Saturday, August 14, 2004
The Act Symposium on Welfare Reform is underway
This Symposium should throw up some interesting ideas on Welfare Reform, My Right hopes it is not simply dismissed as a 'kick a beneficiary while they are down' session by those on the left. Amongst the speakers are the Hon Michael Bassett and the Hon Roger Douglas - I will post on their speeches when they are available.
Muriel Newman kicked of today by opening the Symposium with a speech that detailed the boom of the welfare state - far beyond what Kirk Labour Government had in mind when it implemented the recommendations of the 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security. The full speech is here and highlights some telling statistics:
The result was a ten-fold increase in welfare dependency in just 30 years from fewer than 35,000 beneficiaries right up until the early 1970s, to over 350,000 today.She then tells of her personal experience as a solo mother, adding credibility to her desire to return welfare assistance to being a short term solution and enabler:
In 1973, 31 years ago, we had 12,000 sole parents. Today we have 112,000.
In 1983, 21 years ago, we had 8,000 on Sickness Benefits. Today we have 43,000 over five times as many.
In 1983, 21 years ago, we had 18,000 Invalid beneficiaries. Today we have 72,000, four times as many.
If you believe Labour, you would think that unemployment is no longer a problem. Yet, in 1973 31 years ago there were fewer than 2,000 people unemployed. Today there are more than 40 times as many.
Welfare reform is an issue I am passionate about not only in an intellectual and political sense but, because in the mid 1980s, after 18 years of marriage, I found myself as a sole mother with two young children on welfare. Ive lived the day-to-day existence. Ive seen the wasted lives. And Ive experienced the seductive grip of a system that begins by helping but ends by destroying self-esteem, confidence and hope. I escaped; many others did not.Hopefully all politicians and commentators will forget the personalities and political leanings of the speakers and look pragmatically at the ideas espoused.
Every decent society must help those in need, it must help those people become valued and valuable members of society. That is not at issue here, at issue here is whether the welfare system in it's current state is addressing or inadvertently adding to the problem.
