Planning Council report a waiting time bomb

Press, 25 October 1982, Page 12

Planning Council report a waiting time bomb

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

The new Planning Council is sitting on a time bomb, in the form of a report on “Issues on Equity.” This report has been passed on to it by the outgoing council, which at its final meeting exhibited extreme reluctance to acknowledge responsibility for the report or to publish it Wider knowledge of the contents of the report cannot be suppressed indefinitely. The new ' council . must " decide whether to continue to try to keep it secret, or to publish it in a form which the Government would find more acceptable. To publish the report as it stands would gravely damage the Planning Council’s relationship with the Government. It is possible to have some sympathy for the new council. It was left this time bomb by its outgoing predecessor. Also, the report itself was commissioned as an internal report for the Planning Council, so it was never originally intended that it should be published in the form in which it was presented to the council.

The outgoing council recognised at once what a can of worms the report was. Instead of acknowledging the difficulties it faced, it criticised the report for not being specific enough, not having enough facts, and not quantifying the nature of the problems identified, as they appeared throughout society. It was a case'of

attacking the compilers of the report rather than coping with what it said.

It is ironic that the report should be criticised for not being specific enough. When it was being compiled, some individuals and groups refused to co-operate with the compilers. Their reason was that cooperating was a waste of time. They predicted that the report would never be published, that it would be criticised for what it showed and so be unacceptable politically. Their cynicism has been shown to be realism, in the event

What the report showed was a number of things about New Zealand that had been long suspected. It was just that this was the first study which had set out specifically to identify them. Rather than provide figures, useful but often confusing tools in social science, and certainly not as critical to social understanding as many believe, it set out a useful background for the Planning Council to develop its own work programme. The report showed that a significant number of New Zealanders feel society is unjust, and that decisions get made in ways which ignore them and benefit New Zealanders who already enjoy most of the advantages anyway. It made clear that the Planning Council has been consulting far too narrow a range

of individuals and groups. It raised dozens of policy issues needing examination — the appropriateness of the education system, and the extent to which it increased options or reduced them for particular groups of people; the inequities in the incidence of unemployment; inequities and inefficiencies in the decision-making process; the need to involve the people affected by the decisions; identifying those social groups from which most of the influential decision-makers come; and problems of communication between those making decisions and those affected.

It found that many people believed the gap between rich and poor . was widening, in terms of gross income, net income, unearned income, fringe benefits, welfare payments, and tax concessions. It found inequities, inconsistencies and inefficiencies in the system of social welfare benefits, and the need to simplify them.

Most of these points had been long-suspected. Perhaps other and better ways could have been devised for identifying them specifically. The way chosen by the outgoing Planning Council was to commission an internal report. The new Planning Council must find ways to give the issues raised as wide an airing as possible.