Government to announce details of welfare reform

Moving to a single benefit will massively reduce the amount of time case workers spend on administration, Prime Minister Helen Clark said today.

The Government will tomorrow announce changes to the welfare system, with the main one being a move to a single benefit.

Social Development Minister Steve Maharey, who will announce the changes, today briefed Australian Prime Minister John Howard on the changes.

Helen Clark later told journalists New Zealand had 10 benefits and 36 "add-ons".

"The estimate that our policy advisers have made is that we could reduce the amount of time spent on actually administering the benefit system with clients from about 70 per cent of a case manager's time to 30 per cent," she said.

"That then frees up the time to focus on how you support people moving from dependence on a benefit to more independence and, hopefully, back into work, if that is at all possible."

Australia is also considering welfare reform and Mr Howard said he was always interested in similar countries' plans.

"We can all learn from each other," he said.

He was adamant any changes would not be simply to cut benefits; rather, they would simplify and make them more efficient.

His government believed people should not get benefits they were not entitled to but also wanted to provide those genuinely on benefits with incentives to leave welfare and to go back into work.

"I'm quite unapologetic in arguing for that," he said.

"We think it's a good idea that people be encouraged off welfare to go back into work and that's the philosophy that will overhang everything that we do but we'll do it in a way that respects that fact that there are some people unable to work."

Workforce participation was the driver because Australia, like New Zealand, had an aging population and was running out of workers, Mr Howard said.


National Party welfare spokeswoman Judith Collins said the reforms sounded like a "superficial name change".

"Call it what you like, a name change won't move one single beneficiary off welfare and into work," Ms Collins said.

She was sceptical that beneficiary payments would not change and questioned whether the reform would disguise the true number of people on sickness and invalid benefits.


National leader Don Brash earlier this year delivered a hardline policy, under which women who fell pregnant while already on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB) should receive extra benefit only in exceptional circumstances. He also suggested they consider adopting those children out.

Dr Brash also wants those on the DPB with school-age children to go to work.

Helen Clark has advocated getting more women into the workforce through such measures as better childcare. Participation by women in the workforce was below the average for developed countries, and economic productivity would rise 5.1 per cent if it was lifted, she said in her opening address to Parliament this year.

Mr Howard today said his government would not force people to do anything unreasonable.

"We believe that it is in the interests of children, when they are very young, that they have proper caring arrangements and if that includes the full-time care of a parent, well I can't think of a better caring arrangement," he said.

"In other circumstances it can mean other arrangements. It depends on the choice of the parent."

Finance Minister Michael Cullen today briefed the two leaders on moves to establish closer economic links between their countries.

However, a single currency does not appear to be on the agenda.

"What I think we would both have taken from it (the briefing) is that there is a positive will to harmonise to the greatest extent that we can without offending anybody's sovereignty," Miss Clark said.

"There is scope, I think, for some genuine trans-Tasman institutions. We've been having a shot at that in other areas and the work is being approached with goodwill."

Such things as a common border for goods had tremendous appeal and would place the least possible complications in the way of trade in business, goods and services across the Tasman.

"If we focus on the single economic market, the focus is on how can we get the best for our growing economies through the least complications in the way of doing business," she said.

Mr Howard said there was a danger of becoming "to hung up" about the formal structure of such plans rather than concentrating on the substance.

" ...the substance is that it gets better and better each year," he said.

- NZPA