|
|
 | | From: | rob | | Subject: | Government is not seriously interested in welfare reform | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 02:43:52 +1300 |
|
|
 | http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dailynews/0,2106,3162575a6552,00.html
Social welfare is the elephant in the room that successive New Zealand
governments have been frightened to talk about, says the Taranaki Daily
News.
It might move and stomp on them. Opposition parties will raise the
occasional query about what the beast is doing there and who is going to
clean up the mess, but none - with the exception of the personal crusade by
Act Party deputy leader Muriel Newman - pushes the conversation into the
realms of discomfort.
This is unfortunate because welfare is the biggest area of government
spending and, for that reason alone, a worthy topic of serious discussion.
However, the tens of millions of dollars a day poured into unemployment,
solo parenthood, and sickness and invalid benefits - covering 350,000
working-age men and women, and another 250,000 dependent children - is the
least part of the cost.
The greatest loss is human. It is the damage being done to those who
short-sightedly opt for the easy option of a benefit without realising that
it is a trap, and, even more importantly, the damage being done to one child
in every three being raised in benefit-supported homes - or one in four
raised by solo parents.
For Maori children, the scene is worse: Half live in welfare-based homes.
To merely open this taboo subject, to air what is a universal unease, is to
inevitably be accused of beneficiary-bashing.
Welfare advocates believe they have achieved much in the last 30 years, and
are naturally inclined to fiercely defend what they have won.
It is a subject that divides New Zealand along ideological lines, and the
more-government, more-welfare factions have articulate and determined
members.
However, there is too much at stake to be deflected by those currently
claiming what they have long been encouraged to believe is their right to
unearned state-paid wages.
The tenfold increase in welfare dependency in 30 years - including the
creation of 112,000 solo parents raising, and profoundly influencing, a
quarter of a million children (in a tiny population of four million) - and
the leap in beneficiary proportionality from one in 28 workers to one in
four surely indicates that there is something not right about the system we
have.
It will always be there for those genuinely and permanently handicapped -
that is the measure of any civilised society. Indeed, its core goals of a
hand-up for those temporarily knocked to their knees will always be met.
But what we have today, especially its naive hope of reforming inappropriate
behaviour by offering financial rewards, is vastly different from the
founding concepts. It is destructive, breeds bitterness and encourages fraud
and downstream criminality.
The Labour Government has earmarked $27 million for a scheme to get the
long-term unemployed into jobs, but this tackles the wrong end of the
problem and will prove to be good money following bad.
Besides, a government that puts another 100,000 low-wage-earners on
supplementary benefits (as long as it is voted back into office this year)
is not of a mind to seriously deal with the elephant. It has simply shifted
its own toes a little further away.
|
|
|
