Paul Little: Bennett's reforms leave kids out in cold

Child rearing: The toughest job in the world. Photo / Thinkstock

They nearly got away with it. If they hadn't left in that rule about not letting someone who gets pregnant while on a benefit keep it when their newest brat turns 1, it's quite likely no one would have noticed anything wrong with the benefit cull, or, as it's officially called, "resetting expectations".

After all, people who aren't sick shouldn't be paid by us to stay out of work. People shouldn't breed with strangers and be paid by us in order to stay out of work.

That said, sickness beneficiaries are already subject to regular reviews of their fitness for work. Real, live doctors with qualifications have to sign off on that benefit, so if there are abuses of the system, surely it's the doctors who should be targeted.

As for the work-shy, one-woman baby factories, allegedly pumping out sprogs for a living, that theory can only be held by anyone who has never faced the horror that is having a baby. It's the toughest job in the world. Anyone who sees caring for an infant, with all the attendant drudgery, as the soft option would be of such limited intelligence it's hard to know what job they could manage. Experimental drug subject? Mattress tester? Hunter's decoy?

You can't accuse Social Development Minister Paula Bennett of aiming too high. If the changes work, according to her boss, John Key, 46,000 people will come off benefits and another 11,000 will go into part-time work. That adds up to 3000 fewer people than have gone on benefits since National took office. This is not a revolution. It's not even keeping up.

And Bennett admits there are still a few unknowns around the changes. She doesn't know where the jobs will come from. She doesn't know what support measures - extra job training and so on - will be put in place.

Bennett says society's expectations have evolved. Among these, apparently, is the expectation a parent should be the primary caregiver of their child for a few years beyond the first. So, if you have a child while on a benefit, you will have to look for work when that child is 1. Those kids will just have to get with the programme.

Once their children are 14, beneficiaries must seek fulltime work. We also seem to have ditched the idea that it's good for teenagers to have a parent around when they get home. Where this can be managed, it is of extraordinary value for the security it provides a child - even a hulk of more than 14 years of age.

Bennett says she is "putting the right support around" children. Obviously that doesn't include a parent if the child happens to be the second one born to a woman on a benefit or is over 14. These elements of the so-called reforms are not anti-beneficiary. In effect, if not in intent, they are anti-child.

MELBOURNE CUP LOSES THE RACE
I hate sound apocalyptic, but when Geoff Robinson on Morning Report is obliged to ask an interviewee "Hats or fascinators?" surely the end of days is near.

Geoff should try working from home. One of the advantages of that arrangement is that you can ignore the Melbourne Cup. Not for us the compulsory fun of the office sweep and its choice of the $1 or $2 investment.

I'm not a big National Radio listener but I had hoped I could rely on it to be relatively Melbourne Cup-free. But no, there it was, from one end to breakfast. Mary Wilson had to launch her early-evening news show Checkpoint not with a bird call but a race call. She got briefly excited when she got a whiff of disaster. "It's been beset by delays right from the start," she said, smacking her lips as the photo finish took a few seconds longer than it might have.

If you live in Melbourne, Cup Week is a grand time. Kim Kardashian comes to town, for instance. But good things happen too - mainly a swag of money poured into the economy. But there's not much in it for us. The horse-racing industry has been hobbling along on its last fetlocks for years. The attention paid to the Cup is like a surviving practice from an ancient religion.

STEVE JOBS' SEND-OFF
Late apple founder Steve Jobs's last words were revealed this week by his sister, Mona Simpson. "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow," he said. Given his company's obsession with putting "cool" before any other priority, it's no surprise he went out sounding like a stoned surfer lighting his third joint.