Green's strawman - poor people are bad

Stuff has an interview with Green Co-leader Russel Norman:

SOME OF the Greens' economic policies remain quite left-wing. One of its three main planks (Kids, Rivers, Jobs) is to reduce child poverty. It would alter the Working for Families scheme so that beneficiary families as well as working ones would get the extra in-work supplement. Both the big main parties want to keep a gap between beneficiary and working parents as an incentive to work.

The Greens believe people will try to find work and won't bludge (there might be a tiny number of exceptions, Norman says). This is out of kilter with the prevailing view that beneficiaries are not to be trusted.

"We believe that people are good and they just need to be provided with opportunities. And the right-wing idea that we constantly have to get the stick out to take it to the poor – we just don't buy that.

"Because there was a time when I was in a poor family, you know. We were supported and we got ahead because other taxpayers paid for us...Just because we were poor didn't mean we were bad."

And just because people are rich doesn't mean they are bad. But you could be forgiven for believing that's what Greens think with their anti-farmer, anti-capitalist overtones. Both positions are based on conveniently collectivising people.

Anyway, the point I want to make is this: poor people = bad people is a Green Party proposition. It isn't mine.

But that's politics. Tell would-be voters what the nasty opposition thinks of them to further your own ends. That's why I am so glad to be out of this round of conniving and contriving.

In my dealings with people of low income and on benefits I find as much diversity as amongst the opposite. But I will never support the Green's policy of giving the in-work tax credit to beneficiary families because it will not help them in the long run. And I have explained many times why. Higher benefits are associated with higher levels of unmarried or unpartnered birth. Higher benefits keep more people in the system as wages become less attractive. Where the level of household income is the same, children in working homes do better than those on benefits. Giving the in-work tax credit to beneficiary families is a policy that will do more harm than good over time.

The Greens won't deal with the demonstrably probable unintended consequences of this policy. Instead they will go around the traps telling beneficiaries that National and ACT (and Labour, as they try to differentiate themselves) won't give you more money for their children because they think you are bad. That's the depth of the Green's debate. Very shallow.