WELFARE FORUM: Rethinking welfare for the 21 st century PRESENTER - - PDF document

1

WELFARE FORUM: Rethinking welfare for the 21st century PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES & ABSTRACTS

Paula Rebstock: is the Deputy Chairwoman of New Zealand Railways Corporation, Chairwoman of the Insurance & Savings Ombudsman Commission, Chair of Probation Expert Panel (Probation Service) and a Member of the Shared Services Establishment Board (Health). She was formerly Chair of the Commerce Commission and a Director of the Foundation for Research, Science and

• Technology. She has also held positions in Treasury, the Department of the

Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Department of Labour. Paula has a double degree in International Relations and Economics from the University of Oregon and a Masters Degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. In 2009 she received the Insignia of a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for public services. She is currently chairing the government-appointed Welfare Working Group. Paul Smyth: Professor of Social Policy at the University of Melbourne, and General Manager, Research & Policy Centre, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Fitzroy,

• Australia. This joint position involves leading research and the development of

policy around partnership solutions to Australia's social problems. His work combines policy citizens need to master the risks of twenty first century living; and reworks the nexus between employment, wages and welfare through systems of flexicurity. Here welfare and the economy are not opposed, but good social and economic policy reinforce each other. Relevant Paper: Building an inclusive nation Presentation: Reframing the Social Inclusion/social exclusion debate for the 21st century-international perspective. How should we frame the challenge of welfare reform today? For countries like New Zealand and Australia there are basically two options. One is the late twentieth century strategy of 'getting people off welfare'. Welfare state generosity is seen as the main problem and tough love measures to promote a work ethic, thrift and self reliance are identified as the solution. The second is 'creating a social investment state' to promote an inclusive society. This is an entirely different starting point. It assumes that in both social and economic policy, simple deregulation is not enough. It takes a life course approach to understanding the resources. Peter Saunders: was the Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales from 1987 until 2007. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, Peter has consulted for national and international

• rganisations, including the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the OECD,

the IMF, and the Asian Development Bank. He coordinates the Masters of Social Policy program, and leads research and development policy around partnership solutions to Australia's social problems. Research areas include Australian social policy, local governance and social inclusion, and international perspectives on social inclusion. Relevant papers: Measuring Well-being using Non-Monetary Indicators in Family Matters (2008) and Towards New Indicators of Disadvantage, Social Policy Research Centre 2007. Presentation: Child Deprivation in Australia: Findings and Implications for Welfare

• Reform. The focus of recent welfare reform in New Zealand, Australia and other Anglo-Saxon

countries has been on improving incentives and other ways of reducing the numbers receiving working-age payments because of unemployment, sole parenthood or disability. Rarely featured in this debate is an examination of the consequences of adopting an approach which ignores payment adequacy and its affect on those forced to experience economic deprivation and

• adversity. This paper draws on recent Australian research on deprivation to show that such an

approach can generate important new insights into the nature, causes and consequences of

2

• poverty. Special attention is given to implications for child poverty. These findings are

complemented by initial results from other research examining how children and young people in disadvantaged areas perceive and experience economic adversity. The implications for welfare reform are then addressed, focusing on why incentives are important and why they must be considered with adequacy issues if welfare reform is to improve welfare. Finally, I reflect on how the welfare reform debate would differ if it was directed at improving children‟s welfare rather than increasing adults‟ paid work and/or reducing welfare spending paid for by taxpayers. Eve Bodsworth: Researcher, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne, is currently completing her doctoral thesis at Deakin University looking at single mothers‟ experiences of welfare-to-work reform in Australia. Her latest research examined the context in which low income people make decisions regarding paid work and income support receipt, informing part of the Brotherhood‟s Taxation

• campaign. Eve has recently served as a member of an Australian Commonwealth

Government Legislative Review Panel, examining the operation of a number of family payment and welfare policies. Eve is also a lawyer, having previously worked in family law, family violence law and commercial litigation, and she continues to provide volunteer advice at the Victorian Women‟s Legal Service. Relevant paper: Making Work Pay Presentation:“Listening to sole parents – lessons from the Australian „welfare to work‟ reforms and a framework for a supportive, secure and flexible welfare system.” Eve Bodsworth will present findings from a recent study conducted by the Brotherhood of St

• Laurence. The „Making Work Pay‟ study reveals that Australia's income support system has failed

to adapt to the new economic environment and to equip its most disadvantaged citizens, including sole parents, to manage the many risks they face when engaging with insecure forms

• f paid work. In addition, the Australian „welfare to work‟ reforms inadequately recognize the

care responsibilities of sole parents, forcing them to manage care of their children around both the demands of paid work and the inflexible obligations of the income support system. Instead, sole parents need and want a system which allows them flexibility to prioritize the needs of their children when necessary, security to engage in an often precarious labour market, and support to reach their longer term aspirations around paid work. Mike O‟Brien, Associate Professor in Social Policy and Social Work at Massey University‟s Albany campus, is the coordinator of the social policy programme. His research interests include child poverty, welfare reform, welfare state change and social services provision. Recent publications include Social Welfare, Social

• Exclusion. A Life Course Frame (with L. Harrysson) (2007), Social Policy in

Aotearoa New Zealand (with C. Cheyne, M. Belgrave) (2008), Poverty, Policy and State (2008), New Zealand New Welfare? (2008), What Work Counts? (with D. Wynd, C. Dale and S. St John) (2010), Child Poverty and Child Rights Meet Active Citizenship: A New Zealand and Sweden Case Study (with T. Salonen) (forthcoming). He is the current Convenor of the Child Poverty Action Group and Chairs the Welfare Justice. Alternative Welfare Working Group recently established by Caritas, Anglican Social Justice and the Beneficiaries Advocacy Group. Presentation: The New Zealand context Paul Callister: Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. As an economist, Dr. Paul Callister has over the last two decades undertaken research for a wide range of public and private sector organisations, addressing local, national, and cross-national issues. In 2001-2002 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Paul's recent research has focused on the changing distribution of paid and unpaid work at the level of both the individual and the household. This has included a focus on the polarisation of work across households; fertility and 'family-friendly' policies; employment scheduling; home-based employment; the transmission of ethnicity within households; as well as the links between changes in the labour market and changes in the form and function of households. Paul is currently leading the Foundation for Research, Science and

3 Technology funded project: Education capital formation, employment, migration, gender, work- life balance and missing men. Relevant paper: The changing nature of young people‟s transitions. Presentation: General Labour Market Picture in New Zealand.The dominant family and labour market arrangement in the 1950s and 60s was the „breadwinner model‟. The vast majority of mid life men and women were married and living with dependent children. Virtually all mid life men worked full time, full year, while the vast majority of women in this age group undertook full time unpaid domestic work in the home. Now there is a wide diversity of work and family arrangements for women and men. While much of the change has been positive, shifts in labour demand and supply have left some people increasingly excluded. Using primarily census and HLFS data, significant changes in the work and living arrangements of men and women are

• tracked. Consideration is given to changes for individuals but also changing household patterns
• f work.

Cindy Kiro: Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Massey University. Cindy Kiro is the former Commissioner for Children and has extensive research experience in public health, policy for children and young people, and Maori health and development. She is currently Associate Professor at Te Mata o Te Tau, the Academy for Maori Research and Scholarship at Massey University. Presentation: Maori and Welfare Reforms: Issues and Implications. There are important public debates around welfare reform that concern Māori. Māori are an economically vulnerable population and act as the canary in the coalmine for other vulnerable populations who are also likely to be targeted by welfare reforms in New Zealand. Māori need to understand that because of their demographic importance to New Zealand in the future they can be in the driving seat of helping New Zealand to achieve better economic prosperity and social cohesion. Government has a leadership role in developing a strategy which facilitates Māori participation in the labour market. August 2010 official statistics show Māori unemployment of 16.4%, the highest rate since 1993. The key to reducing benefit dependency is the interaction of available suitable work and early established pathways to move individuals and their families through education, early labour market participation and the provision of essential services for employment such as childcare for families with dependent children. Short term or populist approaches reinforcing old stereotypes of Māori will reinforce patterns of failure, making it harder to exit a reliance on benefits in the future. Conceptualising the problem at a population level is essential for dealing with these issues in a more ethical and sustainable way. Kay Brereton: Advocacy Co-ordinator, Wellington People‟s Centre. Kay Brereton is the Advocacy Coordinator at the Wellington People's Centre. The WPC was founded in 1992 and works to assist low waged workers and beneficiaries, by providing access to free advocacy and quality low cost health services. Kay has extensive experience in advocating for beneficiaries to receive their full and correct entitlements. She brings grassroots knowledge of the benefit system, and the experiences of beneficiaries. Presentation: Reflections from the “coalface” Keith Rankin: Lecturer, Unitec, Auckland. Political Economist and Political Historian, Keith Rankin teaches economics within Unitec's Faculty of Creative Industries and Business. From 1997 he has developed and used a spreadsheet- based model to analyse the impact of the different taxes, tax credits and other benefits that exist in New Zealand. Keith has written a number of papers on related issues, and was co-author of "Escaping the Welfare Mess" in 2009. Presentation: Welfare Reform: Changing the Way we Account for Benefits. The welfare system can be reformed through consistent and principled accounting for taxes and benefits, reflecting equity concepts and public property rights. Welfare benefits are a combination of

4 needs-based and rights-based payments to private individuals or households from public funds. Here, needs-based (vertical equity) payments are transfers, rights-based (horizontal equity) payments are dividends, and a third kind, subsidies, includes company tax concessions. Identifying some benefits is difficult because they are paid, not by the country‟s principal welfare agency, WINZ, but by its revenue collection agency, IRD. Thus, depending on a politician‟s or writer‟s normative position, some or all benefits paid by the IRD are commonly deducted from taxes, making it appear firstly that gross public revenue is lower than it really is, and secondly, that a disproportionate share of taxation is levied on high income earners. While the most clear- cut example of mis-accounting relates to “Family Tax Credits”, I argue that all tax concessions, exemptions and allowances should be accounted for as benefits. Dr Louise Humpage, Senior Lecturer, the University of Auckland, teaches social policy and the welfare state in the Department of Sociology. She has written extensively about indigenous affairs policy in New Zealand, Australia and Canada in journals such as Critical Social Policy, Policy Studies and the European Journal of Social Policy. She received a Royal Society Marsden grant 2007-2009 to study public attitudes to social citizenship in New Zealand. The final report, Understanding Social Citizenship in New Zealand, will be released soon. She is writing a book analysing the relationship between policy change and public attitudes to social citizenship. The panel contribution argues that analysing New Zealand public attitudes about the welfare state tells us much about where we should focus to counter regressive welfare reforms. Two research studies have assessed whether attitudes to the welfare state and notions of social citizenship have changed since 1990s. One used quantitative data from the New Zealand Election Study, 1990-2008, to track trends in attitudes across time. The other qualitative study involving interviews and focus groups with 87 New Zealanders from a wide range of backgrounds, conducted between 2007 and 2008 and attempting to document contemporary attitudes to social citizenship (the guarantee of basic rights to health, education, work and welfare). Louise draws

• n these studies to offer some insight on a better frame for the debate about welfare use to

encourage public interest in and support for maintaining a strong welfare state. Manuka Henare: Associate Dean Māori & Pacific Development /Director Mira Szászy Research Centre, joined the Department in 1996 as Senior Lecturer in Mâori Business Development. He is currently Associate Dean Mâori and Pacific Development; founder Director of the Mira Szászy Research Centre and Co-

• rdinator, Huanga Mâori Masters Programme, Graduate School of Business. A

Board member of the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) and Chair of its Audit and Risk Committee, and a member of the Institute of Directors, Manuka has advised government departments, local authorities and other institutions on bicultural policies. He has served on advisory committees on development assistance, peace and disarmament, archives, history and social policy. He previously taught courses on the Treaty of Waitangi, Mâori culture and society and tribal histories at Victoria University of Wellington, and lectured in Masters of Development Studies on culture, religion and economic development. Prior to his university career he was CEO of two national NGOs involved in international development, justice and peace. Manuka will speak on Whanau Ora Sue Bradford: a Green Party MP from 1999 till 2009, Sue is married and has had 5 children. She currently lives in Mangere, in Manukau City. Before becoming an MP Sue was a community development worker and political activist in the unemployed and beneficiaries movement from 1983 – 1999. Sue has been an activist on social justice, peace and womens‟ issues from 1967 until the present day. Sue is a member of the alternative social welfare working group and was the inaugural recipient of the CPAG Children‟s champion award for the parliamentarian who has work hardest for children. Sue will speak on Political realities and strategies.