This teaser on the front page of the (digital) Herald, and the article that it links to, really really annoy me:
Let me count the ways:
(1) It turns welfare, an important safety net and part of the social fabric / contract of our country, into a stupid pissing match about a minister’s “reputation”.
(2) It therefore completely buys in to the underlying assumption that the only measure of success on welfare is to reduce the numbers on it. No. That is the job of the rest of the government (and the rest of the Nats, not Bennett)*. Welfare’s job, and Bennett’s job, is to take care of the people most vulnerable in society, not to punitively cast them out.
(3) In the process of the above it treats beneficiaries as cattle, numbers to be bullied and harassed with the sole purpose of achieving a reduction, rather than as human beings and fellow participants in the shared social fabric. Any one of us could end up on welfare one day. (One token personal story is trotted out, but it is a weak effort in the context of the assumptions underlying the article.)
In short, the whole thing is completely framed in terms of right-wing assumptions and talking points. It trivialises and important social issue, and in the process puts the focus for reducing numbers on welfare in completely the wrong place. Numbers on welfare fall when society and the economy are healthy and there are opportunities for all. High welfare numbers are not Bennett’s failure, they are National’s.
*Even Jacinda Ardern, quoted in the article, seems to buy in to these first two errors.
Update: Yeah – there it is:
(4) It paints Bennett into a corner where the only way she can respond is to chuck more people onto the scrapheap to try and bring the numbers down. Which is exactly the wrong outcome. Labour, Jacinda, please think about your handling of this issue.
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