Posts by Sacha
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Gordon Campbell responds to this latest report.
The WWG has a core problem in selling the notion of a welfare system in crisis, and a nation lacking the motivation to work. Reality check: when work was available in the 2000s and job searches were being case managed, unemployment sank to record lows with fewer than 20,000 on the dole. Conclusion: when jobs are there, people work: and when they aren’t, they can’t. It’s not as if a motivational crisis has suddenly engulfed the country in the last two years, when none existed before the recession.
Not that the WWG seems interested in an honest evaluation of the statistics on employment anyway, and the academics on this panel should be ashamed at putting their names to the distortions used to support the report’s ideological bias. The panel is happy for instance, to trumpet a headline rate of 338,000 people of working age on benefits. Over at The Standard, there is an excellent unpicking of the ingredients of that figure: 85,000 have severe mental or physical disabilities. 58,000 have been documented by medical professinals as sick, 112,000 are raising children alone, and 65,000 are actively looking for work. As The Standard concludes :
In fact, when there were jobs for nearly everyone there were just 1,700 long-term unemployed who had been on the dole for over 4 years. If there are any bludgers they are a subset of those 1,700. Hardly worth turning the lives of 338,000 people and their families upside down over.
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So…. we don’t have a welfare crisis. Nor do we have a motivational crisis revolving around our readiness to work.
...In reality, what we have is a job-creation crisis in the wake of a global recession, and the responsibility for dealing with that crisis rests with central government and, to a lesser extent, with employers and investors. They alone have the tools to bring about positive change in work creation. No amount of positive attitude by a solo mother is going to create a job in her local supermarket, when it is currently laying off staff.
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Hard News: Friday Recommends, in reply to JP Hansen,
it was an amazing emotional moment last night
Beautiful serendipity.
Nobody knew that the song would be dedicated to the miners
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I may be the only one that thinks your venting is a little closer to home than some here may realise.
It's mainly the timing and the tone I have a problem with. I accept there are questions to be answered about what happened. Just not here where most of us know so little about it.
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to Petra,
The monetary cost of trying to identify and ‘cull’ that small percentage of people who have made welfare dependency a lifestyle choice for the very long term would probably be much greater than just not giving a fuck.
They could also put the money into making sure that all the disabled New Zealanders who *want* to work have the support to do so - including adjusting the basic attitudes of employers who get away with discriminating on the basis of ignorant stereotypes.
Until very recently anyone on a sickness or 'in-valid' benefit wasn't even eligible for Work and Income's job-oriented services, and for many the associated costs are so high and benefit abatement levels so steep that it's just not worth the stress and risking loss of crucial secondary grants for the sake of a part-time job. Re-structuring benefits to get around that was on the table about 6 years ago but ended up in the too-hard basket along with the rest of the single core benefit proposals.
We also have a long way to go before all the broader pieces are in place from social attitudes through to communication, transport systems, public services and built environnments that work for *everyone* so that all of our communities can work, volunteer and contribute in so many ways.
That's where I'd rather see the energy go, but it's not nearly so attractive to fearful floating voters as demonising the beneficiaries and anyone else who 'looks different'. And not as easy for the working group as blaming each disabled person for the situtation.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to James George,
Gosh James, you're dead right. There, feel better now? Not getting enough respect at home are we, old fella?
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Blatant scare-mongering
The $50b figure is simply a lie, fisked in several places including other threads here when they first pulled it out of their arses a few months ago.
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High walls will keep our all-important building industry going after they've rebuilt Christchurch
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Bart Janssen,
That's a great example. Maybe a cruise liner rather than a reporter then? :)
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Given that a person who's 2.5km away is effectively invisible to the naked eye, I think a better example might be needed
I remember a doco series starring Dr David Bellamy a few decades ago*. They used a rising helicopter shot of a line of bonfires on a Californian beach to show the timeline of human development. Furthest was about 5km away. Last was about 10m. Dont' remember much else from the show but that one stuck.
Being NZ telly news I'm expecting a big torch or a mirror during the day could be substituted to say "here I am".
*probably "Botanic Man" from 1978. You can see from this clip featuring our fair land that Jeremy Wells and co weren't just drawing on Kenneth Cumberland for their Unauthorised History of NZ.
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Only the last one would have been untrue when the residences were full of uni students like my great-aunt swotting for exams..