The World According to Al

18 July 2013 (updated)

WTF is going on here?

Only a couple of days ago, Key pooh-poohed an official report critical of his spying laws - see last post - quickly followed by an attention-diverting attack on beneficiaries. It'll go down well with his voters; if there's one thing guaranteed to make National voters smile, it's an attack on beneficiaries.

Then things take an even uglier turn with pre-schoolers being issued with ID numbers so they can be tracked right from 3 years old*. A provision in the new anti-beneficiary legislation allows for benefit reduction if children do not attend some form of pre-school from age 3. Clearly, this frees the parents up for work, which is the goal, but ensuring it happens by monitoring the children is another scheme straight out of the 1950s and Joe Stalin.

Now, in terms of the beneficiary cuts, the plan itself is admirable in its efforts to break the cycle of generational benefits we know happens, but sickness beneficiaries? Doctors may well say that work is a great help to people, but where is the practicality?

People who are on the sickness benefit are generally completely unable to work, but now they will be forced into it anyway. Having been in the employment game for quarter of a century, I have come up against a number of people with mental illnesses who have tried to work their way through problems.

The failure rate is extremely high.

I once allowed a WINZ bloke to talk me into trying a nice young chap who had been suffering from a mental illness, so I talked to my late great friend, Rob Klouwens, a man of much compassion, and he agreed to give the young man a go.

It lasted two days before he could not face working.

While that is only one example, I have many dozens more, and while I can think of dozens of failures, I cannot relate one single story of a successful outcome dealing with a person with mental illness. That is not saying people with mental illness are bad or useless, just that they are best able to manage their illness while not working.

The government thinking it will save a billion dollars by forcing people off sickness benefits into non-existent jobs is pure fantasy. All that will happen is a spike in suicides and homelessness as people have their benefits stopped because they are incapable of working.

Where the jobs are going to come from is unsurprisingly not mentioned. The country already has an appalling unemployment rate, albeit better than many, and I know for a fact that the vacancies in New Zealand right now are for highly-skilled people, not people who have been on a benefit for ten years.

The scheme must fail for that reason alone, but within the provisions are many ways of cutting people's benefits or removing the entitlement entirely. That will result in an increase in crime to go along with the increase in suicides and homelessness.

If that's your idea of good government, it sure as hell is not mine.

It has been plain to me for many, many years that the way to approach beneficiaries is to ask them whether they want to work or not. If they don't, pay them a benefit. If they do, give them jobs - create the damned things if necessary, but let them work.

You save your billion bucks by removing 90% of WINZ workers.

The present system is useless, the system being introduced is insane, totalitarian and inhumane.

* following on regarding this plan, I had missed one very important point - as part of the issuing children with ID numbers, the government has come up with a plan so cunning it's worthy of [Sir] Baldrick: all parents with children at kindergarten must re-sign their form to get the 20 hours of free education that subsidises the cost.

If you don't want to have your child issued with an ID number, you will lose about $200 a week. (if your child attends a kindergarten, daycare or child-minding service)

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