Abstract
Using Michel Foucault’s theories of biopolitics, about risk and security, I examine the welfare policies of the National Coalition Government in New Zealand (2008–2017). This government attempted to mitigate risk by projecting possible challenges and solutions to ‘vulnerable populations’. Welfare was re-defined in monetarist economic terms, as ways to ensure ‘small government’. Over the three terms of government they brought in changes across the education, and social services, with the intent of implementing new economic facets to reduce the cost to the state of beneficiaries and their dependent children.
Using cross-ministry data collection, they planned to identify the ‘job-shy’ parents and children deemed ‘vulnerable’. Social Investment aimed to change the behaviours of such populations, whom the National Coalition government deemed future potential liabilities for the state. Projecting costs over 20 or 30 years and modelling the costs of dysfunction would give the social agencies improved information. Early intervention would save the state welfare budget, and responsibilize the young children at risk of themselves becoming beneficiaries later in life.
‘It’s about understanding the drivers of social dysfunction, assessing what makes the most difference to people’s lives, and using evidence to do more of what works’ said Finance Minister, Bill English in May, 2016.
The New Zealand National Coalition Government 2008–2017 (hereafter referred to as National Government) appeared to be increasingly passionate about their policy of Social Investment. Over three parliamentary terms, policy and finances were allocated towards this new initiative. This government had an overall strategy of ‘small government’, which involved divesting itself of direct state responsibility for social services and devolving these to non-governmental agencies (NGOs). In many ways the policy was merely an extension of the neoliberal economic policies New Zealand governments had followed since the 1980s. The radical change was an intent to pay only for delivered outcomes, both at the individual and the aggregated levels, rather than general payments for contracted outputs.
Michel Foucault critiqued the return to frugal – smaller – government in the 20th century, after earlier episodes of ‘too much government’: American neoliberalism seeks to extend the rationality of the market, the schemas of analysis it offers and the decision-making criteria it suggests, to domains that are not primarily economic: the family and the birthrate … or delinquency and penal policy. (Foucault, 2008, p. 323)
‘Social Investment’ as reduction of future fiscal liability
First, I address the underlying actuarial intent of the programme instigated by Bill English, former Finance Minister and Prime Minister in the National Government (2008–2017). While the term Social Investment can appear to be benign, I argue that the prime intention was to ensure that any risk to the country’s treasury funds over time was to be minimized. Welfare was re-defined in monetarist economic terms, as ways to ensure ‘small government’ by devolving and contracting out what had been core state responsibilities.
The National Government’s policy was underpinned by biopolitical anxieties about beneficiaries. ‘Biopolitics deals with the…population as a political problem, as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s problem’ (Foucault 1997: 245). National’s Social Investment policy was about reducing welfare as a cost to the state, rather than the ideas about social safety nets in more equal societies posited by Morel et al. (2012: 359) where ‘“protection” must remain an important function of the welfare state’. Social Investment is rarely implemented at the ‘ideation level’, being ‘workfarist rather than individualized’ (Morel et al. 2012: 351). Rather than ‘provision of incentives for the unemployed to take poorly paid jobs’, they recommended ‘capacitating public services … [providing transitional] bridges of change’ (Morel et al. 2012: 361). Morel et al. see public services primarily as support to the beneficiaries as they move from welfare to paid employment. Robust, quality support systems are essential in easing this transition.
Increasingly illiberal policy
To English and the National Government, the concept was about ‘benefits acting as a disincentive to work’ (English, 2016). This government, I argue, used ‘scientific’ data gathering for actuarial purposes, identifying discrete sections of the population as ‘vulnerable’ before targeting welfare monies towards early intervention. It aimed to turn beneficiaries into tax-payers and reduce ‘the welfare system’s future cost by [NZ]$12 billion’ (English, 2016)’. While all states collect panel data to reduce costs to the state and support targeting to get cost benefits from its investments, I argue that the specifics of the National Government’s purpose were illiberal and punitive in its intent. In contrast to this, they continued the policy of making pensions universally available to those who had paid tax over their working life. The National Government invested policy, time and resourcing to its flagship programme for ‘vulnerable children’, and for beneficiaries. The problem was how to deal with that section of the population who did not seem to be benefitting, were a drain on the state coffers and a risk to the welfare of the nation?
Mitigating risk: ‘vulnerable children’
In deciding what social services will be purchased for which nominated outcomes involves ‘using evidence to do more of what works … [by controlling] government agencies and NGOs to deliver better results from social services using rigorous, evidence-based measurement, evaluation and feedback’. English (2016) hoped to reduce welfare costs. Such costs included monies ‘to be targeted at children most at risk of not achieving in education’ (English, 2016). It was to legislate for a new agency for ‘vulnerable children’ and to contract long-term for specific outcomes with community bodies and non-governmental organizations. Regulation allows for government at a distance: ‘[w]hat works for communities works for the Government’s books’ (English, 2016).
An Early Childhood Education (ECE) Taskforce chaired by professor of public policy, Michael Mintrom (2011) was commissioned by Education Minister Anne Tolley early in the first parliamentary term. The report framed ECE in econometric terms as an ‘investment’ to address the ‘vulnerability’ of disadvantaged children, utilizing ideas from econometricians such as James Heckman (Stuart, 2013). By the end of the third term, however, few of the Taskforce’s recommendations had been implemented.
The state seeks to regulate that which can sap the populations’ strength. The New Zealand Treasury (2016) used data to predict which sections of the future population would be most at risk – roughly 40,000 ‘vulnerable children’ by their estimates. Their infometric tool, Four key indicators of higher risk – Children aged 0 to 14, gives four headings. These are: (a) having a Child Youth and Family (CYF) finding of abuse or neglect; (b) being mostly supported by benefits since birth; (c) having a parent with a prison or community sentence and (d) having a mother with no formal qualifications (New Zealand Treasury, 2017). ‘Boys are more likely than girls; Māori at higher risk of poor outcomes than other ethnicities. Should children be in situations of having two, three or more of these characteristics, it is suggested that ‘wrap-around services’ from several government agencies be accessed. Children in the Northland, Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay regions are more likely to have two or more risk indicators than children living in other regions. ‘Almost a third of these children live in Auckland however, and large numbers live in the other big cities’ the Treasury concluded. The data underpinning these assertions are presented unproblematically, neutrally, divorced from political or social contexts, such as lack of employment opportunities.
I next look across and between policy documents using Foucault’s concept of biopolitics – the state’s management of populations through control and regulation including population data of births, deaths and morbidity such as ‘forecasts, statistical estimates and overall measures’ (Foucault, 1997: 246).
The National Government’s actuarial intent
In an opinion piece, Simon Chapple (2017) argued that abolishing the policy would be ‘a step too far’. ‘Social investment makes extensive use of joined-up government data sets (“Big Data”) to guide decisions to invest in areas where actuaries say the benefit savings will be greatest’ he continued. ‘Measuring disadvantaged people’s wellbeing and how best it can be enhanced by government interventions must become the central focus of a re-orientated Social Investment Agency.’ Chapple summarized the National Coalition’s policy as having three propositions The first is a belief that people on welfare suffer long-term social and economic costs. The second proposes that these costs are best mitigated by making long-term investments in those people. The third proposition is that the best way to assess the government’s performance in reducing these costs is by the savings made in long-term benefit payments, which can be calculated by actuaries. (Chapple, 2017)
The individuation of data removes any state responsibility for poor provision of resources and infrastructure; rather self-government is emphasized. The Social Investment Unit’s statements look at individuated data, devoid of context, such as a lack of central government resources and investment in infrastructure over time. When the Treasury (2017) noted that children from Northland, Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay regions were at risk, it was without context over time. For example, a 2010 study (Warwick Walbran Consulting Limited, 2010: 2) noted that ‘[f]reight transport to/from Gisborne … has been a topic of discussion and concern for some time’. Access by road and rail is precarious, and all of these areas have demographically poor populations. The data on such discrete populations is based on tax data from the Inland Revenue. Debates over unemployment and taxation in New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s reconfigured the targets of policy and re-ordered social antagonism, establishing a neoliberal citizenship regime and centring political problematic… the process of reconfiguring citizen subjectivity initially as ‘social consumers’ and participants in a coalition of minorities, and subsequently as universal taxpayers in antagonistic relation to unemployed beneficiaries. (Hackell, 2007, p. ii)
A history of political risks: biopolitics in New Zealand
Since the early 19th century, the poor, those without visible sustenance and shelter, have been viewed as a risk to the wellbeing of the state. Risk as a concept has a relatively short history. Initially, in the 19th century, tied to the insurance industry – the uncertainty of shipping cargo arriving safely in port – risk-thinking spread in the 20th century to social areas such as health and education. Designating a population as risky allows for policing, of mitigating the risk, transforming ‘uncertainty into calculated risk’ (Bialostok, 2015: 566). ‘Risk thinking brings the future into the present and makes it calculable … and creates the belief in the transformability of a radically indeterminate world into a manageable one’ (Bialostok, 2015: 564). Microeconomists suggested ‘early intervention’ for ‘at-risk’ families, as a cost-benefit policy.
Much of the social policy of the National Government adopted the moral judgements about the undeserving populations framed in ways that portrayed members of the social body as non-paying elements. The discourse aligned with that of small government. In devolving risk to local philanthropic groups, the government stepped away from direct responsibility for a social ‘safety net’. There were similarities to the 19th century concept of local charity. The government retained its control of the ‘science’ of algorithms, economic management and measures. The discourse of risk is evident across three terms as a regime of ‘truth’ – that which is accepted by the population as ‘true’. The National Government drew on a long history of economic parlance in its use of ‘big data’ to limit the long-term social welfare costs to the state. There is a ‘history of the present’ in the Social Investment treatment of beneficiaries and tax-payers.
Foucault’s genealogy allows examination of the construction of the members of the state, as they are responsibilized.
Hackell’s (2007: 9) view that ‘taxing some for the benefit of others … [where] ordinary taxpayers were distinguished’ from beneficiaries had merely entered a new iteration. Economics as a discipline has grappled with the utilitarian idea of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ since the times of Jeremy Bentham. Ideas of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ beneficiary welfare remained at the centre of welfare economics.
Social welfare and the state
At the cusp of the 19th century there was a fear of the itinerant poor, resulting from the demographic shift to urban areas as Britain industrialized. Political economists such as Thomas Malthus (1798) used both arithmetic and geometric progression data to demonstrate that food supply could not keep pace with population growth. Political intervention was unwarranted – left to nature, famine and want would correct overpopulation. Moral judgements were brought to bear on those seeking parochial support. Widows and orphans (the deserving) were viewed somewhat more favourably than the alcoholic and work-shy (undeserving poor). Minimal support was offered by the 1834 New Poor Law, where the poor were confined to workhouses in their parish of origin; where outdoor relief – daily payment for working in the fields or roads – allowed them to provide for themselves and their families. Britain and a number of her colonies-maintained workhouses in the early 19th century, but NZ was not among them. Some, with attestation of good character, had assisted immigration passage to the colonies.
As the New Zealand settler population increased so did those deemed to be undeserving. Despite central government picking up responsibility for many services from 1852, welfare for the poor was largely left to churches and charity. Central government took responsibility for some services, such as the introduction of compulsory primary school attendance in 1877. An old-age pension, means-tested, and dependent on good-character attestations, was introduced in 1898 (Murphy, 2008: 33). This was the first old-age pension in the world – what John Murphy called an example of ‘new liberalism’ about the ‘ethical role of the state’ (Murphy, 2008: 33). Pensions had ‘restrictions based on racism, length of residency, spouse desertion and criminal convictions’ (Murphy, 2008: 44). Widows with dependent children received state support from the early 20th century.
Debate continued over the pre- and post-war periods about the government’s role in universal provision of welfare. Should there be a statutory right to support in old age? Should availability be limited to those of British stock; or to Māori or Asian? A Social Security Act was passed in 1938, administered by a State Security Department. The Act was based on citizen’s rights as a member of the national community – where every citizen had the right to a basic standard of living. This Act established: a range of new benefits, including provisions for sickness, unemployment, orphans and emergency coverage, social security [was placed on] a more systematic footing…It operates within a framework of an income-tested system of non-contributory benefits and pensions funded from general taxation. (Maharey, 2000)
The Fourth Labour government introduced economics from the Chicago School with emphasis on monetarism, the self-choosing rational individual, where markets – invisible managers of the economy – assumed a hegemony. Neo-liberal economic discourse privileged the working individual, devolved responsibility for welfare from central government, to the family. Initially the progressive policies adopted by Labour (1984–1990) responded to the calls for greater diversity, greater employment and career options for women, and support for care of their children. In the Education Act 1989, Labour undertook a radical overhaul of education. No longer under the management of central government and local departments, education was devolved to individual schools. The bureaucracy of the departments was shifted to key agencies offering ministerial advice and funding, and auditing of school performances. New public management techniques were applied to education and other social areas. New Zealand’s social policy paradigm was restructured in a workfare direction and (re)oriented towards achieving competitive and flexible labour markets. This restructuring made full employment a by-product of market forces and individual effort, rather than being the central goal and outcome of direct government intervention. This fundamental policy shift occurred alongside the construction of a new mode of political identification based on the identity of the (productive) taxpayer. (Hackell, 2007: 6)
This construct is evident in a New Zealand Treasury (2016) paper identifying the small number of future taxpayers who would need to shoulder the burden of welfare: The investment approach looks to identify welfare recipients who are most likely to benefit from being helped back into the workforce because they are at higher risk of remaining on a benefit in the long term. Once identified, those recipients receive more support.
The changing discourses – neoliberalism explored
Discourse, as used by Michel Foucault, examines the theme of discontinuity as a tool with which to analyse policy. ‘The use of concepts of discontinuity, rupture, threshold, limit, series, and transformation present all historical analysis not only with questions of procedure, but with theoretical problems.’ There must never be, in a genealogy, a search for ‘origins’, or things that have ‘already been said’. Rather, it must be treated when and where it occurs. A new discourse of citizenship, of individual responsibility had replaced that of state welfare in the 1980s. The previous Keynesian discourse was cut loose.
The National Coalition’s adoption of Social Investment as a tool to manage the poor can be traced genealogically to these earlier discourses. Some elements of the language of ‘undeserving’ v. ‘deserving’ emerged, while others descended. Targeting monies towards those work-age beneficiaries required families to look after their own. Those deemed ‘old-age people’ had rightly earned their pensions as former contributors to the nation’s tax-take. While there may be some public responsibility for citizen of the future, the children, there was less feeling of responsibility for their mothers. New public management groundwork laid by the Fourth Labour Government allowed the National Government to further shape its citizens into two classes of workfare – those with children but lacking partners, and others. National’s intent was to tighten targeting to a degree for individuals within a beneficiary class. Under National ‘the internal limits of citizenship are represented by those categories of persons constructed as the antithesis of the model citizen’ (Hackell, 2007: 22).
Political discourse attempts to persuade, indeed, to construct. Constructs such as freedom, responsibility, citizenship, a just society and autonomy have an epistemic quality. The collective discourse establishes a discourse of ‘truth’ about beneficiaries and their children. Hackell uses Foucault’s notion of discourse to look below the surface of policy, and to seek a history of the present. I adapt some of her ideas below. (English and Bennett, 2016)
Discursive tactics, strategies and mechanisms: a genealogy
In its third term in government some of the key National social policy strategies were finalized. In 2016 Education Minister Hekia Parata implemented targeted funding for underachieving children. She said The Education (Update) Amendment Bill was about putting ‘the achievement of our children … at the heart of the education system, and gives us the flexibility to respond to their current and future needs’ (Parata, 2017). Bill English, Minister Responsible for Housing, New Zealand Corporation and Minister for Social Housing, Paula Bennett, oversaw the transfer of state housing stock to an NGO (English and Bennett, 2016). Anne Tolley, Minister of Social Development noted in 2016 ‘[f]iscal analysis shows the government is spending a considerable amount in lifetime costs for children and young people’. She continued ‘The Social Investment Unit is currently developing its future work programme, which includes the creation of a social investment ‘engine room’ (tools and infrastructure) that can be applied to any population, spend or service delivery model based on risk’.
I set out a genealogy of the tactics, strategies and mechanisms (see Stuart, 2009) used by National Governments to shift the discourse concerning beneficiaries, which by the conclusion of the 2014–2018 government had become hegemonic.
Early emergent discourses: the beneficiary
There had been major welfare reforms in the 1990–1993 periods under National’s Minister of Social Welfare, Jenny Shipley. In December 1990 she announced that benefits would be cut significantly with a Change Team on Targeting Social Assistance established to design a new system of targeted social assistance (St John and Rankin, 2009; Stuart, 2014). The National Party discussed an aggregated family benefit – Family Accounts – where a normative two parent family was used with a single-family income test as they moved towards a Welfare that Works budget in 1991.
The National government explored citizen’s rights, responsibilities and obligations with its attempt to introduce a contract between central state and its citizens in its Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility. (Ministry of Social Development, 1998). In this code, binaries of appropriate v. risky behaviours were set out, in the form of questions designed to elicit moral responses. Questions such as ‘What more can the Government do to encourage beneficiaries into work? … Is it fair to expect a working-age beneficiary to take up part-time or full-time work or training when they have the ability to do so?’ (Ministry of Social Development, 1998). This was one among a number of strategies and tactics including conferences and public consultations used to re-construct beneficiaries in a new image.
The National Government’s economic policies, as mentioned in its party pre-election policies meant it would ‘provide an environment where New Zealand families are able to support themselves and take control of their own lives, freed from the dependence on State welfare’ (New Zealand National Party (1990b: 2), as cited in Hackell, 2007: 258). They instigated a mandatory work-for-the-dole and a work testing schedule. In opposition, during the repeal of the Social Security Amendment Bill 1998, the Hamilton West National Party Member, Bob Simcock said when beneficiaries ‘are not making a call on anybody, we have no involvement in that. [But] …when people make those claims on other taxpayers, they do have some obligations that they have to meet’ (Hansard, 2000).
Better public services – the beneficiary
Many of these strategies, tactics and mechanisms were carried through when the National Coalition were re-elected in 2008. I will set out these in some detail as they are demonstrated in the first term of this National Government before being consolidated over its next three terms. The Better Public Services (New Zealand State Services Commission, 2012) mechanism was designed to plot measurable outcomes on chosen goals, such as attendance at an early childhood service, and inoculation of children. Number one was Reducing long-term welfare dependence. Number two was Supporting vulnerable children, by demonstrating an increase participation in early childhood education. Actuarial firms Taylor and Fry and later Ernst and Young gave advice on the proposed social investment approach including lifetime costs to the state. Government took advice from specialists, such as the Prime Minister’s science advisor. Its aim in collecting data was to ensure that the government used evidence to get value for money on its investments. Targeted services with payment on results was a good mechanism, the National Coalition believed, to ensure outcomes could be delivered. The government aimed to reprioritize funding, with less universal services, but targeting to ‘vulnerable’ children. Though there were political risks as beneficiaries’ privacy rights would be affected – numbers of agencies shared information – however responsible government should not fund beneficiaries indefinitely. Devolution to NGOs, paid on evidential outcomes alone, was cautious care of the public coffers, they believed. A conjunct of policies underpinned by more ‘scientific’ monetarist ideologies aimed for future social and budgetary dividends to be set in place over the nine years.
In 2010 the Prime Minister fronted a press release with Social Development Minister, Paula Bennett: The Future Focus policy, they said, involved ‘active case management to get back to work…[and changed] the focus to a better-off-in-work approach…The state would act when ‘Job-seekers…don't take responsibility for themselves’.
A Welfare Working Group was charged with reducing long-term benefit dependency and creating incentives for people to move further into the tax system. This Working Group recommended amalgamating all benefits into a single job-seeking benefit and creating incentives for people to move into the tax system. ‘Most working-age people are able to participate in paid work, either immediately or after some period of preparation and transition support. The initial presumption in the welfare system should therefore be that people can work, not that they cannot work’ (Welfare Working Group, 2011: 3). The taxpayer and the community expected that those who can work should, in fact be required to do so. A long-term approach could encourage the persistent unemployed to seek work. The Working Group report recommended actuarial funding, a ‘statistical method for calculating the cost or risk, and allocated provision of funding to cover that cost … Improving work outcomes for people of working age at risk of long-term welfare dependency and reducing the long-term costs of welfare dependency (as measured by the forward liability)’ (Welfare Working Group, 2011: 148). Disadvantaged youth could be enrolled in work training and vocational courses.
The Future Focus Policy success, the government believed, would pivot on the sharing of individualized data across agencies such as welfare, health and education. Data could identify discrete groups who would benefit from intensive interventions using cost-benefit analyses.
Less direct government involvement was planned for social services under this policy, however, and central agencies would contract out for longer periods than previously. Payment would be by results. As the risk would be great, philanthropic organizations could invest in delivering outcomes for high-risk populations, where investments might deliver especially good returns (see for example Ball and Olmedo, 2011). Many of the previously successful NGO and community groups would find that their tenders would be unsuccessful in the new regime.
The National Government had hoped to implement these strategies in a fourth parliamentary term – an intent that was thwarted by the electorate.
Future Focus Policy: an example
They hoped to persuade beneficiaries to work, and their children to be work-ready, thus avoiding becoming beneficiaries themselves.
In a policy statement Key and Bennett (2010) said ‘The Future Focus package aims to reform benefits by rebalancing obligations and support – to bring an unrelenting focus on work’. They set about this by implementing a number of Better Public Services 2012–2017 goals, including reducing long-term welfare dependence whereby ‘an accumulated actuarial release of [NZ]$13 billion by June 2018’ (State Services Commission, 2017) would be evident.
One of the incoming Government’s policies was a ‘vulnerable child-first allocation policy’ where resources were tightly targeted for results. The Minister of Social Development, Paula Bennett, took responsibility for instigating a Green Paper for Vulnerable Children (Ministry for Social Development, 2012). In the introduction Prime Minister John Key wrote that his government was ‘working to build a future with better job prospects, greater life choices, and, in turn, a society with less dysfunction, unemployment, welfare dependence and crime’ (Ministry for Social Development, 2012, introductory statement). Paula Bennett in her statement in the Green Paper noted ‘[t]hese are issues that…must be seen beyond three-year political terms. We must tackle complex, controversial issues and make decisions that will affect generations’ (Ministry for Social Development, 2012, introduction). Government alone cannot affect change, she said. It has a ‘key role to play – demonstrating leadership, making policy decisions and delivering services to support vulnerable children (Ministry for Social Development, 2012: 7). Those with devolved responsibility such as ‘[l]ocal government, business, philanthropy and non-government organisations all have a role to protect vulnerable children and prevent more children becoming vulnerable …’ (Ministry for Social Development, 2012: 7).
Work continued apace on the essential elements underpinning the Green Paper, so that by the conclusion of their first term, many of the proposed mechanisms were ready to be implemented in their second. Bennett (2013: 2) introduced a White Paper for Vulnerable Children and a Children’s Action Plan. where she set out the economic rationale. ‘Public resources aren’t limitless so the Government must focus on purchasing social services which make the greatest difference for our most vulnerable children, and deliver value for money for taxpayers’ (Bennett, 2013: 26). One of the devolution strategies was cross-sector tracking of individual ‘vulnerable’ children between and across agencies. In Foucauldian terms the state surveillance was enhanced, with protection ‘accountability at every level’ (Bennett, 2013).
In the interim between the Green Paper and the White Papers, two groups: the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty and the Ministerial Committee on Poverty had been established. At each parliamentary term between 2008–2014 new aspects of the strategies and tactics were implemented. Drawing on familiar representations, the discourse that coupled limited public resources with state responsibility for social safety nets was to emerge. Not only did the National Cabinet, adopt the ‘value for money’, ‘scientific’ language, but it’s ministries and public services followed suit. They reiterated the need to relieve the tax burden by solving dysfunction and unemployment.
Implementing Future Focus benefit reforms
The National Government positioned itself as saviour of liberalism, freed from the shackles of Keynesian economics. The dependent was either the risky child, or was the sole parent, a woman, who may have come from several generations of beneficiaries, deemed a sap on the nation’s coffers, a ‘future liability’. Once a Māori sole parent beneficiary herself, National Minister, Paula Bennett summed up the party’s beliefs: We’ll target those most at risk … who’re on a collision course with welfare…[by]assign[ing] providers to help them get back on track, engaged with learning or working…[The government aims to turn] around the very old fashioned attitude that says women are so helpless they need to be supported by the State if they’re not partnered. (Bennett, 2012) an investment approach will reap the greatest benefits. Such an approach involves giving preference to those policies which generate the largest long-term returns, both for children and our wider society. There is considerable evidence, for example, that investments in the early years of a child’s life generate the greatest marginal benefits. To quote the Nobel laureate James Heckman…‘It is a rare public policy initiative that promotes fairness and social justice and at the same time promotes productivity in the economy and in society at large. Investing in disadvantaged young children is such a policy’. (Children’s Commission, 2012: 29):
The report recommended shifts in the existing model of collecting data, including a Child Information management system and a Case Management system and contained an appendix of Evidence-Based Programmes and Approaches which set out evidence bases and estimated returns on investments (Expert Panel, 2015: 285–297). Auditing firm, Ernst and Young recommended that this approach be a part of a ‘global approach for most New Zealanders and most government social benefits and services’ (Ernst and Young, 2015: 5). It resulted in the Children Young Persons and their Families Act Phase one (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) 2016. Data collated by a range of government social policy departments would be shared with NGO providers. This may be the first time in the world that an actuarial approach has been taken to evaluating the costs of a pay-as-you-go welfare benefit system…[The system supports the central ministry] to set priorities for investment in (and disinvestment from) services. MSD [Ministry of Social Development] is developing a return on investment…framework to make this process more systematic. (Productivity Commission, 2015: 70–71)
Agencies who supported the turnaround of beneficiaries’ lives should be entitled to a return on their investments. Yet many NGOs who purchased contracts emphasized the ‘duty of care’ rather than efficiency in the sector, the Productivity Commission argued (New Zealand Productivity Commission, 2015: 51). They recommended ‘creating new performance measures (e.g. future benefit liability, return on investment) … as better measures on which to hold political decision makers accountable’ (New Zealand Productivity Commission, 2015: 107).
In April 2017, Minister Amy Adams, Minister Responsible for Social Investment announced the stand-alone Social Investment Agency and Social Investment Board (Adams, 2017). Under the auspices of the State Services Commission, the Board comprised the Chief Executives of the Ministries of Education, Health, Justice and Social Development with an independent chair. It would be responsible for ‘providing investment advice and implementation oversight, reporting through the Minister Responsible for Social Investment to the Social Policy Cabinet committee’.
In a 2017 Draft Report the Productivity Commission referred to their research notes, written by one of their staff researchers, Nicholas Green (2017) on ECE as a case study of productivity (Green, 2017). He, like Mintrom (2011: 107), believed that ‘curriculum development and implementation are a matter of interest for governments. This is a sector where education is largely delivered by private providers, with governance and funding oversight by the Ministry of Education through the charter contract. Despite having great hopes of improved data collection, Green felt that there was presently insufficient information available to assess the present productivity in this sector. He concluded: In order to capture changes in the quality of ECE, output information could be adjusted. Measures used for quality adjustment should have a close causal and empirically-demonstrated link to early childhood activities, be relevant to the entire sector, and avoid overlaps with other parts of the education system. Two possible candidates for quality adjustment are child development and increased parental employment resulting from ECE participation. Child development measures would require the introduction of some form of assessment of children’s cognitive, attitudinal and social competencies, either before or after their entry to school. A parental employment measure would need to link a child’s ECE participation to the employment status of their primary caregiver, and require data matching or the use of shared data platforms. (Green, 2017: 17)
Where to for any ‘future forward’ policy?
It is the notion that civil society is a transactional one – based on the exchanges between willing purchaser and willing buyer, a de-centering of central power to the market, and an emphasis on individual rationality of buyer and seller – that underpins neoliberal economics. Foucault described the self-interested economic subject as someone who maximizes her self-interest. ‘Not only may each pursue their own interest, they must pursue their own interest, and they must pursue it through and through by pushing it to the utmost’ (2008: 275, italics added). The citizen-taxpayer is in a binary opposition to the ‘beneficiary’.
Tesar uses Foucault’s theory of power, as that which is productive. Marek Tesar and Sonja Ardnt (2016) suggest ‘epistemological pluralism’ is needed in educational policies. Critical scholars who breach the prescribed rules make little impact, because the discourse is bounded by the ‘truth’ of the regime which privileges the taxpayer. Yet in an increasingly complex world, we need to break down binaries. Tesar and Ardnt (2017: 666) advocate for an ‘underlying recognition that there is no one single truth, way of being, knowing, researching, or teaching, learning or capturing these nuances in policy’.
To use Foucault’s analogy, the Better Public Service and Social Investment goals utilized ‘war-like techniques’ and ‘tools that set up winners (and their différend, losers); of bodies of people working in formation with a single purpose’ (Stuart, 2009: 171). The National Government’s discourse was underpinned by the assumption that the beneficiary will identify with the model of the taxpayer as in her best interests, which will ultimately benefit everybody as they form themselves on the approved model.
The former Prime Minister remained hopeful the ‘Big Data’ element will be retained by the Labour Coalition Government. Bill English as Leader of the Opposition, in his opening address to Parliament in November 2017, continuing the attack, called on the government to keep the intent of Social Investment that his previous government had instigated.
Genealogical discursive research has supported my intent to demonstrate the governmental strategies, including the state’s interest in the beneficiary: population tactic – Social Investment. No longer a cost to the parish, but a contracted outcome from local NGOs; no longer on outdoor relief, but charged with maximizing their human capital, 21st beneficiaries remain constructed morally as ‘dependents’. However, National’s treatment of those of pension age – that it was universally available; ‘earned’ by those paying taxes over their life-course – came closer to the liberal policies of the 1938 Social Security Act. Any traces from a previous welfare discourse have been transformed by an underlying econometric purpose.
As Marek Tesar notes, philosophy of education can support critique of policy, in ways politicians and policy writers rarely consider. A philosophical critique can unpack the forces that normalize a certain discourse, to present it anew as ‘strange’. Ethics in policy, and the philosophy of education, are linked to ideas that in society we may consider as notions of fairness, equity or social justice …. To practice universal ethics means to give up the relational other, not to embrace the danger that comes from every decision, or the potential harm caused by blankly applying universal ethics, standards or morals’ (Tesar, 2016: 595).
The incoming Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, accepts that there is good in the collection and collation of data (see Kirk, 2017; Sepuloni, 2018). The Labour Coalition Government is seeking responses to the Treasury’s Proposal for a Living Standards Dashboard. This uses Human Capital together with other capitals: those of Natural Capital; Social Capital and Financial and Physical Capital. Sepuloni has called for a report by October 2018 on how the Social Investment Agency, and the analytical data can be used towards supporting the policy Towards Investing for Social Wellbeing across generations. However, any alternatives will likely remain within domains econometricians see as ‘truth’.
I have used discourse concerning the National Government’s Better Public Service goals to note that the government’s plan to mould the beneficiary-as-taxpayer was in place over three and a projected fourth parliamentary term. I have attempted to disrupt the accepted, normalized meanings that burnished the National Coalition’s Social Investment strategy. By utilizing the genealogical method, I have attempted to make the accepted truths of Social Investment ‘strange’; to re-examine that which is taken for granted.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
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