Category: Welfare Reform
Looking forward, strengthening the welfare system to ensure the unemployed take on available jobs must be a Government priority – as must growing the economy.
The links between welfare dependence from birth and poor, if not disastrous outcomes for children, have now been well-explored by institutions like AUT and Treasury.
In the aftermath of the economic fall-out caused by the Covid-19 outbreak, the Labour Government must introduce the framework for policies which address the systemic weaknesses that have undermined our economy and society for so long, and which threaten our future.
The only effective way to reduce child poverty is to ensure parents are in work, not on welfare. Policies that make welfare attractive risk deepening the dependency trap.
A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s disadvantaged to become tomorrow’s privileged and, in the process, enables everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.
The current welfare system has failed the people of New Zealand and led to too much inequality. We need to move away from the current welfare system of tax and spend via government-owned institutions to a system based on individual choice, competition, and personal savings...
A question that is increasingly being asked these days is whether we are now heading into another ‘Dark Age’, where common sense and rational thinking are again being replaced by fanaticism and superstition. In addition, the State is becoming more pervasive and people are feeling increasingly powerless to change or improve their lives.
The only effective safeguard for ordinary people is the ability to make a free personal choice among competing suppliers whose livelihood depends on satisfying the final consumer. Dedication to that principle from 1984 onwards is what places that Labour government squarely in the established Labour tradition of putting the needs of the common people first.
New Zealanders generally support the concept of a safety net for those in genuine need. Most believe that for the able bodied, assistance should be temporary. In other words, anyone who can work, should work.
It isn't at all clear to me what this brave new world of bigger benefits with no strings attached is going to do for children. Money can't buy love. In fact unconditional money finances lifestyles that are not conducive to happy and safe childhoods.
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