Benefits of this kind are good and right and just

We can't have people languishing on benefits for years, said LinkedIn Luxon.

I mean yes it's heartless to match benefit levels to the index that moves slower, but we’ve got landlords to be looking after, he might have continued.

He didn’t, but the policy speaks loud enough for itself.

$2 billion taken off our poorest, trying to get by on the very least, so that landlords can get so-called tax relief and feel more incentivised to climb back into the speculative property market, the single most awful thing about our economy.

But let’s go back to that people languishing on benefits bit.

We know what he’s doing when he uses those words.

He’s smearing more oil paint onto his fevered portrait of a beset New Zealand where you and your mate and your missus are the only people slaving your guts out to pay for your granite sink tops and and your Ford Rangers, while the rest of the country has their feet up living large on the benefit.

I wish to submit in evidence, your honour, correspondence regarding the sort of numbers we’re actually talking about.

I offer this OIA request someone made:

.

And I offer this table which makes up part of the response:

And here’s the whole thing your honour, but right now I just want to look at the numbers in that particular table.

I’m going to go past the number who can’t work because they’re too sick to do so, because I wish to imagine when he talks about languishing on benefits for years, he’s not so callous as to include sick people.

And so I’m looking at the number who have been on the Jobseeker Work Ready number for between five and ten years, which is 7551, and for over 10 years, which is 4,605.

And I’m looking at the number on Sole Parent Support which is 14,730 and 8376 respectively.

And I make these contentions:

1. The longer time goes on, the smaller the number gets. Which suggests it’s not in fact languishing for life.

2. Some people in a population of over 5 million are going to be problematic, there’s no avoiding it.

3. The stories of the people behind the numbers will more than likely give you a picture more complicated than the one implied by Luxon that it’s just a matter of giving malingerers better monetary signals.

4. 12,000 or so people out of a population of more than 5 million is rather at odds with the portrait so feverishly painted by Luxon and his mates of a nation weighed down by loafers and bludgers and bottom feeders.

5. Benefits of this kind are good and right and just.

They were there to provide a home for John Key’s mother and her three children when she needed it. They were there to help a teenage Paula Bennett raise her daughter when she needed it.

In an ideal world they will be there, in sufficient amount, for everyone in need, for as long as they need.

But God it can come at a grudging price when people like Old Mate Grabaseat start thumping that tub.