Thursday, January 27, 2005
A brash new world?
There's an interesting dividing line in the reactions to Don Brash's Orewa II speech on welfare. The usual people have lined up to slam Dr Brash for his beneficiary bashing. But the man or woman in the street appears to side with him. A TV1 Close Up poll gave the National leader 88% support, while the majority of the vox pops in The Press were also supportive. Neither of these polls are particularly valid as market research, of course, but I wonder whether the government and allies are as in tune with public opinion as they like to think? The next political polls might give an indication.
But on to the content. Several points are abundantly clear: The total number of people on benefits is astronomical and shows no sign of abating (even with the reduction in unemployment beneficiaries); while we can afford the Vote Welfare Budget in these healthy economic times, that will not be the case if there's a downturn; the cost is even higher in human terms.
An unknown number of DPB beneficiaries are also fiddling the system big-time. I have heard countless anecdotes of women collecting the DPB while living with a man, who may or may not be the father of her latest child. WINZ staff make some enquiries, but they are totally under-resourced to check up, and Kiwis dislike officials snooping around the neighbourhood even more than they dislike dole bludgers. And as the DPB woman interviewed by Susan Wood on Close Up eloquently exemplified, it's so much easier to go on the DPB than to stick around and try to make a difficult relationship work.
That still doesn't explain, though, why the numbers on nearly all benefits have skyrocketed since the 1970s. The amount of work available is at least equal to the amount of work available in the 1960s, when unemployment was virtually zero. So why could people work back then, but not work now? Is the NZ population so much sicker now that we have so many on the Sickness Benefit?
The underlying factors that have caused this benefit inflation were barely addressed by Dr Brash in his speech. And there is no indication from anywhere that they are going to change in the near future. To change the numbers, we have to change the reasons why the numbers have increased -- anything else will simply be like trying to tie down the cork of an overheating bottle of gingerbeer with a piece of rotting string.
There's an interesting dividing line in the reactions to Don Brash's Orewa II speech on welfare. The usual people have lined up to slam Dr Brash for his beneficiary bashing. But the man or woman in the street appears to side with him. A TV1 Close Up poll gave the National leader 88% support, while the majority of the vox pops in The Press were also supportive. Neither of these polls are particularly valid as market research, of course, but I wonder whether the government and allies are as in tune with public opinion as they like to think? The next political polls might give an indication.
But on to the content. Several points are abundantly clear: The total number of people on benefits is astronomical and shows no sign of abating (even with the reduction in unemployment beneficiaries); while we can afford the Vote Welfare Budget in these healthy economic times, that will not be the case if there's a downturn; the cost is even higher in human terms.
An unknown number of DPB beneficiaries are also fiddling the system big-time. I have heard countless anecdotes of women collecting the DPB while living with a man, who may or may not be the father of her latest child. WINZ staff make some enquiries, but they are totally under-resourced to check up, and Kiwis dislike officials snooping around the neighbourhood even more than they dislike dole bludgers. And as the DPB woman interviewed by Susan Wood on Close Up eloquently exemplified, it's so much easier to go on the DPB than to stick around and try to make a difficult relationship work.
That still doesn't explain, though, why the numbers on nearly all benefits have skyrocketed since the 1970s. The amount of work available is at least equal to the amount of work available in the 1960s, when unemployment was virtually zero. So why could people work back then, but not work now? Is the NZ population so much sicker now that we have so many on the Sickness Benefit?
The underlying factors that have caused this benefit inflation were barely addressed by Dr Brash in his speech. And there is no indication from anywhere that they are going to change in the near future. To change the numbers, we have to change the reasons why the numbers have increased -- anything else will simply be like trying to tie down the cork of an overheating bottle of gingerbeer with a piece of rotting string.
