Still burrowing inside New Zealand Labourism - the case of Maharey

["Jurriaan Bendien" <J.Bendien@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This is just a supplement to my previous remarks about the autopsy of NZ
social democracy. In the article below, respected New Zealand political
journalist Colin James gives an insight into the terms of debate between
left and right within the NZ Government, focusing on Social Services
Minister Steve Maharey (NZLP). I actually debated with Steve Maharey about
Labourism in 1986, when he was still a sociologist (I think at Massey
University), and before he became a Labour MP and Social Services Minister.
Let us grant for a moment that Maharey with his "third-way" ideas has his
heart in the right place - but just look at how difficult it is to implement
any of his timid ideas, even when he is a government minister ! And compare
this scene to Trotskyists and Barnesites arguing that revolutionaries should
continue to canvas and vote for the NZ Labour Party... it is just loony.

Jurriaan

NOW THE LEFT'S TURN TO WORRY ABOUT WELFARE
Colin James's column for the NZ Herald for 27 August 2002
One of the government's biggest tests this term in its quest to establish a
durable majority will be welfare. In the 1999 Speech from the Throne Helen
Clark aimed to "correct" what she felt were the excesses of 15 years of
reforms by free-marketeers and reducers of the state. Today's Speech from
the Throne is a more challenging exercise -- or should be. This is the term
that will decide whether Clark will re-map the political landscape for the
next half-generation or more. That does not mean just winning the next
election. It means establishing a policy platform on which future
governments of any stripe will feel bound to build their policy
superstructures. Core to that will be the course Labour sets with welfare.

In the 1990s it was fashionable for the right to attack welfare as crowding
out the private sector and so constraining wealth production. Welfare was
also said to rend the social fabric and sap its recipients' moral fibre. The
policy response, sporadically and irresolutely pursued, was to impute
obligations to those on state assistance: a sort of "spare the rod, spoil
the child" approach. The left's response was indignation and assertion that
it did not work. But indignation does not wish away the steady rise in
numbers on state support, which crowds out spending on the left's treasured
health care and education projects. This is starting to bother some
ministers.


Social Services Minister Steve Maharey's solution is to replace "security",
the cornerstone of the welfare state since the 1930s, with "opportunity".
Down the track that also implies "responsibility" (another favoured Maharey
word) to take up opportunities. (An apposite idea, the right would say, the
welfare state having eroded the notion that people are responsible for what
they do -- to the point where a smoker, despite having chosen to smoke, is
now suing a cigarette company with state legal aid.)


Maharey wants the state to help create real opportunities for people to
support themselves. To do that he says the state must remove some of the
perverse incentives which discourage beneficiaries from taking jobs. And
that requires extra spending to ensure they don't lose out in the transition
to the workforce. So the role of "security" henceforth would not be an
end-state, as now for many, but a platform for "opportunity".


"The state's whole raison-d'etre ought to be to put you (a beneficiary) back
in a position where you are running your own life," he says. Late last
parliamentary term Maharey's Ministry of Social Development put up a raft of
papers along these lines. He hasn't got buy-in from colleagues yet. But he
says the mood among them -- and, critically, in the Treasury -- has "moved
from too hard, too costly and pie in the sky" to at least a willingness to
discuss a shift. There are two problems.


One is money. Ensuring a "smooth transition" from dependency to training and
work is expensive because it involves support through the transition.
Maharey also thinks he needs, as part of that, to simplify the benefit
system, which would cost more than the present system. Maharey wants that
extra government spending seen not as consumption but as investment. He
cites estimates that getting 10,000 young people off the dole and over their
lifetimes saves $450 million directly and another $250 million indirectly.
But assessing the value of an investment takes time. Even if his ideas were
in full force now, he couldn't present a positive balance sheet by the next
election. Building new hospitals gets much faster political returns.


Maharey has two aids. One is that the Canadian Treasury has accepted the
"investment" approach. He sees glimmerings now that the Treasury here might
also. And he has his "social indicators" project. Launched last year, this
aims to assess progress or regress against a raft of measurements of the
nation's social health. As the numbers come in year by year, he will have
both a stick (of political embarrassment from published deteriorations) and
a carrot (of signs of improvements) to wave at his colleagues.


It would be easier to leave welfare undisturbed. But it would go on crowding
health and education. And that is not the basis for long-term Labour
domination of our politics.



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