“There for the grace of God goes I.”

We generally say it when something bad and we know that it could just as easily happen to us, and anyone who is a parent should say that whenever they hear nightmare stories about kids being abused by their parents or caregivers.

I say that not just as a by-stander looking on. I say that as someone with three kids —all grown up now— but someone who has raised three kids and I know just as well as the next parent how much that can drive you to despair at times.

Which is why it is so important to remember that it’s not just the no-hopers who end up with Oranga Tamariki knocking on the door.

The child welfare agency’s clientele runs the full range of society, including those so-called respectable middle-class and upper-class families.

And I’m willing to bet that the reason some of them are in strife with OT is that they just can't cope. Or, more to the point, don’t know how to cope.

And until we realise that just banging-on about OT being useless isn't the only route we should be going down, then nothing’s going to change.

I am not saying we shouldn’t be criticising OT when they get things wrong. Which is what the Chief Ombudsman is doing —again— after what he says was “a series of failures” which meant Oranga Tamariki didn’t do what it should’ve done when it received multiple complaints about pre-school and primary school-aged kids being abused by their mother’s partner.

Peter Boshier is slamming OT, saying it even had photographic evidence of abuse but didn’t do enough to ascertain what was going on and, as a result, left the kids in serious risk.

So it’s only right that the Ombudsman calls them out like this. But, even if OT turned itself into a gold-plated example of a child welfare agency, that still wouldn’t be enough.

Because I’m willing to bet that some of these people who end up being investigated by Oranga Tamariki —not all of them— but I bet some of them, only come to OT’s attention because they just don’t know how to cope. Especially when it comes to coping with a crying baby.

Which is what Dame Lesley Max, who runs the Great Potentials Foundation, is talking about when she says we should be teaching kids about parenthood when they're at school.

Of course, chances are your so-called “family values” people would be dead against teaching kids how to be parents at high school, you know: “Aww, that’ll just encourage them to go out and get pregnant.” All that nonsense.

But I agree with Dame Lesley, why aren’t we teaching kids how to do what is the most important job in the world?

Maths and science isn’t going to help you in the middle of the night, when you’ve got a baby that’s been crying all day and all night and you’re at the end of your tether.

Geography isn’t going to help you then, nor are media studies, yet that’s what we do. And we wonder why most of us are nowhere near ready to be parents.

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John MacDonald was joined by National’s Hamish Campbell and Labour’s Reuben Davidson for Politics Friday.

On the agenda today was yet another case of Oranga Tamariki failing to act on information pertaining to child welfare – is it time to start parenting courses to help with the stress of raising children?

A petition has launched, looking at banning the private sale and use of fireworks. Has their time in the publics' hands come and gone?

And the Government is considering performance-based pay for public sector bosses – does this idea have merit?

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I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of public sector bosses getting performance pay.

Not that the Government is going to care too much about that, because it’s confirmed that, from the middle of next year, that’s what’s going to be happening.

It’s unclear to me at this stage whether it’s going to mean the heads of all our government departments are going to have some of their salaries earmarked in a category which is known in the HR game as “at-risk”. Which means some of your pay you’re not guaranteed to get unless you meet certain performance measures.

The big-hitting chief executives in the private sector have these “at-risk” clauses. People like the head of ANZ, Antonia Watson, who fronted up to a parliamentary select committee yesterday and was asked how much she gets paid. And she told them it’s around $2 million a year.

I’m more than happy for her and all her other private sector chief executive colleagues to be getting bonuses and extra pay for doing what’s required of them and doing it well, but I’m certainly not happy for the people in charge of social welfare, education, health —all of the essential public services— getting bonuses.

And the reason for that is that public services can’t be pigeonholed like private operations can.

If a private business is losing money on something, they can pull the pin. Easy. You can’t be so knee jerk when you’re running a public service.

Because, generally, when a private business is losing money on something it’s because there’s less or no demand for what they provide. So you stop doing it.

If you’re running the social welfare department, though, or health, you lose money hand over fist, but you can’t do much about it because —despite the fact you're chewing through the money— demand is always going to be through the roof.

It’s the complete opposite of what happens in the private sector.

The Government’s bringing back performance pay for public sector bosses after the former government got rid of it back in 2018.

Chris Hipkins was the State Services Minister back then, and he got rid of the performance pay and bonuses because he wanted to put a bit of a handbrake on the pay pockets for the heads of government departments, which seemed to just be going up and up and up at the time.

And I remember before then, you had politicians saying that performance pay was needed to make sure the public sector could attract the best people to run all the government departments.

What they meant, of course, was that they needed to compete with the private sector and so they had to offer the same kinds of sweeteners.

But I think we can agree that that hasn't necessarily been the best thing, and that someone who is a brilliant private sector chief executive doesn't necessarily make a brilliant public sector chief executive. And vice versa.

Where I see problems with performance pay in the public sector is it will create tension and division. In fact, it will be worse than that. It will mean we see less genuine leadership in our government departments and more government puppets running the show.

I’m not saying that a government department or agency should be run independently from the wants and expectations of the government of the day, it would be naïve to even suggest that.

But if you’ve got the head of a government department being told that they’ll get a bonus if they do this or do that, or achieve this or achieve that, then their sole focus is going to be on pleasing the Minister.

They’re not going to advocate on behalf of the people who work for them, they're not going to rock the boat. They’re not going to be the type of leader that I think we need in the public sector.

They’ll be even more “yes people” types than they are at the moment because they’ll know that, if they aren’t, the bonus won’t be coming.

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Labour Leader Chris Hipkins joined John MacDonald for their regular catchup.

On today’s agenda:

Andrew Bayly is in hot water for his “offensive comments” during a Ministerial visit – what are his party’s thoughts on the situation? Is it time to have central government reporting on local councils to mitigate the chances of what’s happening in Wellington? And, has David Seymour hit the bullseye with his new school lunch plan?

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Sometimes you just have to resort to cliches, because there are times when there’s just no other way to say it. Or no better way to say it.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting different results.

That’s how I feel about the Government strengthening its Three Strikes law to make it easier to keep repeat offenders in prison for longer.

Which means that instead of 3 Strikes kicking-in after someone’s first sentence of two years or more, they’re going to be in the running if their first sentence is just one year or more.

So, if someone commits a crime with punishments longer than one year (the first time around) and then goes on to commit two more crimes and gets sentences of two years or more for each of them - the third time, the judge has to give out the maximum sentence. No discounts.

Until now, the 3 Strikes was only going to kick-in after someone committed their first crime that had a sentence of two years or more. Now it’s going to kick in if their first crime gets a sentence of just one year, or more.

And the reason I think it’s insanity is the same reason that Julie-Anne Kincade thinks it’s insane. She’s a King’s Counsel and Vice-President of the Law Association, and here’s what she had to say to Mike about this a couple of hours ago:

She says there's no evidence that Three Strikes works in the way that people think it will work. She says it doesn't deter people, and some people might be sent to jail just because they don't have a house where they can serve home detention.

Julie-Anne Kincade is also concerned these changes to the Three Strikes laws could men negative outcomes for innocent people too.

"I'm also very concerned about the lack of parole. Parole is an incentive for good behaviour and it incentivises people to engage with psychologists and take programmes. To understand their trigger points.

"Under this regime, the most serious offenders won't be allowed any parole. They won't be given any rehabilitation and then they'll be chucked out on the street without the strong support that parole system gives people to make sure they transition back into our society. This is actually going to achieve exactly the opposite of what they want to achieve."

If the aim is to reduce violent crime then the Government is barking up the wrong tree with this one. Because if it didn’t work the last time we had it —which was between 2010 and 2021— do you really think it’s going to work now? Of course it’s not.

And the reason it didn’t work last time we had it is because laws like this don’t take into account other factors like mental health, intellectual disability, the age of the offenders, and any addictions they might have.

The same thing happened in California after they brought in a Three Strikes law in 1994. In fact, it saw so many more people end up in prison that it nearly bankrupted the state. They, eventually, saw the light and got rid of it.

Not here in New Zealand, though. The fact it failed last time obviously isn’t a concern for the Government - which is only doing what it’s doing to keep the crowds on the sidelines happy.

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You can call me a nerd, if you want to. But I reckon there is nothing like the performance of walking down to your local polling booth on voting day and casting your vote.

The way we do every three years when we’re electing a Government. In the general election.

There’s no confusion. It’s well-publicised. You can do early voting, if you want to or need to. But we all know, don’t we, that when we wake up on a particular Saturday morning every three years - we know it’s voting day.

Not so straightforward, though, when it comes to voting for our local council. Which, let’s face it, actually has more sway over our daily lives than central Government.

And I think we need to merge the general election with local body elections, which I’ll get to shortly.

But, for some reason, in the spirit of trying to make it easier for us to vote in our local elections, we’ve actually made it more difficult.

And this is something Local Government New Zealand wants to try and sort out. It wants to get more of our voting in the elections for our local councils.

I reckon the pitiful voter turnout - compared to general elections - largely comes down to the fact that you can pretty much vote when you want in local body elections. Well, within a voting period. But you can do it when it suits you.

If you compare voter turnout for the general election with local body elections, it's very clear.

Turnout at last year’s general election was 78.2 percent. Turnout in the most recent local body elections two years ago was 40 percent nationally.

And the reason for that is simple, in my view.

The voting papers for the local body elections arrive in the mail. They sit on the kitchen bench. Every time we walk past them we think, ‘ooh, must get those away’.

But for most people, the only time the papers leave the bench is when they’verealisedit’s all too late and they chuck them in the recycling bin.

And then, for the next three years, they complain about how hopeless their local council is and, you know, “can you believe how our rates have gone up under these clowns?”

So Local Government New Zealand, here’s what needs to happen to make sure more people vote in your local body elections.

For starters, council elections should happen at the same time as general elections.

And there’s a very good reason for this. Not just because it makes sense doing it at the same time.

The reason is, how many times have we heard that councils have had to pull the pin on something - let’s use cycleways as an example - because there’s been a change in Government or a change in Government policy and the money they thought they were getting from Wellington isn’t happening anymore.

If local body elections were held at the same time as general elections, things would be more in sync, wouldn’t they?

And the other big change that’s needed - is we need to get rid of postal voting.

Because, as I say, the papers arrive in the mail but most of us end up throwing them in the bin. Because we just don’t get around to it. Unless you’re a nerd, like me. And unless you love elections.

But for normal people, the voting papers just gather dust - and then it’s too late.

So instead of postal voting in local body elections, I reckon there should be a voting day where you have to turn up at your local polling booth - unless you need to do an early vote - and I reckon that should happen on the same day as the general election.

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What’s the thing you hear people say time-and-time again about the way we seemed to just get on with the job of building infrastructure back in, say, the 1970s?

What’s the most common thing you hear people say about that?

They say “our forebears had the foresight”. And that’s what I hope Christchurch city councillors have when they decide whether or not to press-on with the controversial Wings to Wheels cycleway on Harewood Rd.

Because,believe it or not, it’s back on the table after costs have skyrocketed and the government money that was originally going to be coming to help pay for it has been pulled.

The overall gist is that if the council wants to go further with this particular cycleway project, it’s going to have to come up with about an extra $10 million over and above what’s already been spent and what’s left in the budget.

So far, the council has spent $6.2 million on the project without any shovels hitting the ground and it’s only got $18.5 million left in the budget. And there’s a gap of about $10 million.

Nevertheless, I hope our councillors have this “foresight” that people like to credit past leaders with.

And I hope they have the fortitude to say, ‘you know what, this is going to cost a truckload more money than we thought we’d have to spend and it’s a truckload more money than we want to spend - but we’re going to do it, for the generations to come’.

That’s what I hope they do.

You might remember that it was back in 2019 when the council came up with the plan for the 4.5 kilometre cycleway on Harewood Rd.

The cost back then was expected to be $19 million, with half of the money coming from the Government, through NZTA.

Naturally, costs went up. Initially, they went up to $22.7 million and now it’s expected to cost $28.5 million all up.

So the council has just put out a range of options to be considered, which range from pressing-on and spending millions more than they expected to putting the thing on hold indefinitely.

And, in the middle of those two extremes, there are other options. Such as building a shorter cycleway - which would still cost about $20 million.

The council is also suggesting that, instead of going for what we like to call the “over-engineered” options, it could just paint lines on the road and put in traffic lights at three intersections.

But that option would still cost $10.5 million, anyway. So why would you bother with that half-hearted measure?

I’ve often said ‘what’s wrong with a few white lines?’. But if you’re going to spend $10 million, you may as well spend $28 million. There are some other cheaper alternatives too.

I see councillor Victoria Henstock is saying that she’s pleased to see there are several options on the table, because she’s been opposed to the Harewood rd cycleway from the get-go.

But this is where she’s wrong. She’s saying today: “This is a sensible approach. We cannot keep pouring money into projects that we cannot afford and are not wanted by the local community, as they keep telling me.”

And that’s the problem right there. When you get politicians who are only interested in what the people in the here-and-now think. And, in particular, the people in the here-and-now who complain.

Because, of course, Councillor Henstock is going to hear from people who are anti the cycleway.

She’s not going to hear from the people who, in 10 years time, are going to think this cycleway is absolutely brilliant.

The people who, in 10 years time, will be saying ‘wasn't it great that our city leaders had the foresight to bite the bullet; they had the fortitude to spend the extra money, and make sure we can ride our bikes safely”.

That’s what I hope people will be able to say. And that’s why, instead of tinkering around the edges and coming up with some sort of half-hearted alternatives that will still cost a lot of money, I hope the council doesn’t give in. And I hope it presses-on, as planned. And certainlydoesn't pull the plug altogether.

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