Ross Robertson (The Independent, 2 April 2003) attacks me for “suggesting make-work schemes” for the unemployed and for “suggesting there are 134,000 people being paid to do nothing”. He says “make-work schemes do nothing to up-skill the unemployed”.
Let me plead guilty to believing that we should not be paying 134,000 able-bodied adults to do nothing – and that is exactly what we were doing as of the end of January, according to the Government’s own statistics. If there was a desperate shortage of jobs, with the economy in deep recession, then perhaps we would have to pay people to do nothing. But that is clearly not the situation currently.
In every city and in every small town, there are things needing to be done. To be sure, in some cases the things needing to be done are as basic as cleaning up the park. But what on earth is demeaning about cleaning up the park, or picking broken bottles off the beach? To imply that we should not expect the unemployed to do that kind of work is to insult those who are already paid to do that work.
The National Party believes that giving people who can’t get a regular job the chance to earn their taxpayer support gives them not only money but also pride and self-esteem, which can easily be destroyed by simply handing out a regular cheque for doing nothing.
The real ticket out of welfare dependency is work – any kind of work. To keep on handing out cheques while asking nothing in return is hugely damaging to those receiving the cheques, to those in school thinking about their future options, and to those who are paying the taxes which honour those cheques. It should stop.
Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.