Singing from the same song sheet

This is no surprise. The Government is well aware of the need for a one-voice policy and employs an army of efficient, highly skilled public relations staff who manage the language of its communications and shape public messaging. Some call them the Wellington Mandarins.

Just like these high-ranking bureaucrats in imperial China (see on photo under the word clouds) who were carefully selected, well-educated, lettered and loyal servants to the Emperor, the Wellington Mandarins ensure that only streamlined messages are communicated from all New Zealand government departments, agencies and politicians’ offices. They are skilled communications strategists and accomplished ghost writers. We call them spin doctors.

Following is an excerpt from the proposal on the treatment of overseas pensions, submitted by the Office of the Acting Minister for Social Development and Employment to Cabinet in 2008. It comes under the heading “Publicity”:

During the Review there has been much interest on this issue from stakeholders. Therefore, regardless which policy proposals are adopted, (Editor’s note: one of these proposals was the discontinuation of the Spousal Provision, which was not adopted by Cabinet because the money to finance its abolition could not be “found”) the Government needs to put out clear and robust messages on this issue.

A communications strategy detailing comprehensive stakeholder engagement will be developed. This will be built around the following messages:

- the current system provides very good protection for most New Zealanders and therefore the Government is maintaining the wider policy largely in its current form

- in terms of treatment of overseas pensions, most countries apply a principle that people receive the equivalent of one state pension – New Zealand achieves this through Section 70 of the Social Security Act. [Section 70 renamed into Sections 187-191 in 2018]

The key audiences are NGOs such as Grey Power and Age Concern, migrant community groups, Pacific governments, other governments, the New Zealand public, and the media.

The communications strategy, with clear, consistent albeit not really robust messages, was developed, implemented and seems to be working well. This explains why every letter from the Ministry of Social Development, from any WINZ office and from most Members of Parliament on the issue of Sections 187-191 contains identical cookie-cutter phrases.

The real greedy grabbers

The most infuriating aspect of the Government’s line of reasoning (see below Terminology for the Spin Language Detector) why the Direct Deduction Policy is justifiable against all obvious anomalies, is the underlying implication it carries. It infers that immigrants and New Zealanders with overseas pension entitlements who protest this practice are being greedy. Those politicians who don’t mince their words even call it double-dipping.

The real double-dipper or even triple-dipper is, in fact, the Government. NZ Super is paid from general taxation. This is one stream of pension funding. In addition, by taking away people's contribution-funded overseas pensions under Sections 187-191 legislation, the Government is dipping into a second income source for pensions.

As most – but not all – overseas pensions are taxed in New Zealand, this adds a third income stream to the New Zealand government’s revenue generating machine. In this way the Government lines its dedicated pension pockets by dipping into three sources while unashamedly calling those it fleeces double-dippers.

Terminology for the Spin Language Detector

If there were a Spin Language Detector to expose how the Government’s spin doctors twist the truth, the device would certainly work to capacity when fed NZ Super related texts. Programmed to identify framing, just one of a number of manipulative language strategies, it would be very busy.

The main official tenet is: no-one should be better off. To substantiate this doctrine, one recurring argument used by the Ministry of Social Development, WINZ and politicians of the mainstream parties to try and justify Sections 187-191 is recited like a mantra. It reads something like this:

Immigrants and New Zealanders who have an overseas work history should not receive both an overseas benefit and NZ Super. If they did, it would give them an unfair advantage over New Zealanders who have not had this opportunity. Hence the Direct Deduction Policy ensures that every person eligible for NZ Super receives the same level of Government support by topping up their overseas pension to NZ Super level.

On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. But in fact it is just another popular trick from the political PR toolkit: using a logical fallacy to deliberately shape public opinion the way it suits the Government. If given such material to analyse, the Spin Language Detector would certainly flash a red light for Advanced Manipulation. Let’s see what else this smart device would flag as framing for political spin in this statement.