Richard Prebble: Who’ll do all the work if the jobseekers won’t?

OPINION

There are 59,968 more people on benefits than there were pre-Covid, says Act MP Karen Chhour. In a press release, she also says there are 96,885 work-ready people on the Jobseeker benefit and nearly 20,000 job listings on Trade Me. How can that be?

A hundred thousand people is roughly the population of Dunedin.

The country is so short of workers that Westpac estimates net immigration this year could reach 100,000.

Are we becoming a Saudi Arabia? Saudi has such an entitlement culture that most of the adult population are on government handouts, while the real work is done by immigrant workers.

Over King’s Birthday weekend, I read Peter McCardle’s autobiography, Party Hopper.

Peter was that rare MP who came from the civil service. He had been a centre manager in the Employment Service, and estimates that he case-managed 5000 people. He says that “most of the Employment Service was just helping the easiest of the unemployed to place, at tragic cost to tens of thousands of long-term unemployed”. He watched “Labour’s Minister of Employment standing in front of the TV cameras saying ‘yes, long-term unemployment is rising, but we’re placing thousands of people in jobs each month’”.

He formed his own programme.

One issue, he says, “was the nonsense that jobseekers had to trudge backwards and forwards between Social Welfare and the Employment Service, seeing a Welfare clerk to deal with their benefit needs, and then people at the Employment Centre”.

Peter advocated that the departments be combined into a one-shop service - a policy that frontline workers supported, and the head office opposed.

“And, secondly, the unemployed had to be kept active. Everyone needs to be needed, and paying the dole to fit and able people to do nothing is the worst thing you can do to an unemployed person.

“I was going to change the system for them”.

McCardle arrived in Parliament to find he was expected to vote for a mini-Budget that slashed benefits. He crossed the floor to vote no - not a career-advancing move.

If it was not for MMP, his ideas would have gone nowhere.

He found himself as a New Zealand First and then independent MP and for a time Minister of Employment in the Shipley Government.

No one doubted the sincerity of an MP who had crossed the floor. While the departments still fought against amalgamation, a one-stop shop for the unemployed was created, saving $24 million every year. While there have been minor changes, no government has proposed splitting Winz into two departments.

The second part of Peter McCardle’s reforms was the Community Wage, “to change the unemployment benefit from a payment for doing nothing to effectively a contract payment to a jobseeker … for … 20 hours of work or training”.

Act MP Karen Chhour says there are 96,885 work-ready people on the Jobseeker benefit and nearly 20,000 job listings on Trade Me. Photo / Getty Images

While benefit advocate groups went nuts, the front-line Winz staff had no doubt that the policy worked. Peter gives anecdotes about people who had been on a benefit for 20 years getting into employment.

We will always have an unemployment issue. Many of the so-called work-ready jobseekers are far from work-ready. But Peter McCardle’s vision of no able-bodied adult being on long-term benefits is achievable.

Officially, jobseekers must be ready for work, drug-free, seek employment and take any reasonable offer. But in 2018 Labour directed Winz to relax sanctions.

I know long-term unemployed people who are young, fit and work-shy. When they do get a job, they are often sacked for failing to come to work. They rarely face sanctions. Until, like the rest of us, no work means no pay, they will be lifetime beneficiaries.

The Green Party, so their website says “will take a Tiriti-based approach ... a universal basic income ... non-punitive”.

The Greens’ version of the Treaty gives an entitlement to a taxpayer-funded, no-obligation income for all.

There is no mention of workfare in Act’s alternative Budget. McCardle quotes me as saying, “your work-for-the-dole stuff is pure Act”. We appointed Peter to Act’s research unit.

The National Party has a useful idea of giving young unemployed people job coaches, but this does nothing to tackle the problem of the long-term unemployed.

It is understandable that no party is willing to advocate workfare. In the Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor, welfare reform does not figure as an issue of concern.

The unemployed do have time to protest. Peter McCardle, who devoted his parliamentary career to helping beneficiaries, faced pickets and abuse wherever he went.

If compassion for those on benefits does not motivate concern, then the huge cost should.

We are well on our way to becoming a Saudi Arabia, where one class of the population lives on government handouts, while the hard work is done by a migrant workforce.

- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.