LINDSAY MITCHELL: Welfare missing from the 2026 election campaign
Welfare is markedly missing from 2026 election campaign issues.
There's been far more debate about Super: its cost, means-testing and the age of eligibility. New Zealand is an outlier. Australia, the UK and the US have a qualifying age of 67. Whether NZ joins must be decided. Super isn't sustainable.
But what of working-age people? The percentage of 18-64 year-olds on a benefit is 12.8% - up from 9.9% ten years ago. That's around one in eight people unable or unwilling to support themselves.
In fairness, plenty only use a benefit short-term during a temporary period of unemployment or incapacity. That 'safety net' principle seems broadly accepted across the voting population. Others with severe disabilities or chronic illnesses require ongoing support. Again, seemingly accepted as part of the social pact.
But among physically capable people, long-term and inter-generational dependence is growing fast.
According to the Ministry of Social Development, average future years on benefit has grown from 10.8 in 2015 to 14.3 in 2025. For particular groups, the length of stay is much higher. For example, someone on either a Youth or Young Parent benefit will be dependent for an average of 25 further years.
Why? Is the shortage of paid work that severe? The post-covid period proved that even when employers were crying out for workers, many on benefits were unmoved. Migrants had to fill workforce shortages that New Zealanders were not prepared to.
Work-aversion is learned and handed down. Children in long-term dependent homes have no working role model. Nearly three quarters of all beneficiaries up to age 25 had a parent on welfare while they were a child.
At the end of 2025 over a quarter million children were dependent on benefits. Each year around one in five births is to a parent already on welfare or who will be by year-end. Many of these children will spend their entire childhood and teenage years in an unemployed household, mostly with a 'single' parent. This impacts strongly on their life chances in respect of not just health and education, but security and safety. Of all children who had a finding of maltreatment by the age of five, 83 percent were on a benefit before age two. There is significant overlap between the Work and Income cohort, Oranga Tamariki and Corrections.
So back to the election campaign.
While much-needed fiscal savings could be made by tightening Super eligibility, it cannot be claimed that reliance on a pension at the end of one's life is damaging in the way chronic welfare dependence is, growing up and thereafter. That is the massive social problem New Zealand needs to grapple with.
So why aren't political parties talking about this?
The Left won't acknowledge the harm welfare dependency does, insisting that poverty alone is the problem, this despite latest evidence showing children in poor working households have a material hardship rate of just 17 percent whereas children in poor beneficiary households have a hardship rate of 47 percent. On the very same low incomes, children of beneficiaries do it much tougher in respect of going without. Something isn't happening for those children. They aren't being prioritised.
There's a further possible reason why Labour, the Greens, and Te Pati Maori accept welfare as a lifestyle - 'honouring te tiriti' and what Bob Jones called 'Maori wonderfulness'. Forty percent of working age beneficiaries with recorded ethnicity are Maori. To criticise welfare as a lifestyle would be to criticise Maori. That's not in their playbook.
The Right has historically run with welfare reform policies and billboards carrying their message. For example, in 2005 :
But in the last three years under National, matters have only deteriorated. They can't make a talking point out of their own failure.
ACT, the champion of welfare reform, is also part of the government so could be accused of sharing the failure.
ACT nevertheless has a couple of useful policies, though they aren't easy to find. Their welfare policies don't appear at their website's main policy page, indicating a lack of priority. They do say they will "introduce electronic money management for Jobseeker Support Work Ready recipients who remain on a benefit for more than four months."
The problem is Jobseeker beneficiaries are not typically parents. Most of the children in benefit homes are attached to single parents. At the very least ACT's policy needs to include those on Sole Parent Support who, on average, stay there for an average of 17.5 years and often add more children during that time.
Cue Paul Henry.
Ask him what role he thought welfarism played in the death of Wairarapa toddler Lillybing? I clearly recall how affected he was, as a local, by that tragedy and his gutted acknowledgement on radio that we were all, as taxpayers, complicit.
We just keep funding the pathways to failure and worse.
Dragging eyes away from aimless, spirit-sapping, benefit-dependence towards resented superannuitants might play well politically, but it won't address the disaster that welfarism is.
Who is going to talk about it?
Maybe, once elected, Paul Henry will start? Holding that hope, I will vote accordingly. For the children who really don't deserve to grow up in such reduced and too often, risky circumstances.
References
Why is superannuation unaffordable? Because a succession of overpaid, self absorbed twats have squandered taxes for decades, rather than putting aside money for future obligations. Bob Hawke introduced compulsory super funded by employers in 1992 @ 4%. That figure has gradually increased to 12% currently. If you haven’t worked there is a means tested pension of $1100 a week, compared to the miserable 400 here. This is without any contribution you make yourself.
I even see the current crop of greedy politicians and political class eyeing the Cullen Fund. Our politicians are so committed to us having retirement savings that POS Key thought it would be a good idea to tax the employer contributions, which effectively meant taxing our…
There's now no realistic solution to benefit enabled unemployment as a lifestyle without a period of significant adverse impact on the innocent until the measures start to bite. Hence most political parties won't touch the problem with a barge pole, hence it gets worse, hence they wont touch it .. and so on and on ...
thanks Lindsay for framing so clearly... plan of action...
yr 0 - get elected
yr 0-1 - double police recruitment, make public health user pay (thou still heavily subsidised)
yr 1-2 - return welfare to mj savage days
yr 2-3 - suppress riots - they'll eventually get hungry & won't want to get injured b/c of cost
Wat past time to take a leaf from Singapores book, no workee no benifit unless you have worked for 12 months, I think that entitles you to 1 weeks payout. China also has a similat policy.
The so called enucation experts have done this country no favours at all, they are instrumental in turning out 40% of school leavers that can neither read, write and do maths, Shame on them and Chipkins mother, who presided over these lost generations
"Others with severe disabilities or chronic illnesses require ongoing support"....This category is growing in line with the psychiatric industry and the labelling of more things. Online this week someon in NZ said they had been home with "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" for many years and exempt from work searching requirements, it's a long covid thing diagnosed by a psychologist . Anxiety, , depression, dissociative seizures and other psychiatric illnesses many co-occuring with gender dysphoria etc and numerous neurodiverse labels. Would be interesting to see a breakdown by the government of those who are exempt from looking from work and the reasons. But there has certainly been an increase in the labelling of behaviours that previously would have been simply human difference