National's new welfare policies only raise more questions

National has announced a five point welfare plan that applies almost entirely to Jobseeker/Work Ready beneficiaries.

The first is random testing for drugs. According to MSD Minister Louise Upston: 

“Under our policy, a first failed test will be recorded and a second failed test will trigger a clinical alcohol and drug assessment. Where someone then fails to meet their obligations, the normal sanctions regime will apply, which could include reductions to their benefit."

There are already thousands of people on benefits other than the Jobseeker/Work Ready benefit whose primary incapacity is substance abuse.   These people are medically certified and do not have work obligations. 

There isn't enough resource right now to address addiction. The wait time for drug and alcohol services is getting longer. So what happens after the newly proposed "clinical alcohol and drug assessment"? If a Jobseeker beneficiary is assessed with a substance abuse problem, won't he or she simply be moved onto a different benefit to await rehab?

But if drug-testing Jobseekers is a good idea, why not unemployed mothers on Sole Parent Support?  Children need protection from the growing meth scourge. According to ESR, between 2015 and 2022 there were 20 infant deaths where meth was found in their system. It is safe to assume at least some - if not most - of those children would have had a parent on welfare.

In any case, why should anyone with a drug habit receive a cash benefit? At the very least they should be on an electronic money management card. Why should the taxpayer fund drug habits?

National has also announced that if a Jobseeker has been dependent for two of the last three years, their benefit rate will be reduced.

Fair enough. To get people off welfare we need to increase the margin between benefit incomes and earned incomes. But it is households with children where the margin is virtually non-existent. There is already a substantial margin between welfare and work for young, single and childless beneficiaries. Again, the policy seems ill-targeted.

Another part of the new plan is that Jobseekers will have their stand-down period extended from 13 to 26 weeks if they repeatedly "leave employment without good and sufficient reason."

If people repeatedly leave jobs for no good reason there should be no entitlement. The jobseeker benefit is a safety net - not an enabler to drop-out as and when it suits.

The last item I want to comment on is extending the residency qualification for a main benefit from two to five years.

This seems fairly pointless because currently, non-residents who don't qualify for main benefits can qualify for emergency benefits, for example, refugees. The consequence of this change will simply be a sharp increase in the number of people on an Emergency Benefit, which pays the same rate as a main benefit.

In conclusion, while sounding good in theory, it's a not a sound plan. It ignores the problem of inter-generational, sole parent driven dependency, and it will move people around in the benefit system rather than out of it.

Welfare missing from 2026 election

Welfare is markedly missing from 2026 election campaign issues.

There's been far more debate about Super: its cost, means-testing and the age of eligibility. New Zealand is an outlier. Australia, the UK and the US have a qualifying age of 67. Whether NZ joins must be decided. Super isn't sustainable.

But what of working-age people? The percentage of 18-64 year-olds on a benefit is 12.8% - up from 9.9% ten years ago. That's around one in eight people unable or unwilling to support themselves.

In fairness, plenty only use a benefit short-term during a temporary period of unemployment or incapacity. That 'safety net' principle seems broadly accepted across the voting population. Others with severe disabilities or chronic illnesses require ongoing support. Again, seemingly accepted as part of the social pact.

But among physically capable people, long-term and inter-generational dependence is growing fast.

According to the Ministry of Social Development, average future years on benefit has grown from 10.8 in 2015 to 14.3 in 2025. For particular groups, the length of stay is much higher. For example, someone on either a Youth or Young Parent benefit will be dependent for an average of 25 further years.

Why? Is the shortage of paid work that severe? The post-covid period proved that even when employers were crying out for workers, many on benefits were unmoved. Migrants had to fill workforce shortages that New Zealanders were not prepared to.

Work-aversion is learned and handed down. Children in long-term dependent homes have no working role model. Nearly three quarters of all beneficiaries up to age 25 had a parent on welfare while they were a child.

At the end of 2025 over a quarter million children were dependent on benefits. Each year around one in five births is to a parent already on welfare or who will be by year-end. Many of these children will spend their entire childhood and teenage years in an unemployed household, mostly with a 'single' parent. This impacts strongly on their life chances in respect of not just health and education, but security and safety. Of all children who had a finding of maltreatment by the age of five, 83 percent were on a benefit before age two. There is significant overlap between the Work and Income cohort, Oranga Tamariki and Corrections.

So back to the election campaign.

While much-needed fiscal savings could be made by tightening Super eligibility, it cannot be claimed that reliance on a pension at the end of one's life is damaging in the way chronic welfare dependence is, growing up and thereafter. That is the massive social problem New Zealand needs to grapple with.

So why aren't political parties talking about this?

The Left won't acknowledge the harm welfare dependency does, insisting that poverty alone is the problem, this despite latest evidence showing children in poor working households have a material hardship rate of just 17 percent whereas children in poor beneficiary households have a hardship rate of 47 percent. On the very same low incomes, children of beneficiaries do it much tougher in respect of going without. Something isn't happening for those children. They aren't being prioritised.

There's a further possible reason why Labour, the Greens, and Te Pati Maori accept welfare as a lifestyle - 'honouring te tiriti' and what Bob Jones called 'Maori wonderfulness'. Forty percent of working age beneficiaries with recorded ethnicity are Maori. To criticise welfare as a lifestyle would be to criticise Maori. That's not in their playbook.

The Right has historically run with welfare reform policies and billboards carrying their message. For example, in 2005 :



But in the last three years under National, matters have only deteriorated. They can't make a talking point out of their own failure.

ACT, the champion of welfare reform, is also part of the government so could be accused of sharing the failure.

ACT nevertheless has a couple of useful policies, though they aren't easy to find. Their welfare policies don't appear at their website's main policy page, indicating a lack of priority. They do say they will "introduce electronic money management for Jobseeker Support Work Ready recipients who remain on a benefit for more than four months."

The problem is Jobseeker beneficiaries are not typically parents. Most of the children in benefit homes are attached to single parents. At the very least ACT's policy needs to include those on Sole Parent Support who, on average, stay there for an average of 17.5 years and often add more children during that time.

Cue Paul Henry.

Ask him what role he thought welfarism played in the death of Wairarapa toddler Lillybing? I clearly recall how affected he was, as a local, by that tragedy and his gutted acknowledgement on radio that we were all, as taxpayers, complicit.

We just keep funding the pathways to failure and worse.

Dragging eyes away from aimless, spirit-sapping, benefit-dependence towards resented superannuitants might play well politically, but it won't address the disaster that welfarism is.

Who is going to talk about it?

Maybe, once elected, Paul Henry will start? Holding that hope, I will vote accordingly. For the children who really don't deserve to grow up in such reduced and too often, risky circumstances.

References
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/benefit/2026/benefit-fact-sheet-snapshot-june-2026.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/benefit-system/benefit-system-report-2025.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/newsroom/media-releases/2015/taylor-fry-key-findings.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/vulnerable-children/auckland-university-can-administrative-data-be-used-to-identify-children-at-risk-of-adverse-outcome.pdf
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/child-poverty-in-nz/msd-2026-child-poverty-report.pdf