John MacDonald: What's all this talk about beneficiary-bashing?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Look out dole bludgers, we’re coming after ya.

That’s the Government’s message to beneficiaries who are being warned that, if they abuse the system, there’ll be limits on what they can spend their benefit money on.

This is all part of the new traffic light system for people on the Jobseeker benefit. Some might say it’s a traffic light system with a green arrow to the right.

Which is what the Opposition parties are getting at, anyway. Saying that all the Government’s doing here is a bit of good-old-fashioned beneficiary bashing.

The Government, though, is saying ‘oh nah nah nah, it’s not like that at all. All we’re doing is sticking up for hardworking taxpayers who provide the money for the benefits.'

And I’m with the Government. Because all it’s doing is setting-out some expectations and what will happen if people don’t meet those expectations.

It’s not beneficiary bashing. If it was beneficiary bashing, the Prime Minister and the Social Development Minister would have come out yesterday and said something like ‘anyone on a benefit is a no-hoper bludging off the system’.

That would be beneficiary bashing.

But the Government didn't say that at all. It’s being claimed by politicians on the left that that’s what the Government is implying. But I don’t buy that for a minute.

What are some of the other words being thrown around about this?

“The Government is waging a war on the poor”. That’s what the Green Party is saying. But I’m sorry Greens, I think you’re talking nonsense there. I don’t see it that way, at all.

Yes, the National, ACT and NZ First parties probably don’t have as much time for beneficiaries as the parties on the left do. But they’re not waging war on the poor.

Maybe I’m sympathetic to what the Government is doing because I’ve never actually been on a benefit myself before. That could change some day, of course. Because none of us really know how our lives might change down the track.

But, even though I don’t have experience of what it’s like to be a beneficiary, I imagine that —if I was— I’d follow the rules, knowing that a benefit is a mixture of being a right and a privilege.

And I can’t imagine myself willingly ripping off the system. Or claiming the dole —or Jobseeker benefit, as it’s known— and not doing anything to try and find a job.

That’s because I have a good understanding of expectations. Just like those of us who have a paid job, we know about expectations.

Example: I know that if I didn’t bother turning up to work every morning, I’d be out the door. I know that if I overstay my welcome in a car park, there’s a pretty good chance of a ticket waiting for me when I get back to the car.

I understand expectations and consequences.

And why shouldn’t it be the same for people on benefits? That’s what the Government is doing with the Jobseeker benefit. It’s setting out its expectation of people and the consequences if they don’t meet those expectations.

The thing I mentioned before about the Government putting limits on what beneficiaries can spend their benefit money on, that’s one of the sanctions the Government is going to use to penalise people who don’t do things like actively look for work.

They’ll have a card that half their benefit money will go onto, and they’ll only be able to use it to buy essential items. Which I actually think is a reasonable way to penalise someone because it wouldn’t be taking money away from a family, for example. From kids.

So if you had a set of parents —or one of them— on the dole, and they repeatedly failed to meet the new requirements, then their kids wouldn’t be punished. They wouldn’t miss out on essentials because there’d be less money coming into the house.

There’d just be limits on what half of the benefit money could be spent on. People will probably find a way of working around that because that’s what us people tend to do, don’t they?

Nevertheless, I think it’s a much more humane approach than cutting benefits.

Of course, if we’re totally honest, we’ll know that the Government isn’t doing this in the interests of the beneficiaries themselves. It’ll say it is. And I haven’t seen anything from the Government about how much money this will save the taxpayer, for example. It’s probably got no idea. Nevertheless, it’s good optics for a centre-right government.

But it isn’t beneficiary bashing.

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