Deborah Coddington: Minister's welfare group under cloud of question

Paula Bennett. Photo / Mark Mitchell

I can't decipher Paula Bennett, Minister for Social Welfare, and I'm not alone.

Behind her jolly "I like me just the way I am" facade, do we have a senior Cabinet minister so cunning you could pin a tail on her and call her a weasel?

Beyond her propensity for blundering into political tar babies, will we find gravitas from someone hand-picked by John Key, who foresaw a potential to wrestle a positive direction for our welfare system?

Or do we have a clever actress with a likeable personality who will nonetheless come unstuck?

She looks as if she can whip together a meal from a bare pantry, and that's a good thing.

But I do find the National Party's exploitation of her solo mother-slash-working class-slash-Westie tiresome to the point of no longer being credible.

Her tendency to intervene may one day get her into serious trouble.

It worked when she separated a teenage catfight.

It didn't last week when she visited solo mother Natasha Fuller to discuss her privacy complaint.

Fuller, who in her own words "makes things up" (others might put it less kindly), turned out to be a disaster, but Bennett should know to arrange meetings with hostile people like this on neutral territory - never in the complainant's private abode.

I don't doubt Bennett's word that no compensation was offered, but it should never have reached that stage. So what has Bennett really achieved?

I consulted a wise, non-partisan colleague who pointed out she has successfully introduced the Future Focus Package, getting people to reapply for benefits and get them into work - when jobs become available. She's also a great supporter of the volunteer sector.

And being selected for the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship is a major coup.

But last month Bennett set up a Welfare Working Group (WWG) to "examine long-term welfare dependence, identify causes and solutions".

Chaired by ex-Commerce Commission head Paula Rebstock, its members include Professors Des Gorman, Kathryn McPherson, Ann Dupuis, plus Sharon Wilson-Davis, Catherine Isaac (formerly Judd), Adrian Roberts and Enid Ratahi Pryor. They're paid when they meet - $850 per diem for the chair and $550 for members.

My wiser colleague John Armstrong wrote that this "privatisation" of advice is a good thing, because ministers can disown unpopular sections, unlike when they use the public service.

Left-leaning Russell Brown on Public Address raged about the WWG, specifically Catherine Isaac, former president of ACT, but - to be fair - perhaps as an award-winning PR maven, Isaac's job is merely to write the press releases.

But her appointment convinced me Bennett is clever, and has figured out how to accomplish cut-through in welfare whilst remaining electable - get the Business Roundtable to do your nasty work.

Already, Roundtable consultant Peter Saunders has been co-opted as the "overseas expert" advising the group.

Then the day after the WWG first met, on April 30, an article opining what the group should be doing to welfare appeared in The Dominion Post, written by Business Roundtable executive director, Roger Kerr.

His advice was unambiguous - tell the Government to get beneficiaries off their bums - and quoted a former Australian politician, "unemployment is a political choice".

He reckons there's work to be done everywhere - on farms, in rest homes, for instance - which shows how often he gets out of his office. Dump the minimum youth wage, repeal hiring and firing laws, he writes, and employers will hire.

No, we won't.

Standard Roundtable stuff, you say, who would take any notice? But Kerr omitted to add he is now the husband of Catherine Isaac. Innocent oversight - maybe, or an assertion that spouses don't influence each other? Many would find the latter disingenuous.

Either way, it makes National look sneaky. Despite unemployment benefit rates declining 95,000 in 10 years, welfarism, especially addressing reasons for climbing sickness and invalid benefits, is an important issue.

Minister Bennett, yet again, needs to explain why her new expert group has been compromised by this potential conflict, or else go back and use the taxpayer-funded public servants in her department for independent advice.

Since I'm arguing they should make full disclosure, I will too: readers with elephantine memories may recall I was the subject of some fleeting headlines involving Kerr, Judd and chases across Parliament grounds in 2004.