When it comes to National Party policy, don’t let John Key’s smarmy smile or Paula Bennett’s ‘scientific evidence’ fool you. A flick through their cryptically proposed welfare reforms and it is quite clear what they are implying without explicitly saying it. Tricky! Although this mightn’t come as much of a surprise considering our PM has never been one for transparency or honesty – refer to the Tea party tape and the backdoor meetings with Petrobas, despite the very recent and very poorly-managed RENA disaster. Bennett claims the Welfare reforms are “resetting expectations,” so let’s take a look at what that really means.
Firstly who are these elusive beneficiaries that National love to hate? Recent figures suggest there are currently 328,000 beneficiaries, which is approximately 12% of the working-age population. Of that group, 26% are on the invalids benefit, 18% are on the sickness benefit and 2% are carers for the sick and infirm, 33% are parents supporting children and 17% are on the unemployment benefit. However National party rhetoric consistently dumps all beneficiaries into one homogenous group of lazy, unmotivated and undeserving, which is misleading at the very least, and absolutely disgusting at its most reasonable. It creates a culture of disdain for all beneficiaries, while carefully ignoring any distinctions or reasons as to their inability to work. Little to no attempts are made to correct these popular misconceptions, and understandably so, because they carve the way for their proposed welfare reforms.
“The expectation is for the majority of beneficiaries to be available and looking for work”, exhorts Bennett.
Hold on Bennett, this ‘majority of beneficiaries’ you speak of are on the invalid and sick benefits, sitting at around 46% of the total beneficiary population. So what you are really saying here is that you expect the sick and the invalid, which includes individuals with mental health problems, disabilities and impairments, to enter or re-enter the workforce (i.e. for their labour to be exploited and the like). Ask yourself if this is the type of society you wish to be a part of, one starved of empathy that has no respect for the sick.
There are a number of draconian proposals to ensure that those who are weaselling out of work are made to get off their asses. One recommendation will see to it that medical certificates go ‘transformers’ on us, and become ‘fit notes.’ Instead of describing the length of time an individual is unable to work, the health professional will describe what the individual is capable of doing in paid work. The last say then goes to “work professionals” who will gauge the validity of said ‘fit note’. This means that your job descripition and work expected of you will be tweaked to allow you to be as productive as possible during this time. (Apparently, health professionals cannot be trusted to put the economy before their patients. Go figure.)
National party policy then goes on to state: “There are clear links between welfare, poverty and poor health. Evidence shows children are better off when their parents are in work, not on welfare.” This simply is not true; one trip down to the Auckland City Mission will make anyone a believer. Under John Key’s watch, we now have a new class of people – the working class poor. These are individuals with fulltime jobs, who aren’t leeching or being lazy, who are now unable to support their families and feed their children. Why is this? Well again under National’s watch, wages have gone down, which apparently is meant to lead to long-term economic growth, which in a nutshell and without sounding too much like an activist on a megaphone, means ‘the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer’. The trickledown theory has yet to ever trickle down genuinely, I’m afraid. So where’s the incentive to work? Well, in my opinion, there are none. Alongside the inability to support yourself and your family, working conditions are, to put it bluntly, shit (refer to, for example, the 90-day work trial bill and plans to introduce an un-liveable youth minimum wage). So perhaps instead of pointing the finger at individuals for not working, the government could seek to better working conditions and treatment of workers (that’s assuming of course there are jobs to begin with…)
The punishment for those seen to be ‘leeching’ off the system? Benefit-cutting. For example if offered a night shift, the individual must accept irrespective of their ability to find childcare (childcare, which by the way, is on its way to not being subsidised if National has its way! Woo!) This treatment is also known as leaving people out in the cold. For what, you may ask? Well, for daring to be sick and invalid, for daring to be marginalised, for daring to become parents (if poor people can’t afford children, why are they continuing to breed?!) and most importantly, for having the audacity to not have a job despite there being none to speak of (job creation hasn’t been one of National’s strong points, you see).
Claims by John Key that there will be an emphasis on child wellbeing are empty, as they are the unquestionable victims of these reforms. [Note: we have 200,000 children living in poverty, right here in Aotearoa.] National party recommendations include parents being coerced into ‘work-preparation schemes’ if their child is under 3, working part-time when their youngest child is 3 and must work full time once their child is 5. If they have more children while on the benefit, the recommendations state that they should return to work when their baby is 14 weeks. While some of these recommendations are not yet concrete (they have to be elected first!), there is a clear message being sent to NZers. Being a parent is not considered valuable or worthy of an individual’s time. The repercussions for children in welfare homes are bleak, whose parents face benefit cuts should they decline work, regardless of the circumstances. The current benefit sits at $322p/w, so any further cuts could see families turned out onto the streets, or lead to neglect when parents have to work and cannot arrange/afford adequate childcare.
Not to mention that these reforms stink of hypocrisy, especially considering Bennett herself reaped the benefits of a positive welfare system having been a solo mother at 17 and a recipient of the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) and the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA), which allowed her to obtain her degree from Massey University.
With all these considerations, you can bet your bottom dollar that National’s forecasts for reducing those on welfare by 100,000 won’t be making Aotearoa a healthier, richer place to live in (perhaps only for the 1%). Increased rejection of claims and coercion into work where it is inappropriate to do so mean poverty rates will go up. Repeat after me: Poverty rates will go up. Poverty rates will go up. Poverty rates will go up. This negates any rationale behind having a welfare system at all, as it is meant to support and empower individuals during their times of need. National’s reforms do the opposite. They worsen socioeconomic conditions, hinder attempts to enter workforce in a positive manner, which will inevitably widen the gap between the rich and the poor and strengthen intergenerational welfare dependency. Say goodbye to social mobility, folks!
The discourse needs to be shifted away from victim-blaming towards more effective, problem-solving. This would involve contextualising welfare dependency, by disaggregating data, correcting popular misconceptions, and understanding the reasons behind high levels of dependency to begin with. For example, instead of punishing and driving individuals further into poverty through benefit cutting, how about focusing on creating jobs for the 17% currently on the unemployment benefit, who have no chance of finding a job when there a no jobs to speak of! This I’m sorry to say John Key (actually, no I’m not) is the responsibility of the government (yes, he had the audacity to say it wasn’t). So do your job and do it properly.