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4
November 2007
Taxpayer
Funded Activism
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 In
the wake of last month’s Police raids, Tuhoe activists have
asked to be left alone to
establish an independent Tuhoe nation. They say that they will
take up arms to defend their right to live as they please, as
a country within a country.
In
a revealing interview for TVNZ’s Sunday programme, Tuhoe
spokesman Tamati Kruger answered the question “Are you a New
Zealander?” with “No, a Tuhoe”. He went on to say, “It
is the duty of every Patriot to defend their beliefs and their
culture. It is the duty of the oppressed to rise up and break
the chains of distress and despair. Our priority is to
maintain for those generations to come the right to be Tuhoe.
Tuhoe have a tradition of clashing with the Crown. This will
continue until the Crown recognises that Tuhoe want self
rule”.
When
asked if there is a Tuhoe army, he stated, “There are many
Tuhoe women, children and men that would rise up very quickly
to defend their culture, their beliefs, their ideology and
their philosophies”. He drew analogies between the battles
of Tuhoe and the struggles in Ireland and indicated that they
would be prepared to use violence to achieve their goal of
establishing a nation within a nation.
When
asked directly by the interviewer, “If we don’t find a
political solution could it go violent?” the spokesman
answered, “That can never be discounted by us”. Certainly
television footage of children as young as ten being trained
to use guns (the legal age is 16) indicates a commitment by
tribal leaders to ready the whole community for violent
action. (To listen to view interview, click
here >>>)
While
they are supported in their quest for sovereignty by the Green
Party, the real source of political power comes from the
race-based Maori seats. The Maori Party, which holds four of
the Maori seats, is committed to fanning the separatist flames
within Maoridom in its drive to win all seven Maori seats at
the next election. Their continued advocacy for preferential
treatment for Maori does nothing to heal the racial divide,
nor enable young New Zealanders to see a future where all
Kiwis are treated as equals.
What’s
more, it is scandalous that funding for the quest for self
determination by Maori activists comes courtesy of taxpayers.
As a government Minister said last week:
“We
have groups calling for separate nations within our nation and
prepared to use guns and violence. What is most obscene about
this is that these same people, who want their separate
nation, want us the taxpayer to pay for it”.
Winston
Peters went on to say: “This is where the system is failing
– taxpayer sponsored militant separatism. These groups want
separate development – but your money to fund it. Rejecting
all our values except collecting the dole each fortnight.”
(To read the Speech, click
here >>>)
Most
New Zealanders – including most Maori – find this
situation abhorrent. The
Prime Minister knows exactly what is going on yet has done
nothing to sort it out.
In fact, under Labour, it is now far easier to become a career
beneficiary and rip off the welfare system – and the
taxpayer. Someone can now live in an isolated area where there
are no jobs and receive welfare support for doing so. In times
gone by our welfare system prevented this by requiring those
who lived in areas without jobs and who wanted welfare
support, to either relocate to a place where jobs were
available, or declare themselves voluntarily unemployed.
These
days, someone can stay on a benefit in the long term by either
refusing to take any jobs that are offered, or by making sure
that they are not suitable. If they pretend to be an artist,
they can get paid the artists’ dole indefinitely. If they
are sick of their job and want to spend some time at home,
instead of having to face a stand-down period, they can quit
work one day and go on the dole the next. It is now far easier
to go from the dole to the non-work-tested Sickness and
Invalid Benefits. For teenage girls, the Domestic Purposes
Benefit is a viable career choice. And if someone is on
welfare and working for cash, the chances of getting caught
are minimal.
In
spite of more than a decade of economic growth and a critical
shortage of workers, according to the Ministry of Social
Development there are still more than a quarter of a million
working aged people receiving welfare. Many of them are career
beneficiaries.
Of
the 263,000 beneficiaries, almost 100,000 are women on the
DPB. Many have been on the benefit for years, making sure they
continue to qualify by having a stream of children to
different fathers. These are women who have no intention of
ever getting a job. They should be ashamed of the detrimental
affects that this lifestyle is having on their children. The
Labour Government should stand accused of allowing it to
happen: together, the government and these career baby
producers have put their own interests ahead of what’s best
for the children.
In
the USA, when they woke up to how career welfare mothers were
blighting the lives of their children in order stay on
benefits, the Government changed the system. Their welfare
reform programme, signed into law in 1996 by Democratic
President Bill Clinton, aimed to ‘abolish welfare as we know
it’. The key intent was to get welfare mothers off benefits
and into mainstream life. They required sole parent
beneficiaries to undertake work, training or community service
activities for a minimum of 30 hours a week. In order to
create a sense of urgency, they introduced time limits of two
years for the continuous receipt of welfare and five years
over a lifetime. They also paid the benefit at a set rate
irrespective of the number of children, to discourage women
from having more children just to make more money.
Essentially
these reforms replaced their equivalent of our Domestic
Purposes Benefit, which provides open-ended income support,
with a programme which gave temporary assistance conditional
on work. A life-raft of support services such as child care,
transport help, relocation assistance and financial planning
advice, were also provided. The single purpose of these
benefits was to remove the barriers to employment and ease
these beneficiaries into jobs.
The
results were remarkable. The welfare caseload fell by 60% from
5 million to 2 million families as welfare mothers found work.
The biggest improvement by far was among women who had never
been married. Overall, by 2002 the poverty rate amongst black
children and sole parents fell to their lowest levels in US
history, with 2.6 million fewer adults and 2.8 million fewer
children living in poverty than six years earlier.
This
week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is Dr Lawrence Mead,
Professor of Politics at New York University. In his article
“Why Welfare Reform Succeeded” he says:
“Welfare reform
was a triumph, not just for social policy, but for American
government. Seldom has a major social reform been instituted
so successfully. This was a credit to elected leaders and
administrators at all levels. In the 1960s and 1970s, when
welfare first became a national issue, how to reform it was
deeply divisive. Liberals and Democrats wanted to liberalize
benefits and coverage, while Republicans resisted. In turn,
conservatives demanded work requirements, and liberals
resisted. The impasse prevented all fundamental change. But
over time, these passions cooled. Welfare reform came to be
treated more practically, as a problem to be solved. A
concordat emerged where liberals abandoned entitlement, the
idea that aid should be given based on need without demanding
work, while conservatives abandoned downsizing government.
Rather, both sides focused on promoting work”. To read the
article click here >>>
Professor
Mead makes the point that while there is still work to be done
welfare reform has fundamentally transformed the way that
assistance is provided to single parents, linking it firmly to
work and contribution. As a result, there is no desire to
re-introduce the unconditional benefit entitlements that had
proved to be so damaging to women and their children.
If
these types of reforms were introduced into New Zealand, the
effect on career beneficiaries and their children - as well as
on the wider economy - would be profound.
To
the government we need to question whether the career
activists and career beneficiaries of Tuhoe should be funded
by those they protest against. Surely this is a greater
scandal than sensationalised accusations of mistreatment by
Police.
This
week's poll asks: Should taxpayers fund career beneficiaries who are able to work but
choose not to? Go
to Poll >>>
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would like to comment on this issue please click
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