Sunday 17 May 2015

Linking Benefits To Votes: What's Labour Up To?

Why Link Votes and Benefits? It’s possible that the Labour Party is simply attempting to put some legislative flesh on the bones of its new “communitarian” ideology. At the heart of communitarianism lies the assertion that for every “inalienable right” enjoyed by the citizen, there is a corresponding, and equally inalienable, responsibility.

WHO IS PETER GOODFELLOW? Most New Zealanders wouldn’t have a clue. And that’s as it should be. Generally speaking, people only recognise the name of a political party’s president when that party is in trouble. Or, as was the case with National’s Sir George Chapman, when they’ve played a decisive role in their party’s political victories. National’s current president, the aforementioned Mr Goodfellow, enjoys the well-earned anonymity of success.
 
Alas, the same cannot be said of the Labour Party’s governing body, which last week presented a submission to Parliament’s Justice and Electoral select committee raising the possibility of “making enrolment to vote a pre-condition to receipt of various forms of state support”. In other words: if you’re not enrolled, you won’t get your benefit. There are, Labour submitted, “advantages and potential disadvantages to the approach” and, since it had already been adopted in other countries, “it is incumbent on us to examine all options to see if they are feasible in our context.”
 
Where to begin with this curious proposal? Perhaps by pointing out that s.82 of The Electoral Act 1993 already provides for the compulsory registration of electors – on pain of a $100.00 fine for the first conviction, and a $200.00 fine for the second and any subsequent convictions.
 
If the NZ Council of the Labour Party was unaware of this, then it should not have been. And if it was aware, then why did it consider some further inducement to enrolment necessary?
 
It’s possible that the Labour Party is simply attempting to put some legislative flesh on the bones of its new “communitarian” ideology. At the heart of communitarianism lies the assertion that for every “inalienable right” enjoyed by the citizen, there is a corresponding, and equally inalienable, responsibility.
 
Much of Labour’s current policy platform is permeated with communitarian ideas – especially in the area of social welfare. Beneficiaries in receipt of public support are expected to reciprocate by doing all within their power to return to the workforce. If they have entitlements, Labour argues, then so does society.
 
By what right does any citizen not enrolled to vote lay claim to the support of his or her fellow citizens? If such people refuse to fulfil what is both a legal requirement and a civic duty, then isn’t society entitled to withhold its duty of care until those responsibilities are met? Putting it bluntly: without the pro quo, nobody gets a quid.
 
The other explanation for Labour’s curious submission is considerably less lofty.
 
Despite enormous effort by scores of tireless volunteers, tens-of-thousands of likely Labour voters failed to enrol in time for last year’s election. Though technically in breach of the Electoral Act, these citizens will probably not be prosecuted. Receiving no disincentive to repeating the offence, there’s every chance their names will not appear on the roll again in 2017.
 
If, however, tens-of-thousands of social welfare beneficiaries: people who, most experts agree, are much more inclined to vote for political parties of the Left than the Right; were required (ably assisted by Work and Income staff) to fulfil their legal obligations as electors before receiving their benefits, then the Labour Party would be saved a huge amount of hard political slog.
 
Getting people to the polling booths is one thing, but if they are there discovered to be not on the roll, then the bureaucratic hurdles placed before them can be formidable. Frequently, the sheer volume of paperwork proves too daunting for these often poorly educated and/or non-English-speaking citizens to attempt, and the potential Labour vote is lost.
 
When viewed from this perspective, Labour’s submission not only appears organisationally self-serving, but it could also be construed as a subtle thrust against the emerging strategic preference (among Andrew Little’s principal advisers) for Labour’s effort to be directed at “soft” National Party voters. Many on the left of the Labour Party are convinced that the tens-of-thousands of unregistered voters constitute a more wholesome electoral target than some twenty-first century version of “Rob’s Mob”.
 
That Labour’s submission ended up attracting so much (presumably unwanted) media attention more than bears out the observation with which this discussion began. That one of the best ways of telling whether or not things are going well for a political party is how invisible its organisational wing is willing to become, and how anonymous its leadership.
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 May 2015.

7 comments:

Sanctuary said...

The Labour party is completely ideologically lost. It is a historically socialist party dominated by middle class managerialists who support a neo-liberal status quo and look to this so-called ideology of communitarianism as their last stand against political exhaustion. It is incredible that Labour - supposedly the most international of our political parties - has yet to analyse or discuss or even grasp the importance of Poedemos or even Syreza in building a new left response to capitalism by making leftism fit for a 21st century environment. Instead, with all the arrogance of the English speaking left, it stumbles on with idiotic proposals such as this one.

The crisis of the left in the Anglo-sphere exists The crisis consists "...precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear..."

Labour is rapidly running out of time to decide whether or not it wants to be re-born as part of the new, or continue to stagger morbidly towards it's death.

Davo Stevens said...

NZ is in the same position as so many of the Western Democracies, namely; it is run by a Duopoly.

People don't vote because only the names change not the policies. Different people doing the same thing.

And until we get a major political party that is diametrically opposite to what we now have, nothing will change for the better or worse.

Grant said...

"Getting people to the polling booths is one thing, but if they are there discovered to be not on the roll, then the bureaucratic hurdles placed before them can be formidable."

It seems obvious to ask how does this sentence look in reverse. ie. Getting people on the rolls is one thing, but getting them to vote, let alone in the way you want them to is another.

If someone forces me to do something I don't want to do I tend to kick against the direction I'm being pushed.

Anonymous said...

Seeing as getting social welfare payments involves filling in paperwork about address, income, etc, I'm genuinely puzzled as to how registering to vote constitutes an insurmountable bureaucratic hurdle.

Charles E said...

Long ago only men who owned land got to vote. The poor were excluded.
And in some places only white people could vote.
Some places deny the vote to prisoners still.
I am told that in NZ everyone, absolutely everyone can vote and here Maori (men & women?) were the first colonised people to get the vote and later we were almost first to allow women to vote.
All good advances in liberty. All very Kiwi.

So that is all progress and world leading stuff.
Forcing people to register, or worse, forcing them to vote like in the penal colony across the ditch is not in keeping with a free society. It's against liberty and the NZ way so Labour would likely get a net loss in votes from such a policy, and deserve it.

Davo Stevens said...

In Oz people have to vote here it's voluntary.

Labour is putting the cart before the horse. Cure the disease and the symptoms disappear. Find out why people can't be bothered voting and resolve that.

Perhaps it's the Tweedledee/Tweedledum politics?

Richard McGrath said...

Well done for pointing that out, Mr Trotter. A very cynical and (as you point out) unnecessary move as the law already makes voter registration compulsory.
I have a suggestion: make voter registration voluntary, then only those with a real interest in who governs the country will bother to enrol. The politicians would never allow this, of course, as 20-30% voter registration would clearly imply that most people of voting age are thoroughly disillusioned by the duopoly that have ruled this place for decades.