Bradford wants to see all options considered

Mike O'Brien and Sue Bradford are looking at alternatives in the welfare reform debate. Photo / Natalie Slade

Less than a year after quitting Parliament, former Green MP Sue Bradford is jumping back into public life with a new group that aims to challenge an official shakeup of the welfare system.

The "alternative welfare working group" will seek public submissions around the country to counter the official welfare working group which has been asked by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett to find ways to reduce welfare dependency.

"They are actually talking about changing the very basis of our social security system, but they are not engaging a wide range of people in the discussion around that," Ms Bradford said yesterday.

"It's very important that other analyses and other solutions are put up."

The six-member alternative group has been set up by the Catholic aid and social justice agency Caritas, the Anglican Social Justice Commission and the Beneficiary Advocacy Federation.

Massey University social policy professor Mike O'Brien will chair it. Other members are Lincoln University economist Paul Dalziel, Victoria University welfare law lecturer Maamari Stephens, Anglican Bishop Muru Walters and Disabled Persons Assembly researcher Wendi Wicks.

Former Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro and Child Poverty Action Group co-founder Susan St John will advise the group.

Dr O'Brien, who taught at Massey's Albany campus when Ms Bennett studied there in the 1990s, said he agreed with her that the welfare system needed wide debate.

"One of the really major aims for me is to make sure that those with knowledge and experience at the grassroots are really able to feed into that process," he said.

"The second thing is that the terms of reference that the welfare working group has been given, and therefore the Government's approach to thinking about welfare, is really tight and narrow.

"So we think there is a really important place to be had for trying to ensure that the wider questions about income distribution and jobs and the nature of work and the importance of caring work really get taken into the debate."

The official group, chaired by economist Paula Rebstock, has been asked to focus on how to help sole parents, sick and disabled people into paid work. It has also been asked to look at whether insurance principles, already used for accident compensation, could be extended to the welfare system.

Ms Rebstock has said the group is looking at Canadian-style unemployment insurance, where workers pay into a compulsory fund and get an income-related payout for up to a year if they are made redundant. She has also talked about US-style time limits on the domestic purposes benefit.

In contrast, Ms Bradford found herself agreeing with economist Gareth Morgan at a forum held by the Rebstock group last month that it would be better to pay a universal basic income to everyone to avoid the humiliation of applying to Work and Income. The basic income would be clawed back at a fixed percentage of earned income.

She said the Rebstock group should also look at work stresses. "How about the working group seriously addressing this issue and making a few recommendations to Government about what could be done to strengthen workers' rights on the job?"

GROUP APPROACH

Ministerial welfare working group

Goal: To cut long-term welfare dependency.
Ideas so far: Unemployment insurance; time limit on DPB.

Alternative welfare working group

Goal: A fairer society that values caring.
Ideas so far: Universal basic income; compulsory redundancy pay.

BENEFIT A COMMON EXPERIENCE

About half the children and young adult population have lived on welfare benefits at some time in their lives.

A background paper prepared for the Government's welfare working group says that although only one-eighth of working-aged people were on welfare at last count, 51 per cent of all young adults who turned 32 last year had been on benefits at some time since 1993.

Even more - 55 per cent - of all teenagers who turned 16 last year are in families that have been on welfare at some stage in the same period.

The paper says 32-year-old women were only slightly more likely than men of the same age to have been on benefits some time since 1993 - 52 per cent of women compared with 49 per cent of men. However, older women were significantly more likely than men to have spent time on benefits because many spent time on the domestic purposes benefit.

Almost half (47 per cent) of women who turned 48 last year, but only 41 per cent of men of the same age, have been on benefits since 1993.

In the oldest age group, only 44 per cent of women and 38 per cent of men who turned 64 last year had been on benefits in the previous 16 years.

The numbers on benefits were unusually high in the period because of the high unemployment caused by economic restructuring and recession in the early 1990s.