What kind of
future are we focussed on anyway?

I want to speak today about welfare in New
Zealand and I want to talk about it in a political way.

Welfare is a political issue and this is obvious
when we look at the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill that encapsulates the
current National Government's thinking about the welfare of New Zealanders.

Future Focus is supposedly going to fix
unemployment, solve welfare issues and even provide moral guidance to a subset
of shiftless bludgers.

These are the nameless individuals, according to
the Prime Minister is his recent speech, who require a “kick in the pants” to
force out of bed in the morning – no doubt to another day of working to make
the people who own our economy even richer.

Mr Key may have dreamed up his quip up while
holidaying at his Hawaiian condominium, but whatever its origins that throwaway
line was put there for a purpose.

That purpose is political.

It is in the political interests of the current
Government to redirect public concern and resentment about unemployment.

Unemployment is first and foremost a political
threat to a Government.

A National Government promotes an ideological
vision of the world in which hard work and individual responsibility result in
good things happening.

The shine goes off the vision when mass
joblessness starts to make good things unobtainable to hard working,
responsible citizens who find themselves unable to gain work.

What I have observed in our society over 20
years is when unemployment is relatively low, people tend to shrug their
shoulders.

This situation occurred for a while under the
last Labour Government.

Lower unemployment wasn't much to do with their
policies in our analysis, it was just that the global economy was going through
an upswing and we happened to benefit from that.

The second situation is when unemployment rises.

The initial reaction is to start blaming the
unemployed, because in a well organized country like ours it seems difficult to
believe that the  system could have anything
wrong with it.

I think we are in this second phase at the
moment.

Phase three is when unemployment rises even
more, as it did in the late 1980s and 1990s, and you see a rapidly evolving
attitude because the reality no longer fits popular prejudice.

There seems to be a mass tipping point when
enough people are out of work and the realization dawns that the problem is not
laziness or stupidity, but a problem of political economy.

Then people turn on the Government and start to
blame them. This happened to Labour in 1990 and National in 1999.

This third phase is what every modern capitalist
Government desperately wants to avoid.

Because a National Government does not believe
in interfering with what they believe is a perfect free market economic system,
they have to sit tight and hope that the global economy temporarily picks up,
jobs appear, and that will see them right for a few years.

In the meantime, what they have to do is run
what is essentially a public relations strategy to encourage the view that not
having a job is your fault.

This requires a delicate touch. You can't be too
heavy handed or you could have the opposite effect and start making people feel
sorry for the unemployed.

The best way to do it is to suggest that there
is a certain number of malingerers out there who are going to get the kick in
the pants, but if you are a good honest upstanding citizen who doesn't have a
job there is nothing to worry about.

It's hard to say what would happen if
unemployment rose again – it could happen.

In the media we have a large number of real
estate salespeople and other experts on the global economy telling us things
are back on track.

My own view on the global recession is that we
fell half way down the cliff, woke up on a shaky ledge and dusted ourselves
down, and stepped out into space with a relieved smile on our faces.

Global Economic Crisis part 2 could now be on
its way.

If this happens, then we could see an increase
in unemployment to the levels of the early 1990s, or around what the United
States is experiencing at the moment.

Whether this would lead to a rejection of
current policies is hard to say.

We live in a society that has been thoroughly
individualized, where public debate is dominated by dumbed down commercial
media, and the attitudes of acquisitive capitalism are rampant.

This disease is not unique to New Zealand and
its symptoms have been described by the British psychologist Oliver James in
his well known book “Affluenza.”

The Alliance Party has a very different analysis
of the unemployment, welfare and social issues facing New Zealand.

To provide a context for our alternative ideas,
we need to first look at some of the people who the Prime Minister believes
require a kick in the pants.

“Growth in demand for food parcels through the
Salvation Army's network of food banks grew by almost 40% during 2009. For the
year to 30 December 2009, nearly 47,000 food parcels were provided to over
25,000 families through the Army's 48 Community Ministries centres.”

(A Road to Recovery, by Alan Johnson, Salvation
Army, February 2010, p.31)

A few weeks ago I was told by Presbyterian
Support in Dunedin that their foodbank had seen 
numbers of users rising to 430 people through the door in a month.

(Personal interview, 28 May 2010)

Dunedin has a population of approximately 100
000, that is 10% the size of Auckland, and the cost of living is lower. Housing
is cheaper but you use more electricity in winter.

Growing numbers of people are hungry and unable
to meet basic living costs.

We have a new Bunnings warehouse opening in
Dunedin in July. They have 110 new jobs going and they had so far received more
than 1700 applications by the end of last month. (Otago Daily Times, Friday 28
May 2010).

Similar situations exist in other major New
Zealand cities.

The Salvation Army noted how Countdown
supermarket advertised 150 jobs for its new store in Manukau and around 1500
applicants lined up for interviews on 21 January 2010.

(A Road to Recovery, by Alan Johnson, Salvation
Army, February 2010).

This is the obvious, visible result of the 40
000 jobs that vanished over the year to September 2009.

These pieces of information show two things.

The first is that we have severe financial
stress on a growing minority of citizens. These are people who are going under.

The second is that New Zealand does not have an
epidemic of laziness, but it does have an unemployment crisis.

The proportion of people in part-time work
increased, with the underemployed (those who would work more hours if they could)
increasing from 82,000 to 122,000 in the year to September 2009.

(A Road to Recovery, by Alan Johnson, Salvation
Army, February 2010, p.25).

This Government has no active strategy to deal
with unemployment, and is relying instead on an old religious myth called the
trickle down theory.

Trickle down involves transferring wealth from
the majority of the general population to a minority of the wealthy, who then
transfer it back down by spending it and creating jobs as golf caddies, wine
waiters and prison guards for the rest of us.

In short, the operations of the free market are
going to be left to their own devices and if that leads to a number of people
dropping off the bottom end, then that is a political problem to be politically
managed.

The Future Focus documents I have read seek to
reframe unemployment in a brisk tone by implying that an unquantified but
apparently serious number of unemployed and other beneficiaries are parasites
who must be starved into compliance.

Essentially beneath the spin it's a nineteenth
century worldview that has got loose in the 21st century.

Rather than Future Focus, I refer to it as the
Great Leap Backwards.

It is unlikely that any other group in the
population, with the exception of criminals, could be referred to in public by
the leader of the nation as deserving a kick in the pants.

But anyone used to the way that language is used
by politicians and other unelected individuals whose job is to mould public
opinion will appreciate there is an attempt to influence our view of the
unemployed, or at least some of them.

Even the previous Labour Government used this
type of aggressive language when it introduced the so-called “Jobs Jolt”.

Political language can be used to dehumanize
people, distance ourselves from reality, manipulate emotional reactions, avoid
responsibility, protect privilege, and maintain power.

That's why I avoid the term “welfare reform”,
because the word “reform” has a positive sound and my view is that the current
changes to welfare policy are negative and cynical.

Welfare is now reduced in public debate to
meaning welfare benefits, rather than the original more accurate and more
generous meaning of the wellbeing of a society or community.

A basic underpinning of the welfare of our
society is ensuring that secure jobs are available to those who can and want to
work in paid employment – the figures I provided above make it evident this is
not the case.

The current policy direction reverses this
approach and assumes that the essence of the problem is not jobs or their
availability, but an attitude problem on behalf of the jobless.

“Future Focus places an unrelenting focus on
work. Beneficiaries who have been on an UB for more than a year are at risk of
long-term welfare dependency and more needs to be done to connect them to the
labour market.”

(Unemployment benefit, Future Focus Factsheet,
Ministry of Social Development, 2010)

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions made the
reasonable observation that “ . . . the problem is not that people do not want to
work. The problem is that there is a lack of jobs.”

“When there are enough jobs, then benefit
numbers will fall as they did from 2004 to 2007. For instance in 1999 there
were over 161,000 people receiving unemployment benefit. By 2008, this had
fallen below 18,000.”

“This did not come about because of major
changes in the attitudes of unemployed people towards work in that period. And
neither were there more stringent tests applied to qualifying for an
unemployment benefit.”

(New Zealand Council of Trade Unions submission
on the Social Security (Future Focus) Bill, May 2010, p3).

To give a historical perspective, in the post
war period in New Zealand,

In 1950, the average annual registered
unemployed in New Zealand was 38.

In 1955, the figure was 56.

In 1960, 
the figure was 633.

In 1964, the figure was 650.

(W. B. Sutch, the Quest for Security in New
Zealand, OUP, 1966, p.440)

Obviously there were a number of factors in
play. New Zealand benefited from good trading conditions.

However there was also a commitment to full
employment and reinforcing policies that worked to provide social stability and
economic productivity.

In such a situation, welfare dependancy –
another political term that subtly shifts responsibility onto the victims of
economic insecurity – was not a problem.

The amazing thing is how these achievements are
frequently dismissed and mocked in supposedly sophisticated contemporary New
Zealand, probably because they provide an embarrassing contrast to the slowly
unfolding social disaster of the last two decades.

When my father first immigrated to New Zealand
in the 1960s, he said if you didn't like a job you could just leave and walk
down the road and knock on the door and get another one.

This may not have been an ideal situation for
employers, but look at the situation we now face.

In January 1993 the late Bruce Jesson wrote in
Metro magazine about his experiences occasionally visiting a downtown pub in
Auckland during the day, and the human misery and waste he encountered.

He was a scathing critic of the moralistic
response to unemployment and welfare dependancy.

He saw this as a way for both individuals and
Government's to pass the blame for unemployment onto its victims.

“The Welfare State has existed in New Zealand
for more than half a century. For most of this time there was no problem of
dependance and poverty. Indeed, social spending fell as a proportion of GDP in
the 1960s. It is only since the appearance of mass unemployment that a large
section of New Zealanders have become dependent on the State. It was only
during the 1980s that these people sank into a condition of hopelessness.”

Jesson summed it up when he said the
hopelessness could be gradually overcome by policies aimed at security,
stability and the creation of worthwhile jobs rather than leaving things to the
market.

“A hard core might remain, but theirs would be
personal tragedies, not social ones.”

(Jesson, To Build A Nation, p.275)

I would add that I do not believe that a large
section of New Zealand's population ever recovered from the effects of the free
market policies of the period in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

We are in a very bad position to face the
effects of rising unemployment because so many of the people affected have nothing
in the way of savings, and live with families and in communities that struggle
at the best of times.

My own family experienced unemployment during
the 1980s. My father lost his job and moved through a series of short lived
jobs and periods without work. There were nervous moments when restructuring
came to the Government department where my mother worked.

I spent several years drifting in and out of
short term jobs in different cities in the late 1990s, which was probably a
common experience in the times for young people.

I spent two years on the dole in total, although
for some of this time I worked and studied part time.

What that experience did leave with me is a
permanent niggling sense of insecurity and a strong political commitment.

The “relentless focus on work” suggested by the
National Government implies that any paid work is good.

Yet many jobs in our society are boring,
dangerous and unhealthy, and it is these jobs that are usually badly paid.

In his book “The Culture of Contentment” the
Canadian born economist J.K. Galbraith wrote about how modern capitalist
society depends on a large minority of working poor to fill the dead end
occupations that nonetheless are vital for the function of society.

“There is no greater modern illusion, even
fraud, than the use of the single term work to cover what for some is . . .
dreary, painful or socially demeaning and what for others is enjoyable,
socially reputable and economically rewarding.”

Professor Galbraith writes “the poor in our
economy are needed to do the work that the more fortunate do not do and would
find manifestly distasteful, even distressing. A continuing supply and resupply
of such workers is always needed.”

(J.K. Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment,
p.33)

The brute fact of the matter is that a modern
free market capitalist economy is unstable and unemployment is an ongoing
feature of it.

Businesses themselves are operated in a
ruthlessly logical, planned and structured way, but the economy which they
operate in is now a deregulated and anarchic one.

One of the interesting factors impacting on unemployment is
how the accelerating deployment of advanced technologies combined with the
profit maximizing methods of the modern corporation is influencing what has
been charmingly called the “jobless recovery.”

The
US technologist and entrepreneur Marshall Brain in his essay Robotic Nation has
suggested that the rapid growth in automation technology in the economy over
the next two decades could create mass unemployment.

(http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm)

These
converging and accelerating technologies will disrupt the world of work and the
concerning possibility is that the impacts will be felt most heavily in the low
skill service sector which makes up an increasing sector of our economy.

Brain, who is an adamant supporter of the capitalist system,  predicts an economic problem of lack of
demand from the displaced and jobless workers, and the social problem of their
lack of employment, as posing a serious threat to the system.

We have to ask ourselves, how did we get here?

The relentless focus on work from the National
Party and its coalition allies has a number of 
contradictions.

The first contradiction is that some of the most
respected and powerful people in our society do not work for a living.

They live off investments or rent, and any work
they do is by choice.

This used to be called usury in the Middle Ages,
but today it is described as being “financially independent” by the best
selling authors of airport self improvement books.

There is another contradiction in that we are
living in a society where there is massive technological advances, yet the
working class who are still in work are working longer and harder and more
unsocial hours.

Yet another contradiction in that while some
have too much work, others have too little.

Employment is becoming more and more “flexible”
to use the Human Resources term, which means in practice that workers fit in
with the demands of employers because they don't have a real choice.

Despite these contradictions, the roots of the
ideology behind “Future Focus” go back centuries in our society. They are
nothing new.

In 1922 the British historian R. H. Tawney
explained the evolution of a puritan mindset in Europe during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries which equated work with moral worth.

This led to a radical change in traditional
Christian views of poverty and wealth.

This developing Protestant work ethic “saw in
misfortune . . . the punishment for sin” and this attitude is a popular one
today.

It is interesting to note that the promotion of
public private partnerships in dealing with welfare are not a new idea either.

In 1649, faced with growing pauperism, the
English Parliament passed an Act for the employment of the poor and the
punishment of beggars.

“A company was to be established with power to
apprehend vagrants, to offer them the choice between work and whipping, and set
to compulsory labour all other poor persons, including children without means
of maintainance.”

(Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, R.H
Tawney, Mentor, 1963, p220)

Respectable citizens railed against the “luxury,
pride and sloth” of English wage earners in the seventeenth and eighteenth
century.

High wages were seen as a misfortune as they
simply led to weekly debauchery, and Arthur Young, writing in 1771, summed
things up by writing that “everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes
must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.”

Although it is not stated in such refreshingly
honest terms, that seems to be a theory that is still alive and well in the 21st
century.

However, starting in the last half of the
nineteenth century, there was a new drive for security and dignity based around
the mobilization of working people in trades unions and reforming and socialist
political movements.

This was certainly not an easy road nor a
straight one, but the extension of the vote, the establishment of public health
and education, and the regulation of employment were all part of the move to a
more humane, civilized and advanced society.

Since the 1980s there has been a concerted
political and economic attack on the basis of the welfare state and the
democratic socialist politics that created it.

This attack has been driven by the interests of
business or capital, and their political representatives, but the support for
this counter-revolution is quite wide within the general public.

If you listen to the debate on talkback radio,
you will find real and uncensored opinions about unemployment.

If you prefer a more gentle dialogue, you could
check out the comments posted on the New Zealand Herald's website in response
to the announcement of “Future Focus.”

A comment from someone calling themselves
“Average Maori bro” of  Glenfield on 24
March 2010 was disappointed that the Government “really does not go far enough
. . . What is stopping a beneficiary from having another kid when the one they
already have turns six. There must be a limit as to how many kids the
government will pay for. Its the right thing environmentally. Payouts should
not be in money, but healthy non-junk food provided and a tent on camping
ground.”

Another contributor, Glenn Anthony, claimed it
is “About time someone has spoken up and said enough is enough. Why should I and
everyone else work their guts off just for someone to recieve money for
nothing? And I don't care if you say "I have paid taxes I am entitled to
it". It is money in the economy that could be better spent elsewhere in
the economy like tax cuts for instance. Something that gives people an
incentive to work hard contribute to the economy and grow it. Abolish benefits
I say.”

“Rossnz” of Hamilton thought that “Getting on a
benefit and staying on it is a lifestyle choice. It often follows a choice of
playing truant from school. Uneducated lazy deadbeats will find it hard to get
employment.”

“N.S.” of Auckland City joined the New Zealand
Herald debate with the contribution:

“Too right these lazy buggers should be made to
get off their butts. Yes, there are people out there that need the help, but
there are more that are sitting there laughing. GO Paula! Take lead for the
govt, show em what BIG balls are all about.”

So there is now a fixed caricature of the
unemployed person – shiftless, lazy, requiring discipline at the very least and
even punishment.

These people are of course the target market for
National. They vote.

Beneath all the civilized veneer of polished
professional politicians, this is the mindset our current Government are
appealing to and encouraging.

Interestingly enough, unemployed people often
take part in these comments on news blogs and talkback as well.

They often agree with the Prime Minister because
just like him, they see themselves as the “good unemployed” people as opposed
to the “bad unemployed.”

Of course in reality people rarely fit into one
neat category or other.

The fact is that the search for work or simply
living on a benefit is hard and can affect people in different ways, especially
as time goes on.

Issues can range from social stigma,
relationship problems, shortage of money for essentials, all the way through to
mental and physical illness.

Because unemployment disproportionately affects
the most vulnerable people in society these problems are magnified.

“Distribution of the unemployment burden is
especially skewed towards younger age groups . . . youth unemployment, has in
fact risen quite alarmingly, from just under 16% in September 2008 to over 25%
in September 2009.”

(Salvation Army, “A Road to Recovery”, page 25)

In short, we have a problem with providing paid
work for those who need it and want it.

This makes it all the more staggering that the
focus of current policy is on forcing those with other commitments of unpaid
work into the job market when it is quite possible this may have harmful
outcomes.

There is no doubt that unpaid work makes the
world go around.

Parenting is the most important unpaid role for
many people, but unpaid work also involves caring for relatives and friends,
voluntary or community work, or the myriad activities people take part in which
provide the glue for society.

That's unfortunate for us because we live in a
society where unpaid work is devalued and the current direction of Government
policy seems to be pushing us further down that track.

Traditional household responsibilities are often
shared, but in many cases this unpaid work is falling heavily onto women, on
top of their new role as paid workers.

It is now the norm because a family in most
parts of New Zealand would find it difficult if not impossible to survive on
one low to middle income wage.

The effect on sole parents is obvious.

Not only facing the extra burdens of their
status that are imposed financially, socially and psychologically, the goal now
seems to be to make life harder on this group.

Work testing for domestic purposes beneficiaries
with a youngest child who is aged 6 years or older has been advocated on the
basis that requiring sole parents to work will facilitate independence from the
benefit system.

The potential for bad results has been pointed
out by a number of agencies, including Presbyterian Support who observed that
an “unrelenting focus on work in this context is also a compulsion upon solo
parents to disinvest in their role as parents to put time, energy and skills
into raising their children.”

(Presbyterian Support submission to Select
committee on Future Focus Bill, 2010, page 3)

Presbyterian Support Otago CEO Gillian Bremner
spelled it out in even clearer terms.

“For some people, particularly solo mothers,
getting food on the table and their children out the door to school and all the
normal household chores is as much as they can manage. If we are real about
good parenting, these people should just be allowed to get on with it.”

(Personal interview, 28 May, 2010)

The
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions have pointed out the practical difficulties
for solo parents pushed into paid work.

“For many
domestic purpose beneficiaries it will be difficult to get part time work that
is compatible with child care responsibilities. When the cost of working is
accounted with travel and clothing costs, some beneficiaries may be in a worse
financial situation than they would have been than on the benefit and will
experience increased hardship and financial pressure.”

The Council of Trade Unions
described the Future Focus policy as inappropriate and misguided on “the basis
of the evidence that shows that domestic purposes beneficiaries will find jobs
(if they are available) and that other work looking after children and
community involvement or retraining and education are not considered valuable
and strong contributions.”

(NZCTU submission to Select
Committee on Future Focus Bill, 2010, p.3)

Another serious issue is
childcare, with many workers put in a difficult position with unsympathetic
employers and low wages.

The simple problem of a
solo parent who has to knock off work and who has to travel perhaps long
distances by public transport to collect a sick child from school is a
straightforward example of the kind of problem that will arise.

This situation would
possibly be easier for a middle class or wealthy family to manage, which once
again leaves the impression that these policies are intended to punish a
certain sector of society.

The expense of childcare
and its availability are also pressing issues, but ones that the Government
seems happy to leave to market forces to solve – in other words, to leave to
chance.

This does not even take
into account the debate about whether childcare for young children has good
outcomes compared to parental care.

The NZCTU also warns of the
dangers of pushing single parents to balance care for children up to the age of
16 with paid work.

“There could be severe social consequences from effectively forcing sole parents
into work. There is no point in criticising the antisocial behavior of those
young people with insufficient parental guidance, if there have been deliberate
policies to undermine the ability of sole parents to provide such guidance.”
(NZCTU submission to Select Committee on Future Focus Bill, 2010, p.3)

The most disturbing aspect of New Zealand
society today is how many children are treated.

The most obvious moral rule in our society that
reasonable people would adhere to is that children are not responsible for the
actions of their parents.

Even those who hold the belief that
beneficiaries themselves are to be left to fend for themselves, would hesitate
to visit the real or imagined sins of the parent on the children.

Thus it is reassuring to read in the words of
the Ministry of Social Development that even when beneficiaries parents “fail
to comply with their obligations” and have their benefits stopped, there will
“continue to be a safety net for sole parents and couples with dependent
children.”

“These
groups will always keep 50 per cent of their benefit and all of their
supplementary assistance. This avoids undue hardship for children whose parents
fail to comply with their obligations.” (Sanctions, Future Focus Fact Sheet,
Ministry of Social Development, 2010.)

This
enlightened approach will ensure that at least one of two children in such
beneficiary families will continue to be fed, or alternately both will continue
to receive 50% of their meals and accommodation.

These contradictions exist because welfare
policies are often not based on what works, what is fair or what is morally
right. These considerations influence things but don't drive the process.

Welfare policies are based on the sentiments of
voters, the self-preservation of Governments and the reinforcing dominant
ideology of global capitalism.

The contradiction in our society is that while
politicians bleat about family values, our economy is now thoroughly set up to
undermine family and community relationships.

“Over the past 30 years, rising living costs have placed
additional financial pressures on families. More families have moved to urban
areas for work and education. The average number of paid working hours per
family has increased, and family break-ups have become more common. These
trends, common across many OECD countries, have meant many young families live
away from their extended family, and more parents are on their own when raising
children. In many instances, the wider family support network has become
weaker.

In New Zealand, these trends have
placed pressure on vulnerable groups.”

(The Best Start in Life: Achieving
effective action on child health and wellbeing, A report to the Minister of
Health, Public Health Advisory Committee, June 2010, p5).

We live in a 24 hour, 7 day society. Economic
pressures compel two income families with shrinking time to develop these all
important relationships.

Our hours spent working are increasing and
becoming more fragmented and invasive. Shift work and irregular hours have become
common.

For many white collar workers, the computer and
the mobile phone have ensure that work invades even the remaining private time
in people's lives.

In another example, I have spoken to many casual
waterfront workers, who are members of my own Union the Maritime Union of New
Zealand. They wait everyday for a phone call to advise them whether they have
work or not. The effect this has on basic items like mortgages or rent, the
most simple essentials, and planning for the future, is enormous.

On the other side, as the basics of life such as
healthy food and housing become increasingly expensive, we have a powerful and
intrusive advertising industry constantly bombarding people around the clock
with the message that happiness and fulfillment comes through buying things.

Children are manipulated into consumerism at a
very early age, and the peer pressure surrounding  status symbols and material goods create
further pressures on family life and finances.

The traditional rhythms of family and community
are disrupted and what do we have in return?

We have a society where you can go into a big
shed at any time of day or night and buy some plastic junk made overseas, sold
to you by a worker behind the counter whom is paid enough just to survive week
by week.

To this mix add a growing number of
beneficiaries and others who are struggling to make ends meet and in some cases
getting by day to day. Consider the social and psychological impact.

Lana Morrison, team leader at Presbyterian
Support's welfare team in Dunedin, told me many of the people she dealt at the
foodbank with were strongly affected by negative emotions of powerlessness,
stress and anger, which combined with their desire to provide for their
families, led to mixed up behaviour.

And then we wonder why things are going wrong.

One growth industry in this country is prisons.
We use shipping containers to imprison people now. The irony of this for the
seafarers and wharfies in my Union is that we have barely any New Zealand ships
left working on our own coast. You can't get a job moving containers between
our ports, but you can get a job guarding prisoners inside them.

But this is also a society where the wealth
accumulated by the richer section of society is growing.

And that is why we will continue on this path –
because it is benefiting some people a great deal.

That is where the political dimension comes in.

Welfare is not just a technical issue. It is a
human issue that goes to the very heart of how we live our lives in a
community.

Since the rise of the neoliberal or “New Right”
political and economic orthodoxy in the last thirty years, there has been a
sustained assault on the basic structures of the welfare state.

In practical terms this has meant the rollback
of the social achievements of the organized working class over the last
century.

There has been a cramping of the meaning of
welfare.

We have seen a move away from welfare as
referring to an integrated set of policies to ensure social stability and
wellbeing.

The assumption is now that an unregulated free
market left to its own devices provides the best outcomes, and any negative
outcomes are due to individuals bad choices within that perfect system.

Canadian author John Ralston Saul notes how the
neoliberal ideology sees “the underclass [as] products of the disincentive
effects of welfare, not of the free market” while describing how the
international trend of an accelerating rich–poor divide has taken on
“particularly dramatic proportions in New Zealand.”

(The Collapse of Globalism and the reinvention
of the world, John Ralston Saul, Penguin 2009, p.211).

Social problems are reduced to individual
problems. Individuals are responsible for their own lives. A simple and
convenient outlook. But this viewpoint is made nonsense in a world of complex
and shifting relationships and power.

Individualism has resulted in mass powerlessness
for the majority.

The operations of a deregulated free market
economy do not guarantee security or livable incomes for all.

Attempts to separate social policy from economic
policy are doomed to fail.

A minimal, “safety net” welfare state without a
managed economy and full employment is a recipe for the creation of a people
who we give the damning label of underclass.

Rather than to do something about the causes, it
is easier, cheaper and more convenient to harass, marginalize and eventually
imprison or write off such people.

A welfare state will operate successfully when
it is part of a democratically engaged society, an egalitarian society, and a
responsible society.

Professor Richard Wilkinson and Professor Kate
Pickett recognize this in their best selling work “The Spirit Level: Why
equality is better for everyone.”

“Attempts to deal with health and social
problems through the provision of specialized services have proved expensive
and, at best, only partially effective . . . the only thing that many of these
policies do have in common is that they often seem to be based on the belief
that the poor need to be taught to be more sensible. The glaringly obvious fact
that these problems have common roots in inequality and relative deprivation
disappears from view.”

(R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, the Spirit Level,
Penguin, 2010, p238.)

The simple problem is that the inequality of our
society is producing social breakdown, and if we are to really focus on the
future we must address the inequality that blights the lives of many New
Zealanders, and most outrageously, New Zealand children.

“Important
influences on child health, such as income levels, good-quality housing and
access to services, are inequitably distributed across New Zealand families,
giving different groups of children in New Zealand an uneven start. These
inequities in access lead to systemic inequalities in health. Inequities often
compound each other and tend to be intergenerational.

One
of the largest determinants of health is income. Financial hardship limits
access to important resources needed for good health, places stress on families
and is linked with an increased risk of child abuse and neglect. In all
countries, socioeconomic differences are linked with differences in health
outcomes for children. Differences in child wellbeing are more extreme in
societies with greater income inequality and a higher percentage of children living
in poverty.”

(The
Best Start in Life: Achieving effective action on child health and wellbeing, A
report to the Minister of Health, Public Health Advisory Committee, June 2010,
p5).

Reading such statements gives the impression
that our society is devolving socially. It is going backwards.

The progress of the twentieth century provided
many advances for the mass of people in the developed world.

This was based around the extension of
democracy, a spirit of collective responsibility, the public good and positive
freedoms that gave, or at least acknowledged, the right of all citizens to
health, education and security, and from this bedrock to be able to fulfil
their potential as best they saw fit.

These goals conflict with the neoliberal agenda
of the National Party that seeks to muzzle democracy with the operations of the
marketplace, in other words the power of money, and celebrate inequality and
insecurity as the motivating force of our economic life.

These contrast with the goals of a democratic
socialist party such as the Alliance which advocates a collective approach, an
ethic of solidarity, an engaged citizenry, and a plan to directly deal with
poverty and inequality rather than attempting to glue together the fragments of
a broken society.

The rebuilding of a welfare state for the 21st
century is a key goal for the Alliance Party.

The Alliance sees the welfare state as a
positive, empowering development.

We see the current problems experienced with the
welfare system as an inevitable result of the failures of a deregulated society
based on free market ideology.

Welfare must be based on an interlinking set of
policies that cover all aspects of our basic economic and social needs.

I will summarize these as:

• Full employment

• Health care

• Education

• Housing

• Support for those unable to work, and greater
acknowledgement for unpaid work

These are the concrete goals but they must be
accompanied by a people who have once again engaged with the democratic process
in an active way, as opposed to the disconnected, alienated and disenfranchised
population of New Zealand today.

Specifically these are some of the ways to move
towards those goals.

• Active and direct state intervention in the
economy to ensure full employment, including regional development and public
works programmes.

In answer to those of claim that this is
inefficient, we reply that there is nothing more inefficient that having tens
of thousands of workers on the dole in unproductive misery.

Along with this policy there would be an
acknowledgement that the primary cause of unemployment in our society is the
chaos and instability of an unregulated capitalist economy, so the punishment
attitude towards the unemployed would be removed.

• A
move to a 35-hour working week with no loss of pay and introduction of 5 weeks
annual leave would reduce the stresses on overworked modern families while
providing work opportunities for the unemployed.

• A
minimum wage of $17 an hour, and agreement with the UNITE Union campaign for a
living wage that seeks a phased increase in the minimum wage to 66% of the
average total hourly earnings as defined in the Quarterly Employment Survey.

•
Resetting benefit levels at the current day equivalent of pre–1991 benefit cut
levels.

•
Extend paid parental leave so that workers who become primary caregivers get 12
months paid parental leave and introduce free childcare and after-school care.

•
Protections for casual and part-time workers and requiring employers who
receive public contracts to deliver services to meet national standards in pay
and conditions.

• All
workers entitled to a minimum redundancy payment of 4 weeks, plus 2 weeks for
every year of service.

•
Collective bargaining to move from multi-employer and multi-union agreements to
national pay and conditions across industries and occupations.

• The
right to strike to enforce their Collective Agreement, to oppose lay-offs, to
support other workers and for political reasons.

•
Workers should have a say in the way work is organised. The Alliance will push
for stronger employment legislation to ensure greater workplace democracy.

• The availability of affordable, high quality
housing, and a substantial increase in the building of state housing.

• Free education to tertiary level and the abolition
of student loans.

• Increased funding for the public health
system.

Such policies would require substantial funding,
and as such the Alliance has fully costed them and made them available.

We advocate the redistribution of wealth through
a progressive taxation system and the public ownership of strategic areas of
the economy to provide stability and equality.

A vital part of any welfare state is
the use of progressive taxation to fund high quality public services in health,
education, infrastructure and welfare.

There
has been increasing inequality made worse by changes in the tax system which
has become more regressive, that is, placing greater burden on those least able
to pay.

The
Alliance support a progressive taxation system which changes the structure of
income tax and completely changes the structure of indirect taxation.

Under
progressive taxation people on high incomes pay more while those on low incomes
pay less, and this of course applies to beneficiaries as well.

GST
hits those on low or fixed incomes the hardest and the Alliance advocates
phasing out GST, starting with GST on food.

Introduction
of financial transactions tax (FTT) and a capital gains tax that excludes the
family home are the two main taxes that we would introduce, which would pay for
the removal of GST.

These
taxes have the added benefit of reducing the speculative activity in the
economy that has negative effects on low to middle income earners.

In
one sense it is not surprising that the “marketing speak” brand that the
Government have chosen for their social welfare package is “Future Focus”

They
no doubt want to focus on the future because if people referred back to the
lessons of history, even the last twenty or thirty years, we would not want to
continue in the direction we are going.

It is
a landscape littered with lost opportunities, real suffering and the ongoing
deprivation of many decent New Zealanders.

The
main objection to our policies will be from those who say more equality will
somehow drive away the brilliant and talented, as if brilliant and talented
people only care about money.

The
best short answer to this is in the conclusion of “The Spirit Level”, where the
authors write:

“Nor
should we allow ourselves to be cowed by the idea that higher taxes on the rich
will lead to their mass emigration and economic catastrophe. We know that more
egalitarian countries live well, with high living standards and much better
social environments . . . Nor should we allow ourselves to believe that the
rich are scarce and precious members of a superior race of more intelligent
beings on whom the rest of us are dependent. That is merely the illusion that
wealth and power create.”

(R.
Wilkinson and K. Pickett, the Spirit Level, Penguin, 2010, p269)

To
create a society in which the welfare of all citizens comes first will take
some effort and will take some time, and we will probably never get to the
final destination.

The
answer from our leaders is to suggest there are people who need a kick in the
pants.

But
what we are really doing is putting the boot in when they are already down.

We
cannot and will not achieve a better society by continuing on the road we are
on. We have to change direction.

What we need is a helping hand for those who are struggling, and an equal, secure
and democratic society in which all people are included.

ENDS