"The real problem is not enough jobs"

Kay Brereton, Benefit Rights advocate responded to last weeks Treasury report to the Welfare Working Group by saying, The real problem is not enough jobs.

There are 4 points I would make about that statement;

1/ Economies are cyclical. Nobody knows when, but the NZ economy will recover. If we fail to change the current policy settings around the sickness and invalid benefits (what Treasury wants) when we have another strong period of economic growth similar to that of 2003-2008, the numbers on those benefits will continue to rise, as they did during that period.

2/ NZ has a rapidly ageing population which is going to mean increasing demand for aged care workers in rest homes and in the community. Demand already outstrips supply. There is significant caring capacity within the DPB population where over 40,000 people are caring for school age children only.

3/ Many mothers want to work but there is a shortage of pre-school care available. The government pays around half of the DPB population (50,000) to care full-time for one child only. This is a very inefficient use of resources. Every dollar spent on benefits can't be spent elsewhere creating employment.

4/ Tourism is an integral part of the NZ economy. Our PM is Minister for Tourism. Tourism creates many low-skilled jobs but potential workers need to be in the right location to take them. Labour was very successful at moving people off the unemployment benefit into work and one of their strategies was the Jobs Jolt which prevented unemployed beneficiaries from moving to places where there was no work. But that policy was never applied to the sickness, invalids or DPB. Again, all Treasury wants is the same effort put into those people on other benefits who can do some work.

But as long as people continue to take a paralysed defeatist approach that says there are no jobs, there will be no jobs.