Disputed Destination: New Zealand's world-beating, state-provided universal superannuation scheme offers unprincipled politicians and rapacious financial institutions a tempting target. The Baby Boom Generation (1946-1965) is fast becoming the preferred scapegoat of these "reformers".
THERE’S NOTHING NEW about Welfare Reform, it’s as old as the
ideas advanced in its justification. Managing the poor and vulnerable is just
one of those perennial problems with which governments of every stripe have to
contend.
Mostly, politicians restrict themselves to tinkering, but
every so often a government comes along which engages in the sort of ruthless,
root-and-branch reform that leaves deep scars upon the body politic.
Fortunately, the bitter historical memories handed down by its victims serve as
a prophylactic against similar “reforms” for generations. But, eventually,
popular memory fades, and when it does the threat of root-and-branch reform
returns. And tragedy follows it.
New Zealand may soon be facing just such a threat and,
curiously, it’s as likely to come from the Left as the Right. If that sounds
improbable, then perhaps we should all remind ourselves that it was the
supposedly left-leaning Labour Party which unleashed the “New Right” economic
reforms of the late-1980s. And that it was no less a “liberal” than Bill
Clinton who campaigned on a promise to “end welfare as we have come to know it”
and who, in 1996, affixed his Presidential signature to the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
President Bill Clinton signs the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, putting an end to "welfare as we have come to know it", August 22 1996.
But why would Labour do such a thing? How could attacking
the poor and vulnerable possibly assist its reclamation of the Treasury
benches?
Part of the answer lies in the “communitarian” beliefs
evinced by followers of Labour’s “Third Way”. It’s a philosophy which asserts
that too much emphasis has been placed on “rights” and not enough on
“responsibilities” in the formulation of public policy. Society, they say, has
a duty to see that one group of citizens’ rights are not upheld at their
neighbours’ expense.
The implications of communitarianism for solo mums, the
unemployed, the sick and the disabled are readily imagined. Indeed, they’d do
well to remember that David Parker, Labour’s finance spokesperson, is a strong
believer in communitarian principles.
The other reason Labour might opt for root-and-branch
welfare reform involves the same reasoning that went into the National Party’s
own root-and-branch solutions to the “problem” of “welfare dependency”: poor
people don’t vote. Eight hundred thousand New Zealanders failed to cast a vote
in the last election. Most of them were young, many of them were poor, and
practically all of them didn’t give a stuff about politics.
Motivating such voters requires immense effort, and
National has opted instead
to appease its more conservative supporters by transforming the young
and the poor (Maori and Pasifika especially) into handy targets.
Labour’s challenge is to find some way of mobilising the
young without at the same time making itself a political hostage to the needs
of the poor. One of the easier ways to do this might be to provide younger
voters with a hate figure: a stereotype capable of igniting both their
indignation and their fear. Fortunately for Labour, such a stereotype already
exists: the Selfish Baby Boomer.
By encouraging Generations X and Y to blame the Baby Boomers
for everything from the price of real estate to the rising cost of tertiary
education, and enlisting their support for a “root-and-branch” reform of New
Zealand’s “irresponsibly generous and fiscally unsustainable” system of
universal superannuation, Labour could off-set its declining levels of support
among older voters. By attributing New Zealand’s indebtedness to the
“intergenerational theft” of Baby Boomers, this stripped-down, communitarian
Labour Party could, at least in younger voters’ minds, transform “austerity”
from a political swear-word into a righteous electoral virtue. In combination
with the Greens’ bracing mantra of ecological restraint, they could be on to a
winner.
In 1834 the newly enfranchised English middle-class
shrugged-off its responsibilities to the poor and vulnerable by passing a new
Poor Law. Its hated symbol, the workhouse, was immortalised by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist. The new Poor Law’s sponsor
was not some Tory reactionary, but the liberal Whig, Lord Melbourne.
The Workhouse: The New Poor Law of 1834 brought these dreaded institutions into existence. They were explicitly required to offer conditions harsh enough to dissuade all but the most desperate (overwhelmingly, as the above photograph reveals, the elderly) from seeking sustenance within their walls. The legislation was the work not of Tory reactionaries, but of liberal Whigs.
Baby Boomers, be on your guard.
This essay was
originally published in The Dominion Post, The Otago Daily Times, The
Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily
News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 June 2012.
