More on the WWG report

It seems that the Government is readying itself to head down the path of reform of the welfare system. Both major dailies lead with the story this morning.

First-up, this from the Herald:

The Government is likely to press ahead with further welfare reform aimed at reducing long-term welfare dependency which has become entrenched in as many as four generations in some families, says Prime Minister John Key.

An initial report by the Government's working group on welfare dependency, released yesterday, described NZ's benefit system system as outdated, financially unsustainable and lacking incentives to get beneficiaries back into the workforce.

The Government has already moved on the issue with its Future Focus Bill, under which recipients of the domestic purposes benefit (DPB) will lose half of it if they twice refuse work within a month of their youngest child turning 6. It is set to become law next week.

And while the welfare working group has yet to make any recommendations to address the problems it identified, Mr Key said that when it did, the Government was likely to pick up at least some of them.

"In some parts of New Zealand you are seeing intergenerational welfare dependency that's taking place not just over one or two generations but often now into third and potentially a fourth generation and I think that is of great concern to those communities and those individual New Zealanders.

We live and operate a business in a community where there is significant welfare dependancy, and where there is a general apathy towards getting off welfare. When we moved here over 20 years ago, we remember being told by a colleague at the local hospital that Wanganui had, at that time, the highest per capita rate of teen pregnancies in New Zealand. Whether that's still the case, we don't know. But we DO know that there is a large body of people in this city who depend on the state for income, and that many of them have no wish for that situation to change.

And over at the Dom-Post, Tracy Watkins suggests that the Government is gearing up for change; and that Labour is gearing up as well:

Is John Key's Government at a junction? Two reports in the space of a week tackling two pillars of the welfare system – state houses and benefits – suggest it is preparing for a gear change.

Read them alongside industrial relations changes that have pitched the Government into battle with the unions, and that threaten to go beyond the comfort zone of middle New Zealand, and it is no wonder Labour leader Phil Goff is acting like a man who has just spotted a liferaft.

That, of course is the dilemma for National. Significant welfare reform will be hugely unpopular with a significant chunk of the electorate, and the opposition and sundry "community activists" and do-gooders will rant and rave in the media. This will be painted as an attack on New Zealand's poorest and most vulnerable. Already the WWG is being accused of "manufacturing a crisis" in order to support John Key's "beneficiary-bashing agenda". Do you get the picture?

In our opinion, it's anything but an attack on the vulnerable. Yes, every government has an absolute responsibility to protect its citizens, but that relationship has to go both ways. Those who receive support from the state ought to have some obligation to return that support. Clearly, many beneficiaries don't see it that way; welfare is a right in their eyes.

That mindset has to change. The challenge for the government is to make the welfare system sustainable, not just in the immediate future, but long-term. The key to that is to get people off benefits and into paid employment where they become contributors to our future prosperity.

How to do that? Sheesh; that's another matter altogether!

UPDATE: Lindsay Mitchell notes that the media distortions have already started, and that facts are going at the window at the expense of ratings ... we didn't see THAT coming!!