blogging it real

From the crew at keepleftnz

I'm still yet to hear anything which isn't going to do more harm than good come out of Donnie and has mates mouths. They actually don't like people. That's the conclusion I've come to. Unfortunately the one-two greed and racist sucka punch has worked quite nicely for them sucking about 20% of New Zealand in big time. The other 20% that always vote National are just haters of (wo)mankind.

Back to the 90s: Work for the Dole.
14 September, 2005

So in a shockingly surprising move, Don Brash and National want to re-introduce a work for the dole scheme. Didn’t we tell you they wanted to go back to the 1990s? Didn’t we tell you that National was bad news for the unemployed? Exactly.

This time, National are trying to pretty up their work for the dole scheme by saying that the ultra-cheap labour will be put to good purpose – saving the environment. We’ll deal with that part in a second, but it doesn’t change the basic character of the scheme – you don’t get the unemployment benefit unless you show up and work.

To recap from the debate we all had on this in about 1998, here is what is silly about work-for-the-dole:

First, being unemployed should be about looking for real work, but this scheme takes away a lot of time people could be spending searching for work, at interviews, undertaking training courses, etc. It condemns the short term unemployed into becoming the long term unemployed. National’s targeting of this scheme at, among others, “young unemployed” people makes this effect even harsher and more unfair.

Second, the skills “learned” on these schemes (often involving chain-gang style manual labour) aren’t helpful for getting people into real work, certainly in the ‘knowledge-wave’ or skilled-trade sectors that are forecast to be growing. They’re only helpful for one thing – working harder in a future work for the dole scheme.

Third, it involves the government ripping off its citizens. If the government really thinks there is a problem with the environment and it needs fixing, maybe it should (gasp!) actually employ people to fix the important problem and (shock!) pay them above the legal minimum wage. Work for the dole schemes exploit unemployed people at less than livable wages with less than legal minimum employment rights.

We at keepleftnz agree that there are environmental problems that need fixing around here, but we don’t agree that the best way to fix them involves exploiting the least fortunate in society in the process. The cost of Brash’s tax cuts are clearly in view – the extra $92 a week for Dr Brash comes at the expense of the job prospects of unemployed Kiwis, who now are forced into state-sponsored exploitation simply to put food on the table.

And to further underline the cynical and irresponsible nature of this policy, we notice that National hasn’t budgeted for the $100+ million cost of this policy. Anywhere. What the hell kind of fiscal responsibility is that? Morons.

What’s a better solution? Oh, how about the one that has got us the lowest unemployment rate in the developed world? One where unemployed people undertake training and pound the pavement looking for work. That is what has worked so well for this country over the past six years. This system not only isn't broken, it's working very very well, so there's no need to screw around with it.

This Saturday the choice is clear – Back to the 90s with National or forward to the future with team LPG.