In June, there were 59,968 more people on benefits than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
OPINION:
As we say goodbye to 2023 and welcome in 2024, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it’s five of the top columns of the year from Richard Prebble.
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? One hundred thousand people is roughly the population of Dunedin.
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 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.”
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”.
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. Read more >
Politicians broadly fall into one of two categories: office-seekers who do not care what policy they promote, providing it’s a vote-winner, and conviction politicians who want to make a difference.
Recent events have revealed that Chris Hipkins is an office-seeker and Christopher Luxon a conviction politician. Who knew?
First event: Luxon’s captain’s call to rule out any coalition with Te Pāti Māori. He made his call knowing many in his caucus would do any deal. It was a principled decision - polls said Te Pāti Māori was in the kingmaker position.
Under Hipkins, Labour and Te Pāti Māori have held talks. Hipkins will not rule out a coalition.
Major-party voters have not been able to express a view on co-government. John Key had an agreement with Te Pāti Māori and implemented co-governance agreements. It was the Key Government’s actions that enabled Labour, without an electoral mandate, to take co-governance into the heart of government.
Luxon’s stand has set the campaign agenda. Labour must now seek a mandate for its policy of co-government.
Second event: this was Hipkins’ Budget. Grant Robertson would have got the Prime Minister’s agreement on all the key decisions. The Budget revealed that Hipkins’ priority is not the cost of living, but staying in office. He knows it is impossible for a borrow-and-spend Budget to reduce inflation.
The third event: Hipkins is determined to shred his economic credibility. As an MP in Phil Goff’s caucus, he was part of a campaign to lift the age of National Super to 67. Labour said projections showed that at 65 the scheme is unaffordable.
The facts are on Luxon’s side. The Treasury has warned of an “unsustainable level of debt” because of the rapidly increasing numbers of superannuants.
These three events have defined the two Christophers and given the country a clear choice. Read more >
In last week’s Budget, Grant Robertson failed to mention the economic policy that will have an even greater impact than the massive amount of borrowing and spending: mass immigration.
On average, at least 440 new residents will arrive at Auckland Airport today. In the 12 months to March, 161,900 new migrants arrived. They will work and pay taxes, but from day one they will also need housing, access to health, education, transport, power, water, sewerage, law and order and welfare. It will be years, if ever, before their taxes can pay for the infrastructure they need.
Before the cyclones, the Infrastructure Commission estimated that this country has an infrastructure deficit of $104 billion. But the commission did not forecast mass immigration.
To determine the population gain, we must deduct the numbers leaving permanently. In the year to March, 96,500 people left. The net gain in population was 65,400. Westpac economists have noted that if recent trends continue, this year New Zealand’s net gain will be a record 100,000.
The principal reason that our roads are gridlocked, our hospitals are overwhelmed and we have a housing crisis is uncontrolled immigration. Labour and National added a million people faster than the country could build the necessary houses, hospitals, schools and roads.
Immigration is why the average house in Auckland costs a million dollars. Immigration creates a wealth effect. It is fool’s gold. It fooled voters into re-electing John Key. Chris Hipkins hopes it will fool voters into electing him.
Professor Robert MacCulloch, one of our few internationally recognised economists, says that it is mass immigration that may prevent a recession. The professor points out that recessions are when the total economy shrinks. He says it is possible for the total economy to grow because there are more of us, while our individual share of the economy reduces.
The professor is right. The economy may miss a recession, but individually our quality of life will be poorer. The professor is also right when he says immigration greater than infrastructure can handle is the route to the third world. Read more >
What a difference a day makes in politics. Yesterday I wrote that Labour could still win a third term. Today the Labour Party faces a devastating electoral wipeout.
Since World War II, every Prime Minister who has taken office in between elections has gone on to lose. Holyoake from Holland, Marshall from Holyoake, Rowling from Kirk, Palmer then Moore from Lange, Shipley from Bolger, English from Key. Some, Holyoake and English, put up a fight. Most were swept away in big landslide defeats.
Yesterday, Jacinda Ardern forming a coalition of the losers after the election, despite Winston Peters’ denials, was a real possibility. Now, nothing can save Labour.
It has been obvious since the Tauranga by-election that Ardern cannot face campaigning to a sceptical electorate. She went everywhere, even America, rather than going to the Tauranga by-election. If you cannot face meeting the voters, you cannot lead an election campaign.
The only way any MP, probably Chris Hipkins, can get 43 MPs to vote for them on Sunday is to do deals with Labour’s factions, the Māori caucus, the trade union caucus and the very powerful gay caucus.
Chris Hipkins will be the weakest PM since Geoffrey Palmer.
It is not just her caucus Jacinda has abandoned. She has abandoned Labour’s activists, donors and voters - the supporters who had the right to expect her to at least fight for what she believes. Then there are the voters of Mt Albert. The PM is cynically leaving them without an elected representative for six months.
Then, there is us, the team of 5 million. Our captain is abandoning the ship of state.
Locking down the country was always the easy part. Getting the country going again is much more challenging. The leader of the team of 5 million has just quit because it is too hard. Read more >
“Most of New Zealand’s problems - a lack of affordable housing, cost-of-living pressures and inferior healthcare among them - can be traced to poor productivity,” said David Seymour at Act’s election-year conference.
Act is going to campaign to lift New Zealand’s productivity. Everything, he says, from roads to housing, is caught up in red tape.
A minister and department of regulations seems to be Act’s proposal to constrain its National Party coalition partner from generating more red tape. But it will just result in interdepartmental disputes. For Act to effectively stop red tape, the party needs to win enough votes to claim the Treasury.
Much of the poor quality of government decision-making can be traced to Labour’s deliberate downgrading of the quality of the Treasury. Seymour must rebuild the Treasury so it has the intellectual capacity to challenge red tape.
Politicians have long known the truth of Nobel economics prize winner Paul Krugman’s statement: “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything.”
Jenny Shipley said she would increase the economic growth rate to 5 per cent. Helen Clark promised to lift New Zealand into the top half of the OECD. They failed. John Key campaigned, saying, “our vision is to close the gap with Australia by 2025″.
No party is campaigning to close the gap [this year]. They should be.
Here is a suggestion. Make it the rule that no civil servant or local body employee can receive a bonus unless the country’s productivity improves. And no MP or minister can get a pay rise until New Zealand’s productivity exceeds Australia’s. Then, everyone in government’s priority would be improving productivity. Read more >
Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.
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