Submission to Welfare Working Group

> download the Submission to Welfare Working Group’s Options Paper on reducing long-term dependency (PDF, 116KB)

Basis of our Submission

The Salvation Army has already made submissions to the Welfare Working Group’s earlier issues paper and cannot see any evidence in the current Options Paper that our submissions have been taken seriously. It is important we believe to re-state our concerns about the narrow focus of the current review and the unfortunate pre-disposition which the Group appears to have toward the question of dependency ahead of other challenges facing New Zealand’s welfare system. We believe that it is important to re-state these concerns because the best review process will still be deeply flawed if it is so narrowly focused as to miss the bigger and perhaps more over-whelming issues. This is the danger in the review presently being conducted by the Welfare Working Group.

The Salvation Army acknowledges the real importance of the issues which the Welfare Working Party is attempting to deal with but believes that the question of welfare dependency is imbedded in broader questions of inequality in our society. In particular we believe there is a deeply imbedded inequality of opportunity which poor (and mainly benefit dependant) people and communities face especially around access to effective schools, meaningful training and worthwhile jobs. This inequality breeds reliance on welfare benefits and this reliance leads to dependence and a surrendering of personal and collective autonomy by those afflicted. These outcomes are clearly far less than ideal and we as national community should be looking earnestly at ways of overcoming them.

Such an interest leads The Salvation Army to believe that the pathway beyond welfare dependency is not that of more tightly controlled benefits but of better resourced schools and training opportunities and of working with employers to open up workplaces to those marginalised through their lack of education, their addictions, their poor health and their disability.