By JOHN ARMSTRONG
The Alliance is urging Labour to ease social welfare rules to make it easier for beneficiaries to earn extra cash without having benefits cut.
The junior Coalition partner yesterday detailed further priorities for 2001 - as well as Jim Anderton's People's Bank, a "job Machine" and the introduction
of paid parental leave - designed to boost the party's sagging opinion poll ratings.
In a state-of-the-nation speech yesterday, Mr Anderton said the Alliance wanted to lower the rate at which welfare benefits were reduced as a person earned more money from part-time work, "so we don't penalise beneficiaries who try to work."
He suggested cutting welfare abatement rates with the long-term intention of making it easier for beneficiaries to move into the workforce.
Other Alliance priorities listed by Mr Anderton as part of the party's "vision" included:
Looking at wiping debt for science and engineering students if they work in New Zealand for a number of years after graduation.
Working with industry to give free access to some tertiary courses.
Ensuring adequate financial support or employment for students over the summer holidays.
As a long-term goal, ensuring no one under the age of 20 is on the dole.
"We should be prepared to try things," Mr Anderton said.
"If they work, we should do more. If it doesn't work, throw it out and try something else."
But despite those sentiments, Mr Anderton is known to want to secure four or five high-profile policy "trophies" that the Alliance can call their own and wave in front of voters in election year.
Such more policies must be popular and easily identifiable, as well as reflecting core Alliance principles.
Ideally, they should not be Labour policy - but would have to be ideas with which Labour feels comfortable.
In his speech, Mr Anderton said the Coalition was not run on the basis of each partner bringing to the table shopping lists of policies that had to be hammered out through hardball negotiation.
"We simply agree to work in good faith. We argue things out - but respectfully."
The Prime Minister had not read Mr Anderton's speech when contacted yesterday. She said cutting benefit abatement rates was desirable, but ministers were juggling priorities within tight fiscal limits.
"My attitude would be, they are all good ideas," she said. "Put them into the Budget process and see how we go."
