My Two Bits' Worth

Somewhere in my distant past life with Family Budgeting and general social services I entertained the concept of delivery of supplementary financial support via something like a present-day debit card. 

Anyone could apply for such a card and it would have the capacity to divert the cost of a specific percentage of any sale of certain items to the public purse. Each individual’s percentages would be related to their normal income and their tax rate as recorded by the IRD.

It could apply equally well to everyone from low-wage earners to full-time beneficiaries. The retailer would receive the full amount of payment and would not know how much of any sale was met by the state.  

A system of this kind could be much more flexible around the edges of bands of entitlement than supplementary assistance. It could also smooth the very difficult transition from benefit dependence into work. Indeed, if a political choice were made, it could easily limit the large amount of financial support given to some of us who do not have so great a need of it in our older age.

In the 1970s it was a pretty impossible strategy. The country couldn’t agree to personalised cards at all, even just for personal identification, and certainly not for delivering credit rather than cash. But the concept is not so unrealistic in these high-tech days.  The Community Services Card could probably provide a vehicle for the distribution of realistic financial assistance via credit rather than cash. 

I'll send that to the dreamers in Treasury ...

How to better fund our poor

It's interesting to note that Treasury is doing some "crowd sourcing"  for proposals to improve outcomes for those in need - as well as for taxpayers... An interesting idea, even if the time frame is pathetically short.

Did they get a nudge from minister Paula Bennett before he news release a few days ago? Or did she pick up a bit of political capital from being aware that they were exploring the issues?

At least the Treasury invitation seems to leave fewer questions answered before they are actually asked. And it is clear that interested people and groups may make submissions.  I hope that there will be a flood of creative and compassionate suggestions.

I guess a bottom line for me is that the basic level of benefits, reduced so dramatically over twenty years ago, is simply not adequate for the huge majority of those who depend on them these days.

Sam and John and national morality

While we were at Beyond the Borders over the weekend someone broke into our parked and locked car. Sam, I will call him, in defiance of the flashing alarm, smashed up the ignition barrel. The engine immoboliser defeated him so he satisfied himself with stealing some items carefully stored under a seat and covered with some coats artlessly tossed on the floor. (We have done our time in Community Patrol and do make an effort when we are forced to leave stuff in the car!).

Naturally, this event, probably born of Sam's boredom and mischief rather than malice or greed, led many of our friends to sermonise briefly on the deplorable moral attitude of many of our (young!) people. But the news of the terrible shooting of two social welfare workers in Ashburton has directed my thinking down a different path.

Reading the background of the story does not provide a simple explanation. "John" is obviously a very complex character with profound and distressing medical problems. The appropriate agencies seem to have tried hard to assist him. His behaviour had already involved them and him with the Police. Perhaps the whole situation was irretrievable when he first returned to this country without work.

But what this awful situation brings to my mind is a different age in state social services. I think back to the Woodhouse report of 1971 and the subsequent attempts to set Government support at a level which would enable beneficiaries to live something like a normal NZ lifestyle. I remember the years when the state actually delivered an extra two weeks' income for all beneficiaries at Christmas.

Where has that country gone? What has brought about the conditions in which we, as a nation, have accepted systemic failure to deliver proper care and protection to unfortunates like John and the two public servants he callously shot. What led us to accede to the Benefit Cuts of the 1990s?

At the Beyond the Borders we were reminded that the measure of a country is the way in which it treats its most vulnerable members. For me, that will be a primary issue as I cast my votes in this month's elections.