A Policy A Day: Incarceration and Privatisation

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today's post is written anonymously.

In New Zealand, we have a “she’ll be right” culture, but sometimes we need to look at issues from an “it's broken” view point. One such issue is the state of our corrections system. At the end of March, New Zealand’s prison population reached 10,035. This number was nearly a thousand more than the Justice Sector 2015-2025 forecast had predicted. Why is this population continuously rising when we are constantly being reassured by the government that crime is down? Why are people reoffending? With the General Election less than a month away, these are the questions that we should be asking the different political parties. To get people asking these important questions, let me walk you through the state of our corrections system in New Zealand, using New Zealand’s atrociously high family violence rate as a case study.

Incarceration

In New Zealand, we punish people through incarcerating them [putting them in prison]. Incarceration is a criminal sanction, which is in place to serve and to reinforce the cherished values and beliefs of society, while also incapacitating and deterring those who may be considering criminal misconduct. For many law abiding citizens, this form of punishment is sufficient, and they are happy with the way things are. What these people don’t understand is that incarceration is a form of resocialisation which involves the inmates personally changing.

When people are incarcerated they tend to adopt norms and/or beliefs that are representative of an inmate subculture. Institutions such as prisons create and maintain a kind of tension between the home world of the inmate and the institutional world, and use the persistent tension as a strategic leverage in the management of the inmates.

Along with the negative changes that incur due to adapting to the inmate subculture, inmates also steadily lose their capacity to not only exert power but also to control their destiny while they serve time in prison. Incarcerated life is fully routinised and regimented with very few opportunities for inmates to make decisions or to even exert choice within their daily routine. Upon entering the place of incarceration, the offender is stripped of his or her conception of themselves as well as from the support they would receive from the outside.

Why Incarceration Doesn’t Work

However, this form of punishment is obviously not working as a treatment. We just have to look at the prevalence of family violence in New Zealand to see this. It is thought that in New Zealand, one in four children witness family violence.

It is often asserted that the “cycle of violence” is learnt and passed down from generation to generation, within one’s family. This is due to parenting techniques being learnt from parents and thus abused children become abusing parents. This form of abuse and family violence can span over multiple relationships and generations, making it intergenerational.

If incarceration was a sufficient treatment for inmates, we should have lower family violence rates because perpetrators upon leaving prisons would have left the violence behind and thus would not teach it to their children. But because prisons don’t rehabilitate and they don’t educate inmates, we continue to see people reoffending and in some cases teaching their children to do the same.

Violence is a learnt social behaviour that has also manifested through youth offending. Violent offending by young people is a societal concern especially when youth account only for 5% of New Zealand’s population but make up 10% of New Zealand’s violent apprehensions. This is made even more concerning when one finds out that from 1995 to 2006 there was a 39% increase in youth apprehensions for violent offending, whereas for their adult counterparts there was only a 22% increase.

The effect privatisation of prisons has on incarceration

A scary thing about our corrections system is that we can and have tendered out the running of prisons to organisations such as Serco - this process is known as privatisation of prisons. The problem with privatised prisons is that many of the organisations that run these prisons do not care about the inmates, the conditions of the prison, or adequate staffing levels and/or training. What these organisations do care about is ensuring that at the end of each quarter they make a profit, which they do by underfunding programmes and resources and other means.

When organisations run prisons, they do not care about rehabilitating and educating people not to re-offend – because if they did, demand would decrease and they would not be in demand to run prisons.

In 2016, the United States Deputy Attorney Sally Yates instructed the Justice Department officials to begin phasing out private management of the United States’ 13 privately run facilities. This decision came about after a report into the privately-run prisons showing that contraband, deaths, assaults, and other incidents were higher in privately run prisons, and the standard of health care and food was much lower than federally run prisons. The reality of privatised prisons has also recently been highlighted in the hit Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” and touches on many of those findings mentioned.

What do we do instead of incarceration?

Incarceration has far reaching effects beyond prison walls, with unintended consequences such as social disorganisation of communities, reduced job opportunities for ex-inmates, diversion of funds away from education, as well as psychological and financial burdens on family.  Loss of outside relationships is considered the most painful aspect of incarceration for inmates, and as families are one of the most important factors that affect inmate’s rehabilitation after release, it is vital for these relationships to remain intact. However, this is extremely hard to ensure when prisons are not family-friendly places to visit, and with poor facilities as well as hostile attitudes of staff, it can put families off visiting especially those with children.

With this all in mind, now would be a good idea to look at what the different political parties are proposing regarding improving our corrections system:

• Greens: Stop the construction of new prisons, seek cross party consensus on reducing the prison population, work toward legalising cannabis for personal use.
• NZ First: Introduce a demerit points system for youth offenders, repeal the anti-smacking laws, lower the age of criminal responsibility.
• ACT: Extend the three strikes law to burglary, reward prisoners who complete or teach literacy, numeracy or driver licensing programmes with reduced sentences.
• Labour: Disestablish private prisons.
• Maori Party: Stop the construction of new prisons, repeal the three strikes law, expand kaupapa Maori restorative justice programmes.
• TOP: Aim to reduce the number of prisoners to 6,000 by 2027, raise the Youth Court age to include people aged 19, sentence more people to drug and alcohol treatment instead of prison, repeal the three strikes law.
• United Future: Allow courts to sentence people to rehabilitation for low level drug possession
• National: Establish military based training camps for young people who commit serious offences, fund community groups to reduce youth offending, continue initiatives to reduce Maori overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, continue to pilot initiatives to help released prisoners find and stay in employ.

All of these are great, but no one party holds the solution. If we as a nation really want to ensure we reduce reoffending of inmates then we need to look beyond incarceration. We need to look at:

• Treatment and education programmes for offenders to attend before, during, and after their time in prison.
• Rehabilitation programmes that include the offender and their family – we have heard so many stories of violent offenders going through the programmes on their own, but once they return to their families, they cannot cope because the families weren’t involved in the programme. If families are included in these programmes, then the offender will not only have support and motivation of others, but it would be a learning opportunity for others.
• More strength based programmes for at risk youth – if we can educate and deter people at a young age from committing crime, then the likelihood of them becoming career criminals later will be significantly reduced. 
• Prisons should be more family friendly to encourage inmates to maintain their connection with their family. By having the connection with their family, it could allow inmates to aspire to do better and never be in that situation again, and inspire children to not follow in their parent's poor decision making. 
• Ensuring prisons are run by the government – inmates should not be seen as cash cows for organisations wanting to run prisons purely because they think it will be lucrative.

The way forward in terms of punishment for crimes should be strengths based to show these individuals that they can achieve more, and can do more for not only themselves but their families too. Incarcerating thousands of people a year is not only a strain on the tax payer dollar, but it is a waste of one’s potential and talent. If we can look and fund a corrections system which does correct people in their ways and begins to let them see their potential, then we will hopefully live in a New Zealand that is safer.

Today’s contributor works for an NGO that receives some government funding and has chosen to remain anonymous. The views expressed are their own.

A Policy A Day: Universal Basic Income

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today's post is written by Simon Thomas

Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) - the answer to poverty, unemployment, and tax? Or millennials just wanting their smashed avo paid for by someone else? The idea of a guaranteed income is hardly a new one, but it has never progressed significantly past an interesting point of discussion.

UBI (also known as Universal Basic Income, or Basic Income Guarantee) defined: A periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. Whether you want to think of it as free money, a form of social security, or simply a payment for being part of a country’s economy, there are quite a few arguments for and quite a few arguments against implementing a UBI. Happily, the three most common and relevant arguments for both sides marry up quite well:

Pro: A UBI will help to alleviate poverty and simplify welfare systems.

Con: But, it would be expensive.

Pro: Automation is disrupting the labour market, and a UBI may be necessary to support the resulting unemployment.

Con: But, industrialisation has been happening for hundreds of years and hasn’t caused long-term unemployment before. Why should this tech revolution be any different?

Pro: Providing people with financial freedom will encourage an innovation-based and future-proof economy.

Con: But, giving people free money might disincentivise work.

Poverty and Welfare
If you’re a reader of A Policy A Day, then I’m sure you’re also relatively aware of the poverty stats in NZ, but the short story is that they do not read well; it seems that the current means-tested, needs-based welfare system may not be doing its job effectively (in spite of a glowing review from Wikipedia). A UBI as a fix to this doesn’t seem hugely clear until we look at the pitfalls of the current system - after all, isn’t it just providing welfare to everyone? In the current system, I see three big issues.

Firstly, because the current system is means- and income-tested, it can create what’s known as a welfare trap, whereby the income a person could receive from a low-paid job may not be that much more than the welfare itself. This practically incentivises poor people to stay on welfare or, if the person is willing to lie to WINZ, commit welfare fraud. A UBI addresses this issue by its very definition of being unconditional, providing a minimum income while still allowing the person to supplement it with full- or part-time work if they are able.

Secondly, current welfare systems put a huge stigma on social security, which would be immediately addressed by an unconditional income. There is absolutely no stigma attached to NZ Super - a form of social security which is actually quite close to a UBI (the amount you receive isn’t income tested, but the tax you have to pay is) - and while some would argue that pensioners have earned Super through working in New Zealand, everyone gets the same regardless of their contributions to the pension fund throughout their career.

Finally, the current system also necessitates a large amount of bureaucracy and administration to implement and regulate. A UBI addresses this slightly by reducing the necessity for means testing and regulation. There would be a small administration cost, especially to get everyone signed up initially, but it would likely be nowhere near the current cost.

Which all sounds great, but how do we afford it? I won’t be going too deep into the actual economics of it as I am by no means an economist, but suffice it to say that this is a huge barrier that UBI still needs to overcome. There are plenty of people who say that it is economically not viable or that the necessary steps to fund it are completely undesirable, but there are also plenty of suggestions that say that it is completely viable. Plans to fund a UBI range from reforming tax, through rescinding all other (now “redundant”) forms of welfare, to removing all non-digital currency from circulation and placing the amount in a central UBI pot (or a mixture of the above). In fact, a recent study from the US has suggested that a UBI could be paid for with increasing federal debt and still increase the GDP of the US permanently.

This calculator tool, by NZ accountant Peter Brake, shows you one simple scenario and whether you will personally be better or worse off with a UBI.

Automation Is Disrupting The Jobs Market
Even my dad (who can hardly work Facebook) seems to be aware of the advancements being made in automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Increasing numbers of articles are talking about how robots will be taking all of our jobs in the near future and, if they are to be believed, we should expect up to half of the jobs currently done by humans to be wiped from the jobs market in the next 20 years. If this does come true - and the trend continues - a UBI or similar will be necessary to ensure that those being displaced can still survive.

Of course, there are arguments against these predictions - mainly that industrialisation has been going on for hundreds of years and has never caused long-term unemployment before, due to the creation of entirely new areas of work, so why would AI and robots be any different? Mark Walker’s paper, below, includes some examples of technology which changed the job landscape for good but think horses vs. cars, artisan weavers vs. mechanical looms, the ice trade vs. household fridges.

Whether or not we are actually going to see a job market collapse this time is, unfortunately, a completely unknown parameter - we never dreamed that programming would be a career until the invention of the computer; who is to say that there aren’t as many jobs to be invented as lost in the coming digital revolution? This wonderfully light-hearted paper by Mark Walker attempts to move past this seeming impasse.

Future-Proofing Our Economy
Some big names in tech have also expressed their views about how a UBI would very likely improve the economy through entrepreneurship. Stewart Butterfield, the founder of Flickr and Slack, tweeted recently that “giving people even a very small safety net would unlock a huge amount of entrepreneurialism.” Mark Zuckerberg went as far as to say that billionaires such as himself should pay for it. As someone who is currently trying to make the most of the safety net provided to me by mooching off my parents, I can personally vouch for these ideas. To be honest, though, this idea goes much deeper than allowing a privileged white kid to take a year or two to learn how to code and try to build a business from it. If the economy becomes such that a UBI can be set to give everyone the freedom to choose their own paths and explore their interests, there will be an explosion of innovation.

Counter to this is the age-old argument that giving people free money will completely disincentivise them from working rather than encourage it. This comes from the [knee-jerk] thought, “If I could live without working, why would I want to work?”. While this is an understandable reaction, it is normally based on the thought that a UBI would completely fund the lifestyle that they have become accustomed to. In reality, any UBI would only provide enough money to afford the absolute basics of living, if that (except, maybe, a UBI in a utopian society where the entire economy is automated and considerably healthier than today’s). In the realistic scenario, further work would be necessary to afford any luxuries (and, likely, some modern necessities).

There have also been multiple studies suggesting that this disincentivisation is an entirely unfounded objection and that UBI experiments have, on the whole, increased labour supply. Of course, it is impossible to say that these results can be replicated in NZ, but we do like to think of ourselves as innovative and industrious - it seems unlikely that a large number of us would be content “sitting around, doing nothing all day”. Whether or not the makeup of this labour supply would be a good balance between professions would need further study, but it seems to me that there would be more than sufficient diversity in interests and skills.

Bonus uncertainties to think about

- How would a UBI affect immigration policy? At what point should someone receive NZ’s UBI?

- What will be the initial costs to implement a UBI and sign everyone up?

- If current welfare is retracted, will there be people worse off? For example, how will a single mum of four kids manage? Will needs-based welfare still be necessary?

Policies
Currently, a UBI is only truly being suggested by The Opportunities Party. They have three sections of a UBI: one of which is arguably just targeted welfare for young families; the second replaces NZ Super with a UBI (but also includes a means-tested top-up); and their Youth UBI - which would provide all 18-23 year olds with an unconditional $200 per week - comes very close to truly testing what a UBI might look like and how it would work. It seems that TOP’s main drivers for their youth policy are to help address suicide rates in over-stressed youth and to ease the movement into an increasingly difficult and competitive job market while allowing for increased exploration of fields such as technology, entrepreneurship, and the arts.

The Greens have historically advocated for discussions around a UBI and, in this election, have released an alternative route to reduce some of the issues of the current welfare system. Their policy, titled “Mending the Safety Net”, includes increasing the amount someone can earn before their benefits are cut, and reducing the amount of time spent on investigating those on welfare. They state that their welfare policy should, “guarantee a basic, liveable income”.

As far as major parties go, Labour has previously commissioned some research into UBI, so it may be reasonable to assume that they would at least enter discussions around implementing one. Their Three Years Free policy for tertiary education provides generous support to those seeking further education and training, but it is by no means an unconditional basic income.

Conclusion
There are obviously some rather large uncertainties facing implementation of a full UBI: Is it necessary (is the jobs market actually facing severe disruption)? How will we pay for it? Will it ruin the economy by disincentivising labour? However, I have not been able to find a single concrete reason why a UBI would definitely fail. This, then, leads me to believe that, as a potential silver bullet solution to multiple issues facing NZ, there should be significant resource placed into researching, designing, and testing a UBI.

There is a ridiculous amount of information about UBI on the interwebs, from Reddit threads to a plethora of research papers undertaken by Basic Income Earth Network. I’ve struggled a lot to try to decide what to discuss in this article what to leave out (or simply link). If the idea of a UBI interests you, I strongly recommend committing a couple of afternoons or evenings to reading around some of this material. Even if you just Youtube “UBI” you’ll find a good number of TED Talks to listen to.

Simon Thomas is a Biomedical Engineering graduate but has temporarily shunned that to work on an education-based social enterprise, The Learning Collaborative. He is relatively new to political discussions but has become increasingly intrigued by it all. Simon considers himself to be left-leaning but does not currently feel attached to any particular party.

A Policy A Day: Urban Development Authorities

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today’s post is by Jade Kake

Urban development authorities are currently being considered by both the government and the opposition, largely in response to the inability of housing development and infrastructure to keep pace with population growth in Auckland. Given the coordinated approach and extensive powers proposed, there is huge potential for urban development authorities to address housing supply and affordability, nationwide and particularly in Auckland.

Urban development authorities have been successfully used in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, and there is mounting evidence that these have resulted in better urban design outcomes, improved infrastructure, and economic productivity. The social impact of urban regeneration is more complex, with positive economic outcomes linked to both increased incomes – and house prices.

When left to market forces, the benefits of urban regeneration accrue to our wealthiest and most privileged members of society, and acutely increase the disadvantage experienced by everyone else. What requires further discussion is how indigenous communities are involved in decision-making, and how marginalised communities are empowered (or disempowered) to resist gentrification and positively engage in the development process.

Urban Development Authorities proposal

The government’s proposal, which is currently in the early stages of consultation, would allow nationally or locally significant urban development projects to be built more quickly. Powers currently held by the Crown would be vested in a publicly-owned entity that could be used to streamline and speed up large scale projects, such as suburb-wide regeneration.

The Affordable Housing Authority proposed by Labour is essentially an urban development authority, but without the benefit of more detail, a comparison isn’t possible. Instead, we will assume that the roles and potential powers proposed on both sides are essentially the same, with room for negotiation in developing the details.

The discussion document puts forward a list of potential powers, including:

• Land – powers to assemble parcels of land, including existing compulsory acquisition powers under the Public Works Act 1981
• Planning and resource consenting – powers to override existing and proposed district plans and regional plans, and streamlined consenting processes
• Infrastructure – powers to plan and build new and reroute existing infrastructure such as roads, water pipes and reserves
• Funding – powers to buy, sell and lease land and buildings; powers to borrow to fund infrastructure; and powers to levy charges to cover infrastructure costs

The scale of urban development authorities (such as nationwide, by island, by Regional Council area, by major urban area, etc.) remains to be determined and will have implications regarding consenting and other powers currently held by other geographically defined entities.

Many questions are raised by this extensive list of potential powers, such as, how will the proposed urban development authorities give effect or consideration to the Auckland Unitary Plan? How will the current requirements to consult with iwi under the Resource Management Act be maintained? What are the potential non-market based approaches to urban renewal? How can alternative models of development articulate a leading role for iwi, and how can central and local government incentivise and support such approaches?

Potential roles for Tāmaki Makaurau Iwi

With many Tāmaki Makaurau iwi at the critical point of achieving or negotiating settlement, there are emerging opportunities for iwi to develop their land (returned or purchased through settlement) for housing. The role for iwi as articulated in the government’s proposal is equivalent to that of any other private developer, however, given the document is still a draft, this could be expanded.

Ideally, a variety of roles for iwi would be articulated through the legislation, including governance roles within the Urban Development Authority, as lead development entity, or participating in development consortia. This would enable iwi to participate at whatever level aligns with their interest and capacity – some may wish to be kaitiaki of the vision for their wider area, setting the strategic direction and spatial plan; others will wish to have more influence over environmental outcomes, or the social and tenure mix of housing; others still will wish to take advantage of the commercial development opportunities presented.

The issues associated with the proposed Barrowcliffe Development in Manukau highlight some of the tensions and competing interests in Auckland, with mana whenua sidelined in favour of other interests. Under Ngāti Tamaoho’s leadership, the transit-oriented development would deliver 300 new homes and prioritise social and affordable housing. Divergent policy objectives have been blamed for the stall in the project, with competing mandates between Auckland Council and its development arm Panuku to deliver affordable housing and maximise financial returns.

Another case in point is the Paoa Whanake Point England development planned on land returned under Treaty settlement. Ngāti Paoa have indicated that of the 300 new homes that will be built, 20 per cent of the houses will be social housing, 20 per cent will be sold as affordable, and 60 per cent will be sold on the open market, and that the development will be made available to both tribal and non-tribal members. Community opposition to the project was highlighted in the media, however, the hearings for the Point England Development Enabling Bill revealed a community in support of Ngāti Paoa – but in opposition to the lack of meaningful engagement by the government.

Iwi-led developments such as Barrowcliffe and Paoa Whanake have the potential to benefit both mana whenua and mataawaka (particularly those on low incomes) due to the clear commitment made by iwi to facilitate positive social outcomes for all who reside in their rohe. This can be achieved by determining the tenure mix, and targeting Māori and Pasifika families and individuals through tenant selection criteria, progressive ownership schemes, and social procurement. Additionally, application of principles such as Te Aranga contribute to a positive sense of place relationships for mana whenua, maatawaka, and tauiwi.

A further consideration may be that, given the issues of affordability and low rates of Māori home ownership, what models can be developed to enable iwi-developers or iwi-led consortia to provide a percentage of retained affordable or affordable rental homes (targeted to Māori and other low-income families)? What are the policy implications, and what government financial incentives might be required for this to work?

Resisting Gentrification

The recent experiences in Glen Innes, which has a high proportion of Māori and Pasifika families on low incomes, has highlighted the issues associated with displacement of existing communities in the regeneration process. In response to this issue, the Māori Party’s housing policy specifically requires all community housing providers and all Crown providers of state housing (such as Housing New Zealand) to provide for tenant involvement in governance, through tenant advisory boards and funds tagged for tenant led initiatives. Early tenant involvement in decision-making and social procurement are two further mechanisms to support positive outcomes and prevent displacement of low-income communities through the regeneration process.

As areas selected for regeneration often include a large proportion of state housing, there are opportunities to support state housing tenants to transition to home ownership through rent-to-buy programmes for existing Housing New Zealand tenants. The current policy enables Housing New Zealand to sell houses to tenants under a rent-to-buy agreement, however, this is not widely promoted and many tenants are unaware that this option is available to them. Additionally, there is no provision to credit a portion of rent already paid (often over several decades) towards purchasing the home, a policy change that Māori Women’s Welfare League has long been advocating for.

The tension inherent in this proposition is that tenants do not necessarily whakapapa to the rohe in which they live. There is a need to ensure that the rights of iwi and Right of First refusal provisions under treaty settlement are maintained, that iwi involved in regeneration projects in their rohe (such as Tāmaki) and not placed into a position of conflict with the local community, and that the rights of individual Māori state housing tenants (who may not whakapapa to that rohe) to security of tenure are upheld and their aspirations for home ownership supported.

Impact Outside Auckland

Although principally targeted to Auckland, the urban development authorities proposal when progressed will be national legislation. Several pieces of bespoke legislation precede the urban development authorities proposal, including the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act 2013, and the Housing Legislation Amendment Act 2016. It is unclear to what degree the government has applied the critical learnings from Special Housing Area projects – such as Tāmaki Regeneration, Hobsonville and Waimahia Inlet – in drafting the urban development authorities proposal.

The Housing Legislation Amendment Act enables land obtained under the Public Works Act that is no longer required for the original purpose to be sold to private developers for housing, without the need for it to be offered back to the original owners. This does not undercut any existing Right of First Refusal provisions, but of course, many iwi either don’t have Right of First Refusal provisions or are pre-settlement. A potential unintended consequence may in future see surplus land (such as Whangarei’s prime railway land) sold to private developers without first being offered to tangata whenua. Whether intended by the legislation or not, this should be cause for alarm for pre-settlement iwi.

One way to address this may be to develop government policy that requires any land taken under public works to be released for housing development under the Housing Legislation Amendment Act to be offered to iwi-developers or iwi-led consortia in the first instance. The proposition by Labour (through their Affordable Housing Authority) to partner with hapū, iwi, and Māori organisations to develop affordable and social housing through the procurement process (and by creating joint development organisations) is an interesting one that may go some way towards addressing this issue.

Both major political parties have indicated their support for urban development authorities. The devil is in the details, so to speak, and the best way to ensure Māori outcomes are protected is to ensure minor parties with a strong commitment to Māori and Treaty issues – particularly the Māori Party and to a lesser degree the Greens – are adequately representation under MMP.

Jade Kake is an architectural designer, housing advocate and researcher. She works for national Māori housing advocate Te Matapihi, and in this role, she has written about a wide range of housing related matters online and in print, and has spoken on various panels. In her spare time, she works for her whānau, marae, and hapū in a technical capacity, supporting Māori land utilisation, papakāinga and marae development projects.

A Policy A Day: Teach First

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today's post is by Simon Johnson

There are many things that our next Minister of Education could do if they wanted to make education better:

•   Give more children access to high-quality ECE
•   Reform NCEA
•   Refurbish or rebuild our many failing school buildings
•   Encourage schools to pool their human and financial resources and collaborate to improve learning

At the same time, the Minister must help schools to re-orientate themselves to prepare students for a world where:

• The average learner will live to be 100 years old – and will need educating for many different careers over their lifetime [1]
• Mid-skilled occupations, of the sort that the average Kiwi relies upon, will increasingly be automated. More and more workers will need to interact with AI as a core part of their job.
• Students will have to compete with increasing numbers of English-speaking workers from developing markets who demand a substantially lower wage than their Kiwi counterpart.

Clearly, the next Minister will have their hands full – and they only have three years in office. They have to prioritise. What one thing could an ambitious but realistic Minister do, which would have the greatest possible positive impact on the future of young New Zealanders, whilst also being achievable in the next three years, requiring little additional money and is within the political realities of NZ today?

I suggest that our ambitious Minister should focus on one thing: encouraging more high-quality teachers to teach in New Zealand’s poorest schools.

Why does this matter so much? The evidence is quite clear: improving the quality of teaching – and of the teachers doing the teaching – is the single biggest lever for improving student outcomes [2]. In particular, the effect of being taught by a particularly poor teacher is almost catastrophic for the student involved: the best evidence is that being taught by a teacher in the bottom 5% of effectiveness will reduce an average’s student performance by ~40%, compared to being taught by a teacher of average quality [3]. It is clearly utterly imperative to reduce the number of students being taught by such teachers.

There are (simplistically) two ways that this could be done [4]. The Ministry of Education could find ways to ban these failing teachers from the profession (In the jargon, this is ‘deselection’ [5]). But any Minister who followed this course would be in a political fight of the highest order: no teacher (and certainly no teaching union) would like to work under the threat of ‘deselection’. Moreover, whatever your opinions on firing poor quality teachers as a principle [6], it is a silly policy in New Zealand’s current situation: we struggle to recruit enough teachers to work in low-decile schools as it is [7]. Out on the front line, the ‘pool’ of available teachers is shallow – few head teachers in low-decile schools have the luxury of choosing between several maths teachers to fill their vacancies. Introducing the threat of later firing is not going to encourage many people to join the profession. Instead, we must compete these low-quality teachers out of the profession. We must increase the depth of the recruitment pool – increase the number of high-quality teachers – and hence provide headteachers with more genuine choices in recruitment [8].

As we do so, we must also change part of the incentive structure. At the moment, the pool of teachers is not evenly distributed across the system: high-decile schools find it easier to recruit for vacancies and, on average, attract higher quality teachers [9]. The reason for this is simple: teachers are paid according to a national pay scale. There are no financial rewards for choosing to work in a low-decile school. Indeed, there is an implicit financial reward to teaching in high decile schools. A decile 10 school has about 60% greater income than a decile 1 school, as a result of parental donations (‘school fees’) [10]. Although a high decile school can’t spend this on teacher pay directly [11], they can spend it on the things which make a teacher’s life more attractive: the better classroom facilities, the new swimming pool, the additional school trips. Compounding this, high decile schools have fewer children with the most extreme forms of educational need, and have the pick of high-quality school leaders and supportive parents. Although some teachers are motivated by the challenge of teaching in low-decile schools, many are not: given the imbalance in incentives, it isn’t really much surprise that many high-quality teachers choose not to work in the schools which need them most. Any attempt to improve the depth of the teacher recruitment pool must be closely tailored at ways to encourage more teachers to work in low-decile schools.

Enter Teach First.

Teach First New Zealand recruits teachers in a completely different way to existing training institutions. Modelled on similar programmes in other countries, its basic premise is that teaching is a craft that can be learnt (to some degree) ‘on the job’. Accordingly, they recruit graduates directly from university (without completing the normal year-long teacher certification) and, after an 8-week training course, find them work in low-decile schools. The scheme to date has been small, with only a handful of new teachers being trained each year, and has not been without its controversies: Teach First and the Ministry of Education got into legal difficulties when they failed to comply with various pieces of education and employment law which regulate how teachers are recruited. However, there has been relatively little controversy about the quality of the programme: an initial qualitative study conducted by NZCER and the University of Auckland found the quality of teachers produced by the programme was generally very good, which is in line with international experience where Teach First teachers tend to be as effective (although not more effective) than conventionally trained teachers.

One particular feature of the Teach First programme is worthy of our particular attention: it seems to attract teachers who want to teach in low-decile schools. Once they complete the 2-year training programme, Teach First alumni are under no obligation to continue teaching in low-decile schools. Indeed, with the brand-stamp of ‘Teach First’ on their CV, they would be in a good position to take teaching jobs in other schools. And yet they continue to teach in low-decile schools in significant numbers: about 50% of those who complete the Teach First programme remainas teachers in low-income schools aftertheir programme.

This is remarkable and could – if done at scale – make an incredible difference to low-income schools. Any programme that increases the size of the ‘pool’ of people willing to teach in these schools, despite all of the incentives which encourage them to teach in higher-decile schools, will increase the competition for a fixed number of teaching roles and will reduce the number of sub-standard teachers who are hired merely to fill a vacancy. Teach First to date has shown that there is a pool of socially minded potential teachers amongst our university graduates who are willing to ignore their rational interests (financial and non-financial) to teach in low-income schools.

The first order of business is to ensure we are fully recruiting in this market: we should step up our efforts to identify these potential teachers and recruit them into teaching. For all the difficulties that Teach First has as an organisation (including, most recently, the withdrawal of the University of Auckland as its academic partner), it seems to be the organisation that is best placed to find these teachers. Our new Minister of Education should sanction an expansion of Teach First. It should be allowed to recruit as many teachers as it can find – on the proviso that it manages its programme in a way that keeps the proportion of its alumni who teach in low-decile schools stable (at around 50%), whilst also maintaining its existing quality and performance standards [12]. Further, the Minister should work with Teach First to remove any bureaucratic barriers that are preventing them finding a new academic partner. A critic of Teach First will rightly point out that Teach First is expensive (it costs about 50% more to train a teacher through Teach First versus conventional training channels [13]). However, I suggest that this a price that – ultimately – we can afford to pay, in order to get more high-quality teachers in schools where they are most needed [14].

So far, so easy. The problem is that Teach First is tiny. Under any conceivable expansion plan, only a small sliver of New Zealand’s teachers would ever be taught by Teach First. This is probably right – the on-the-job method of learning that Teach First uses may not be right for every potential teacher. Instead, the Ministry of Education should learn from Teach First to improve its own recruitment efforts for recruiting teachers to low- income schools. Teach First recruits teachers in a fundamentally different way to traditional institutions: it offers a sense of ‘mission’ and purpose, as well as a structured set of mentors, coaches and peers who remain with the teacher as they begin their teaching career, offering advice and encouragement as the new teacher encounters the difficulties of being a new teacher. In an ideal world, the Ministry would launch its own recruitment strategy incorporating these elements which Teach First have shown to be successful, with the addition of a financial incentive, possibly a student loan rebate, to increase the pool of people willing to teach in low decile schools. This would be a new role for the Ministry - it means they are actively intervening in the teacher labour market in a way that they haven’t done before – but it is an idea which would have real benefits for low-decile schools by increasing the size of the pool of teachers they can recruit from. Doing so would not be the most eye-catching initiative for a new Minister but it has the advantage that it might just have a significant difference, quickly, for the young New Zealanders who need it most.

Simon Johnson is a former Treasury official and management consultant. He now lives in India where he is working on teacher quality and retention. He writes in his personal capacity and has no party-political affiliation, nor any connection with Teach First NZ. [Editor's note: Simon is still very tall, and very British.]

[1] Gratton and Scott (2016) ‘The 100 Year Life’

[2] Hattie (2009) ‘Visible Learning’

[3] Hanushek (2009) ‘Teacher Deselection’

[4] A third alternative would be to improve the quality of the lowest performing teachers through in-service professional development. I am not discussing this here, not because I consider it unimportant (it clearly is vitally important) but because I am assuming that it has limited potential to help the least effective 5% of the teaching force.

[5] I am not clear why Hanushek invents this euphemism for ‘firing’ [Editor's note: if anything, 'deselection' sounds far worse, almost robotic in its clinical coldness].

[6] And, to be clear, I am in favour it, all other things equal (which they definitely are not).

[7] I really wish that the data exists for me to show this empirically. However, at the time of writing, my OIA request has not been successful and I cannot show this more than anecdotally.

[8] This assumes headteachers can distinguish between a high and low quality candidate at interview – a vital point which is worth much fuller discussion than I can spare here.

[9] See note 7

[10] For more, see our article from the last election cycle: https://www.mcdp.nz/2014/09/a-policy-day-capping-school-donations.html

[11] This would be ‘bulk funding’.

[12] The MoE should insist on this being written into the contract with Teach First.

[13] See, for example, http://ppta.org.nz/dmsdocument/77, conforming with the wider literature.

[14] That is not to say that we should write a blank cheque. For example, I would be very happy to introduce some form of bonding, where Teach First participants have to pay back a portion of their costs if they leave teaching (or low-decile teaching) before a certain number of years. My point is that a short-term additional cost in improving the size of the teaching profession will have long-run advantages if it is can remove low-skilled teachers from the classroom. 

A Policy A Day: Treaty Education in Schools

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today's post is by Phoebe Balle

Background
The Treaty of Waitangi is generally considered the founding document of our nation, yet many people know worryingly little about it. There is currently no guarantee that students will receive treaty education during their schooling. The New Zealand curriculum asks school leadership to ‘consider the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi’. Besides the fact that ‘consider’ holds no imperative to take action and that the treaty ‘principles’ are very different to the treaty articles, according to the Ministry of Education, it’s up to each board of trustees to decide what should be in a school’s curriculum [Editor: worryingly similar to our approach to civics education more generally]. As a result of this hands-off Ministry approach, treaty education varies widely among schools and is sometimes left out altogether. Furthermore, when treaty content is included in school curriculums, Tamsin Hanly’s [1] research on the teaching of the treaty in primary schools confirms that many teachers only know the inaccurate “standard story” of a colonial history of New Zealand, for example, that Māori ceded sovereignty to the British. Below are some responses from recently graduated students and student teachers when asked what they knew about the Treaty of Waitangi when they left school. These responses suggest that the existence and quality of treaty education in schools is highly variable and even contradictory.

1960, Standard One, Auckland state school
‘…we were each given a small brown pamphlet (probably about A4 size folded into 3) which was a miniature facsimile of The Treaty. We had to memorise and recite aloud a paragraph which began: The Treaty of Waitangi was signed on February the 6th 1840 by which the Maori ceded their (rights? lands? -can't remember) to Queen Victoria…’

2001, Wellington state school
‘I knew there was a treaty. No idea of the context. I had a vague idea some wrong stuff happened, and something about there's a Waitangi Tribunal that does something.’

2004, Year 9 Social Studies, Auckland state school
‘I left knowing the Treaty existed, that "Māori ceded sovereignty to Britain", and that some dude chopped down a flagpole.’

2005, Year 9 Social Studies, Auckland private school
‘Covered the treaty in yr9 social studies. Learned next to nothing other than dates and that the translation was controversial. Nothing about te tiriti or details on the variations in the different versions.’

2010, Year 13 History, Dunedin state school
‘the take home messages I got was that Māori didn't cede sovereignty, they allowed governorship (though this was controversial) and that until 1840 Māori held the balance of power....’

2016, Teachers training college, Victoria University
‘2 lectures that I don't really remember. Then we had a debate about whether we should still honour the treaty aaaand everyone got really uncomfortable.’

Still studying, Teachers training college, Canterbury University
‘We did a Treaty workshop this year...We had a follow up assignment based on it too, and there has been other links through the other subjects we are studying.’

What is Treaty Studies?
‘Treaty studies’ should include local iwi history, civic, and heritage studies. There is scope for modules on critical histories of the Pacific and pre-colonial Māori society, interactions between Māori and tauiwi (non-Māori) surrounding key events in the history of Aotearoa such as the signing of He Whakaputanga (known as the Declaration of Independence) and the signed text of te Tiriti o Waitangi, different cultural worldviews and forms of governance (Tikanga-based vs Westminster systems), the process of colonisation and contemporary impacts, and much more. It has the potential to be a rich and varied subject.

Why does it matter?
A critical, well-informed, historically accurate understanding of the complexities of our homelands and heritage is an essential foundation for exploring questions of identity and power, both national and personal. Debates in the political arena about the relevance of the treaty can feel distant from the realities of many tauiwi people, but this is largely because we are not equipped with the knowledge to engage in these important conversations. The current failure of the school system to provide adequate (or any) treaty education impacts us on a personal level and shuts us out of vital public debate. I have participated in some treaty education workshops where the sight of a participant in tears asking “why didn’t I learn this in school?” is not uncommon. Independent Treaty educators report that this cry is raised in virtually every treaty workshop they run for adults. As James Baldwin said, "History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history."

People of Aotearoa want to know the truth of our history. We want to live honourably in this country. An education system that continues to perpetuate colonial myths and enable ongoing ignorance about our own history is shameful. We are one of few countries worldwide without a strong form of ‘civics education’ in our curriculum. Understanding our place in Aotearoa through a critical understanding of the complexities of our history and the contemporary impacts today should be a priority in the school syllabus.

Is treaty education within the government's purview?
The government has been instrumental in shaping the way treaty education has been taught in schools. H.C. Evison [2] recently brought to light the fact that in 1966, the Education Department, now the Ministry, changed the high school curriculum instructing that for School Certificate, students would only be examined on history from 1870 onwards. The government’s blatant erasure of the treaty signing and other crucial parts of our history from the school syllabus in the sixties has produced the current generation of 40+ year old people in power including educators, lawyers and politicians who are often illiterate in pre-1870’s Aotearoa history (and often beyond this period too). This Ministry action illustrates the extent to which our government has gone to foster ignorance about our history.

It is not only the government’s purview but their responsibility to make treaty education a substantial part of the school curriculum to begin to undo this damage. It is also their responsibility to strive for harmonious race relations, and Ingrid Huygens’ [3] research showed that for Pākehā, learning about the treaty was a key factor in encouraging positive relationships with Māori.

Is it feasible?
Absolutely. The Education Council has just released its new Code and Standards for the Teaching Profession which set out what it means to be a teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand. A clear statement of commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi is included and is also woven throughout the Code and Standards. All teachers will need to demonstrate this commitment in their practice. This is a commitment within the teaching profession which aligns well with bringing Treaty Studies into schools. We already have resources and expertise to deliver on this commitment; many Māori have been trying to educate tauiwi about their Treaty of Waitangi responsibilities since 1840.

From the 1980s some tauiwi have taken up responsibility for educating their own. These are highly educated experts like Dr Ingrid Huygens who wrote her PhD about the processes of Pākehā change in response to the Treaty of Waitangi. Experts like these could be employed by the Ministry of Education to run teacher and student teacher development programmes. There are a wealth of resources available for teaching iwi histories and Tamsin Hanly’s Critical Guide to Māori and Pākehā histories of Aotearoa provide an accessible teaching framework for exploring these subject areas. As with all transitions in the curriculum, such a process will take time, but introducing a curriculum that teaches a critical history unbiased by colonial mythology is well worth the effort.

Conclusions
Between discussion about ethical investment, taxes, and monetary policy, one of the specific policy points in the Green Party economic policy says that they promise to “properly fund environmental and Treaty education”. The Māori Party has a similar policy that calls for “funding for Treaty settlement education in all schools”. Policies to properly fund treaty education in schools will properly prepare our citizens for living in Aotearoa and engaging in important dialogue about identity and power. Treaty Studies is vital to building healthy power-sharing relationships that allow Aotearoa to flourish.

Phoebe Balle graduated from the University of Auckland with degrees in ecology, sociology, and Māori studies. She currently works in education and is a member of the Wellington Tiriti Collective.

[1] Hanly, T. (2007). Preparing Our Students For Bicultural Relationship Pākehā Primary Teachers and Bicultural Histories of Aotearoa. University of Auckland
[2] Evison, H. (2010). New Zealand racism in the making. The life and times of Walter Mantell. Panuitia Press, Lower Hutt.
[3] Huygens, I. (2007). Processes of Pākehā change in response to the Treaty of Waitangi. University of Waikato http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz//handle/10289/2589

A Policy A Day: An Alternative Model for Policy Making

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today's satire post is by Ben Tan

New Zealand has many issues that probably need to be addressed – housing, healthcare, and education are often bandied about as things that “everyday New Zealanders” care about. Things like the environment, infrastructure, and immigration are all key areas in which most people generally agree are things. However, getting people to generally agree on what to do about such things is often quite messy, and messiness means that we give ourselves too much opportunity to procrastinate by feeling compelled to first tidy up. As such, political parties come up with “policies” that outline how they want to behave in light of these issues (for example, a policy could be something like charging people for water, or maybe granting all would-be immigrants New Zealand citizenship, which would drastically reduce the increase in immigrants on temporary resident visas).

And actually, while politicians and the media like to talk to us about what “everyday New Zealanders” want and think, we don’t seem to give much thought to “yesterday” New Zealanders and “tomorrow” New Zealanders, who, arguably, probably have a lot more to worry about (like why tomorrow is always only a day away, or why people don’t like them around, even though they contribute to society and work towards permanent residency). How do parties/politicians “come up” with their policies? Do they need a policy on policy-making? (While policy looks like the word police, police-making is wholly different, and achieved as a result of organic biological processes that are discussed in one of the areas of the “health and physical education learning area of The New Zealand Curriculum”).

One of the recent political contenders has started being quite explicit (more moustache-prominent, as opposed to NSFW-explicit) about their policies being “evidence-based”. In fact, there is a more general trend in the notion that we should be using “evidence-based” policy to help us address the ills of society. But what is “evidence-based” policy? What is “evidence”? Evidence is usually a set of numbers and squiggly graph-things that come out of studies about the world around us. Experts use things like “the scientific method”, which is all about observation and logical reasoning, to better understand the links between actions and reactions in the world. Science relies on a set of principles designed to “significantly reduce subjectivity, bias and uncertainty in our understanding of our natural, built, and social environments”. For some reason, some people think that we should be able to use “knowledge” and “facts”, to inform how we should do something, to give us the outcomes we desire. But of course, studies have their limitations, and experts often have to be upfront about their assumptions and contexts, and when policies need to take into account other areas, such as the logistics of implementation, cultural/societal value propositions, and will this thing get me votes, it’s probably more worthwhile to consider “evidence-informed” or “evidence-influenced” policy making.

But today’s New Zealanders don’t have time to think about facts (after all, it’s much easier to send things via email than to figure out how to dial someone). Memes run rampant through the ultra-fast broadband connections that make bushes espouse the benefits of interconnectivity, and basing things on “evidence” seems like a tiresome novelty. Fake news is more digestible, and pseudoscience means we can seem fairly reasonable. As I suspect we’ll hear more of in the coming campaigns, people understand “the single mum in Otara”, or the “small business owner in Gore” much more than scientific jibber-jabber (read: studies) about the efficacy of boot camps for reducing youth recidivism.

Hence, in an effort to improve transparency about how and why the government makes the decisions that it does on behalf of all everyday New Zealanders, yesterday New Zealanders, tomorrow New Zealanders, and you-don’t-look-like-a New Zealanders, here’s a proposal for a Ministry of Anecdotes and Stuff Comments (MASC). The ministry will come to embody a new yet old way of thinking, what we call "anecdote-based policy making".

MASC’s role is to seek out and destroy gather public opinion about absolutely everything, with a particular focus on the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, beneficiaries, tradespeople, farmers, aunts, uncles, and other such types of general human being, whereby anecdotes and “I’m not something-ist, but…” ideas can be gathered to inform, outform, perform… essentially, form policy in all areas of the government’s domain. MASC will coordinate a network of departmental anecdote providers so that decision making can take into account highly specific, incredibly localised individual experiences that can be used as a smokescreen to push forward a policy agenda on purely ideological grounds anyway. MASC will also be in charge of identifying people who know people who know people because after all, it’s not “what you know”, it’s “who you know that you can say you know too”.

MASC will also aim to be a fully modernised hi-tech ministry. It will create a centralised state-of-the-art digital database full of security holes and overrun costs as “features, not bugs”, and use artificial intelligence to data mine the comments section of Stuff, and websites that often have the wrong headline match up with the wrong content. A young old single mother who is a job-stealing house-buyer who is unemployed and renting a damp house warmed by burning red-tape told us that this approach would cut travel times by twenty minutes, so we are inclined to believe that MASC will be a complete success, especially if we don’t establish any explicit targets on performance outcomes. After all, more roads in a tool-kit will do us just nicely once you’ve had enough.

At the end of the day, let’s do this, and take a fresh approach where we deliver for New Zealanders who are better together. 

A Policy A Day: Temporary Migration and Integration

In the lead-up to the election, we are examining a policy a day. We're exploring a variety of policy areas, explaining the background and analysing some of the policy options, with a mixture of technocracy and values-based approaches. Inevitably, some opinion will make its way in and we make no apology for that - after all, we're voters too. A list of all the articles is available here. Enjoy!

Today's post is by Andrew Chen

Immigration has been one of the hot button issues in politics this year, with migrants placed under the spotlight from all sides of the political spectrum. The big trap is that a lot of the discussion has been about the causal impacts of immigration on other issues, such as housing, infrastructure, and employment, when immigration is actually only one impact out of many influencing those areas. People seem to have a tendency to say “increasing immigration means that we have a housing crisis” with the subsequent implication of “reducing immigration would fix the housing crisis” when immigration actually has a pretty limited impact on house prices and there are a multitude of other factors at play. So the immigration debate should be about much more than just increasing or decreasing the numbers – there is a lot of nuance to be taken into account, especially when we remember that we’re talking about humans, not just units of economic production and consumption. Looking a bit more deeply into the details gives us a better understanding of what levers we can actually pull to actually address the identified issues.

Background

One of the often-missed but actually really, really important details is the role of temporary migration. Every month the media reports “record net migration” based on Statistics New Zealand data that says more people are coming into the country long-term than those leaving. But when we take a closer look at the types of visas that are being granted, we find something quite interesting:

Source: Dr. Francis Collins from the University of Auckland, derived from MBIE “Migration Trends and Outlooks” reports

It turns out that the number of residency visas (i.e. people who want to live here permanently) has actually been pretty stable for a really long time. What has gone up significantly is the number of work and student visas, and in many cases even though they get classed as “permanent and long-term” because they want to be here for longer than 12 months, they really should be considered temporary because most will leave within 3-5 years. This is evidenced by the relatively static number of residence visas – most work and student visas simply do not get converted into residency, throwing cold water on the theory that these visas are a “backdoor” into permanent residency. Whether you agree that the overall number of migrants is too high or too low, the fact remains that the number of migrants arriving on a temporary basis is increasing.

Let’s hold that thought and have a look at perceptions of New Zealanders towards migrants. A UMR survey in May reported that 56% of people thought that “too many people who come to live here from overseas don’t seem to have a good enough grasp of English”. The same survey reported that 45% of people think that “immigrants often all go to live in one suburb creating divisions between New Zealanders”. MBIE and NZ Asia Foundation surveys in 2016 have both reported significant proportions of the population believing that migrants are culturally harmful, including 23% agreeing that “allowing migrant cultures to thrive means that New Zealand’s culture is weakened” and 31% agreeing that “Asian people do not mix well with New Zealanders”.

All of this points towards a discussion about integration – given that migrants are coming to New Zealand, how do we make sure that they are able to participate fully in society, joining communities and forming friendships? A significant proportion of New Zealanders think that migrants don’t integrate well enough, and for some reason the expectation is that migrants should do all the integrating (with many New Zealanders conveniently forgetting about their role in welcoming new migrants). It seems odd to me that some people think that the solution to migrants not speaking English well enough or not “mixing well” enough is to reduce the number of migrants. Isn’t the better solution to help these migrants integrate? 

As it turns out, recent policies and announcements from Immigration New Zealand contain language such as “reducing expectations of settlement from temporary migrants” and “ensuring that migrants with no pathway to residence do not become well-settled in New Zealand”. This is on top of changes that make it harder for migrants to bring their families to New Zealand with them, and rights afforded to migrants explicitly based on the level of their salary.

Therein lies the rub – we have an increasing number of temporary migrants, who the public expect to integrate into New Zealand society, when the government is actively trying to discourage temporary migrants from “settling”. What incentive does this give for migrants to try to integrate? Temporary migrants know that their visas have limited lifespans, and if a migrant knows that they will definitely have to leave a country relatively soon, then why would they invest effort into integration? It takes time to settle in a new place, to join a community, to build trust with people and develop relationships. But time is something that we simply do not give these temporary migrants.

Better support is needed for new migrants, temporary or otherwise, to help accelerate the integration process. There are a lot of problems with the current immigration system as well as with many of the proposed immigration policies from the political parties, but this post isn’t about trying to move the numbers up or down. What we want to address is the problem that once migrants are approved and come here, we seem to make it unnecessarily difficult for integration to happen, especially if they are here on a temporary basis.

Policy

Existing migrant support is relatively limited. Immigration New Zealand outsources (and contributes funding towards) other parts of government to provide services, such as the Citizens Advice Bureaus, the Chambers of Commerce to help people find jobs, and the Ministry of Education to fund ESOL classes, while giving grants to non-government organisations like the Auckland Regional Migrant Settlement (ARMS) Trust and the Chinese New Settlers Trust. More recent approaches have focused on the provision of grants such as the “Settling-in Grants” to community support groups, taking the responsibility for migrant settlement out of the hands of the government.

In 2013, the Auditor-General published a report investigating how well the government supported new migrants to settle and work. About $17 million was budgeted for helping migrants settle in 2012/2013, but importantly most residency visas include a $310 migrant levy that provided about $6.5 million of that budget. There’s also something subtle about that levy – it gets charged when migrants are granted residency because by and large, migration settlement services are generally not available to temporary migrants. [In the interest of transparency, in the latest 2017/2018 budget the amount for “settlement and integration of refugees and other immigrants” has gone up to about $35 million, but this is largely because refugee settlement used to be allocated separately and has now been merged into the same line item. At the same time, the migrant levy will raise about $25 million this financial year.] At the moment, the government spends, on average, about $200 per migrant on settlement services, and that’s only counting those given permanent residency visas.

Migrants bring significant economic benefits to New Zealand, and helping them integrate into New Zealand better could unlock more social and cultural benefits too. There are relatively successful initiatives in Canada and Australia for supporting migrant settlement that we can bring to New Zealand.  A lot more money could be invested into initiatives such as free English and Te Reo classes for all new migrants to help overcome language barriers that make integration challenging, cultural exchange workshops with Māori including education about the Treaty of Waitangi, and buddy programmes that help match up new migrants with local mentors. These programmes wouldn’t necessarily be compulsory, but improving availability and increasing awareness will go a long way in helping many migrants feel more safe and comfortable in New Zealand. It doesn’t really matter if these programmes are run publicly or privately – the crux is that more public funding should be allocated to make these programmes more widely available. Most importantly, the funding needs to be extended to temporary migrants too, and the language around “reducing expectations of settlement” should be reshaped into language along the lines of “helping migrants fully participate in society while they are in New Zealand”, acknowledging that not all migrants may have the option to settle.

I can’t say with certainty how much money should be allocated to these programmes, but I definitely feel that a few hundred dollars for each permanent migrant, for the entire lifetime of that migrant, is not enough. Given that we’ve already invited these migrants to be here, it seems wasteful not to help them fully engage with our society. The government should see investing further into these programmes as investing into new people who can contribute greatly to New Zealand, beyond supplementing our labour supply. Communities with a strong sense of trust and safety have multiplicative benefits for society, from a stronger voluntary sector to better health outcomes to generally higher morale. Improving the ability of new migrants to contribute to these communities is critical for making New Zealand the best country it can be.

Andrew Chen is a PhD Candidate in Computer Vision at the University of Auckland, investigating embedded vision with surveillance and robotics applications. In his spare time he has interests in evidence-informed policy, science and technology communication, civics education, and immigration. Also, he thinks cats are great.