What role Mr English's government, and its predecessors, have played in creating this situation is a moot point. Those of a certain age will argue that self-sufficiency, resilience, pride and reluctance to accept charity (as social welfare was once regarded) have all but disappeared from our national character, and that too many New Zealanders now prefer to depend upon the state than support themselves, especially if that involves work that they see as beneath them or not worth the reward.
This is encouraged by those who decry the minimum wage, which they see as a lifetime sentence to poverty rather than offering the young and poorly skilled the chance to enter the workforce and progress.
The Maxim Institute's view, expressed in this newspaper last week by Kieran Madden, was that the word "hopeless" had two meanings, however, the one intended by Mr English, another meaning lacking in aspirations. He was right to point that out as a major issue that had been ignored for too long. Because many people were raised in communities where there were few stable families or well-educated, full-time workers, "we can hardly expect vague hopes to magically transform into active aspirations," he wrote. "Alongside building skills and providing opportunities, we must begin by inspiring hope."
'Aspirations' is the magic word. The seed needs to be sown very early in a child's life, or undoing the damage will at best be difficult and expensive, at worst impossible. We are seeing the result of that in a level of welfare dependency that, while now reducing slowly but not insignificantly, threatens to settle at a level that is bad for society, bad for the economy, and tragic for those who are trapped within it.
It's become a generational thing. Baby boomers grew up in what many now see as the best of times, but more importantly they were the children of parents who really had done it tough. They had endured a depression on a scale unseen before or since, and had survived a global war. Their children had a much brighter future than they themselves had experienced, but were imbued with their parents' belief in the value of and necessity for hard work.
The post-war world had significant need for those who had not achieved great academic success, a reality that prevailed until the mid-1980s, but there was more to it than that. Post-war children had aspirations; they were prepared to start at the bottom and work their way up. They tended to pick a means of earning their living and stick with it. The CV of the average baby boomer, even now, would not run to the multiple pages often boasted by the average millennial.
Perhaps it is the disappearance of the work that was once available in abundance that is the true root of the hopelessness we are now witnessing. Where once upon a time kids who did not thrive at school, for whatever reason, even in a place like Kaitaia, could routinely find not especially poorly paid work with either of the two councils, the Ministry of Works, the P&T, the local dairy company or in forestry. The generations following the upheaval perpetrated by Rogernomics have no such options; if they do not have the wherewithal to do well at school, or the vision and encouragement to make the most of other attributes, there is really nothing for them.
Some of the blame for that lies with governments past and present, but much lies with parents who must see their children losing all hope of employment or fulfilment, and do nothing about it.
A true appreciation of just how hopeless some young people have become can perhaps best be gained by spending time in the District Court. That's the place to see how blighted lives can become in a very short time, and how standards of behaviour that were once all but universal have lapsed. It is not only the work ethic or the ability to see a future based on hard work and the gaining of skills and experience that have been lost. There is now often a fundamental disconnect with society, most often displayed as a stunning lack of respect. Some children, as many defendants are, have become alienated to the point where they are probably beyond mending.
Last week a 13-year-old boy expressed his dissatisfaction with the outcome of a bail application by directing an obscenity that would once have been inconceivable, and even by today's standards came as something of a shock, at the judge. He is not an aberration though. He is one of a generation, whose future is no doubt well mapped out, which is as far removed from the world of his grandparents as can be imagined. It can reasonably be expected that he is not going to benefit greatly from more than a decade of compulsory education, and that is going to have difficulty escaping from the ranks of the unemployed. His attitude will always count against him.
Are Bill English and Co responsible for that? Hardly. Labour has claimed that Mr English has written off a whole generation, but perhaps he is accurately assessing the victims of a social revolution that began 30 years ago and that continues to wreak havoc.
The architects of our social welfare system would never have imagined the harm that would be done by what critics describe as giving people money for nothing. The challenge now is to start undoing that harm by encouraging New Zealanders to once again believe that their world will be what they make it. For some that might mean getting up at four in the morning to milk someone's cows.
