48 comments

We hear an awful lot from the Right about how much New Zealand sucks: ‘crime is up’ they cry (when it’s down), ‘taxes are too high’ (when they’re down), ‘too many dole bludgers’ (when benefit numbers are way, way down), ‘everyone’s leaving for Australia’ (when fewer than 0.7% of people went last year), ‘labour costs […]

Know your Nat: Judith Collins

Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, April 30th, 2008 - 45 comments

If National were the Government, Judith Collins would be Social Services Minister. That should be enough to send shudders down the spine of anyone who is worried about ensuring there is a safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. Collins is rabidly anti the welfare state and a nasty piece of work. […]

Child beating petition falls short

Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, April 29th, 2008 - 95 comments

Family First’s petition for a referendum on reversing the amendment to s59 of the Crimes Act that removed the defence of reasonable force for assault on a child (try saying that three times fast) has failed to get enough signatures. It needed 280,275 signatures and seemed to have enough but the Office of the Clerk […]

On child poverty

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, April 29th, 2008 - 26 comments

The Child Poverty Action Group has released a report [PDF, 400k] showing there were 185,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand in 2004. That’s a big number but it is out of date and already well down from the dark days of the 1990s. It is estimated that higher employment, higher wages, paid paternal […]