Andrews looks to NZ welfare reforms

New Zealand has in recent years embarked on a brave new welfare "reform" of which our gormless welfare minister Kevin Andrews is keen to copy. In fact New Zealand has been the birthplace of a lot of Lieberal policies. There was the "never ever" GST that was implemented in NZ before Australia giving them their big GST idea. There was also the way unions were overthrown over there with the warfies being taken on and losing. I heard after that the unions just laid down and died. Of course this was all like manna from heaven for the Lieberals who tried the same tactic on here trying to break the warfies in the late '90's, as the Lieberals salivated over the NZ experience.

It seems the shortage of Lieberal ideas continues with welfare reform. The NZ experience of what Andrews wants to implement here though is hardly conclusive, and the early signs are that it's particularly bad. No doubt the Lieberals are salivating over it right now. 

The system involves just three welfare payments. I dunno how a whole population of human beings can be simplified down to just three categories. My guess is it can't, and that's why people are falling through welfare holes. In fact the number of people registered as unemployed is more than those getting the unemployment benefit, indicating that some simply don't qualify for it. What do they do then? starve? 

The senior lecturer said the basic “safety net” in New Zealand was becoming increasingly under question with people demonstrating “special hardship” to qualify for an emergency payment increasing by 43% between the 2007-08 financial year and 2011-12. 

Fletcher said a large gap had developed between people being recorded as unemployed in the Statistics New Zealand household labour force survey and those receiving a benefit, leaving “increasingly large holes” in the safety net. 

He added: “We have no evidence yet that the welfare reforms have improved the officially-measured unemployment rate. The rate has fallen over the last 18 months – from 7.2% in September quarter 2012 to 6.0% in March 2014 – but this is appears to reflect the wider economic recovery and improvements in the labour market." 

Susan St John, a University of Auckland associate professor in economics and co-director at the Retirement Policy and Research Centre, said the country had “major issues” with child poverty which were not evident in Australia and the social welfare system was one of the biggest factors. 

“If you’re going down the path of copying us, you really need to look at impacts,” she said. 

She said tax benefit policies disadvantaging children from low socioeconomic backgrounds and the lack of indexation of some welfare payments had resulted in the “rapid falling behind” of benefits. 

“It pushes families into poverty,” she said. “... It’s nothing to be proud of.” more