Saturday, October 06, 2007

Another half-arsed policy

Here's a quote from a column in the NZ Herald by Paula Oliver;

Key refers to some core principles of the party that won't change - tax cuts, smaller government, a tougher stance on law and order, mutual obligation on welfare, and a fundamentally greater trust of the private sector to play a role.

I only want to focus on one aspect - mutual obligation on welfare.

The problem with mutual obligation is it cements in welfare. It legitimises benefit use far beyond what Michael Joseph Savage ever intended. Welfare dependence was supposed to be a temporary condition - not a way of life.

By mutual obligation National means, for instance, making single parents on the DPB get their children to school with breakfast on board. Do that and it is quite OK to have children and expect the taxpayer to support them.

This of course does nothing to reverse the effect that the DPB has had on self-sufficient, two parent families.

Work-for-the-dole is another mutual obligation policy with pitfalls, being expensive to run and competing with the private sector.

Mutual obligation means looking for a job or training for one. How come one individual has to pay for their tertiary education while another gets it courtesy of the taxpayer?

No. Mutual obligation is just an attempt to damage control the current failed system. It does nothing to address the core problem of intergenerational dependency and the inherent injustice of one significant sector of society making lifestyle choices at the expense of another. It is also firmly at odds with National's "smaller government" principle.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The problem with mutual obligation is it cements in welfare. It legitimises benefit use far beyond what Michael Joseph Savage ever intended. Welfare dependence was supposed to be a temporary condition - not a way of life."

When I read Paula Oliver's piece I thought those five positions were quite tenable.

Your assessment of National's welfare stance varies somewhat from your preference which emerged following your post on Libertarian Paternalism on Sept 27th. Then you encapsulated options as status quo,better,or best. I backed your preference for better.

Here you seem to suggest that it is the status quo or "cold turkey".

Doesn't the "mutual obligation" aspect at least shoe-horn in some value to what many taxpayers view simply as a handout? Couldn't this be seen as a step in the right direction, towards the compassionate society's "safety net, not hammock"?

No National Party stance on welfare will be a vote winner, but they have signalled that some auditing of expenditure is required. Is that not worthy of recognition?

Politics is the art of the possible.

The status quo (the probable) is already spoken for.

Lindsay Mitchell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lindsay Mitchell said...

I appreciate your point but I don't necessarily see this as 'better' for the reasons I have already given.

Anonymous said...

Labour
Greens
Anderton
Maori
NZF
Dunne
National
Act

Have I ranked these more or less Left to Right on Welfare?
Or status quo through to best?

See any coalition partners there for ACT, Lindsay?

While I applaud your idealism, I want someone to get started on reining in a bloated deadweight in our economy.

Given your comments, perhaps there is only one party prepared to shift from the status quo.

You articulate your views well and I think could make a positive difference to how far that shift goes.