Booking Beneficiaries Into Rehab

It's For Their Own Good: Equating beneficiaries with drug addicts has long been one of the Right's most potent rhetorical strategies against the welfare state. It has now been given the official imprimatur of the Ministry of Social Development's senior medical advisor. What's next: "Arbeit Macht Frei" ?

 

THE EVIDENCE is said to be compelling: “for most individuals, working improves health and wellbeing and reduces psychological distress.” In fact, so convinced of the health benefits of employment is the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) senior health advisor, Dr David Bratt, that he equates putting patients on “welfare” with putting them on “an addictive debilitating drug with significant adverse effects to both the patient and their family (whanau) not dissimilar to smoking.”

 

Just think about that for a moment. The MSD’s senior health advisor is telling his fellow doctors that helping their patients access the state assistance to which, as citizens, they are legally entitled, is the same as “putting them on” methamphetamine, heroin or some other kind of “addictive debilitating drug”.

 

The Right’s decades-long rhetorical effort to associate being on a benefit with being hooked on drugs has thus been given the imprimatur of settled medical science. Henceforth, going to the MSD will be the equivalent of checking yourself into rehab. Everything that happens to you there will be about getting you off your welfare addiction and back into the healthy lifestyle of paid employment.

 

Of course, as medically verified drug addicts, the “welfare dependent” citizens themselves have no opinions worth considering. Everybody knows that junkies lie, cheat, steal – even prostitute themselves – to feed their habit. It is, therefore, vital that they not be mollycoddled by their case workers at the MSD. What is required, and what will, from now on, be meted out to these “addicts” is the “tough love” they so desperately need – and which the failed policies of “welfare entitlement” have for so long denied them.

 

And, just in case there are people out there in the community who object to this characterisation of New Zealand’s pioneering Welfare State as nothing more than a government sponsored tinnie house, the Ministry of Social Development has instituted a regime involving compulsory drug testing for “jobseekers”; tough sanctions for those with outstanding arrest warrants; and mandatory attendance at classes devoted to imparting parenting skills.

 

Which is as clear a way of delivering the message: “these people are all drug-taking criminals who persistently neglect and abuse their children”; as the MSD’s bureaucratic masters are willing to venture.

 

The National Party-led Government’s dramatic reform of New Zealand’s social welfare system marks an ominous turning-point in the country’s history. Never before has the state been willing to satisfy so completely the most punitive, the cruellest and the most nakedly sociopathic impulses of its wealthiest citizens.

 

The people behind these reforms know that there are simply not enough jobs to socially integrate the tens-of-thousands of “jobseekers” currently registered on the MSD’s books. And yet, they have no intention of following the example set by previous New Zealand Governments, in which the state itself provided the jobs so necessary to people’s health and wellbeing.

 

What they propose to do, instead, is force as many jobseekers as possible off the MSD’s books. They will achieve this objective by turning the experience of being on the MSD’s books into a nightmare of bureaucratic harassment and social stigmatisation.

 

Before the rest of New Zealand could accept such callous brutalisation, however, the National Party-led Government had first to transform welfare beneficiaries into useless and undeserving sub-humans. Their poverty had to be presented as the consequence of their own lack of application and self-discipline. They had to become idle ingrates: drug addicts and criminals; totally unworthy of decent people’s respect or compassion.

 

And now, because it is not made up of monsters, and for the sake of their hapless children, the Government is insisting that these creatures somehow be “persuaded” to turn their lives around. This time, however, the persuasion is not going to involve the use of carrots. This time the MSD is going to use a stick.

 

And, just as they were in Germany 75 years ago, the doctors are being asked to help. We must hope that Kiwi physicians turn out to be less enthusiastic social-engineers.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 July 2013.

White Knights, Dark Arts.

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself: What would a true master of the dark arts of politics have made of the actions of the Ira Bailey and Keith Ng, who told the MSD about the acute vulnerability of its IT systems? Or of David Shearer, whose bungled handling of leaked information about John Key's visit to GCSB headquarters snatched ridicule from the jaws of embarrassment?

 

A MASTER of the dark arts of politics would shake his head in disbelief. A former staffer in the Prime Minister’s office and a radical environmental activist discover a “hole” in the Ministry of Social Development’s IT network – and they immediately inform the Ministry, the Privacy Commissioner and the public.

 

The first question our black political magician would ask is: “Why?”

 

Because it wasn’t a little hole that IT specialist, Ira Bailey, and investigative journalist, Keith Ng, discovered. No. It was a vast portal; a royal road to virtually every piece of information the MSD possessed.

 

“Did it never occur to either of you that this discovery invested you with extraordinary political power?”

 

The tone of incredulity in the Political Wizard’s voice is easily imagined.

 

“Have you any idea what even an absolutely useless Opposition politician could have done with this information? Can you not imagine the havoc it might have created? Paula Bennett would have been beside herself. The paranoia levels in the MSD would have gone off the scale. Properly managed, this discovery could have seriously destabilised John Key’s government. At the very least it would have destroyed the Minister’s career.

 

“But what did you two upright citizens do? You told the MSD about their IT vulnerability. You told them! At least you, Mr Bailey, had the wit to enquire about an incentive. But you, Mr Ng, did not. Presented with an extraordinary opportunity to do real political damage you acted pro bono publico – for the public good. Honestly, words fail me!”

 

Could there be a better testimonial to the basic honesty of ordinary, decent New Zealanders than this extraordinary incident? Because our Master of the Dark Arts, in identifying the huge opportunity for political mischief-making Mr Bailey’s and Mr Ng’s discovery represented, is not mistaken. All of us, with a little thought, will be able to think of at least one politician who would have exploited the MSD’s massive failure without hesitation - or mercy.

 

We should be proud of Mr Bailey and Mr Ng. Their public-spirited behaviour was so very different from the sort of behaviour exposed during the Leveson Inquiry. Would a journalist working for The News of the World have handed such a treasure-trove of confidential and potentially damaging information over to the UK Privacy Commissioner? Would Julian Assange have contacted the US Department of Defence and offered to identify a potentially devastating security breach?

 

What do you think?

 

The Bailey/Ng revelations weren’t the only example of less-than-perfect state security to enliven the past week. It would seem that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has more than its fair share of “disgruntled former employees” – and maybe even one or two still on staff.

 

Once again, however, the recipients’ exploitation of covertly acquired information was enough to make our Master of the Dark Arts throw up his hands in horror.

 

“This is, quite simply, unbelievable!”

 

We must imagine at this point a shame-faced David Shearer shifting uneasily in his office chair.

 

“It’s Political Destabilisation 1-0-1, Mr Shearer. Page One of The Beginners Guide to Political Scandals. Evidence first. Evidence second. Evidence above all else. You never – and I mean never – launch a political scandal unless you are in possession of all the evidence required to prove it. Do you know what I’m talking about, Mr Shearer? No? Then, let me spell it out for you.

 

“If you claim the Prime Minister joked about Kim Dotcom’s arrest, in a cafeteria full of GCSB operatives, and there’s video evidence to prove it, what do you absolutely, positively, have to have in your possession, Mr Shearer? That’s right, you have to have the bloody video!

 

Did you have the video, Mr Shearer? Did you have any evidence to back up your claim? No, Mr Shearer, you did not. You walked out to confront the most popular Prime Minister in New Zealand’s history holding nothing but an accusation. By the battlements of Barad-Dur, Mr Shearer, what were you thinking!”

 

To which those past masters of the dark arts of politics: Michael Laws, Richard Prebble, Pete Hodgson and Rodney Hide would undoubtedly add: “Amen”

 

An idealist might argue that Mr Shearer’s ineptitude in these arcane matters is rather endearing.

 

A realist would simply conclude that the next victim of the dark arts is likely to be Mr Shearer himself.

 

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, 19 October 2012.