If some of this week's protesters didn't pay much attention to the facts, nor do many politicians. Photo / George Heard
OPINION:
On the face of it, Brian Tamaki's modestly attended march on Parliament had a clear message: "Government Must Go", declared the professionally produced banner at the front of the mob.
A little further investigation revealed many of those walking down Lambton Quay had no idea why they were there. Tamaki's new movement, it seems, is all brand and no substance.
Tamaki's idea is to attract those who worry about a range of unrelated issues, from chemtrails and 1080, to the climate-change hoax and vaccine fraud, to the imminent Rapture and near-universally practised sexual deviancies, to a wide range of conspiracies involving the unctuous annual chin-wag in Davos that calls itself the World Economic Forum.
He does not invite his supporters to examine his actual agenda too closely. It's all about the vibe.
Most likely, Tamaki's rhetoric about merging such disparate groups will prove detached from any plausible future event. He can probably remain a figure of fun.
More worrying is that the same detachment from reality is appearing in what more important political leaders have to say, including Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon, and how their utterances are reported in some daily media.
Two weeks ago, Luxon announced his "new approach" to getting under-25s at risk of long-term welfare dependency into work.
Job coaches from community groups would help under-25s on the Jobseeker benefit for more than three months to put together agreed plans to find jobs. Those plans might include finding and enrolling in training courses, and learning how to apply and present well at an interview.
Those under-25s who are unemployed for more than 12 months but then find and hold a job for a year would get a $1000 cash payment from taxpayers.
But Luxon also said those who "blatantly" refused to co-operate with a jobs coach, or failed to turn up to agreed courses or apply for agreed jobs, would have their Jobseeker benefit cut.
Labour and its surrogates — aided and abetted by the remaining Jacindamaniacs in the daily media — initially attacked the idea as monstrous. Then they said it was existing policy anyway.
Most controversial was Luxon confirming that his policy would include under-25 Jobseeker beneficiaries with disabilities or health problems.
Labour attacked that as almost indescribably evil. A week later, it turned out to be existing policy.
More than two weeks after Luxon's original announcement, TVNZ revealed on Monday that, over the past five years, Labour has cut the benefits of around 4000 sick, injured or disabled jobseekers for not trying hard enough to get a job.
That's an average of 800 a year, or 16 per cent of the 5000 people with health and disability issues that Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni says were on the Jobseeker benefit as at June 30 this year.
She failed to explain the discrepancy between her own attacks on Luxon and the fact that his policy appeared to be the same as hers.
Yet Sepuloni is not the only villain in this whole embarrassment. The whole political class stands accused of hypocrisy or ignorance.
Apparently, when National was devising the policy for Luxon, not a single one of its MPs or staff knew that people on the Jobseeker benefit with disabilities or health problems are already subject to the type of sanctions he was proposing.
None said to their boss: "I'm sorry, the big announcement just isn't newsworthy because Labour already does it." Worse, had any National MPs or staffers said that, they would have been wrong, at least about the newsworthy bit, because it turned out that none of the media — including weekly columnists — knew Luxon's proposal was largely already policy.
Most appalling, nor did the organisation that has the most resources and also sets the policy, the Government itself. Had it known, ministers and others would presumably have kept their mouths shut for fear of hypocrisy.
But, again, perhaps not. Maybe Beehive strategists calculate correctly that the chances of anyone from the Opposition or the media actually knowing whether or not an announcement conflicts with existing policy and practice are vanishingly small. The Beehive was just unlucky to be caught out this time — and only on one news channel, after the first advertising break.
No less than Tamaki, both National and Labour conducted what purported to be an important policy debate with no concern for whether or not it connected with reality. It was enough that National could brand itself as tough on unemployed people with disabilities and Labour as more kindly. It was lapped up for two weeks by the media, which just played along with the sloganeering and political positioning without too much concern for whether or not it meant anything.
Meanwhile, the sideshows of Labour's Gaurav Sharma and National's Sam Uffindell attracted vastly more coverage.
Most astonishingly, the suggestion that people with and without disabilities should be treated materially differently in such matters is at odds with the policy direction of both National and Labour in recent decades, and the disability sector's Enabling Good Lives strategy both have signed up to.
No one suggests a person with quadriplegia should have their benefit cut for not applying for a job as a builder. But, then, no one suggests an able-bodied person who dropped out of school after year 11 should have their benefit cut for not applying for a job as a surgeon.
Neither Luxon nor Sepuloni is so stupid. Nor are they wicked for thinking that policies, whenever possible, should apply equally to disabled and non-disabled people — or for thinking that neither disabled nor non-disabled people should be allowed to stay on a Jobseeker benefit indefinitely without at least applying for those paid jobs that they can do.
After all, this is what the disabilities community has lobbied for, for decades.
As far back as 1931, the Government began funding the Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment League, set up to provide rehabilitation and employment for disabled soldiers.
Since evolved into Workbridge, it continues to be funded by the Government to help people with disabilities or health conditions find work that suits them.
Sepuloni knows this — or should — because last year she launched a Working Matters Action Plan to help disabled people and those with health conditions have an equal opportunity to access employment.
The whole story has some comedy value. But here's the problem for democracy: How are voters meant to make informed choices next year if no one in the political class even cares what current policies are, whether ideas are new, or about anything much except virtue signalling, looking tough and branding?
- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based public relations consultant.