Benefit Dependency

Now this is amusing. Last Wednesday I posted a round-up of views on the Kahui twin homicides and also posted my own (carefully considered) views on welfare dependency and suggested:

Perhaps CYPFS should not just be reactive to complaints, but be funded so it can be pro-active to identify at risk families such as this one, and intervene before it it too late? Maybe one needs agencies to share data to identify “profiles” such as over-crowded homes or more than x number of people on a benefit. People don’t like profiling, but waiting for the children to turn up dead isn’t a great alternative.

This offended Jordan who labelled my post as “dog whistle” and “To use that as a hook to swipe at the system that is used properly by most is pathetic”.

Jordan concluded by saying:

“Sure there may be a question about that family concentration. But do we want to engage in the paternalism of ‘supervising’ families with large numbers on benefits when most of those will be perfectly fine?”

So it was with amusement I read yesterday that Helen Clark announced that the Government would focus on groups of entrenched beneficiaries, or long-term beneficiaries living at the same address.

Not sure if it is a good or a bad thing that Helen Clark and I both independently suggested the same thing, but I do look forward to Jordan labelling her a benficiary basher. To be fair to Jordan he has labelled the move as potentially Orwellian.