Tapu Misa: Jobless - irresponsible or just running out of luck?

Swedish politicians are a strange breed. Their Finance Minister Pat Nuder told the Financial Times this year that his Government would go into next year's election telling Swedes - who already pay the highest taxes in Europe - that they would have to cough up more.

Nuder's centre-left Government seems to think that presenting itself as the champion of the welfare state is a vote winner: "Contrary to many of my European colleagues, I dare to say what is necessary. What people are demanding all over Europe is that we should invest more in the public sector."

Our politicians know different, of course. They know the welfare state isn't working and that people dislike paying high taxes. That's why we're talking about tax cuts and "work for the dole" policies - National's answer to welfare dependency.

Never mind that National tried this in 1996 to 1999, when it was called the "community wage", and that a Work and Income evaluation found that those who were forced to work for the dole were less likely to find real jobs than those who weren't.

But then working for the dole isn't really about ensuring people find jobs that pay a living wage. It's about breaking that welfare habit, making them responsible, forcing them to get off their lazy butts and meet their obligations to "Kiwi battlers".

It's not that the Nats are without compassion, it's that they have to be cruel to be kind. Workfare is about tough love - breaking the cycle of dependency and making beneficiaries more "responsible".

Brash has said: "We see many hard-luck stories in the media about people who have no jobs, poor living conditions and many children. Yet our journalists rarely ask the hard questions that must be asked: How did you get into this situation, how much of it were you responsible for, and how much was bad luck?"

He's right, of course. Journalists have been remiss on that whole issue of responsibility. Take Maori, a third of whom are on benefits, which means they're very irresponsible or very unlucky. Until 1987, Maori were more likely than non-Maori to be employed. Their unemployment rate was just 1 per cent.*

Maybe it was irresponsible of them not to have known that their jobs were about to be wiped by a radical shift in government policy. They should have made sure they weren't working in places such as the freezing works when deregulation cut a swathe through Maori and Pacific jobs. They shouldn't have been counting on what used to be secure railways jobs when corporatisation wiped 9000 jobs in 1986.

The National Government later decided that the answer to the burgeoning number of beneficiaries was more "personal responsibility" and cut benefits by $1.3 billion. Of course, it was for the greater good, just as "the work for dole" policy is now.

Hard luck that those still stunned by the loss of their jobs in the 1980s - in the main, Maori and Pacific Islanders - were hit again. There could be no gain without pain - even if the pain was suffered by those Brash now describes as being "unwilling to make sacrifices to get ahead in life".

Despite state house market rents and the resultant overcrowding, the return of Third World diseases, and the growth of food banks there was an epidemic of irresponsibility and "welfare dependency". That would make a return to the American-style workfare programmes - of which National and New Zealand First are such big fans - perfectly logical if it weren't for the fact that, as associate professor Mike O'Brien of Massey University points out, there's no evidence to support the assumption that beneficiaries "lack a work ethic and are content with the beneficiary style" or that their children are being groomed for a life on welfare.

O'Brien, author of the soon-to-be-published Workfare: Not Fair for Kids? says the evidence does show that beneficiaries want to work but need viable work at an adequate wage and good quality, affordable childcare.

"Proponents often claim that workfare restores the 'social responsibility' of those receiving benefits," he says. But all it really seems to do is reduce the number of beneficiaries."

A report by the Washington Post shows that falling welfare rolls don't necessarily equal a better outlook for the country's poorest. The 1996 West Virginia welfare reform law, or Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act - which set a five-year limit for receiving welfare and required beneficiaries to get an education, take job training or do community service - left many former beneficiaries worse off than before. Beneficiaries disappeared from the rolls but weren't necessarily moving into jobs. A year after their welfare cheques stopped, 73.1 per cent were still unemployed. Their "personal responsibility" had hit a wall. Jobs were few. And getting there was an ordeal, often merely adding expense and worry to already crushing personal burdens.

Tom Gaiz, co-director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, told the Washington Post that "we're spending more money overall than we were 10 years ago" - for health, food assistance and other supplements.

In New Zealand, O'Brien sees similar risks for the children of beneficiaries, particularly those of single mothers, already disadvantaged by poverty and stress.

If we have to copy anyone, he says, we should take the British approach of seeking to reduce poverty while reducing the number of citizens depending on the state.

But, of course, that would mean talking about collective responsibility. 

* The Maori unemployment figures used reflect the percentage of the Maori labour force who were long-term unemployed (26 weeks or more), rather than the total unemployment rate. The source is a 1998 Te Puni Kokiri report called Progress Towards Closing Social and Economic Gaps Between Maori and Non-Maori.