Helping hands (and backhands)
many of them are likely to resist to the point where they feel that punitive wallop of benefits that will be halved after a month’s notice, and over time potentially be reduced to zero.
Bill English hammers the message of how targeted this initiative is.
Ninety percent of young jobseekers have been getting work within six months, and half the remainder are already in programmes where the Government is content they’re giving the task a decent sort of try.
It’s the remaining 5 per cent, right now about 8000, who are being made this offer they can’t refuse without consequences. Even then, English cites similar cases indicating that 95 per cent of the hold-outs will comply when given the one-month warning.
And even after that, decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. (Parenthood, for instance, is likely to complicate the approach somewhat.)
So, okay, we probably aren’t looking at large numbers of people being turfed off benefits and hitting the skids. But this still raises discomforting questions about what happens to those who are. It’s certainly hard to avoid the conclusion that streetlife and/or criminality await them.
The Greens talk of people struggling to overcome drug addiction being pushed under the poverty line by this punitive package. This relies on a pretty tolerant definition of "struggling" to include a disengagement with support programmes. The hardliner retort would be that it’s the absence of a struggle that would trigger the benefit cut.
Greens inequality spokeswoman Marama Davidson cites Ministry of Social Development figures that, in the year to March, 170 beneficiaries were sanctioned for drug use, so it’s not the crisis National claims.
Not many people would swallow the line that the 170 figure is particularly representative of the scale of the problem of drug use impairing jobseeking. And English, citing surveys, says one in five beneficiaries are telling the Government drug use is a barrier to them getting jobs.
This policy’s penalties will attract a great deal more attention than the extra-resources provided as the upside. It’s likely to gain more votes than it loses but if enacted will need close monitoring and possibly swift recalibrations.