Frequently Asked Questions about the DPB Petition
- What is a Select Committee Review?
- What am I advocating by signing this petition?
- What are the alternatives to the DPB?
- Won't children be harmed by the abolition of the DPB?
- Won't women be forced to stay in violent relationships?
- What happened before the DPB?
- Shouldn't women be allowed to stay at home with their children rather than seeking childcare?
- There aren't enough childcare facilities as it is. How can we get rid of the DPB?
- Some children are better off without their fathers (or mothers). Isn't this a reason for the DPB?
- Children are better off with one happy parent than with two arguing parents. Shouldn't the DPB allow this?
- Why can't we simply maintain the status quo?
What is a Select Committee Review?
This petition would be allocated to the Social Services Committee, which is made up of MPs from each political party. The public and interested groups would be invited to make submissions that they can choose to present to the committee personally. The Select Committee can then make a report with or without ecommendations to the House of Representatives. It is a democratic process.
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What am I advocating by signing this petition?
You are expressing a wish that the government, by way of the Select Committee process, examines the current system. As petitioner, I will be making a submission that government should abolish the DPB but there will be the opportunity for other individuals or groups to argue for its retention or even expansion. The primary aim of this petition is to stimulate some much-needed debate about the future of family welfare.
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What are the alternatives to the DPB?
Some western countries have replaced statutory benefits with temporary assistance. For instance in the US their equivalent to the DPB, AFDC (Assistance for Families with Dependent Children) was abolished in 1996. It was replaced with TANF, (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). This put limits on the length of time a benefit could be drawn for. Alternatively, if we actually believe that children are the parent's responsibility and the parent therefore needs a job to provide for them, the unemployment benefit would suffice. The average total time (not to be confused with the average cumulative current spell) spent on the DPB, has reached at least six and a half years. In the US, it had reached eight years when they decided welfare must be returned to its original purpose - temporary assistance to the needy. This development has led to a sixty percent reduction in welfare numbers. Similar successes have been achieved in Canadian provinces.
Our productivity growth from 1995-02 was a mere third of the growth we achieved from 1990-95. By contrast, in the US productivity growth almost doubled in the 1995-02 period when compared to the 1990-95 period.
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Won't children be harmed by the abolition of the DPB?
Ironically, the availability of the DPB has actually fuelled the very need for it. We now have one in four children dependent on this benefit. New Zealand research* shows that for children brought up in poor single parent homes, the source of income is important. The outcomes for those children whose main source of income is from government transfer (benefits) were worse than for those whose main source of income was from market income. In general, children do better with a working parent.
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Won't women be forced to stay in violent relationships?
No. If a form of temporary assistance is available there is no need for a woman to stay with a violent partner. It has to be said that some men prey off women on the DPB because she has an indefinite source of income. When asked why government were letting out statehouses to gang members National MP, Tony Ryall, explained that the applying tenant is usually a single mother and the gang member moves in 'on her back'.
Violent partners should be prosecuted. However, this is becoming an increasingly contentious issue, again because of the DPB. Many men report that false accusations and protection orders are made against them because the mother needs to ensure custody of the children to secure the DPB.
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What happened before the DPB?
In 1971, of the 2,700 adoptions, 83 percent were born out of wedlock. And, of course, there were the shotgun marriages. These two institutions were unfavourably viewed by feminists, who agitated for financial 'independence' for single mothers. We have effectively exchanged those two 'social ills' for far worse conditions - the well-documented negative effects of fatherlessness and benefit dependence.
Before the DPB, families took greater responsibility for unexpected pregnancies or failed relationships. Today, families have been substantially weakened in a domino-type affect. Once the state steps in and assumes the father role, there is every likelihood that there won't be a family capable of providing for the circumstance if it is repeated in the next generation.
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Shouldn't women be allowed to stay at home with their children rather than seeking childcare?
This is an important question and research can be presented to argue the case either way. But if a parent believes that being there for their child fulltime is important, then this must be their choice and the provision for it their responsibility.
Some points to consider are:
- Many mothers who would rather stay at home are working out of necessity and they are paying tax to support women using the DPB to stay at home.
- The longer a person stays out of the workforce, the harder it becomes to re-enter. For a first-time mother who has just become a single parent facing a future providing for her child, getting back into the workforce should be a priority.
- Young first time mothers can become quite isolated by staying at home.
- It is arguably more important for a child to have an intact family and the example of a working parent than for them to have one at-home, benefit-dependent parent.
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There aren't enough childcare facilities as it is. How can we get rid of the DPB?
Currently, half of those on the DPB have just one child. Paying one person to look after one child fulltime, along with accommodation costs and living costs (a typical DPB beneficiary with one child has an income of around $18 -20,000) is poor economics. An ideal paying job for one of these parents would be in organised childcare supervising 3 or 4 children. This would also accommodate the mum who wants to be with her own child fulltime. More crèches are needed in workplaces.
Although rebates and subsidies already exist, childcare costs could be made 100% tax-deductible.
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Some children are better off without their fathers (or mothers). Isn't this a reason for the DPB?
In extreme circumstances, temporary assistance would still allow the parents to separate. In general, children want and need their dads. Perhaps boys in particular.
In a speech at a Parliamentary breakfast early in April 2003, Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft identified the main characteristics of the young offenders who appear before him:
"The second characteristic (the first was that 85% are male) is that many have no adult male role model or a good adult role model and come from disadvantaged, even dysfunctional families. 14,15 and 16 year-old boys seek out role models like "heat seeking missiles." Its either the leader of the Mongrel Mob or it's a sports coach or its dad. But an overwhelming majority of young boys who I see in the Youth Court have lost contact with their father. That message is often received by audiences in various ways. I'm not making a judgment about people who separate because usually separated dads have a wonderful input into the lives of their children. Neither am I saying that all solo mums breed criminals, because it's a lot to do with parenting styles and involving adult male role models in the lives of their boys. But what I am saying is that I'm dealing in the Youth Court, as are the 42 Youth Court Judges around the country, with boys for whom their dad is simply not there, never has been, gone, vanished and disappeared. When you ask them about their dads as I sometimes do, the tears will stream down their eyes or their anger will rise up. It's an awfully common characteristic."
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Children are better off with one happy parent than with two arguing parents. Shouldn't the DPB allow this?
Research by Judith Wallerstein followed children from homes where unhappy parents divorced and unhappy parents stayed together. The research was conducted over 30 years. What Wallerstein found was that the impact of divorce on children was not greatest at the time of separation but when those children entered adulthood. Because they had no 'template' for marriage, even an unhappy one, they had difficulty forming relationships themselves.
The DPB makes getting out of a relationship going through a bad patch too easy. Most marriages and partnerships go through troubled times. Seventy percent of New Zealand divorces are initiated by wives and, predictably, it is almost always the wife who goes on the DPB.
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Why can't we simply maintain the status quo?
The numbers drawing this benefit have steadily increased from 17,000 in 1975 to 110,000 today. They evened off in 1998 with the introduction of worktesting but this has recently been abolished. Treasury have forecast the numbers to increase by 1,000 every year for the next 4 years.
In 1971, 14% of births were ex-nuptial (outside of marriage). Today 42% are ex-nuptial. The two-parent family is the economically viable unit of society. 83% of single parents are currently benefit dependent. We cannot economically sustain this trend.
Truancy, illiteracy, alcohol and drug abuse and youth offending are more widespread than before the phenomenon of single-parent welfare dependency.
Society is becoming less tolerant of the misuse of the welfare state. Sadly, this leads to resentment and division. It does not lead to social cohesion, or the ethics of voluntarism and cooperation. Maintaining the status quo will not allow us to move towards strong families and strong communities.
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Institute for Liberal Values, Monday February 6th 2012. |
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