LINDSAY MITCHELL: If welfarism matters, the choice is clear

Benefit numbers are out for September. The last before the election. Up again. There are now 417,000 working age people on a main benefit.

Christchurch, New Zealand's second largest city, has a population of 411,000. Think about that.

Up till the mid seventies the percentage of 18-64 year-olds on a benefit never exceeded two. One person in fifty. Right now it's 12.9 percent or one in eight people.

Every type of main benefit is up - Jobseeker, Sole Parent and Supported Living.

Yes, the unemployment rate has grown over National's three years from 3.9 percent in December 2023 to 5.6 percent most recently. But it is also abundantly obvious from the consistent inflow of migrants who find, or create, jobs for themselves - where there's a will, there's a way.

New Zealand though has a welfare system that pays people a liveable income which competes with earned income. Choosing welfare is rational, even if taxpayers find that choice repugnant (notwithstanding, they will happily support genuine cases of need.)

There is a fundamental difference between the Right and Left view of working age welfare. That was never more apparent than when the National government commissioned the Welfare Working Group in 2010 headed by Paula Rebstock compared to Labour's similar exercise, the Welfare Expert Advisory Group in 2018 headed by Cindy Kiro. The reports they issued were chalk and cheese.

The former recommended ways to reduce welfare dependency; the latter, ways to improve the system to make it fairer and 'kinder' for beneficiaries.

Team Rebstock recommended:

• A stronger work focus for more people – Sending early, strong signals about the importance of paid work and assuming most people of working age can work.

• Improving outcomes for children – The social and intergenerational consequences of having 222,000 children growing up in benefit dependent households are deeply concerning. Welfare reform options must explicitly consider the potential impacts on the well-being of children. Reducing the unacceptably high incidence of child poverty in New Zealand through a particular focus on at-risk jobless households and whānau must be a high priority of reform.

• Committing to targets – The Working Group proposes a target of reducing welfare recipients by 100,000 by 2021. Setting an achievable numerical target for reducing the number of people dependent on welfare will assist in directing attention to the scale of the problem, ensures a sharper focus across Government and the community on outcomes from reform, and to provide a clear yardstick for measuring progress.

Team Kiro team proposed:

• Increase main benefits by between 12 percent and 47 percent

• Remove some benefit obligations and sanctions

• Fully index all income support payments and thresholds annually to movements in average wages of prices, whichever is the greater

  
  

In so much as employment is desirable, the Left sees a major role for the state in provision and guarantee of work; the Right largely sees provision of work as a role for the private sector. The first hampers the second.

These fundamental differences persist.

It is physically and psychologically crucial that people support themselves and experience the satisfaction, mateship and self-discipline of doing so.

Chronic welfarism damages people. In turn, it hurts children by creating a far riskier home environment than an employed household with two parents, or even an employed single parent. Role models, routines and reliability cannot be overstated for children.

If the issue of inter-generational, destructive benefit dependency matters to you, the choice between Left and Right in the upcoming election is clear.