"Misinformation
and Contemporary Economic Policy"
Paper for the
Pacific Rim Allied Economic Organizations Conference, 2000
Pacific Rim
Economies at the New Millenium
January 11-16,
2000 - Sydney, Australia
by
Stuart
Birks and Gary Buurman[1]
Abstract
There are recognised problems with the quality of policy advice in New Zealand, as evidenced by the State Services Commission's project on the matter. Much of the research in New Zealand, even in the public sector, is in the form of advocacy research. The absence of appropriate scrutiny and critical assessment of this material results in serious misinformation of the public, policymakers, and practitioners. As part of a larger project, this paper looks at New Zealand studies on the economic cost of family violence and on time use. It uses these and discussion of the policy environment to consider some general problems including: choice of methodologies and perspectives; the availability of information; the policy research base; the amount of debate on policy issues; and the role of professional bodies, special interest groups and the media in shaping policy directions and the implementation of policy.
1. Introduction
In 1997, on the
instigation of Jenny Shipley as Minister of State Services, the
State Services Commission (SSC) in New Zealand began a project
concerned with the quality of policy advice being tendered to
Government Ministers. The project came up with a number of issues
that impact on policy advice. It is our contention that the
public sector is not the only area affected by these issues which
result in misinformation in the policy-making arena. In this
paper we look at examples of studies or research areas that are
linked with policy. We then consider statements arising from
their results. Often what has been read into the results bears
little or no resemblance to what has been done. Biased
methodologies have also been used. The lack of debate has
resulted in misinformation concerning policy being spread and
reinforced over time.
Studies are of
value because, among other things, they are open to scrutiny.
Over time, assumptions are examined; there can be experimentation
by changing the parameters; and causality can be challenged.
There is little critical appraisal in New Zealand. One reason
given by the SSC is a lack of outside ‘think tanks’[2]. Hence New Zealand may
lack academic or independent researchers to critically analyze
results. While it is expected that lobby and special interest
groups hold preconceived ideas, it would be desirable that the
public sector be more critical. It might be expected that public
sector policy advice would meet certain standards of impartiality
and thus be the first place to go for critical assessment.
Our main concerns
in the paper are the underlying principles and standards guiding
policy advice and policy development and implementation. In Birks
(1998a) it is argued that the New Zealand legal establishment is
"vulnerable to capture". The same could be said of
other areas. This can arise if, for example, there is poor
research, lack of scrutiny and critical peer review, and misuse
of process and principles. A democracy requires checks and
balances built in to its institutional framework as a safeguard
against capture. Lobby groups advocating for business, unions,
women, Maori, the environment, etc., have an important role to
play in the policymaking process, but they should be active
within an appropriate framework. We would contend that New
Zealand does not have this framework.
The next section
of this paper is a summary of the main findings of the SSC’s
project to date. The subsequent three sections consider i) a
study on the cost of family violence; ii) the New Zealand Time
Use Survey; and iii) the policy environment. Conclusions are then
drawn.
2. The Quality
of Policy Advice
Three papers that contribute to the 1997 State Services Commission project are released on the web at http://www.ssc.govt.nz/documents/Occ_Papers_Contents_Screen.htm. Some of the concerns are:
· Inadequate human resources in some policy units
· Inattention to implementation issues
· Counter-productive departmental patch protection
The project identifies five contributing factors:
· Lack of clarity from ministers on desired outcomes
· Insufficient incentives for cooperation on policies that ‘cut across’ departments
· Variations in standards of leadership
· Under-investment in capability development leading to shortages
· Inadequate and/or ineffective use of information, research, evaluation and consultation techniques as policy inputs
Occasional Paper 7 concerns evaluation. One perceived problem is a focus on the actual output of advisory departments rather than on the outcomes that government is seeking. Few departments evaluate the extent to which the policy outputs they produce contribute to the priorities of the government. Many factors affect outcomes and there are problems with causality. It can be tempting to simply not evaluate. Outcome evaluation is not a strong feature of New Zealand policy because of low demand (in that ministers were not interested in evaluation); funding problems; a fluctuating policy environment with a three year election period and a lack of skilled evaluators.
Occasional Paper 9 mentions a perception from ministries that advice presented is not underpinned by robust information and research (p.3). Concerns about the quality of advice include short timeframes that inhibit in-depth research and a shortage of policy advisors skilled in information management and use (p.5). Brevity is required in the presentation of advice, particularly in cabinet papers. These papers are generally not referenced with information sources. Thus there is no assurance that the contents are not just informed guesswork and this makes it difficult for ministers and their advisors to crosscheck different assertions.
This paper concentrates on inadequate or ineffective use of research, information and evaluation and there are serious implications for economists including:
3. The Economic Cost of Family Violence
In 1994, Suzanne Snively published the results of her study to establish the economic cost of family violence.
3.1 The Study
Snively's approach was as follows.
A seminar was held in June 1994. There were 20 participants, primarily from the public sector (for example Police, Justice, Social Policy, Social Welfare, Health, and Women's Affairs). At this seminar, three prevalence rates were determined for use in the study, giving the assumption that family violence is experienced in 1 in 4, 1 in 7 and 1 in 10 of all families.
For each of the three prevalence rates she considered a base scenario, a 5-times-callout scenario, and an income foregone scenario, giving nine estimates in all. These estimates ranged from $1.187b to $5.302b.[4] To summarise the three scenarios:
The base scenario costings are mainly based on the characteristics of those families who acknowledge family violence by calling the police. The number of reported cases is assumed equal to the number of Family/Domestic Associated Incidents/Offences reported to the Police. There is also some consideration of assumed non-reported cases, these being calculated as the total number of survivors (given by the prevalence rate) minus the number claimed to be reported cases.
For unreported cases, the main costs are 2 doctors' visits and 2 drug scripts per person. For the reported cases, the principal direct costs to survivors were for accommodation and medical/dental treatment, loss of income, and costs of childcare. Costs to government consisted of costs for health care, welfare, justice and law enforcement.
The five times callout scenario multiplies the number of reported survivors in the base scenario by five on the premise that there are five people who acknowledge family violence for every one who goes so far as a police callout. Direct costs for reported survivors as used in the base scenario are then applied to the larger number of acknowledged survivors assumed in this study.
The income foregone scenario primarily adds estimates of income foregone by those survivors assumed not to acknowledge their survivor status.
3.2 Critical Assessment
There are a number of areas in this study which merit mention on economic (and other) grounds:
i)
Choice of prevalence rates
Snively reported that, at her seminar:
"A commonly agreed prevalence rate of family violence amongst service providers in New Zealand is estimated at 14% or 1:7. It is also the middle assumption between 1 in 10 and 1 in 4 measured by other studies attempting to assess the prevalence of family violence ... Based on the New Zealand population as at end March 1994, one in seven children is 129,556 and one in seven women is 172,125, a total of 301,691."[5]
It is not clear that it is "commonly agreed":
"The
seminar participants expressed different views on the prevalence
of family violence. There was agreement to use 1:4, 1:7 and 1:10
ratios to estimate the number of families experiencing family
violence (survivors). For this project these ratios are applied
to estimate the number of women and children without any attempt
to adjust for different family types."[6]
So despite
differing views, limited information, and a possible personal
interest by these service providers, this is how crucial values
in the Snively study were determined.
ii)
The use of prevalence rates.
Problems do not stop at the selection of particular prevalence rates. A prevalence rate gives the number of families experiencing family violence at any time. It is not an incidence rate, which refers to the number of incidents that occur in a given time period. Snively uses the figure as an annual incidence rate, thus giving the number of incidents in a year. She also assumes that each incident has one survivor.
There are two
main sources for statistics on family violence. Police and court
records are one, and broader social surveys are another. There is
a marked difference between family violence data drawn from these
sources. The former record males as the main perpetrators of
partner violence. The latter give higher rates of partner
violence overall, with little difference between rates for men
and for women. Snively's police data for the 1993 calender year
show 21,008 domestic dispute incidents for the whole of New
Zealand (1993 population over 3.5 million), whereas Magdol et al.
(1994) give partner violence victimisation results from a cohort
of Dunedin 21 year olds as 34.1% for males and a lower figure, 27.1%,
for females.[7]
iii)
Assumptions
It is claimed that the report is based on official statistics. While it is true that data for population, wage rates, etc., were used, many key measures were simply assumed or used inappropriate data. Hence:
a)
The callout rate
The number of reported cases is assumed equal to the number of Family/Domestic Associated Incidents/Offences reported to the Police. These include domestic dispute incidents; violence against women offences; child abuse offences; and all domestic related breach offences.[8] Somewhat surprisingly, these are all added together to get the number of callouts. If there is an incident resulting in an offence being recorded, this would show up in the Snively study as two callouts, one for the incident and another for the offence. Snively may be as much as double counting each reported offence. On this basis alone, Snively's estimate of the level of reported violence may be up to twice the actual level. In addition, Snively assumes that the number of incidents/offences equals the number of "survivors". If during the year anyone experienced more than one reported incident or offence, then Snively is further overestimating the number of reported survivors. On the other hand, the 1-in-7 approach considers children living in families experiencing family violence as "survivors", thus indicating more than one survivor per incident. Similarly, women in families experiencing family violence against children are considered to be survivors, even if they are the perpetrators.
b)
Three month wage costs
Every reported case is assumed to suffer a drop in income equal to 3 months earnings at the average women's gross ordinary time wage. This was an estimated figure, with no explanation given save that, "It is generally accepted that every family affected by family violence will suffer a direct fall in family income at the time they acknowledge the violence."[9] Gross income figures are used although they are described as costs to the individuals, ordinary time wages are used rather than earnings, and women's wages are used although the fall is described as 25% of "family income". Survivors who are not earning are assumed to have been prevented by family violence from entering the workforce. For some unexplained reason, there is a further loss of income in reported cases due to loss of work time. The latter calculation uses total average female weekly earnings for those in full-time work, and the median (not average) part-time wage for those in part-time work.
c)
Childcare costs
Reported survivors remaining in full-time work are assumed to require full-time childcare[10], the costs of which are included as costs of family violence. No explanation is given as to why such childcare was not needed when the women were working before. Childcare costs are included also for women in part-time work.[11] Given the numbers affected, it appears that the survivors are all women, although 43% of the total number of survivors are under 14. Although only 8% of those reporting family violence stay in full-time work[12], these 8% are all expected to require full-time childcare. As the figures indicate, there are far more women than children survivors of family violence, so it is not clear where the extra children requiring childcare are coming from. Moreover, some of those reducing or stopping work will be caring for children or doing other activities which have some value, but this is ignored.
d)
Accommodation costs
25% of reported cases are assumed to require a year's private rental accommodation at $180 per week each, plus $120 deposit, $1000 for furniture, etc., and $730 for other household expenses as a result of the family violence. Although it is assumed that there is one person per case, the rental is sufficient for a three bedroom home in a provincial centre. An additional 1% of reported cases bought homes, with $8000 deposit per person included in the costs although it is a capital item rather than an expense. It is not clear what happened to these people's previous accommodation.
e)
Doctors and dentists
Costs of doctor visits are included as direct costs at two visits per survivor for non-reported cases, but only for 57% of reported cases. It is not clear why those who do not acknowledge the violence require more visits than those who do. The costs to the government of doctors visits are also included in the Snively calculations. These are calculated at two visits per survivor for everyone, even though not all survivors made two visits. There is a similar inconsistency with visits to dentists. 12.5% of reported survivors are assumed to require dental treatment. For comparison, the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project found over nearly 3 years only about 5 cases of teeth broken or knocked out.[13] Given the Hamilton catchment of about 100,000 people, and a New Zealand population of say 3.6 million, that would translate into about 60 cases a year on the whole country. This compares with Snively's estimate of 4,643 among reported survivors in her base 1-in-7 scenario. Government costs of dental treatment are then calculated on the basis of treatment not for 4,643 people, but for 12.5% of all 301,691 "survivors", or 37,711 people.
f)
Benefit payments
Despite direct costs to individuals being listed with no recognition of benefit payments received, these payments are considered among the government costs. It is assumed that one seventh of payments for unemployment, the DPB, sickness, accommodation, special needs, and childcare arise as a result of family violence.[14] This is double counting as costs to individuals should consider change in earnings, not just losses. It also assumes that these payments have arisen because of family violence. It is interesting to note the assumed link with unemployment, whereby family violence is considered to be responsible for a fixed proportion of unemployment benefit outlay. This suggests a very close link between family violence and the state of the economy, with increased violence being the cause of decreased economic activity. This means that causality is in the reverse direction to that which might be expected, and suggests differing levels of violence according to socio-economic group.
g)
Children or women?
In the five-times-callout scenario, the figure for reported survivors is taken as five times the figure in the base scenario. This gives a figure of 185,720 reported survivors. All 185,720 suffer a direct fall in income, although the assumed 301,691 survivors (1-in-7 rate) only include 172,125 females aged 14 and over. The income-foregone scenario then assumes an additional 49,916 of the unreported cases gave up work as a result of family violence. If we also consider the treatment of childcare costs, there appears to be an assumption that every survivor is a woman with dependant children. Nevertheless, women who give up work are not assumed to save on childcare costs by caring for their children themselves, or, in fact, doing anything of value with their time.
3.3 How it was reported
The following are extracts from the Stone (1999).
Quoting Brenda Pilott, who ran the family violence unit:
"… the report was immensely valuable in budging the Government to commit some serious funding to policies addressing family violence… We could have produced a report which used speculative data to get some shocking numbers. But we wanted a robust conclusion which we could stand behind."
However, much of the estimated cost was in fact public funding either directly spent on family violence policies already in place, or assumed to be spent as a result of family violence (e.g. one seventh of unemployment benefit payments, and support for Rape Crisis). Given the quality of information on the nature of the problem, it is perhaps debatable whether money spent to address family violence issues is a cost of family violence itself or money chasing a cause. Similarly cost of calls to the police for family violence are included ($13m), although this is a cost of the policies applied in relation to family violence rather than necessarily a cost of the violence itself. In other words, it begs the question as to whether the policy is appropriate and efficiently applied. To illustrate one aspect of the problem, should the cost of fire service callouts on false alarms be considered a cost of fires in New Zealand, or a cost of the approach adopted for dealing with fires? If we are not careful, anything could be made to look like a serious problem simply by spending a lot of money on it. This could then be used as a justification for the expenditure.
"The
Snively study found that family incomes dived an average of 25
per cent after episodes of domestic violence."
It did not find this, it merely assumed it.
Despite falling incomes being considered in this way, Stone reports:
"Economist Suzanne Snively believes the annual cost of family violence could be a staggering $10 billion if lost income is calculated."
Stone also says:
"Her
report agreed with the NSW standard, which found that for every
woman who called police there were five women who turned
elsewhere, to friends, a refuge or the family doctor."
It agreed with the NSW study simply because she chose to use the NSW figure, which is itself simply an assumption ("The NSW study assumed that there were five women who directly acknowledged family violence and sought help for every one who called out the police." (Snively, para.3.13, p.7)
As John Yeabsley of the NZIER says in the Stone article:
"The point is to know whether your responses are right or not. Unless you get good quality data you have no way of knowing whether the policy is appropriate."
4 The New Zealand Time Use Survey
A
time use survey was conducted in New Zealand for the year July
1998 to July 1999, by Statistics New Zealand under contract to
the Ministry of Women's Affairs which sponsored the survey at a
cost of $2million. It has been described by Marilyn Waring as: "the
most sophisticated and conceptually advanced time use survey of
all. This will be the single most exciting information base
established as a vehicle for change in my lifetime."[15]
4.1
The Study
Fleming[16] indicates the motivation for time use surveys:
"It is recognized that in both the developing and the industrial world women do the greater share of unpaid work, and men do the greater share of paid work. This imbalance has been identified as a major factor in women's lower status, lack of access to resources and increasing poverty."(p.17)
She contends that, "time use data provides empirical evidence of unequal sharing within households and the barriers to participation in paid work presented by caring responsibilities",(p.17) and that, "consistency of data collection allows comparisons to be made between … different groups within the same population".(p.16) She claims further that, "Married women are increasingly involved in paid work, but the evidence is that men are taking up unpaid work only slowly or, in some countries, hardly at all, resulting in a double burden for working women" (p.16).
4.2 Critical
assessment
Fleming's claims are questionable, and the structure of the survey limits the value of its results.
The claims:
When considering relative workloads, it is important to note that "work" here is measured in terms of hours, not necessarily value of output. It is a measure of input, not of output, and can be further obscured by participation in several activities simultaneously.
Do women have lower status? Status would depend on measures used and valuations placed on the results. For example, would a greater likelihood of award of custody of children indicate lower or higher status?
Do women have less access to resources and increasing poverty? Access to resources depends on income and intra-family transfers. Poverty depends on both income and wealth. Prue Hyman reports that women's share of total wealth in New Zealand rose "from 30.5 per cent in 1980-81 to 38 per cent in 1987-88, partly as a result of more equal sharing of property after divorce" (Hyman, 1994, pp.219-220). This is a remarkable increase. Perhaps we should consider it more as an exercising of rights obtained through marriage, though, in which case the wealth distribution figures presumably significantly understate women's total claims on assets. For example, a married person's legal claim to half of their partner's superannuation should be taken into account by an reduction in the measured wealth of the one with superannuation and an increase in the wealth of the other. A more recent study by Infometrics, using 1997 data, found that women’s average wealth was 86% of men’s[17]. This figure also does not make any adjustment to consider unrealised claims on partners’ assets through marriage, as with superannuation.
It is claimed that caring responsibilities are a barrier to women's participation in paid work. To take another perspective, it could equally be argued that society's expectation that men provide financially for their families acts as a barrier to their participation in family life. Similarly, separation, more commonly the woman’s idea[18], and the associated non-custodial status of most of the fathers[19], are barriers to fathers’ caregiving activity.
She claims that consistent data allows for comparisons between various groups. This is not the case if groups are poorly identified, and if groups are not treated identically in the survey. Both these problems apply with the New Zealand survey. It is not possible to distinguish between separated and never-married sole parents, and there is different treatment of custodial and non-custodial parents, for example.
The "double burden" concept is simplistic at best, being based on the classification of tasks, and may be a fabrication. One New Zealand study (Fletcher, 1978) found that full-time homemakers put in less time in total than their working husbands, and the increased hours (paid and unpaid) of women in paid work were essentially a catch-up to the hours put by men in full-time work. Given that women do 60-65 percent of the unpaid work (p.36), and men do the majority of paid work, it would be more accurate to say that both men and women have a "double burden".
The structure
of the survey
The results of a study can depend on the methodology used. This includes the definitions used and the groupings made.
“Household”
or “family”?
This survey uses the household as a defining criterion, rather than the family. In particular, there is a distinction drawn between caring for children who live in the same household and children who do not live in the same household. Note that there are a large number of families where the parents do not live together in the same household, as indicated by the more than 200,000 parents who are paying child support[20].
What is “caregiving”?
The “looking after” category only applies for children under 14 years old. For children older than that, the only activities considered are, “coaching, training, teaching, or helping with schoolwork, etc.”, unless the person needs special care because of illness or disability. It is not clear that this covers the wide range of parenting activities described in Birks (1999), as distinct from the narrow “nurturing” and traditional-female-focused definitions of parenting used in such places as the Family Court.
Simultaneous
activities
People can be engaged in several activities at the same time, as when cooking a meal while listening to the radio and keeping an eye on children. In time use surveys, time spent on an activity is used as a measure of input, which is then equated to output of that activity. Can you be as productive in each of two or more activities conducted together as you would if you spent the same amount of time on one alone? While there may be problems with the concept of a main, or primary activity, it can be useful to identify what might be considered the most significant of several activities being undertaken at the same time. It might be imagined that such an activity would be the one that took up most time, attention, or effort, or was considered the most important by the person concerned. The survey does not use either of these. To use their words:
“Primary activity is not determined
by the respondent in that the diary does not allow identification
of primary and secondary activities. Rather, the order has been
determined by the MWA [Ministry of Women’s Affairs] in
conjunction with SNZ [Statistics New Zealand].” [21]
This means that the MWA determined the order of priorities for the various possible activities, with the primary activity being defined as whichever of the activities undertaken is highest on the list. The approach leads to some anomalous results. One subcategory of caregiving for household members is, “available for care of household members”. It appears that this would rank above actually undertaking household work. The primary activity of someone doing household work while a child sleeps is caregiving. However, consider someone working from home and actively involved in caring for children in the household at the same time. That would give a primary activity of labour force activity. Even more strange, a non-custodial parent actively caring for a child while undertaking household work would have a primary activity of household work.
The survey is limited in its usefulness. Among some of the things it cannot tell us are:
The use of “household” as a classifying unit and the absence of clear identifiers of family relationships seriously limits the usefulness of the information provided by the survey.
However, the most significant problem is the method of determination of “primary activity”. This arises because of people’s simultaneous engagement in several activities. The survey does not determine people’s assessment of the relative importance of these, or of their allocation of effort over them. Instead, it imposes the Ministry of Women’s Affairs’ own ranking of activities irrespective of individual preferences or effort. For some issues, the ranking of an activity depends on the family situation (intact or living apart) of the people concerned. In a survey specifically intended to give clearer information on unpaid work, it is hard to see how this approach can be justified.
4.4 Claims
that have been made
The Press, 15 December 1999, has a headline that "Women work harder, survey finds". On the same day, the Dominion claims, "Women's work takes twice as long". However, the Statistics New Zealand press release of 14 December, on which they base their stories, states that, "Men average two hours more paid work per day than women, while women spend two hours more per day doing unpaid work".
Phillida
Bunkle, Associate Minister of Women's Affairs, says in an
official Alliance Party press release, that the woman has a more
onerous and demanding role, "Now we know the reality of
women's lives and exactly why so many women feel so stressed".
As she explains:
But even more important than the
amount of paid and unpaid work women do is the multiple focus of
women's activities. The reality of caring work is apparent in the
amount of simultaneous disparate activities that women do.
Other surveys have only measured
one activity at a time but this one allows a record of all the
things that women do at the same time. This gives a much more
accurate picture of women's real lives. In this survey they can
hold the baby and cook the meal while talking to their mother-in-law
on the phone.
'Now
I and other women can show that the real difference between
myself and men is not that I don't concentrate but that I do so
many things at once.'
Bunkle
also claims: "Of course the most extreme example is where
a single parent is female the parent will do ten hours more
simultaneous activity per day than a single male father."
In
addition to paid work being classified as a single activity[22], the latter result
arises primarily because of women's 768 minutes of simultaneous
activity caregiving for household members, compared to the men's
235 minutes[23].
These
data are for all people aged 12 and over in "one parent
households with children, some or all aged less than 18".
They are averages of time spent by surveyed people in these
households, not only the sole mother or sole father. A smaller
proportion of male respondents will have been the custodial
fathers.
Moreover,
caregiving would be counted as primary unless the person is also
doing an activity of higher ranking. This would have to be
personal care, labour force activity, or education and training.
These women only have 149 minutes in the latter two categories[24], so most of the
simultaneous activity would be while spending time on personal
care, predominantly sleep time. Is Bunkle really claiming that
women are so stressed because they sleep with a child in the
house?
5 The Policy Environment
5.1 Some Examples
5.2 Critical assessment
i)
Problems faced by fathers
There is a lot of relevant information available, but it is far less in volume and less well publicised than the amount of information focusing on mothers' dissatisfaction with the Family Court. The latter has been gathered as part of the Law Commission's Women's Access to Justice Project (WAJP). Similarly with domestic violence, the Department of Justice’s Hitting Home study (Leibrich et al., 1995) only looked for information on men’s violence against women partners. If claimed ignorance of a problem is to be considered acceptable grounds for denying the existence of the problem, then the information gathered must be comprehensive. Otherwise problems can be dismissed simply by refusing to look at them.
Recent studies by both the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Commissioner for Children have found that men and women thought that men were badly treated by the Family Court[25]. In those cases the analysts dismissed the findings on the grounds that the participants in the studies did not really understand the issues.
ii)
Jenny Shipley on policy advice
In 1996, as Minister of Women's Affairs, Jenny Shipley launched the Ministry of Women's Affairs guidelines for gender analysis. These have been criticised for their starting untested presumption of disadvantage for one group and the selective consultation process set down (Birks, 1998a, 1998b). Having put in place a process which will result in poor and misleading policy advice, it is not clear what concerns led her then to prompt the establishment of the State Services Commission’s project.
iii) The Women’s Access to Justice project
The WAJP is an example of gender analysis. It started from the unchallenged assumption that women are disadvantaged. There was no attempt to obtain balancing input from men, nor was there any attempt to check the validity of women's grievances.
At the top of the Law Commission's web page[26] it describes itself as follows:
"The
Law Commission is New Zealand’s foremost law reform agency,
established by statute in 1985 to undertake the systematic review,
reform and development of New Zealand law. We are independent and
publicly funded, and seek to help make law that is just,
principled, and accessible, and that reflects the aspirations of
the peoples of New Zealand."
Birks (1998a) is a 20,000 word critique of the WAJP. The May 1998 issue of the New Zealand Law Journal contained a summary of that report. Law Commissioner D F Dugdale responded in the June 1998 issue, saying that it was premature to criticize the project before the final report was published. The final report came out this year. It did not include the critical publications in its list of references, and the preface by the President of the Law Commission stated that, "The study has already had considerable effect in bringing the issue to attention and influencing change".
Policy appears
to be frequently shaped in an environment characterised by narrow
perspectives and lack of debate. In October 1999 I L M Richardson,
describing the early days of the Matrimonial Property Act 1976,
said at the Australasian Family Courts Conference that, "I
think it helped to have the same bench of judges hear all the
early appeals"[27]. Is
this equivalent to saying that dictatorship is good because it
avoids political disagreements? Some people might have a feeling
of unease that policy is really being made by a few people,
possibly poorly informed, unelected, and lacking accountability.
6. Conclusion
A healthy democratic system requires appropriate research and a well-informed electorate and policymakers. As illustrated by the examples above, the State Services Commission's concerns about the quality of policy advice may well be justified. This paper is part of a wider programme of research which indicates that the problems are endemic in New Zealand.
The media play a significant role in the policymaking process, even if that is not their prime motivation. As we have demonstrated, there are occasions when their reporting does not accurately reflect the information. In some instances they are being used by others as a vehicle to pursue their own political aims.
In the introduction, we mentioned our view that the legal establishment is vulnerable to capture by interest groups. Such vulnerability may be more widespread. Institutional safeguards would include the setting and enforcement of appropriate standards of research and information dissemination, and checks and balances in the distribution of power. These could include neutrality in public sector research, more peer review and the fostering of independent think-tanks, as in tertiary institutions, and more critical and investigative journalism.
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Australian Capital Territory Community Law Reform Commission (1996) Report No.9: Domestic Violence: Criminal Issues
(http://www.dpa.act.gov.au/ag/Reports/CLRC/r9/dovind.html)
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(http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/1999/family_conference/author_20.html)
Birks S (1998a) Gender Analysis and the Women's Access to Justice Project, Issues Paper Number 2, Centre for Public Policy Evaluation, Massey University
Birks S (1998b) "Gender, Policy and
Social Engineering", paper presented at the Annual
Conference of New Zealand Association of Economists. 3 September, Wellington
Birks
S (1999) "Parenting and the Family Court: An Economist's
Perspective", Chapter 8 in Birks S and Callister P (1999) Perspectives
on Fathering II, Issues Paper No.6, Centre for Public Policy
Evaluation, Massey University
Child Support Review Working Party (1994) Child Support Review 1994: a consultative document, Inland Revenue Department
Fleming R and Spellerberg A (1999) Using Time Use Data: A history of time use surveys and uses of time use data, Statistics New Zealand
Hyman P (1994) Women and Economics: a New Zealand Feminist Perspective, Wellington: Bridget Williams Books
Julian R (1999) Fathering in the New Millenium, Wellington: Office of the Commissioner for Children
Leibrich J, Paulin J and Ransom R (1995) Hitting Home: Men speak out about abuse of women partners, Wellington: Department of Justice
Maxwell G M (1994) "Children and Family Violence: the Unnoticed Victims", Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, Issue 2, July, pp.81-96
Maxwell G M and Robertson J P (1993) Moving Apart: A Study of the role of Family Court Counselling Services, Department of Justice
Myrdal G (1970), An Approach to the Asian Drama: Methodological and Theoretical, (Vintage: New York).
Richardson I L M (1999) "Family Courts: Some Questions for Consideration", paper presented at the Australasian Family Courts Conference, Auckland, 16 October
Snively, S (1994), The New Zealand Economic Cost of Family Violence, Department of Social Welfare, New Zealand.
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Stone A (1999) "Billion-dollar cost burdens society", New Zealand Herald, 26 August. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nzherald99/story.cfm?theStoryID=12950
Wheeler
Y C H (1999) Women's Equal Status: "Equal Worth",
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[1] Centre for Public Policy Evaluation, Massey
University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, K.S.Birks@massey.ac.nz, G.B.Buurman@massey.ac.nz
[2] State Services Commission (1999), p.5
[3] Myrdal (1970), p.18
[4] Snively (1994), p.iv
[5] Snively (1994), p.11, para. 5.2
[6] Snively(1994), p.6, para. 3.7
[7] For more discussion, see for example section 5.5 of Birks (1998)
[8] Snively (1994) p.35, fn 1
[9] Snively (1994), p.36, fn 12
[10] Snively (1994), p.36, fn 13
[11] Snively (1994) p.36, fn 14
[12] Snively (1994) p.36, fn 15
[13] See table 2 of Maxwell (1994)
[14] Snively (1994) p.39, fn 3
[15] http://www.mwa.govt.nz/pub/panui/9802/marilyn.html
[16] Fleming and Spellerberg (1999)
[17] In Wheeler (1999), section 5.2.
[18] Maxwell and Robertson (1993), table 1.4.3 on p.37
[19] In 1994, 84% of lone parents were women (The Child Support Review Working Party, 1994, p.24).
[20] Inland Revenue figures for 31 August 1999 indicate 200,738 persons paying child support, in relation to about 300,000 children.
[21] Statistics New Zealand (1999) p.21
[22] The questionnaire instructions say: "If you are doing paid work, ... you don't need to write down the things you do at work." So work only counts as one activity. A sole mother could be washing the dishes while her baby sleeps. This was counted as two activities. A surgeon could be cutting someone open while giving instructions to other theatre staff. This was counted as one activity.
[23] See table 28 in "tusGtables.xls", columns AB to AJ, available from the Statistics New Zealand web page at: http://www.stats.govt.nz/
[24] Ibid
[25] Chetwin et al. (1999) and Julian (1999)
[26] http://www.lawcom.govt.nz/
[27] Richardson (1999), p.5