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 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.

National's new welfare policies only raise more questions

National has announced a five point welfare plan that applies almost entirely to Jobseeker/Work Ready beneficiaries.

The first is random testing for drugs. According to MSD Minister Louise Upston: 

“Under our policy, a first failed test will be recorded and a second failed test will trigger a clinical alcohol and drug assessment. Where someone then fails to meet their obligations, the normal sanctions regime will apply, which could include reductions to their benefit."

There are already thousands of people on benefits other than the Jobseeker/Work Ready benefit whose primary incapacity is substance abuse.   These people are medically certified and do not have work obligations. 

There isn't enough resource right now to address addiction. The wait time for drug and alcohol services is getting longer. So what happens after the newly proposed "clinical alcohol and drug assessment"? If a Jobseeker beneficiary is assessed with a substance abuse problem, won't he or she simply be moved onto a different benefit to await rehab?

But if drug-testing Jobseekers is a good idea, why not unemployed mothers on Sole Parent Support?  Children need protection from the growing meth scourge. According to ESR, between 2015 and 2022 there were 20 infant deaths where meth was found in their system. It is safe to assume at least some - if not most - of those children would have had a parent on welfare.

In any case, why should anyone with a drug habit receive a cash benefit? At the very least they should be on an electronic money management card. Why should the taxpayer fund drug habits?

National has also announced that if a Jobseeker has been dependent for two of the last three years, their benefit rate will be reduced.

Fair enough. To get people off welfare we need to increase the margin between benefit incomes and earned incomes. But it is households with children where the margin is virtually non-existent. There is already a substantial margin between welfare and work for young, single and childless beneficiaries. Again, the policy seems ill-targeted.

Another part of the new plan is that Jobseekers will have their stand-down period extended from 13 to 26 weeks if they repeatedly "leave employment without good and sufficient reason."

If people repeatedly leave jobs for no good reason there should be no entitlement. The jobseeker benefit is a safety net - not an enabler to drop-out as and when it suits.

The last item I want to comment on is extending the residency qualification for a main benefit from two to five years.

This seems fairly pointless because currently, non-residents who don't qualify for main benefits can qualify for emergency benefits, for example, refugees. The consequence of this change will simply be a sharp increase in the number of people on an Emergency Benefit, which pays the same rate as a main benefit.

In conclusion, while sounding good in theory, it's a not a sound plan. It ignores the problem of inter-generational, sole parent driven dependency, and it will move people around in the benefit system rather than out of it.

Welfare missing from 2026 election

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
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/benefit/2026/benefit-fact-sheet-snapshot-june-2026.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/benefit-system/benefit-system-report-2025.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/newsroom/media-releases/2015/taylor-fry-key-findings.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/vulnerable-children/auckland-university-can-administrative-data-be-used-to-identify-children-at-risk-of-adverse-outcome.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/child-poverty-in-nz/msd-2026-child-poverty-report.pdf

Why RNZ can't be trusted

This reporting is amongst the worst I have seen. And it's funded by the tax-payer.

How much beneficiaries are left with after paying the rent

"Beneficiaries are living on an average of $251 a week once they've covered their housing costs, a government report shows.

A budgeting advisor says her clients are not getting by, and every day someone seeks help with KiwiSaver hardship withdrawals to cover the basics.

The Ministry of Social Development's total incomes report showed inflation-adjusted average incomes to April last year continued to drop, from $262 in 2024 and $263 in 2023."

Here is the source table from the report:

The RNZ reporter has described 'equivalised incomes' as "average incomes".

This is a significant error.

As the government report explains:

"Equivalisation means total incomes are adjusted by family size and composition to allow total incomes to be compared across families. Different scales were used for total incomes before and after housing costs."

To explain this process further, here is a table from the latest MSD Child Poverty Report:

This is a look-up chart to convert ordinary dollars (top row)  to equivalised dollars (lefthand column) for selected households.

The shaded cell shows that a 2 adult, 2 children household needs around $52,500 to have the same purchasing power as a 1 adult, 1 child household with an income of around $32,500. Each has an equivalised income of $25,000.

So one worker supporting a partner and two children and earning $52,500 would be said to have an equivalised income of just $25,000.

You can appreciate that equivalised incomes can differ greatly from actual incomes.

Then the RNZ reporter goes on to write:

"A full-time worker on minimum wage who made minimum KiwiSaver contributions would have earned $750.96 each week after tax, during the same period."

There is absolutely no point in this comparison because that income ($750.96) hasn't been equivalised, and no housing cost has been deducted. Except for the mortgage-free, everybody has housing costs - not just beneficiaries.

Why it was mentioned isn't clear. Unless to imply that beneficiary incomes are very low by comparison and that Paul Henry makes stuff up.

He didn't and I showed why his anecdote was entirely plausible yesterday.

Returning to the RNZ report opening statement, "Beneficiaries are living on an average of $251 a week once they've covered their housing costs, a government report shows." 

Most people will take this at face value but I have just explained why that is a mistake. And if the reporter understood the difference, it's an outright misrepresentation.

Did Paul Henry deserve to be called a liar?

Last Thursday Paul Henry was in Dunedin campaigning for ACT. There were planned protests at the speaking venue and one attendee was a left-wing podcaster who took issue with a claim Paul made about how much someone on welfare was receiving. The podcaster repeatedly called Henry a liar which resulted in him being ejected from the meeting.

The matter was discussed on NewstalkZB the following day framed as a free speech issue.

But I want to focus on the claim itself.

There is some confusion over what exactly Henry said but the gist of it was that a mechanic/engineer employed in a muffler business in Palmerston North told Paul he was working six days a week and earning less than the unemployed guy next door whose partner had just had a baby. The guy had never worked and showed no interest in doing so. 

The protesting podcaster took issue retorting that a beneficiary would never get more than an employed person. That Henry was just making stuff up.

Henry himself appeared on the NewstalkZB show and said, "I certainly didn't say this person was single. My assumption actually was that this was a couple that just had a child."

An earlier texter to the show wrote, "My sister's got four kids, mate. Under 12, mate. And she gets $1,500 a week. Plus sells weed."

The host was quick to add, "We can't verify that. It's just a text."

When pressed again by the show hosts on whether Paul had checked the mechanic's claim he replied, "...yes, we've done the numbers, and it's entirely possible it's true."

So let's run some numbers.

An entry-level/apprentice mechanic wage starts around $23 to $26 per hour (training wages for registered apprentices can start lower around $19.16/hour). A qualified/General Mechanic earns an average of $30 to $43 per hour.

So the mechanic's wage for a six day week would range from $763 - $1,541 take home pay.

What would an unemployed couple with just one child receive? No need to guess or speculate.

The latest MSD report on beneficiary incomes (April 2025) shows the couple would receive, on average, $976 net. If they had two or more children that figure would rise to $1,255. These figures would have increased on April 1, 2026.

So it is entirely likely that the mechanic wasn't lying and, by proxy, neither was Paul Henry.

And conceivably, neither was the texter with the dope-selling, mother-of-four, sister.

And this is why hard-working, knackered people are angry with 'the system'. They are forced to support people who refuse to support themselves.

They daren't express their resentment because people like the Dunedin protestor shout them down as liars or shame them as 'privileged'.

Rather than suppressed, these figures need to be spread far and wide so that working people can feel on very safe ground when they question or complain about this damaging and unsustainable situation.

References

https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/benefit-system/total-incomes-report-2025.pdf

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1049-matt-heath-tyler-adams-af-46787368/episode/full-show-podcast-11-september-2026-343655499?viewTranscription=true

Hipkins' play for the Maori seats

Yesterday Labour promised to reinstate the Maori Trades and Training Fund (MTTF) at a cost of $21 million annually. The fund was initially set up as part of the post COVID recovery spend. National later cut it to economise. 

It's part of the by Maori, for Maori kaupapa so is run by maraes and iwi for mostly Maori participants. Reinstated, it will be exclusively for Maori. An evaluation of the scheme was generally positive.

To get them into work or upskill them into better work, the spend on each participant was "from $19,116 (excluding wage subsidies) in 2020/21 to $10,510 in 2023/24"  

Based on the scheme's numbers to date I would estimate that Labour's budgeting to spend $21,000 on 1,000 participants annually.

How many Maori are unemployed right now? Just under 50,000 are on a Jobseeker-Work Ready benefit and a further 39,000 are on a sole parent benefit. Both of the numbers are the highest of any ethnicity including European.

So aren't these high numbers a good reason to 'invest' more in reducing them?

No. They are a good reason to stop spending billions on benefits which have led to a collapse of work ethic, an indifference (if not disdain) for education and inter-generational  dependence on hand-outs. 

That's what Labour has to get its head around. This policy is yet another go at putting out a bushfire with a watering can.

But no. Hipkins is openly using this hook to reel in the Maori electorates. Announcing the policy yesterday, he made his play:

    "Today we launched our Māori campaign..... And we're fighting to win all seven Māori electorates - with strong Māori voices in Parliament, grounded in their communities and fighting for the future their whānau deserve."

Then he blathered on about honouring te tiriti, tikanga Maori being "part of who we are" and wanting his kids to grow up bilingual.

What this signals is Labour's intention to resurrect and press on with a separatist agenda. Buying Maori votes with spending that doesn't make sense from any viewpoint. It doesn't make good economic sense. It puts the cart before the horse, and it is racially based.

Historically, it has been Labour's creation and constant expansion of welfare that has made Maori more prone to unemployment and family breakdown. Apirana Ngata predicted the problem when high family benefits started to flow into East Coast communities. Today thousands of Maori children grow up in workless, fatherless homes and we wonder why its hard to get them into the workforce?

Meanwhile, at every election, Labour promises to solve the problems of its own making. And sadly, many Maori keep believing the promise.

Bigger benefits won't help children

Why are incompetents routinely called 'experts' these days? The election campaign brings them out in their droves. Today's Herald headline:

Child poverty experts urge politicians to adopt recommendations before election

Eleven of them are demanding a range of actions "including lifting the minimum wage to the living wage, increasing benefits and indexing them to average wage growth or inflation, and replacing “Working for Families” with a tax credit that is not connected to parents’ work or benefits status."

For context, two salient facts:

• At April 1, 2025, a sole parent with two or more children received on average $1,110 weekly; a couple with two or more children, $1,255 net. 
• In the year to the June 2025 quarter, median weekly income from wages and salaries was $1,380 gross or $1,111 after tax.

How high do the 'experts' want benefits for caregivers to go?

There are already a quarter million children living in benefit-dependent homes.

Many of these homes are in low-income neighbourhoods where, the 'experts' tell us, it's a struggle to provide essentials like food and clothing.

Neighbourhoods where alcohol outlets cluster, along with vape shops and tattoo parlours. Where gangs deal meth. Let's pump some more cash their way, say the 'experts'.

More money is not the answer.

Yesterday I received a postcard from World Vision showing me where the money I send to them goes. 

That is a malnourished child receiving therapeutic life-saving food. That is a child whose mother cannot feed it.

It isn't a child whose mother receives over a thousand dollars cash from the government every week and still manages to have the 'experts' telling us is living in material hardship.

My non-expert list for the next government contains one urgent and do-able action. Stop paying cash and start providing assistance-in-kind.

A government that wants better for children whose parents can't or won't care for them properly would ensure that the substantial resource going into these homes was practical and effective. 

https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/benefit-system/total-incomes-report-2025.pdf

https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/labour-market-statistics-income-june-2025-quarter/

https://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2026/06/quarter-of-million-children-are-now.html

The Anxiety Epidemic

Over the last twenty years the number of people depending on a benefit due to psychological or psychiatric reasons has increased by 140 percent. Meanwhile the working age population grew by just 26 percent.

In June 2006 the number dependent was 37,300. Fast forward to June 2026 and it's 89,385.

(Left click on image to enlarge)

89,385 is a very big number. It does not include people with an intellectual disability, those we might traditionally regard in genuine lifelong need of community support.

Ironically, paying people to be inactive and isolated is probably the worst approach to improving their mental state.

Part of the reason for the disproportionate growth in numbers is that people are becoming reliant younger and staying reliant longer.

2024 data showed that under 25-year-olds who go on Jobseeker with a Health Condition or Disability (JS-HCD) will spend a further 23.3 years reliant - in 2023 the expectancy was 20.6 years. The year-to-year 13.1 percent increase in future years is larger than for any other benefit.

NZ isn't alone with this problem.

UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said last year:

"We should be aiming for everybody to support themselves as far as they are able, while providing support for those who cannot.

But to do this, we will have to win arguments. Arguments that too many in politics have forgotten how to make. Like a life of work being better than one dependent on the state.

Not just better for society, although we believe that too, but better for the soul. That it feels better to contribute and enjoy the freedom that comes with paying your own way.

Too many young people are growing up not knowing that. They think that a life on benefits is an alternative to working. They think isolating themselves at home is okay because starting a job feels daunting."

As a parent of two in the generation she speaks about, I have seen mental distress. Luckily mine are amongst those who have pushed themselves to work and be independent. At times. the jobs haven't been what they want but they've reckoned any work is better than no work, recognising that a lack of purpose, listlessness and loneliness lead to anxiety and depression.

In November, National will be restricting access to the Jobseeker benefit (including JS-HDA) for 18-19 year-olds. (ACT is also campaigning on tightening up the medical certification process.)

This causes outrage from the left.

The Greens constantly oppose efforts to stop young people getting into the dependency trap. Green spokesman Ricardo Menendez-March says the policy is cruel:

“The National Party has a long history of dehumanising people who struggle to get by on a day to day basis."

I am diametrically opposed, believing both the Green's Income Guarantee or TOP's Citizen's Income from age 18 would seriously damage young people's motivation. If both parties are in government together the likelihood of a universal income being implemented increases.

If someone under twenty cannot find a job, they should be training for one. The late teens is a crucial time. The last thing they need is to be derailed with 'free' money to stay in bed.