Lindsay Mitchell on DPB work testing
March 5th, 2012 at 12:00 pm by David FarrarLindsay Mitchell writes in the NZ Herald:
Metiria Turei describes this as “forcing” mothers into work but that claim doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. Nobody is forced to have a baby on a benefit – a benefit provided, incidentally, because she is already unable to independently support her children. Never before have women been better able to control their fertility. If she chooses to get pregnant and have the baby she will be doing so fully aware that if a part-time job is available when that baby turns one, she will be expected to accept it (along with the childcare assistance needed to do so.) The choice is ultimately hers.
This is a key point. The vast majority of those who have further children on welfare, choose to do so. Despite being unable to even support their current children, they choose to have further children.
Mitchell points out the Key Govt response is different to the US response:
Some American states attempted to deal with the same problem by introducing ‘family caps’ which limited cash assistance to a fixed number of children and no more. The results were mixed and such a move here would be met with objections about depriving additional children, especially from the Child Poverty Action Group.
So the government went with the one year exemption option.
If the parent moves into work, due to work testing, that will actually increase the family income.
Freedom of choice is what the reforms are essentially about re-balancing. True freedom of choice can’t encroach on someone else’s. Most voters are behind the reforms because they feel unfairly treated when one group is allowed to make a choice that they are denied. Why is it fair for single parents to be supported to stay at home indefinitely when most partnered parents go back to work quite quickly? It becomes especially gruelling for working mothers to then hear that putting their young children into daycare is a form of “child abuse”, an argument advanced by the opposition to reject the reforms.
Absolutely. Also most parents choose to limit their families to a size that they can afford. This was not a choice available 100 years ago, but is a choice today.
Children who spend many years on the DPB generally have much poorer outcomes. This is well-documented. To knowingly exacerbate this situation by adding more children to a workless household can’t be defended at any level. In the interests of children the government is entirely justified in trying to break this habit.
Well said Lindsay.
Related posts:
- When should work testing apply?
- “Vile” to make people work
- Work Testing and the Bill of Rights
- National’s welfare reform
March 5th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
***Despite being unable to even support their current children, they choose to have further children.***
This is true although remember some people have low future time orientation and lack the capacity to regularly use contraception. This is why I keep saying you need to make it easier for them by providing a 3 monthly birth control shot for ongoing eligibility to welfare.
http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/contraception/contraception_depo.html
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Lindsay Mitchell should oversee the welfare reforms. She will get it right.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Bob R … You will still have women and different healthcare professionals claiming the injection interferes with a woman’s natural body cycle and can result in bad health…
I still believe the only option is to make it quite clear that family tax care payments will NOT be increased for any additional children born while in receipt of benefit . Not just gor DPB but for UNemployment and sickness benefit in regards to married couples.
Further more , all family tax credits should come directly from IRD and not thru WINZ… Dealing with winz is bad enough. If they have to deal with IRD directly as well it may provide a deterrent that is needed.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
You are a DPB mother.
Your every attempt to find employment in the past has been a failure, and that was when you were young and energetic.
You are now of an age where your lack of experience seemingly means no-one will employ you.
Your DPB will soon end if you don’t have any qualifying children in your home.
So what are you going to do?
I’m not saying Lindsay Addie is wrong DPF. but your constant attempts to paint these people as nothing more than cynical fraudsters is a bit disappointing.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 12:56 pm
***Your every attempt to find employment in the past has been a failure, and that was when you were young and energetic.
***
Err if you’re young enough to have children then I would suggest you’re still “young and energetic.”
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Bob R – re-your point at 12.56.
Read RRM at 12.48 again.
He/she is talking about a mother approaching the END of her DPB qualification.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
RRM, the options to the “lady” in your question are endless (although most involve her getting off her ass – something you communists are dead against).
The revised benefit system simply removes further calving from that list.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 1:26 pm
@ Akaroa,
Cheers, I thought he was suggesting the person may then have little option but to have another child but I see I misread his/her comment.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 1:28 pm
RRM – I don’t think DPF is saying anything like ‘cynical fraud’. I think it’s more like ignorance made easy by our benefit system.
They should have bloody well done something about training or getting work experience long before then.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
RRM,
Why?
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
“Despite being unable to even support their current children, they choose to have further children.”
Where’s the compassion? it’s hard to keep a drug habit going on one set of child support payments,
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
“they choose to have more children”
Rubbish. There are lots of ways to accidentally get pregnant.
There are three clearly documented ways here.
[DPF: Of course accidents are possible. But considering some have four or five accidents to four or five different partners, I'd suggest that for most it is choice]
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Rick are you being sarcastic or are you sticking up for the DPB recipients who add further children to thier household, please clarify.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
DPF, Muzza, I had hoped that the irony would have been obvious from the cartoons in the link.
Well, I thought they were funny.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 7:41 pm
Nothing will ever get seriously done because look who are the majority recipents of the never ending DPB payments (you know a bit like a gravy train that is often referred to). Forget it people this bloody country is going broke, more and more productive are going to Australia, NZ is being left with a gene pool of useless, lazy, illiterate, uneducated, entitlement mentality, ferals. It has happened in England and now it is happening here. Good luck people I leave the country today week. Can’t wait.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
The unemployment benefit is still there if she can’t find work. But, more to the point, these reforms are about work testing, rather than cutting the DPB.
The reforms are simple: If you can work, you should.
Suggestions that people’s benefits are being cut are plainly false. The only situation in which these reforms will cut benefits is if people can work, but choose not to.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 10:14 pm
Tas is right, and understands the reforms perfectly.
They are all about “if you can work, you should”, and that is *exactly* how it should be.
To quote the Dom Post editorial of a few days ago – the politicians who introduced the welfare state here would be appalled at how it has turned out, with tens of thousands of healthy people lazing away their lives on benefits.
The welfare system was supposed to act like a trampoline. Instead, it has become a hammock.
Vote:March 5th, 2012 at 11:08 pm
David:
“Never before have women been better able to control their fertility. If she chooses to get pregnant and have the baby she will be doing so fully aware that if a part-time job is available when that baby turns one, she will be expected to accept it (along with the childcare assistance needed to do so.) The choice is ultimately hers.”
Actually contraceptive failure is common, I have had children that way despite being educated and using contraceptive I know a large number of other people who have two, is your suggestion perhaps that people who do this “choose” to get pregnant either because they don’t get an abortion?
Also I am interested in what you think of parents who don’t send their kids to public school but homeschool, often because there child can’t get a decent education in school due to learning disabilities and a system that fails to deal adequately with this problem. The assumption seems to be that when the youngest turns five the women can work because the kid is at school, public schooling is actually an option, people have the right to choose to forgo it and often do for good reasons.
Also getting state funds for educating your children is not a “option denied” everyone else. Those who use the public schools which are funded by many people who in fact homeschool and go private with no tax rebate, bludge of homeschoolers.
I am sympathetic to much of the idea of welfare reform but the naive assumption that people always choose to get pregnant or that everyone who has there youngest at age 5 can go out and work or they are bludging is simply false to reality.
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