Friday, October 14, 2011

ACT's priorities - welfare missed again

The Nelson Mail reports on a meeting held by Don Brash:
"If National needs a scapegoat, if you like, we could be that scapegoat," he said. The main priorities were to cut government spending, reform the Resource Management Act, restore a youth minimum wage and raise the age of eligibility for superannuation.

No problem with those but it's so disappointing to again see them failing to prioritise welfare. Yesterday these policies appeared on-line:

ACT will continue to push for major welfare reform. A Party Vote for ACT is a vote to:

• Ensure that there is strong, adequate support for the genuinely needy;
• Re-introduce a youth training rate or minimum wage;
• Introduce obligations for sole parent beneficiaries to ensure their children are properly cared for including taking budgeting instruction and meeting regular health checks;
• Introduce sanctions – such as suspension of the unemployment benefit and mandatory work-for-the-dole – in cases where reasonable offers of employment are declined;
• Require mandatory drug rehabilitation or loss of benefit for unemployed beneficiaries who fail work tests because of drug or substance addiction;
• Introduce income management and the requirement to live with a responsible adult for parents under the age of 18;
• Have independent, government-approved gatekeeping and assessment of applicants for the sickness and invalids benefit, and six monthly reassessment of sickness beneficiaries;
• Outsource all employment placement activities to private sector providers and foster a competitive market for sickness, invalid and employment insurance;
• Encourage practical Maori-focused solutions, including Whanau Ora, to lift Maori out of poverty and benefit dependency;
• Introduce a hotline (like Crimestoppers) to report benefit fraud;
• Cut welfare payments to middle and upper income earners through reform of Working for Families.


Some good stuff. Some I am not so keen on. For instance I don't think whanau ora is about reducing Maori benefit dependency. I think it's about teaching them to be better parents. Different things. Not sure about work-for-the-dole although I understand why the WWG recommended a programme. Perhaps PD services could be extended. Cutting WFF (which is only a return to pre-2005 conditions) is absolutely the right move. ACT will be the only party proposing that. Things like budgeting courses and rehab are already used - just not mandatory. Excepting (I think) that if a beneficiary applies for extra assistance so many times they must attend a course as a condition of getting the extra help. But I would have to verify that.

Trouble is, when you set about conditions for receipt of a benefit you are actually sanctioning the receipt. And the very receipt, for perfectly capable people, is wrong.

So what is missing?

The single-most important policy required is time-limits. The single-most important message is, welfare is no longer a way of life. It certainly isn't an option for raising children. We need a sea-change in thinking. These policies aren't going to achieve that.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ensure that there is strong, adequate support for the genuinely needy;

There it is. The very first point shows ACT is not serious about ending welfare

Everybody knows what needs to be done: just stop the spending.

Not Re-introduce a youth training rate or minimum wage; But eliminate all wage minimums

Not Introduce obligations for sole parent beneficiaries But stop the DPB

Not suspension of the unemployment benefit and mandatory work-for-the-dole But terminate all Dole

Not raise the age of eligibility for superannuation. but Stop all super payments --- of course including current codger-bludgers!

not Cut welfare payments to middle and upper income earners But cat all welfare payments to anybody and everybody

NZ doesn't have any money left. We've 200% of GDP and rising worth of borrowings that needs to be paid off.

This huge spend must stop. Immediately.

Anonymous said...

What's missing is a different look to National. It looks like tired socialism. Many of the proposals are supposedly already meant to happen per national socialists whether National or Labour et al.
Peter

Dave Christian said...

The main priorities don’t sound too bad. Except that it is a lie. Like last time ACT voters won’t get what they thought they were voting for.

Last time we got the superCity (increased concentration of power), increased government spending, and some jobs for the boys.

This time the coalition deal will be all about displacing some Maori privilege with non-Maori privilege. For their votes, ACT will not require any regulations or legislation to be torn up, they will require no curtailment of government spending, they will do nothing to promote individual liberty. There is an outside chance they will get an increase in the super age, but this will only be agreed on the basis that it provides more scope for continued high spending by the next government.

Don’t be fooled again.