It's fairly cynical stuff. National's welfare policies are very much designed for electoral gain. There's always a ready political market for populist 'get tough' posturing on solo mums and beneficiaries. Claire Trevett reports on the newly-announced welfare measures in the article Cradle to job queue.
And John Armstrong's National's stance on welfare not as tough as it seems provides a very good analysis of what it all really means. He questions whether National's welfare rhetoric matches reality, saying that 'The policy typifies National's overall election strategy so far - maintaining momentum through drip-feeding policy to demonstrate the party is focused on the issues that matter to voters, while at the same time not overly scaring the horses'.
A similar point is made by TVNZ's Guyon Espiner in his excellent commentary, National's no-surprises campaign. Espiner makes a number of important points: the policy will cost money to initiate, it's less tough than the Welfare Working Group's recommendations, and it seems unlikely to produce the promised savings and reductions in beneficiary numbers.
Espiner also observes that 'Labour is not calling this punitive or labelling it beneficiary bashing' and that it 'too knows the public supports a tougher line on welfare and the party is conscious of not wanting to get on the wrong side of this issue'. And that's an important point. As I argued yesterday in my Herald column, Left right rhetoric masks almost identical policies, National and Labour tend to converge more than differ in many crucial policies. This point is 'partially' backed up by Massey University's Grant Duncan - see: Labour? National? What's the difference?. Duncan argues that in this instance, National has essentially copied policy out of Labour's own recent time in Government: key words in the announcement 'could have come from one of the previous Labour-led government's "social development" policy documents'.
Whether or not National's policies would actually work is discussed widely in the media and blogosphere today. The response has been that there are 22% (60,000+) more beneficiaries under National. Where are the jobs for beneficiaries and solo parents come from? All the signs are that the global recession is not going away and may actually worsen, especially if the European Union can't sort out Greece's debt problems very soon. For more on this see Radio NZ's Welfare groups say jobs needed, the Herald's Editorial - Key's benefit plan needs the jobs first, and Gordon Campbell's On the welfare reform proposals.