Post by mikey on Jun 3, 2014 18:08:58 GMT 7
Don't copy our welfare cuts, New Zealand experts warn Australia
The government has been warned off taking too much inspiration from New Zealand’s welfare system with Kiwi academics saying the safety net has developed big holes and the country has “enormous” issues with child poverty.
The government commissioned Patrick McClure to review the welfare system last year with a discussion paper and report due in coming weeks. The social service minister, Kevin Andrews, has repeatedly referenced the New Zealand welfare system as a place to draw ideas from when it comes to reforms.
The system across the ditch has been reformed in the past few years with people discouraged from having children if they are on welfare, payments cut if certain “social obligations” are not met and spouses made to pay back benefits if their partners wrongly claim them.
Andrews has been reluctant to rule out anything before the McClure review is released but he said in April he had directed the former Mission Australia chief to look at certain aspects of New Zealand’s welfare system.
Michael Fletcher, a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, has cautioned against Australia rushing to copy many of the reforms, saying while it was tightly targeted it ran the risk of excluding people who needed benefits.
“One general comment however is that to date there is little hard evidence for us – or people in Australia – to judge the benefits or otherwise of the New Zealand reforms. The annual actuarial report of the cost of the welfare system shows some decline in future welfare costs but we do not know the extent to which this is due to improving economic conditions.
"More importantly we do not know the wider impacts in terms of better employment outcomes and higher living standards; nor do we have any information on unintended negative impacts,” he told Guardian Australia.
New Zealand’s reforms include streamlining payments into three main benefits – jobseeker support, sole parent support and supported living payment – and increasing the "work focus" of the system while increasing conditions on benefits and taking an “investment approach” to get more people into work.
The measures include extending the time before someone is eligible for welfare, having single parents with a child between 0 and 5 do “work preparation” activities, forcing people on the dole to reapply for the benefit at the end of set time periods, monitoring airports and cancelling benefits of any recipient who goes overseas for any length of time without permission.
People who turn down a job offer have their welfare immediately cancelled for 13 weeks while people with children who turn down a job have their welfare halved for 13 weeks.
Single parents who receive benefits have to fulfil “social obligations” such as having children older than three attending early childhood education, having school-age children attending school and enrolled with a primary health care provider and up to date with health checks.
A “subsequent child” policy has also been introduced to discourage beneficiaries from having children while on benefit, Fletcher said.
“The effect is to disregard for work-testing purposes the age of any child born whilst a beneficiary is in receipt of a benefit once that child is one year old.”
The senior lecturer said the basic “safety net” in New Zealand was becoming increasingly under question with people demonstrating “special hardship” to qualify for an emergency payment increasing by 43% between the 2007-08 financial year and 2011-12.
Fletcher said a large gap had developed between people being recorded as unemployed in the Statistics New Zealand household labour force survey and those receiving a benefit, leaving “increasingly large holes” in the safety net.
He added: “We have no evidence yet that the welfare reforms have improved the officially-measured unemployment rate. The rate has fallen over the last 18 months – from 7.2% in September quarter 2012 to 6.0% in March 2014 – but this is appears to reflect the wider economic recovery and improvements in the labour market."
Susan St John, a University of Auckland associate professor in economics and co-director at the Retirement Policy and Research Centre, said the country had “major issues” with child poverty which were not evident in Australia and the social welfare system was one of the biggest factors.
“If you’re going down the path of copying us, you really need to look at impacts,” she said.
She said tax benefit policies disadvantaging children from low socioeconomic backgrounds and the lack of indexation of some welfare payments had resulted in the “rapid falling behind” of benefits.
“It pushes families into poverty,” she said. “... It’s nothing to be proud of.”
St John said there had been a drop in the number of welfare recipients but measuring success in that was “a narrow approach”.
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/dont-copy-our-welfare-cuts-new-zealand-experts-warn-australia
The government has been warned off taking too much inspiration from New Zealand’s welfare system with Kiwi academics saying the safety net has developed big holes and the country has “enormous” issues with child poverty.
The government commissioned Patrick McClure to review the welfare system last year with a discussion paper and report due in coming weeks. The social service minister, Kevin Andrews, has repeatedly referenced the New Zealand welfare system as a place to draw ideas from when it comes to reforms.
The system across the ditch has been reformed in the past few years with people discouraged from having children if they are on welfare, payments cut if certain “social obligations” are not met and spouses made to pay back benefits if their partners wrongly claim them.
Andrews has been reluctant to rule out anything before the McClure review is released but he said in April he had directed the former Mission Australia chief to look at certain aspects of New Zealand’s welfare system.
Michael Fletcher, a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, has cautioned against Australia rushing to copy many of the reforms, saying while it was tightly targeted it ran the risk of excluding people who needed benefits.
“One general comment however is that to date there is little hard evidence for us – or people in Australia – to judge the benefits or otherwise of the New Zealand reforms. The annual actuarial report of the cost of the welfare system shows some decline in future welfare costs but we do not know the extent to which this is due to improving economic conditions.
"More importantly we do not know the wider impacts in terms of better employment outcomes and higher living standards; nor do we have any information on unintended negative impacts,” he told Guardian Australia.
New Zealand’s reforms include streamlining payments into three main benefits – jobseeker support, sole parent support and supported living payment – and increasing the "work focus" of the system while increasing conditions on benefits and taking an “investment approach” to get more people into work.
The measures include extending the time before someone is eligible for welfare, having single parents with a child between 0 and 5 do “work preparation” activities, forcing people on the dole to reapply for the benefit at the end of set time periods, monitoring airports and cancelling benefits of any recipient who goes overseas for any length of time without permission.
People who turn down a job offer have their welfare immediately cancelled for 13 weeks while people with children who turn down a job have their welfare halved for 13 weeks.
Single parents who receive benefits have to fulfil “social obligations” such as having children older than three attending early childhood education, having school-age children attending school and enrolled with a primary health care provider and up to date with health checks.
A “subsequent child” policy has also been introduced to discourage beneficiaries from having children while on benefit, Fletcher said.
“The effect is to disregard for work-testing purposes the age of any child born whilst a beneficiary is in receipt of a benefit once that child is one year old.”
The senior lecturer said the basic “safety net” in New Zealand was becoming increasingly under question with people demonstrating “special hardship” to qualify for an emergency payment increasing by 43% between the 2007-08 financial year and 2011-12.
Fletcher said a large gap had developed between people being recorded as unemployed in the Statistics New Zealand household labour force survey and those receiving a benefit, leaving “increasingly large holes” in the safety net.
He added: “We have no evidence yet that the welfare reforms have improved the officially-measured unemployment rate. The rate has fallen over the last 18 months – from 7.2% in September quarter 2012 to 6.0% in March 2014 – but this is appears to reflect the wider economic recovery and improvements in the labour market."
Susan St John, a University of Auckland associate professor in economics and co-director at the Retirement Policy and Research Centre, said the country had “major issues” with child poverty which were not evident in Australia and the social welfare system was one of the biggest factors.
“If you’re going down the path of copying us, you really need to look at impacts,” she said.
She said tax benefit policies disadvantaging children from low socioeconomic backgrounds and the lack of indexation of some welfare payments had resulted in the “rapid falling behind” of benefits.
“It pushes families into poverty,” she said. “... It’s nothing to be proud of.”
St John said there had been a drop in the number of welfare recipients but measuring success in that was “a narrow approach”.
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/dont-copy-our-welfare-cuts-new-zealand-experts-warn-australia