hi ho hi ho it's off to work we go...

It's a 38-page Treasury paper providing the first concrete set of public proposals from any official source to the working group's review, which has been given until next February to come up with proposals to reduce long-term benefit dependency, so rebstock the chair rightly says (From NZH) the report is

"just one of many inputs that the working group is getting".

But the report will be influential and what are treasury recommending?

"reclassifying all 144,000 people on sickness and invalid benefits into three categories based on their ability to work, shifting those with some capacity to work in the near future on to the unemployment benefit."

"requiring sole parents to look for paid work before their youngest children turn 6, and contracting out most welfare services to private companies or charities."

It sounds sick but the justifications are based on British and Australian experience

"In Britain, the paper says, 69 per cent of previous disability beneficiaries were classified as "fit for work" and moved on to the dole."

"On the basis of the recent UK reforms, the reclassification of all sickness and invalid beneficiaries could result in more than 80,000 New Zealand beneficiaries moving on to the unemployment benefit," it says.

"The paper also recommends moving sole parents who have skills and experience on to the dole - a move that has just come into force this month for sole parents with no children under 7 in Britain, where it is expected to cut sole parent unemployment by 30 per cent."

The paper says Australia's decision to contract out job search services for the unemployed to private companies and charities in 1998 halved the cost for every job placement from A$12,000 to A$6000.

You can save money everywhere

"The move would make no difference to benefit rates for sickness beneficiaries because they already get the same as the dole. But the adult invalid's benefit of $243 a week is $49 higher than the $194 adult dole."

Just to recap they want to take everyone off the invalids and sickness benefit and put them on the unemployment benefit - they are not sick or disabled anymore - just lazy and need to find one of the millions of jobs available. They want parents to desert their children more than we do even at the moment (which is already high compared to other countries) to go and find these mythical jobs and they want to privatise the delivery of welfare services - and they want to do this to "reduce long-term benefit dependency"? Nah they just want to save some money - don't worry about the people or their lives or how they will suffer because of moves like these. Don't worry about maori who will be disporportionatly negatively affected if these changes were made.

This report reminds me of the old line - Do you want to lose 5kgs instantly? Cut off your head. This is slum clearing without any international sporting event.

It is fair enough to get worked up about racist losers like paul henry but the deeper enemy is harder to grasp. This report from treasury is the tail of the beast.