Treasury’s welfare prescription
October 5th, 2010 at 10:31 am by David FarrarThe Herald reports Treasury recommends:
- Move work-ready people from sickness and invalid benefits on to dole.
- Make sole parents look for paid work before youngest child turns 6.
- Contract out welfare services to private companies and charities.
- Increase sick leave and parental leave to give employers incentives to help workers back to work.
This will give Sue Bradford something to scream about.
I’m hesitant over the work testing when the children are under six, but the other stuff looks pretty sound.
It draws heavily on recent reforms in Australia and Britain, which have both moved work-ready people off disability benefits on to the unemployment benefit. In Britain, the paper says, 69 per cent of previous disability beneficiaries were classified as “fit for work” and moved on to the dole.
“On the basis of the recent UK reforms, the reclassification of all sickness and invalid beneficiaries could result in more than 80,000 New Zealand beneficiaries moving on to the unemployment benefit,” it says.
The principle is very sound, and the UK has shown the potential. I do want to make the point that many who are on the Invalids Benefit are quite literally unable to work, through no fault of their own. They deserve as much support as possible. But there certainly are some on there, who are work capable.
France, Germany, Switzerland and Norway all require sole parents to look for work when their youngest children turn 3, and some countries treat sole parents the same as any other unemployed person regardless of the children’s ages.
One could lower the age from six to five, but I’d rather not go below that.
The paper says Australia’s decision to contract out job search services for the unemployed to private companies and charities in 1998 halved the cost for every job placement from A$12,000 to A$6000.
Superb.
Related posts:
- National’s welfare reform
- Stage 1 of the welfare reforms
- Welfare reforms are go
- Large welfare families
October 5th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Any increase in sick leave should be paid by the government. If they wish to bribe voters they should do it with government rather than employer money.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Watch Key & co poo poo these recomendations. Finding people work is the work of the state.
Vote:Great start, amazing how many sickness benes. are in front of the judge in court.
October 5th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Can’t come soon enough. This commentator hopes for some slash & burn
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 10:42 am
For clarity – you mean a change from “before the youngest child turns six” to “once the youngest child turns five”? I think that once the youngest has completed a term at school, it would be fair enough to expect that active work-seeking be taking place.
[DPF: Yes, that is what I mean]
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 10:48 am
@Sonny – increasing sick leave, but allowing employers greater powers to verify that it’s genuine sick leave (ie the ability to require a doctor’s note after only one day if they wish) seems a fair enough balance to me.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 10:50 am
Another Treasury report to be shelved by this “brave and courageous” government. Key and his ministers will never have the intestinal fortitude to go along with any of these suggestions, so it’s logical for Labour-lite to ignore the report altogether.
Easch country get the government it deserves. Currently, we’re ruled by wimps and cowards propped by spin doctors.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:05 am
Really imported from Britain? Really? Are they sure? I thought there were over 2 million permanently unemployed here.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Unless rule changes say that extra kids added while on a benefit do not mean more money, they will breed to ensure they always have kids under five or six.
My wife and I worked or looked for work while our kids were under five. Why can’t beneficiaries?
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:38 am
One of the benefits of high speed broadband is that it enables the disabled (permanent or temporary) to more readily work from home, or to ease them back into full-time work.
Of course many oppose such new work patterns because it competes with their dreams of everyone riding on bikes or trains.
The 24,000 of the SunMicrosystems workforce of 50,000 who telework actually telecommute an average of 2.5 days a week. So they get their socialising too.
The other way teleworkers socialise is through actually working out of space in remote office centres. They “commute” to the local remote office centre down the road and then “telecommute” to the head office in Downtown or in Sydney or whereever.
You can guarantee that the new Spatial Plan will make no provision for such decentralisation.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:45 am
I can’t wait to hear the Ministry of Social Development’s radical proposals to the govt for reform of monetary policy…
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:48 am
It always amazes me how many people needing legal aid are on sickness or invalids benefit. Too sick to work but not too sick to get on the chop and get in trouble?
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:55 am
NZ has 1.7 taxpayers for every beneficiary for a good reason: We’ve moved so far left socially and economically that the state deliberately has a direct, arbitrarily modifiable influence on the incomes of vast numbers of Kiwis.
Any change to any entitlement is pounced on my the MSM with stupid “look over there” comparisons and analysis of how something impacts “the rich” or “the poor”
Tinkering with welfare won’t do it. We need wholesale change in welfare and taxation so that every NZer feels some pain. Won’t happen of course as the blue socialists are just as keen to sell policy for votes as were the red socialists.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 11:56 am
This stuff can’t happen fast enough but I am sorry this government is not going to do it.
It is about time Mr Key et al realised the 35% of rusted left voters won’t change their vote no matter how nice we are to them so Fuck them and focus on the other 65%. Where is the Ruth Richardson type (we need someone with her intestinal fortitude) to really scare these benificaries.
I have a friend with a very advanced case of hyperchorndia who has just gone on a sickness benefit because he would rather watch his umpteenth replay of Babylon 5 rather than get a job. He now tells me then the benefit is not enough to live on when you are on your own and how unfair life is. Sorry this person is not that far removed from others on the benefit and as a tax payer I have had enough of it.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I am an employer
I can’t for the life of me work out why I need to pay someone else to be sick
Now it seems I need to pay people more to be sick
Doesn’t seem right, sort of backward
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Well, I guess they have to make big savings to pay for all those extra consultants Treasury has been employing. Here’s a thought. Why not pay beneficiaries to write reports for Treasury. Can’t be hard. Just string together a few neo-liberal buzzwords (free market! moral hazard! provider capture! personal responsibility!) and away you go. I bet they’d be cheaper than the consultants Treasury has actually been using, and there will be no loss of quality because one always knows exactly what Treasury is going to recommend anyway. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of tiny minds but it is a touchstone at Treasury.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
I support leaving this a six. This is the legal age from which children must attend school.
In terms of welfare reform, I’d like to see:
–each benefit type given re-application terms, with much of the re-application process being on-line, and the applications becoming legal documents. Case workers can be assigned random individual re-application for manual checking
–publicly visible statistics of MSD case workers’ caseload. How many cases reviewed, how many approved/declined of each type, case worker benchmarking
–publicly visible statistics of sickness benefit approvers. How many application approved/declined, approver benchmarking
We must invert the culture which currently has the rights of a person to choose not to work trumping the rights of a worker to keep more of their income.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
who is Sue Bradford?
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
It is getting awfully close to the election…..Does Paula really want to be a one term wonder?
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Yes it’s a shame that the right time to do this report was when the times were good and there was no chance given our govt then. When the wrong time to do it is now here, that govt with the guts to authorise research into and publish this stuff, has no chance whatsoever of implementing it.
It encourages me they’re flying the right kites. Shame about the economy.
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Can anyone tell me how to get one of these stay at home online jobs?…Happy to do it and needing a position….anyone?
Vote:October 5th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
And I would guarantee, without even looking it up, that those countries provide comprehensive, probably free, childcare from that age.
I’m sure we would all support that!
Like, Somalia? Examples please.
Vote:October 6th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
As if employers are going to employ sickness beneficiaries. Kick them out onto the streets and watch the entrepreneurship thrive.
Vote: