Shadow welfare working group established

According to the NZ Herald;

The six-member alternative group has been set up by the Catholic aid and social justice agency Caritas, the Anglican Social Justice Commission and the Beneficiary Advocacy Federation.

Massey University social policy professor Mike O'Brien will chair it. Other members are Lincoln University economist Paul Dalziel, Victoria University welfare law lecturer Maamari Stephens, Anglican Bishop Muru Walters and Disabled Persons Assembly researcher Wendi Wicks.

Former Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro and Child Poverty Action Group co-founder Susan St John will advise the group.

Dr O'Brien, who taught at Massey's Albany campus when Ms Bennett studied there in the 1990s, said he agreed with her that the welfare system needed wide debate.

"One of the really major aims for me is to make sure that those with knowledge and experience at the grassroots are really able to feed into that process," he said.

"The second thing is that the terms of reference that the welfare working group has been given, and therefore the Government's approach to thinking about welfare, is really tight and narrow.

"So we think there is a really important place to be had for trying to ensure that the wider questions about income distribution and jobs and the nature of work and the importance of caring work really get taken into the debate."

Interesting development. The church groups are showing their true colours now. So much for the separation of church and state. Some of the strongest advocates for the state to up the level of income redistribution are Christians. This has nothing to do with Christian teaching however, whereby people help each other willingly and because of a moral conviction that each man is his brothers keeper. Because to use the state as the furnisher of practical benevolence is to use force.

Take just one statement about the "importance of caring work". Caring for a child is an invaluable task. But it is for the parent (the individual) to value - not for the state. Because once the state (the collective) puts a value on it an obligation forms to define the parameters of care and payment required to fulfil them. Thus conflict is born. People will fight over - and do - how much care a child should receive and from who. 'Rights' expand to encompass propositions like a child has a right to have its mother at home when he or she gets home from school. Those who agree then want the money to allow this to happen from those who do not agree. The only fair solution to this conflict is to leave the parent free to make their own decision about care. Free to make it and free to fund it.

So the religionists are anti-freedom and hide behind a mask of benign intentions. The left-wing academics and politicians are more overt. They resent freedom from regulation, freedom to accumulate wealth (creating jobs and economic growth in the process) and unequal incomes (except their own of course).

The formation and work of the 'official' Welfare Working Group was always going to become highly political. The fight, because that's what it is, has just stepped up a notch. The idea of engaging and satisfying all parties is a naive pipe dream (originally misspelled as 'pope dream' which it may also well be.)

Perhaps a third welfare working group should be formed. One that advises on how to restore responsibility for the welfare of others back to the individual and any groupings those individuals wish to willingly make. That's what families, churches, and charities used to look like before they became agents and instruments of the state.