Is any job better than no job?

The National Party seems to think so - announcing yesterday that, if it becomes government, there’ll be no more young people lying around on the unemployment benefit playing video games all day.

“The free ride is over” - that was the warning shot fired from the luxurious surroundings of Christchurch’s new Te Pae Convention Centre, to young people in Aranui, Linwood, Spreydon, Otara….in fact, anywhere in New Zealand where there is a young person currently receiving the unemployment benefit. Or jobseeker benefit, as it’s known these days.

And when I saw the coverage on TV last night, I thought I was back in the 80s. Especially pre-’87 when it seemed anyone who had a spare bit of cash was starting up or joining a shares club and there were yuppies left, right and centre who seemed to be making money out of nothing.

It turned out they were making money out of nothing and it all came crashing down but, before it did, if you weren’t in a share club or if you weren’t a yuppie you were what we here in New Zealand referred to at the time as a dole bludger.

If you were on a benefit, it was because you couldn’t be bothered working and all you needed was a good kick up the backside and sent out to do an honest day’s work. Because it never did us any harm!

That was back in the 80s. But fast-forward to yesterday, and the National Party seems to think the same solution is needed.

The gist of its policy is that anyone under-25 who’s been on the jobseeker benefit for more than three months, would get what’s being called a “job coach” to essentially do whatever is needed to get them into a job.

And then when you get a job - if you stick at it for 12 months, you get a $1,000 bonus from the taxpayer.

But if you don’t go along with the plan laid out by the “job coach”, then there would be what the National Party is calling “sanctions”. Even the word “sanctions” reeks of Margaret Thatcher doesn’t it?

This morning, party leader Christopher Luxon told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB that these sanctions would start with state-control of beneficiaries’ spending and then eventually their unemployment benefit would be out the window if they didn’t tow the line and get a job.

Now I think this policy is a disaster. It will sound good but, in my view, it will achieve nothing.

It’s all big stick with a little bit of carrot. It’s the sort of thing that is very easy to trot out - but making it happen is a completely different story.

For starters, does the National Party have any idea why some or all of these young people aren’t working? Doesn’t it understand that some of them come from really good families who have done all the right things - who aren’t “the no-hoper parents” people like to rant on about - but despite all that, life just throws some cruel things at these young people.

Things like mental health issues. But also self-esteem and confidence problems. Kids who, especially over the past two-to-three years, have spent so much time in isolation that the idea of going out terrifies them.

I know young people right now - some of them I’ve known since they were babies - who are really struggling at the moment. And what does National think will help them? Telling them that the free ride is over and they need to get a job.

Is this really still the answer in 2022? Are we really going back to the days of calling everyone who doesn’t have a job a “dole bludger”?

Another reason why I think it won’t work, is that National seems to have completely forgotten - or ignored - what would actually have to happen to make it work.

Where would all these “job coaches” come from? What would the Ministry of Social Development have to stop doing, so it could implement this new policy? What would the consequences be of cutting someone’s unemployment benefit just because they don’t get a job? More crime anyone?

I was talking to a 75-year-old woman on Saturday night who is still working. She started working when she was 16 and she’s at the point now where she thinks it’s time to wind things up.

I’d never met her before and I don’t know alot about her but it sounded to me like she and her husband had done pretty well for themselves, but they had obviously worked very hard to get there.

Now she could easily be very critical of “the current generation” and be of the view that if she managed to work hard and keep working, then anyone could.

But she wasn’t, and even she acknowledged that life is so much more complicated for young people today.

And I’m picking that, like me, she won’t be falling for this cheap talk from the National Party

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