I disagree with the currently fashionable call for compulsory superannuation.

It’s argued that because Australia has compulsory super, so should we.  This argument brushes over a fundamental difference between the two countries.  In Australia, public funded superannuation comes in the form of a low-level, income tested, asset tested pension.  Compulsory super in Australia is designed to replace the public pension.

New Zealand has spent 35 years arguing over National Super ever since Roger Douglas first proposed compulsory super.  In the last few years, the major political parties have reached a consensus supporting National Superannuation, linked to inflation and wage growth, and guaranteed by pre-funding through the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.  I believe these arrangements have wide public support and National will not be changing National Super or the new fund.  It’s a simple system everyone understands.

So I can’t see where compulsory super fits in.  We have a national superannuation, a new and fast growing government savings fund and KiwiSaver coming in on 1st July this year.  KiwiSaver will offer incentives to people who can save to do so.  Many Kiwis won’t sign up despite the incentives because they can’t spare any more cash from their weekly budget.  On top of these three schemes, people continue with their main form of saving by paying off their mortgages.

National will stick with National Superannuation with no changes.  Compulsory superannuation isn’t required and doesn’t fit in the New Zealand system. 

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I disagree with the currently fashionable call for compulsory superannuation. It’s argued that because Australia has compulsory super, so should we. This argument brushes over a fundamental difference between the two countries. In Australia, public funded superannuation comes in the form of a low-level, income tested, asset tested pension. Compulsory super in Australia is designed to replace the public pension. New Zealand has spent 35 years arguing over National Super ever since Roger Douglas first proposed compulsory super. In the last few years, the major political parties have reached a consensus supporting National Superannuation, linked to inflation and wage growth, and guaranteed by pre-funding through the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. I believe these arrangements have wide public support and National will not be changing National Super or the new fund. It’s a simple system everyone understands. So I can’t see where compulsory super fits in. We have a national superannuation, a new and fast growing government savings fund and KiwiSaver coming in on 1st July this year. KiwiSaver will offer incentives to people who can save to do so. Many Kiwis won’t sign up despite the incentives because they can’t spare any more cash from their weekly budget. On top of these three schemes, people continue with their main form of saving by paying off their mortgages. National will stick with National Superannuation with no changes. Compulsory superannuation isn’t required and doesn’t fit in the New Zealand system. Tweet

The loopiest idea to come out of government this year has been a proposal by Dr Cullen to put a tax on fixed interest mortgages. Labour have been investigating how to give themselves the power to add up to 2 percentage points to a mortgage fixed at say 8%, when they think the economy needs to be slowed down.

Labour argues the tax would help exporters by helping the exchange rate to drop. I think they like the idea of getting more money in with a new tax and having more ability to control how people spend their money.

Labour also forget that exporters have mortgages too, and so do the people who run the service industries like transport and farm supplies. A mortgage tax wouldn’t just hit people speculating on houses in Auckland, it would hit the whole export sector. Farm debt has gone up dramatically in the last few years. If the mortgage tax was in place, farmers would be hit with unexpected high interest rates just when they are hardest hit with a high exchange rate

The mortgage tax would be unfair. People take out fixed term mortgages so they can control their monthly budget. The fixed term gives them certainty about their regular payments. They are willing to take the risk of overpaying interest for a while as long as they have certainty.

A mortgage tax would take away the certainty. The household budget would be in the hands of politicians trying to manipulate the economy for their own ends.

The real problem for exporters at the moment is the surge in government spending planned by Labour to try and win the 2008 election. Over the next 18 months Labour plan to spend $5 billion more taxpayers money. That puts pressure on inflation and so on the exchange rate. It means interest rates will be higher for longer than they should be, and so will the dollar.

I believe the mortgage tax idea should be scrapped and the Government should start to be more careful with other people’s money. Then the exporters might get the break they deserve.

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.The loopiest idea to come out of government this year has been a proposal by Dr Cullen to put a tax on fixed interest mortgages. Labour have been investigating how to give themselves the power to add up to 2 percentage points to a mortgage fixed at say 8%, when they think the economy needs to be slowed down.

Labour argues the tax would help exporters by helping the exchange rate to drop. I think they like the idea of getting more money in with a new tax and having more ability to control how people spend their money.

Labour also forget that exporters have mortgages too, and so do the people who run the service industries like transport and farm supplies. A mortgage tax wouldn’t just hit people speculating on houses in Auckland, it would hit the whole export sector. Farm debt has gone up dramatically in the last few years. If the mortgage tax was in place, farmers would be hit with unexpected high interest rates just when they are hardest hit with a high exchange rate

The mortgage tax would be unfair. People take out fixed term mortgages so they can control their monthly budget. The fixed term gives them certainty about their regular payments. They are willing to take the risk of overpaying interest for a while as long as they have certainty.

A mortgage tax would take away the certainty. The household budget would be in the hands of politicians trying to manipulate the economy for their own ends.

The real problem for exporters at the moment is the surge in government spending planned by Labour to try and win the 2008 election. Over the next 18 months Labour plan to spend $5 billion more taxpayers money. That puts pressure on inflation and so on the exchange rate. It means interest rates will be higher for longer than they should be, and so will the dollar.

I believe the mortgage tax idea should be scrapped and the Government should start to be more careful with other people’s money. Then the exporters might get the break they deserve.

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Thank you for your concerns about NCEA. Over 100,000 students sat NCEA last year. Here is a parent’s point of view on NCEA talking about what can be fixed so that we can have confidence in the qualification.

When parents hear reports that teachers believe NCEA assessment is not fair and credible, they are right to be worried. When even the government admit there are enough problems to have an enquiry parents know something has to be fixed. But it all looks like the bureaucrats and ministers are more worried about the system than about our children who are its guinea pigs. In their Wellington world, a bad year for NCEA might be just another teething episode, but in the lives of our children it’s a long time. They get one shot at it. The students don’t get the chance for a review and fine tuning.

Parents haven’t been heard, so here is a parent’s charter. It's what we want from the ministers and bureaucrats who we are meant to trust to sort out NCEA.

Big differences in results form year to year make us suspicious. It looks like students can suffer because of the system, not because of their performance. It looks like you have to pick the right subjects in your year to do well.

The assessment has to be fair, consistent and credible. Parents know how hard their children work. We hear far too many stories about the wrong students getting the wrong results, papers hardly anyone passes and exams everyone passed. When internal assessments are good then the exam results are bad, the teachers must be confused about what to teach.

Give us comparative information, including that apparently embarrassing word “failure”. Parents want to know where their child fits in as well as what the child knows. Any result means more to a parent if they know how other students achieved. Parents want to compare schools so provide information that allows them to do it. There is nothing wrong with knowing whether a school’s record is improving or going backwards.

Make sure the results of NCEA do not depend on what school our children attend. Most children don’t go to famous schools. We want results that mean something to employers and tertiary institutions who have never heard of our school. Our students should be entitled to rely on NCEA results, not school reputations.

Bring back failure. Parents were told NCEA was mean’t to do away with failure, but lots of subjects have 50% fail rates if you know where to look. But now the school doesn’t have to tell anyone how many students failed internal assessment or exams. It’s hard to tell if your own child failed internal assessment and the grade average is a nonsense because it leaves out failed subjects. It’s good to know what children know, and it’s also good to know how much they failed to learn, for whatever reason.

Even out the effort. Our children have strong sense of fairness There are too many stories about cunning students working out how to get through by doing easy credits, while others slog it out all year. It’s good for students to have more choices, but we don’t want them given easier choices, because they will take them. Why do some students only do half as many questions in a three hour exam and how come students can just miss out exam questions if they think they don’t have the credits.

Do something to get back the workload and the endless assessment for teachers. NCEA seems to make everyone look busy without much more to show for it. In the real world if the system is too complicated, we simplify it. We’re trying to teach our students to work smarter, but NCEA makes our teachers just work hard, and parents are getting a bit tired of hearing about it.

We want assurance that you care more about standards and students than about theories. Own up to the problem. Face the fact – NCEA has problems. Everyone else knows it, but no-one official in education will say it. You all sound like making NCEA work matters less than having it. Because you won’t own up, parents are suspicious that you will keep trying to justify the problems rather than fix them.

How come everyone is so keen to sort out Scholarship but strange results in NCEA apparently aren’t important enough to be taken seriously? Bright students will do well in any system but most of our children aren’t in the ‘bright category’. The system can do them in. Results should be fair for all students, not just those at the top.

Stop comparing NCEA to the old system. Our children didn’t sit School Certificate or Bursary. They know nothing about it. We don’t want our children to be victims of people trying to prove some point about a system one uses. Drop the argument and show you understand the need to make THIS system work for TODAY’S students.

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So the Prime Minister thinks women who stay at home to look after children are holding the economy back. Imagine the uproar if a male Prime Minister had said that. Helen Clark told the Parliament that if all the women who stay home went to work, the economy could be 5% bigger.

Children weren’t mentioned. The Government believes women are just sitting at home doing nothing and going shopping when they get bored. And the women who do work apparently aren’t working hard enough. The Prime Minister wants them to get out a few hours earlier in the morning and work out a few more hours at night, because otherwise they will have too much spare time.

Helen Clark also told Parliament the worst offenders are women aged 25-34. They have committed the cardinal sin of staying home more than the perfect ideal women of Sweden, a country New Zealand is meant to be like because the Prime Minister goes skiing there. The fact that women aged 24-35 are the mothers of young babies doesn’t seem to matter.

So the government wants young mothers of young babies to get full time work and put their babies in to full time care to lift our economic performance.

Helen knows the great thing about getting these mothers into work is that it counts double for the economy. Where a mother’s work at home didn’t count at all, if she goes to work her wages count for the economy and so do the wages and costs of whoever looks after the child. It’s like telling everybody to eat out every night instead of cooking their own tea – washing the dishes at the restaurant grows the economy but washing the dishes at home doesn’t. So here’s another policy to grow the economy - make everyone go to an expensive restaurant every night.

Some families already do put their children into full time care from a young age.

I go in and out of early childhood centres all over the country because I’m the Opposition Spokesman for education. I am allowed to give an opinion on looking after children because I once spent a year at home as a house husband. I just can’t get comfortable with 6 month old babies spending 10 hours a day in a centre looked after by a teacher. It’s like the feeling I get when I see pictures of men kissing – it’s just not right. Some people decide they have to do it, but it shouldn’t be government policy.

Labour’s views about childcare are quite extreme. They believe the best thing for a child is to get in to early and intensive childcare. I’m not joking – it’s official Government policy that children do better if they are in child care early and often with a qualified teacher, as long as its not privately owned. Apparently the research shows only government owned centres do the job properly. So we are headed down the road to school for two year olds.

I have read hundreds of pages of official documents about the government’s policy on early childhood and parents don’t get a mention. Sometime I wonder why they let us take our kids home to our unlicensed premises to be looked after by unqualified parents.

So at least Helen’s idea that mothers are holding the economy back is consistent with Labour’s policy that parents hold children back. The government believes it can do the job much better than fuddy duddy parents who get married, make up their own minds about who looks after the children and call themselves a family.

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They are ignored in the rush to help everyone else who has a complaint or an injustice or a human right that’s not right. They are told they are dying out, almost extinct and old fashioned. The government is determined not to say anything that encourages them. I’m talking about the mums and dads.

It’s time to acknowledge the mums and dads for the great job they do. They are told regularly that the traditional family is dead. These mums and dads have children and pay their bills. They buy the school raffle tickets, visit and support their parents and pay tax consistently and honestly. They work hard to stay together, but if they fail, they do their best for the children. They save up for holidays, worry about their teenagers and do a good turn for the neighbour or their family occasionally.

They teach their children to stick at it, to be polite and to take opportunities. They teach them to give up some things today for better things tomorrow. They demonstrate to children how to put the care of others ahead of their own comfort and consumption. They take each day as a step to long-term achievements – children grow up, and mortgages get paid off eventually

Some parents do all this on a low income, and some on a benefit. They are constantly making choices to give up what they want themselves so they can provide for their children. Parents on low incomes have to make peace with the reality they can’t do as much for their children as they want.

Children aren’t always the postcard version. Some mums and dads every day face a physical and emotional challenge of caring for children with

disabilities where achievement is just getting through the day. Other mums and dads spend months and years finding their way through a confusing and unsympathetic system trying to get the services their children need, and they stick at it. And some children are just difficult. Mums and dads have to learn patience they didn’t know they had, unconditional love they didn’t realise was possible.

Mums and dads have their own sense of achievement – a child finally sleeping peacefully, a teenager safely home, a month when the overdraft was paid off.

But they can’t do it on their own and they shouldn’t have to. The whole community benefits when the mums and dads do a good job, and the whole community pays when it goes wrong. Mums and dads need support and encouragement. They should get more respect, and their authority with their own children should be reinforced, not undermined. I wish politicians would show the same passionate support for mums and dads as they did in Parliament for the Civil Union law.

So thanks – thanks to the mums and dads, and I hope you get some rest and quiet time at Christmas.

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In the next three months Parliament is going to mess up the lives of thousands of people who are paying no attention. The law regarding personal relationships is about to undergo the biggest change in a century and anyone who isn’t married should pay attention.

The Civil Union Bill on its own will directly affect a few people who want to have a civil union. There is another piece of legislation called the Civil Union (Statutory References) Bill which will make a much bigger difference. This Bill is based on the theoretical idea that all relationships are the same. This bill will change provisions in dozens of different statutes to ensure all relationships carry the same rights and obligations.

It’s a theory because it flies in the face of reality. In reality people choose their level of commitment to a relationship. People tend to believe that the less commitment they make the less rights and obligations go with it. It’s not a tidy process. Children can show up unexpectedly when there was no serious relationship, or the partners might disagree about how committed each other should be. They may not agree that there is a serious relationship at all.

If the civil union bills are passed by parliament, there will be only one type of legal relationship, with one set of rights and obligations. The intention of the partners and their commitment to the relationship will be irrelevant. Thousands of people will find decisions on their commitment made for them by the government.

Traditionally the law has developed to deal with relationships differently in different contexts. By Christmas decades practical wisdom that reflects the way people live could be overturned. Next of kin relationships, spousal obligations, parental rights will all be affected.

One practical example is the way the law has dealt with eligibility for benefits. Married people are income tested against their joint income. WINZ apply the same income test to people who aren’t married but live in a relationship in the nature of marriage, so they can’t collect two single benefits. If people start living together this week, then they are meant to notify WINZ and they would move from two single rates of benefit to a couple rate.

If a couple is defined as living in a relationship for benefit purposes, WINZ treats them as if they are married. The Civil Union (statutory References) Bill treats all relationships the same, so once WINZ decides you are in a relationship, then you are in it for all legal purposes, just like a married couple.

The couple who have been shacked up for a few months will have the same rights and obligations as a couple married for 20 years with 4 children, or any other couple.

Now that might frighten a few off. People will have a simple choice - get together on the government’s terms, or don’t get together at all.

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The New Zealand Herald | 12 October 2004

Section 37 of the Care of Children Bill reflects a time when schools could cane pupils without parents knowing. Doctors did not have to obtain informed consent.

These days it is different. If a school doctor wants to give a pupil a Panadol, they have to tell parents. Parents fill out forms to give permission for their child to be off the school property. Schools and parents share responsibility and liability for the students.

Today there is also a much better understanding of the risks of abortion for the girl who is having one. A young woman who has an abortion sees the professionals involved for a very short time. She can then find herself isolated from parents and dependent on peers to deal with the effects of a potentially life-changing decision.

The professionals do not have to live with the consequences, but the parents and the girl do. If the parents do not know, they cannot care.

Mr Benson-Pope is wrong when he says the current law on underage abortions was designed to protect the privacy of the girls concerned. The 1977 royal commission wanted a law that protected a young woman from compulsion to carry on with a pregnancy or get an abortion. It did not consider that parents would not know the abortion occurred. Whether parents know is a different matter from whether they consent.

Professionals have decided that the requirement that the girl consent to an abortion is also a requirement that she consents to who is told about it. In fact, a person under 16 does not have absolute privacy in the same way as an adult.

For instance, if a girl under 16 needs a surgical procedure as a result of complications of abortion, the consent of her parents must be obtained. The consent would not be informed if the parents were not told about the reason for the procedure. The welfare of the girl can override privacy.

Since Mr Benson Pope chooses to base his argument on hard cases, let's consider those hard cases. If the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, those are criminal matters that must be reported to the police. If the girl reports violence at home, that ought to be reported to Child, Youth and Family Services and the police.

No doctor or school counsellor would send a 14-year-old girl back into these circumstances after an abortion, and the law should not allow them to do so.

Some girls will show behavioural change after an abortion. If they stop going to school or become suicidal, parents would have to be told about the abortion because of their responsibility for the girl's welfare.

The risks for the girl herself are bigger in the long term if the parents who are responsible for her do not know what happened to her. Who is Mr Benson-Pope to decide parents are a bigger risk than a help to their own daughter?

He also argues that girls already tell their parents, based on a survey by Abortion Law Reform New Zealand. Its access to the confidential medical files of individual young women is remarkable when it is just a lobby group.

Its public statements have left the impression that most girls tell their parents. In fact, its survey found that of 25 girls under 16 who had abortions at Wellington hospital last year, 24 told a trusted adult, parent or guardian.

Who is a trusted adult? How many actually told their own parent or guardian? A trusted adult could have been the school counsellor, the family planning nurse or any number of adults who do nor bear parental responsibility.

Parents have the fundamental legal and moral responsibility for a young person. Parents will not always be right, but they always have to live with the consequences.

It is time to swing the pendulum back in favour of parents. Where there are significant events affecting children, and real risks to their welfare, parents should be involved.

The idea that the law allows your 12 to 14-year-old daughter to have an abortion on her own and go back to school is repugnant.

Will parents get upset when they find out their 14-year-old daughter is pregnant? Of course they will. They might even shout about it, but this is not the end of the world.

It is more likely that a counsellor or doctor will underestimate the impact of pregnancy and abortion on our daughters. Almost any sort of parent will respond positively to pressure to take responsibility.

Clause 37 was written with the best of intentions. But this law is sapping parental responsibility. Public polling shows strong support for a common-sense change, and Parliament should follow suit.

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The Government defends NCEA like a flawless new religion that is beyond criticism. But NCEA has problems and while most of them aren’t as spectacular as those at Cambridge High School, they cannot be ignored. If they are, the NCEA will lose credibility in the eyes of the community. The worst outcome could be that a student’s qualification is judged on what school they went to.

Now that all four levels of the NCEA are in action in schools, the Government should review the system to see what is working and what isn’t. It is essential that parents, students and employers can have confidence in this national qualifications.

So what should be changed? Here are five proposals, from a non-expert parent who has had the chance to talk to hundreds of teachers, students and parents, both officially and on the sideline at the sports events.

The NCEA has too much assessment and not enough learning. Students go barely a week without some sort of assessment or mock exam. There simply isn’t enough time for learning, and this problem is compounded by students taking much larger numbers of credits than they need. This can be fixed. Teachers have been diligent to make sure they do everything properly with a new system they are learning themselves. . Recent NZQA policy will require more and more assessment work from teachers. Students need more objective assessment and less of it.

When students are assessed under the NCEA, the credits earned are too variable in value. One credit is meant to take 10 hours of assessment and learning. But students know which are easier and which will take less time. I have seen standards worth three credits that a reasonable student with common sense could complete in a few hours, a fraction of the 30 hours required. Other standards worth three credits require a great deal more than 30 hours work for a student.

It’s widely believed that unit standards are much easier than achievement standards, even where the number of credits is the same. So lets even up the currency, so that the students are treated fairly. No student likes to think someone else has the same results for a lot less work, but it happens all the time.

Internal assessment should be moderated properly. Moderation is about comparing assessments across different classes and schools and scaling results to ensure consistency and fairness for students. Under NCEA, the process for setting and marking internal assessment is checked but the actual results of a student’s assessment are not changed if one teacher’s assessment is out of line. Results are looked at afterwards but it’s too late for the student who copped a bad mark they didn’t deserve. Teachers are expected to judge work against standards that are often vague and general. NCEA relies heavily on the collective memory of School Certificate and bursary standards. As that memory fades teachers will need all the help they can get.

NCEA is not working well enough as a replacement for Bursary. Whether or not the Minister and his bureaucrats like it, students and parents want a national standard high stakes competitive exam like Bursary. Too many schools are choosing to do Cambridge International Exams as a replacement academic exam. NCEA should be credible enough to satisfy the needs of the most academic of students. If it doesn’t it will come to be regarded as a second rate qualification. Universities will end up running their own entrance tests.

Surely this country can produce a qualification for the most academic students. In the end the parents and students will get what they want, so the government should be trying to head off the Cambridge exam by adapting NCEA to include more grades, student ranking and better consistency from year to year so standards are predictable.

Failure should be reported. No failures will appear on a students record of learning. The NZQA use contorted language to hide this fact. Failures in external exams are reported to NZQA but failures in internal assessment are not. Last year up to 45% of students failed (did not achieve) external standards. We don’t know if it was the same for internal standards or if they all passed. Most school principals I talk to believe that if a student is entered in a subject after say the 30th of May or June, then their result should appear on their record. Despite the philosophy that every student should get credits, many won’t. We need to know how many, and why. If we don’t have this information we can’t do anything about it.

NCEA is here to stay, so the government and education leaders need to put aside their ideological baggage, acknowledge the problems and get on with fixing them.

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