Category: Welfare Reform
In the early 1990s the National government introduced welfare reforms that were met with enormous resistance and provoked a good deal of public sympathy for the plight of beneficiaries. The reforms featured benefit cuts which reduced most incomes by around 10 percent, with some losing as much as 25 percent.
In her final speech in the House of Commons on 22 November 1990, the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher engaged in one of her more memorable exchanges with the Member from Southwark and Bermondsey, to explain that policies aimed at reducing the gap between rich and poor will result in everyone becoming poorer.
For fans of government largesse, the temptation of relative poverty rates must be irresistible. These rates reliably rise during periods of market-oriented reforms, and fall during periods of government expansions.
As with overseas aid, such welfare programmes often do more harm than good. Instead of pouring funds into questionable schemes, governments should focus their efforts on lifting economic growth and creating an environment in which small business can flourish, since these are the only proven pathways for improving outcomes for the disadvantaged.
A huge amount is said about child poverty, but bugger all about what causes it. By the end of last year 13, 634 of the babies born in the previous 12 months had a parent or caregiver relying on a benefit. 48 percent of these caregivers were Maori.
A debate is currently raging over the underlying cause of child abuse. It follows the disturbing revelation that five out of every six children who are abused or neglected before they are five years old, live in families on welfare. This rate of abuse is ten times higher for children living in families on welfare than for children whose parents had never been on welfare. It shows what the advocates of welfare reform have always known, that long-term welfare is a serious risk factor for children.
Obligations are well known to people with jobs. They have obligations to their employers to be there on time, to observe the conditions of their contract and generally toe the line during their hours of employment. Working parents are obliged to put their children in some sort of care, be it formal or family-based. In return they receive a pay packet that furnishes their needs and wants, not dissimilar to a benefit, though usually more generous.
On the afternoon of Monday, 13 June 2006 Auckland Police received a telephone call from a staff member of Kidz First Children’s Hospital, situated adjacent to Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu, advising that hospital staff were treating two seriously injured twin infants. Their names were Christopher Arepa Kahui and Cru Omeka Kahui. Police went immediately to the hospital to investigate the causes and circumstances of the twins’ injuries.
Immense intellectual, or at least mental, efforts have gone and continue to go into denying the obvious, that on the whole family stability is better for children than instability, and that not all forms of family, or perhaps I should say household, life are equal from the point of view of children’s welfare. The terrible saga of the Kahui twins is but another illustration of the obvious.
Poverty advocates are crying foul over the fact that the government is even raising the idea of linking the immunisation of children to benefit receipt, even though it is an established practice that works well in many other countries. This is a discussion that is taking place in the wider context of the government’s initiative to better protect vulnerable children. Requiring beneficiaries to immunise their children – unless they are opposed for conscience reasons - is surely part of their obligation as parents. Those who fail to do so are putting their children at risk.
Loading ...
