There are moments when politicians misread a room.
Simon Bridges did it when he was National leader at the very start of the pandemic when his criticism was felt to be beneath the mana of the moment in front of us.
I think Chis Luxon has made the same mistake with his bizarre attack last week towards young people on welfare.
Let’s be clear, we all want young people to have strong vibrant futures and good well paying jobs that are safe is the building block to the stability of that future, but that’s not what National are really offering with their welfare reforms.
As New Zealand struggles to regain its footing from the economic fallout caused by Covid, National have chosen this moment to threaten young people on welfare with sanctions and cutting their benefits.
Many of these young people on welfare are sick, ill or disabled. Threatening them with sanctions when everyone else is struggling is cruel and because so many people have recently had to rely on the Government for wages, I think the tone National has set is too harsh for the room.
People can’t see how cutting benefits now helps anyone.
What National are arguing for is a punitive privatization of welfare, where 3rd party contactors cut people off benefits if they don;t find a job fast enough.
This makes no sense whatsoever because the Labour Government already have an incredibly successful transition welfare program for young people called ‘Mana in Mahi’ where local community groups work with young people rather than threaten them to get a job.
Mana in Mahi has seen 5000 young people go through its programme and to date 90% have not gone back on welfare!
This is extraordinarily successful because the entire programme revolves around working with young people instead of cutting off their welfare which only exacerbates poverty and builds a direct motorway to a life of crime.
We want to support young people into work that works for them, we don’t want to threaten people into jobs that won’t work for them.
All Chris Luxon is trying to sell is the crack of the whip to an angry reactionary electorate who see all young people on the benefit as bludgers.
This is ugly politics.
First published on Waatea News.
Baldrick is feeding raw meat to the sizeable group of moralistic, slavering, Natzo/ACT fans. And he would do what he says to youth unemployed if he ever got to be PM.
He needs to be slapped down now.
The obvious point is–who were the first to put their hands out for Govt. COVID cash? And a number of those self employed, petit bourgeois, contractors, SMEs, and corporates contain in their ranks people that will diss those on MSD/WINZ Job Seeker Allowance.
Remember:
–National Superannuation is a benefit.
–Drought/Flood payments to farmers for Climate Disaster weather events are benefits
–Middle class second tier welfare during COVID was a benefit
–Employer COVID wage subsidies that some trousered, and workers never saw, were benefits
Retire MSD/WINZ, institute a Basic Income for all citizens paid by IRD and eradicate the stigma once and for all. Vulnerable young NZers should not be punching bags for Torys with 7 properties and who holiday in Hawaii while bullshitting they are somewhere else. Baldrick should be sanctioned and his pay docked.
Luxona has also completely miscalculated on the tax cuts envy policy as well….
The majority of people don’t see that as being an appropriate thing to do and a variety of experts have stated that we are already one of the lowest taxed countries in the OECD and concluded that not only it would be inflationary but the ‘trickle down’, (myth), effect would not occur…..
National don’t have a clue ….their economic knowledge is naive non- existent gibberish.
I’m giving them an ‘F’ for fuckwittery!!
Give them a CGT. That would be a tax – WINNER for Fester Luxon and the NACT Alliance.
We hear them bleating on about “Labour should introduce a CGT”
MAKE IT A POINT OF DIFFERENCE THEN NACT
Hold a caucus meeting (like Labour did with the unpopular Gaurav) and get the NACT Caucus to vote on a CGT.
CGT and NACT -Winner winner chicken dinner (no need to pay me royalties like you did with Eminem…this slogan’s a CGT – NACT WINNER!!
TM. I’d like to see how well a basic income for all persons goes, for a subset of persons such as Chatham Islanders, over a reasonable trial time like 10 years, before considering expanding it to all. It would get rid of one of the main welfare traps, the abatement claw back, and could get rid of MSD, which not many people like anyway. Extra money required by persons with health and disability issues, could be funelled though the public health system. And the basic income funded by higher gst. An interesting concept to think about, a version of which Roger Douglas wanted to implement, and the TOP party.
I’d like to see how Luxon earning an extra $18000 a year and the lowest earners $100 a year benefits all New Zealanders?
In an interview this morning Luxon said dropping the 39 % tax rate wasn’t about him… really?
National are simply the worst party in parliament and continue to be the most destructive party in history.
Agree Bert. NZ National have since their inception been all about shovelling socially created wealth “upstairs”–which takes on an additional meaning perhaps with Baldrick’s religious affiliation. They support corporate capitalism and finance capital first and foremost.
Their dirty little trick though has always been to corral the aspirational self employed, small businesses, contractors, farmers, SMEs, reactionary conservatives etc. into voting for them when they really exist to support the “Big Boys” as SirKey illustrated with the short lived off shore trust scam exposed in the Panama Papers.
National seem to have decided that it will look better if aggrieved beneficiaries go in blasting ala Russel Tully at ‘community groups’ (i.e. ‘charities’ established by Paula Bennett types to soak the taxpayer while the CEO rolls round in an executive car on $x00,000 p/a) vs WINZ offices. This appears shortsighted to me.
Is it though? There is A LOT of angst out there regarding the youth and youth adjacent today and a sense of bewilderment regarding their work ethic and desire. I don’t believe this is the trojan horse that the left feel it is.
There will be bigger fish to fry come Q3 2023.
Is there the amount of angst out there that you think. I would disagree. In my circle all I see is angst at Luxon and Willis at the complete lack of vision shown. Reverting to old a failed policies will not work for them and being apparently hard hearted won’t either. I did a rough calculation and came up with $1000 being available for these coaches to be paid per client. At $140 per hour they are not going to achieve much. Then who is going to find them a job.
The big issue is that due to a) employers not wishing to train people b) poor focus on education for these people c) corporate welfare in the form of working for families and rent allowances etc d) years of cheap imported labour e) encouragement for people to shift to big cities. We have finished up with an unsolvable problem.
We need a radical solution and I propose that someone needs to sit down and calculate a real living wage on which a person can live with dignity and respect without any government funding.
This becomes the minimum wage that must be paid. I know it will upset the current cosy business model but if these people are all paying tax instead of getting benefits imagine how much could be spent on hospitals etc.
Maybe we could afford a little of Luxons tax cuts because he wouldn’t have to employ coaches.
.
The problem is this.
Every bit of regulation you throw at society has a cost and this cost has to be forwarded to the end user (otherwise business goes broke). We have also made our lives deliberately expensive (Ifones, coffee, eating out etc) and assume these expensive luxuries are necessities.
This is the millennial class and subsequent generations.
@ Mike Walker – Luxon for PM – the Fire and Fury PM we’ve been needing after all these years of whimps and women.
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2022/08/circuit/why-we-made-fire-and-fury/
Means test the by far largest cost of beneficiary payments – pensioners. It’s a no brainer rort
The pension is not a benefit it is a right earnt by years of work by many .Wen you race 65 you get this money even if you have not worked .If it is not needed it can be pasted on as a donation. I know many iwho do this . A means test is silly as you can always hide income and look poorer than you are . Why should a person be condemned for being frugal through their life not smoking over drinking working hard spending thoughtfully .
Re Luxon’s policy at least it is policy that highlights the wasted lives of some who have not had the fortune of good parenting models to grow from
No Trev according to a recent poll and it was on the TV Ones news last night most NZers don’t agree with giving those who earn 180k a tax break. And Luxon needs to listen cause his mentor Key didn’t listen and went ahead and spent 25 million on a flag referendum that was never going to fly.
If I recall correctly, pension is a “transfer payment” along with the dole et al, transferred from current taxes paid. What “right” does anyone who doesn’t need it have to take from the generations that come after them, Trevor?
Exactly. Any taxpayer funds passed on to other taxpayers are indeed transfers.
It is just since the 80s ideology has dictated for several reasons that unemployed and unable to work citizens should be demonised and blamed for their own plight–even if macroeconomic decisions beyond their control like reducing manufacturing caused their loss of work.
Mrs Shipley even ran TV ads along the lines of–“dob in a bludger, check your next door neighbour”.
National superannuation is hilarious–though not perhaps for new gens who may not get it themselves, while they currently pay for boomers!–I say hilarious because one day a person is a dole bludger and upon their 65th birthday a hard working heartland Kiwi.
Personally I do not agree with the idea of tax breaks for those over $180000 at this point it does seem out of touch even with those who vote National.
I do agree with the policy to try and help those who need a help to get into workforce .Most people are given a lead by parents but not all . It is not doing anybody favours to do nothing and allow the young ones to lose the will to improve themselves.
Yes Trevor and pigs can fly and ACC is not a benefit either but many can’t get it even if they are entitled one has to fight to the bitter end and it wears ya down many give up and suffer.
So an apparently simple way of raising funds to pay for a problem that shouldn’t exist.
Bit like putting sugar in the coffee to disguise the fact you don’t like coffee.
Its really the sugar rush you want.
Couldn’t agree more it is ridiculous that we have politicians amongst others getting the pension whilst raking in at least $150,000.
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.”
You clearly have no knowledge of the history behind the pension Sinic. Labour brought in a compulsory superannuation scheme in the 1970’s and Muldoon waged an election battle against it by calling it socialist. Where he got the idea that saving for your own retirement was part of some socialist plot who knows, but Muldoon was an idiot so par for the course I guess. After they won the election they scrapped the scheme stating that everyone was entitled to a state funded pension, paid for by their taxes, and the country could afford it for ever and a day. As Brian Gaynor later stated this was worst policy blunder in New Zealand’s history. So stop calling it a rort and accept that the pension is everyone’s entitlement as per government policy.
If Luxon really wants to crack down on welfare why not means test the pension? Boomer freak out in 3, 2, 1…
Why is it that we have ‘young people welfare are sick, ill or disabled’, why are they not on other benefits, sickness etc. Seems weird.
Too easy and done too many times to bash beneficiaries, the Nats big thing, ignore the $10 billion a year that is stolen from IRD.
The middle class like to bash beneficiaries.
Michal. He’s also picking up little Bill English’s baton here of not just bashing the younger males, but also being quite aggressive about them; it’s psychological, not well thought through at all.
Maybe this is Luxons attempt to tackle “wasteful government spending”. He can’t just rely on cameras on fishing boats which, according to him, are an example of waste and inflationary spend.
He’s already sorted gang violence. It’s not the NZ police that are the answer, rather the fashion police. Being connected to a higher power he had a conference call with the ghost of Joan Rivers and concluded getting rid of patches is the answer.
$60 and hr picking fruit sounds good. The government could build a giant housing estate in Te Puke and say to beneficiaries here is a house and great money. And Tell Puke is a lovely town, so nice that even the opposition leader holiday s there.
and what do they do for the nine months of the year when they aren’t picking fruit?
It is not unfair to want people who do not gave physical or mental disabilities to work and pay taxes like all other well people. Why should tax on superannuation, for example, go to people who refuse to contribute to their own welfare ?
Old Brit tele programme, The Boys From The Black Stuff, about a group of Tar macadim road layers. Anyway, one worker having a breakdown, always calling!geez a job!, due to being laid off from a job paying just above the unemployment benefit. Now this is were Luxon his farm fence shakers, and toady Epsom pals will be taking our youth to if they ever win the election, back to the mother of all budgets, and lash without pity those who refuse to be exploited.
yozzer Hughes…great show!..headbutter.
Why is it that I hear on radio , every day that employers cannot hire enough staff?
Bring more foreigners in who will work for “contracted” under the minimum wage, not complain, non-unionised, and smile all the time, happy to be working in New Zealand. Win- win-win.
Not like hiring a young Kiwi who spend most of their time posing in the Tik-Tok app on their phones, making fish-lips!
Benefit bashing of all shapes and sizes is merely politics. The Tories are playing to their reactionary and largely racist base. What these fools don’t ever do is address the speculators and investor class ripping off the system. Or the CEOs of the publicly funded institutions pocketing $13,000 per week and going AWOL or on overseas jaunts. Benefit bashing is a huge distraction. And what these fools know damn well but never admit is that unemployment is a structural characteristic of capitalism itself. It provides the conditions for keeping on suppressing wages and maximising profits. The whole thing’s a massive rort and a hypocritical fabrication of criminal proportions and they need to be called out for it. The media certainly don’t so we need to.
Absolutely not a strategic blunder – there will be individuals with enormous overseas experience advising National on these attacks. This is an old school, standard and down the middle vote winner when you remember who turns up to vote – it isn’t young people and it isn’t the un-employed.
The other supposed strategic ‘blunder’ will be attacks on Maori co-governance in defence of ‘democracy’ and ‘common sense’ etc. This will facilitate politely disguised racist dog whistles – again a massive vote winner when you consider who the vast majority of voters are – old, white people.
These strategies are exceptionally effective and come with a catalog of recent, proven electoral outcomes in the US, the UK, Australia, Poland, India and Brazil.
As Plato observed – there is a fine line between democracy and mob rule – something successful politicans, and their advisers, understand to their bones. It’s always a question of how far they decide to take it.
The best thing to do in order to give us good, healthy, budget surpluses would be to raise the age of superannuation from 65 years to 67 years. Putting sanctions on benefits would result in savings of anywhere from $40million to $80million per year but would cost us in terms of increased crime rates whereas increasing the age of superannuation could save us between $400million and $600million per year.
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