The Dom Post reports this morning that National is looking at cancelling unemployment benefits after a year and forcing applicants to re-apply. This is in the wake of a story of notorious South Island family who look like they have been ripping off the system for years.
Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the softening up phase of National’s welfare policy. Every New Zealander should be pi**ed off with the likes of the Harris family. If they have been ripping off the system in the way that has been described in the media then they are undermining our social assistance system, and effectively taking money from those who need it most. They have obviously intimidated Work and Income staff and some serious action is required.
But is their behaviour, and that of a small number of others, reason enough to slash and burn through the whole system? National want you to think so, and will drip these stories out there to soften the public up for cuts and tired old policies like work testing DPB parents and work for the dole. The reality is that the Harris’ of this world are a small minority and thousands of people legitimately need state support, only access it when they need it, and move off it in a reasonable timeframe.
Further, the headline announcement in this story- that people on the unemployment benefit will have to re-apply each year-is a deliberately misleading description of how the unemployment benefit operates. It is not a situation where you sign up and that is it for all of time. Nowadays people receiving the unemployment benefit are constantly followed up by Work and Income as to their progress with getting work. They are required to attend courses and training. The notion of re-applying is empty sloganeering, will achieve nothing and will really just be a bureaucratic burden.
By all means lets look at how we can help move people from welfare to work where that is possible. Lets crack down on those who abuse the system and let’s have more training and budget advice for those who need it. But sadly for National that is not really what this is about. It is quite simply about stirring up people against beneficiaries, and softening up the voting public for their welfare agenda.
During the recession of the early 1990s I spent two periods of more than six months on the dole. The first ended by leaving the country for work; the second ended through a work scheme that led to a low paid but skill enhancing research role.
It was awful. The few people I met that chose a life on the dole seemed mentally scared or with so little hope that it is akin to mental scarification.
My dole payment was on the line every week when I reported in. Reapplying annually for the dole would have just been another bureaucratic process to follow. Some seemed to exist just to make life more unpleasant; some seemed a legitimate check.
I had no choice so I had to put up with it.
From highest Cabinet member to lowest dole recipient, including criminals in both groups, the principle must be, and no doubt is, to pay people all they are entitled to, but only as much as they are entitled to.
My concern is that the Nats are trying to change the Welfare System from Government control to one run by volunteers. This is a return to the Victorian days,When the “welfare ” was decided by Blue Rinse Tory Ladies,moralist religious zeolots and big business mens wives. A shocking and depressing thought,But its on the books we must prepair to fight this now!Robert Treswell summed it up pertfectly in his classic book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist” way back in the 1930s