John Armstrong: Brash full of sound and fury

Boil it down and Don Brash's Orewa onslaught on so-called welfare dependency is a hotch-potch of ideas borrowed from elsewhere that will do little to slash the number of beneficiaries.

If Brash were serious about cutting the welfare roll from more than 300,000 to 200,000 - his target over the next decade - he would be offering something more than punitive sanctions on beneficiaries or pointless work-for-the-dole schemes.

He would be talking about large and continuing investment of taxpayers' money to remove the actual obstacles to getting jobs - rather than pandering to myth and prejudice.

He would be promising things such as affordable childcare, proper skills training and subsidised transport. Unfortunately, as a National Party discussion document on welfare reform observed two years ago, such things come with a hefty price tag. Moreover, they are boring and would not have sated the appetite of a national audience primed days in advance like Pavlov's dogs for something far harsher.

So what we got on Tuesday was plenty of stick and hardly any carrot.

We got the triumph of political populism over policy substance - but triumph no less.

Orewa II has done its job for Brash. It has given him and his party the fresh start to election-year they so desperately needed, and put the leader's fumbling performance of the latter half of last year well behind him.

Having said that, Brash has probably already made as much mileage out of whipping that old standby, the domestic purposes benefit, as he is going to extract.

Not surprisingly, the debate, if you can call it that, has quickly run out of steam, principally because the anti-welfarist pot has not been boiling away in the furious fashion that race was last year.

The argument is now more likely to shift in a direction less favourable to Brash - one that exposes the credibility gap between his policy prescription and his laudable objective of cutting benefit numbers.

For the time being, however, that scrutiny is on hold. What we are instead experiencing is what might be termed the "Orewa eclipse".

Like the moon passing across the sun, Brash's speech has cast a shadow across the body politic. There is an eerie quiet. Like heathen high priests of old, other politicians are refraining from saying anything that might offend the latter-day Gods - the opinion polls.

If perchance Brash has again touched a nerve, then, with the exception of the Greens' Sue Bradford, no one is risking getting on the wrong side of public opinion by disagreeing too vehemently with National's leader.

That was the blunder Labour made last year. This time Labour is trying to smother Brash by stressing that the Government is already implementing those of his ideas that are practical, while politely pointing out that others have already been tried and found wanting.

What you will not hear is the likes of Social Development Minister Steve Maharey joining the chorus accusing Brash of "beating up on beneficiaries" - a charge to which Brash firmly pleads not guilty.

So what's the verdict?

In demanding welfare recipients immunise their children and DPB mothers name the father of their child, Brash is within his rights to extend obligations on those living off taxpayers' money. What is not clear is how imposing such obligations will help to cut beneficiary numbers.

The same applies to Brash's suggestion there be no automatic entitlement to extra state assistance for those who have more children after they go on to the DPB.

That was one of the Orewa attention-grabbers. But the idea was curtly dismissed in National's 2003 discussion document, which found "little evidence" this was successful in discouraging pregnancies.

That document was penned by Katherine Rich, the party's welfare spokeswoman, whose failure to wholeheartedly endorse all aspects of the Orewa address suggests some tension over Brash's focus on the DPB.

If such a policy does not work - and the United States' experience is inconclusive - then the only reason left for having the policy is to punish those on the receiving end.

A punitive element also seems to underlie Brash's intention to resurrect the work-for-the-dole scheme of the late 1990s, given that the official evaluations of New Zealand's scheme and its Australian equivalent found "locking in" participants made them less likely to find real jobs, as they simply stopped looking for them.

As a minimum, Brash would also force those on the DPB with school-age children to work or train part-time. Yet an extensive study by the Ministry of Social Development found those beneficiaries highly motivated in wanting to work. What was holding them back was the struggle to find affordable and adequate childcare, while they also fretted that the upfront costs of taking on temporary or casual work would end up leaving them deeper in debt.

But Brash's Orewa speech is a childcare-free zone when it comes to new policy. He does accept providing more community work and training may initially mean extra Government spending before savings kick in as beneficiary numbers drop.

For "may" read "will" - otherwise Brash will barely dent existing numbers.

True, under Labour, beneficiary numbers have fallen from just over 400,000 to 320,000 in five years. But that is all down to a 96,000 drop in the unemployed component on the back of a buoyant economy.

If the economic tailwind persists, Brash might squeeze more reductions, given more vigorous case management by Work and Income.

The problem is that any gains are likely to be offset by projected rises in those on sickness and invalids benefits. And demographic factors driving that - more people becoming incapacitated as the population rapidly ages - mean there is not much Brash can do about it.

The reality - as Labour has found - is that cutting beneficiary numbers is a long, slow grind requiring extensive Government resources deployed across a range of fronts to help people back into work.

But this is not the kind of message that was going to captivate the audience salivating inside the Orewa Rotary Club last Tuesday.