Editorial: Scorecard a waste of money

So enamoured is Steve Maharey of the annual Social Report prepared by the Ministry of Social Development that he has pondered making it mandatory for future governments. In theory, such compulsion would bring to social matters the sort of prudence and transparency that the Fiscal Responsibility Act was designed to bring to financial management. Governments would have to spend more astutely, and would be constrained from adopting policies that did not improve social indicators, and from economic policies, such as spending cuts, that debased those indicators.

So much for theory. Whatever the pluses delivered by the fiscal responsibility law, it cannot be argued that it has improved the quality of spending. There is little to suggest a different outcome in the social arena. But there is much to conclude the social reports are, themselves, hardly a sign of fiscal rectitude, and are too easily hijacked for political campaigning.

Take last week's release of the fifth such report. It suggested an improvement or no change in most indicators (the likes of suicide rate, road deaths, smoking and local content on TV). Only in obesity and income inequality were we slipping. Needless to say, Mr Maharey, the Social Development Minister, greeted the report effusively - and then seized on it to try to score political points.

He gave credit for the findings not to strong economic growth but to big increases in health and education spending, and to policies that helped people into jobs. The words "tax cut" never passed his lips, but they were not far away when he suggested that further investment was needed in these core areas if New Zealand was to continue on a strong growth path.

Mr Maharey did not dwell on the report's finding of a growing gap between rich and poor. Yet it would be a particularly sore point for those who cling to the old-time Labour notion of evening up income and riches, as well as opportunity. In that context, however, the report fails to highlight the improving situation for those at the lower end of the income scale. Between 2001 and 2004, the median annual household income increased from $40,600 to $46,000. Remove envy and ideology from the frame and this indicator of more people moving out of hardship is surely of overriding relevance.

Analytical shortcoming is not peculiar to this report alone. It also diminished the Ministry of Social Development's document "Opportunities for All New Zealanders", which sank without trace after its release last Christmas. The 80-page production was intended as the Government's response to the first set of social reports. It was to showcase its plans to improve social development. In sum, it offered nothing new in either insight or solution.

The document involved 34 Government departments and considerable expense. It was money poorly spent. So is the production of social reports. Essentially, these are merely compilations of statistics assembled by Government departments and agencies. If they have not been released previously, they are freely available. There appears little point in spending money and time to collate them, especially when the final product makes no attempt to assess the measuring strands or dissect their nuances.

The National Party is eyeing ways to cut bureaucratic spending. The Social Report will surely not escape its gaze. How can it be otherwise for a document that fails to advance the sum total of knowledge, and the prospect of action, one jot?