Editorial: Key's our very own Captain Schettino

When the cruise ship Costa Concordia foundered on rocks off the Italian coast, its Captain Francesco Schettino was the butt of international derision after he reportedly fled in a lifeboat, leaving passengers to fend for themselves.

His actions contravened the time-honoured convention that women and children are saved first.

Currently, we are told, the New Zealand economy - the ship of state as it were - has sailed into stormy economic seas. The family silver must be sold to make ends meet. Belts must be tightened.

To do so, clearly our captain - Prime Minister John Key - has taken his cue from Schettino.

At the same time as raising parliamentary salaries and giving lifeboats to banks, finance companies and investors, the Government's latest strategy is to cast beneficiaries - such as solo parents and (by association) their children, widows, and old women living alone - adrift, to sink or swim in the shark-infested waters of a squeezed employment market.

National's so-called "welfare reform" legislation, to be introduced in March, is justified by the neo-con rhetoric that "benefits create dependency", a slippery piece of reasoning which the Maori Party - supporter of National's majority in the House - appears to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.

In fact, people are dependent on income. Social welfare exists to create an equitable, attractive community, without diseased beggars at the gates. Moral and ethical considerations aside, even pragmatically life is more pleasant for all when everyone has enough to maintain dignity. Benefits prevent chronic poverty. Remove them and you'll see what I mean.

Endemic inter-generational poverty is fostered by keeping benefit payments at punitive subsistence levels. This guarantees a stigmatised pool of job-seekers desperate to work for minimum wages, thereby, keeping bosses in swimming pools, overseas holidays and trust funds.

It is exacerbated by steep abatement rates on any part-time, paid work beneficiaries undertake, and by compliance hurdles hindering entrepreneurial ventures.

Minister of Social Development Paula Bennett, a former beneficiary herself, is like a zealous reformed smoker, targeting the most vulnerable in order to impress her new rich friends. Even she admits making beneficiaries jump through bureaucratic hoops will cost more than it saves.

According to the minister, low-wage jobs, such as caring for the elderly, are "noble".

Perhaps this is why these jobs are so pitifully paid that aged care workers took industrial action last week because they struggle to survive.

If the National Government was serious about welfare reform (rather than merely pandering to more fortunate voters' sense of innate superiority), it would consider adopting Gareth Morgan's idea (in his book The Big Kahuna).

Morgan's idea is centred on ditching the whole tangled regime of existing benefits, tax credits, wage minimums and top-ups, eschewing paternalistic judgments on people's needs, setting an unconditional minimum basic income, then allowing the market to set wage rates consistent with full employment beyond that.

Meanwhile, tobacco profits are up, generating more funds for the Government from duty than it receives in dividends from the state-owned enterprises it plans to sell. Perhaps beneficiaries should be encouraged to do their bit for the sinking ship by taking up smoking?