Armstrong on Youth Benefit Policy

John Armstrong writes in NZ Herald:

The policy has “winner” stamped all over it – at least in electoral terms. It will find favour with many middle-ground voters turned off by Labour’s capital gains tax.

It is the kind of policy that a lateral-thinking Labour Party should have been promoting to confound its critics and shed once and for all its lingering image of political correctness in order to recapture some of the huge number of male voters who have switched to National.

John Key has been smart in picking “disengaged youth” as the first target of National’s intended shake-up of the welfare system. Few will quibble with the policy’s carrot-and-stick approach to trying to prevent young lives being blighted by years on the unemployment scrapheap.

It is that mixture of carrot and stick which I approve of most. Left wing parties tend to rely too much on carrots only when it comes to welfare, and right wing parties tend to overly focus on “the stick”. A sensible mixture of both will generally lead to the best results.

The policy, which includes greater obligation to participate in job training programmes, has many more innovative components than just turning a portion of benefit payments into food stamps.

With intensive case management planned for young unemployed, greater access to childcare so teen parents can go back to school, plus adults undertaking mentoring roles, the policy does not come cheap.

The so called “food stamps” is not the major part of the policy. The commitment to pay childcare so teen parents can continue their education gets a big plus from me.

Also feedback in this article from Derek Cheng:

Otorohanga mayor Dale Williams, who chairs the Mayors’ Taskforce for Jobs and is involved with Youth Transitions to support school leavers, said the policies were a very positive step.

But he said performance-based incentives might tempt providers to focus on easier cases to pocket the cash bonus, at the risk of neglecting the more vulnerable. “It’s possible, and a little bit of that happens now.”

He said it was frightening that there was a dearth of information about school leavers.

“Nobody really knows the number, nobody really knows where they are, and if you don’t know that, how on earth can you help them?”

Rick Boven, director of think-tank the New Zealand Institute, also welcomed the measures but suggested involving employers directly with school leavers.

“You really want to get employers engaging more closely with students and schools, so if you put another agency in between, you can create a little bit of a barrier to that communication.”

And Labour say:

Labour’s employment spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern called the intervention food stamps for youth, and questioned what evidence there was for a need to restrict beneficiary spending.

“I’ve seen no evidence to date that the 1600 people on an independent youth benefit aren’t receiving the kind of support that’s required.”

I would have thought the fact that 90% go onto an adult benefit speaks for itself.

Jacinda also said that the Government needs to provide more jobs for young people. Well the Government doesn’t create jobs, the private sector does. But the Government can make the environment better for hiring young people, so it would have been nice if they also announced that the minimum wage will only apply to those aged 18 and older.