Phil O'Reilly: Former Welfare Expert Advisory Group member on the Government's new sanction system for beneficiaries

Some upsides —and downsides— in the Government's new sanction system for beneficiaries. 

The Government's increasing how often beneficiaries need to re-apply, and introducing new essential payment cards for those who fail to meet their obligations.  

Former Welfare Expert Advisory Group member Phil O'Reilly says the new sanctions avoid causing harm to beneficiaries' children. 

But, he told Mike Hosking, the Government should also think about helping people build work-ready skills – something the previous Government did well.  

He says getting people a drivers licence and Site Safe certificate so they can get a job in construction for instance, is an important part of moving people off welfare. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
As well as congestion charge news. The government also rolled
out this new traffic light sanctioned system for wealthy yesterday.
The worst culprits are handed a money management card where
half the benefit can only be spent on essentials. Now,
the former Wealthy Expert Advisory Group member Pillow Riley's with
us on this feel very good morning to you moning Mike.
Does it address the malaise of those who can't be bothered?
Are there a lot of those? And does it make

(00:20):
a material difference?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, it's probably a sensible move, Mike. The idea when
we did the work through for Advising Group, the or
Philliy people say, don't have sanctions at all. What I
don't think that's sustainable. I think the public expects that
if you're not going to follow the follow the rules,
then you're going to get sanctioned. But at the same time,
you don't want those sanctions to hurt the kids and
the family of the person being sanctioned. So the idea
of saying, well, we'll let you have the money, but

(00:44):
you can only spend it on certain things in this
case probably groceries and debt and so on, I think
that's sensible because what you don't want to do is
hurt kids, and I think the government's trying to get
to that, and all the rest of the things are
putting in place around you can phone and they do
to cha out to Win's office, which is pretty dehuman
I thought when I looked at it, all of those
things I think are sensible. So those complaining about it,

(01:05):
I think need to just think about what's the other
side of us. In other words, taxpas paying for this,
What do they expect? Sure, because't it shouldn't just be
a free reign to go and do anything you like.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
So you're arguing it's not beneficially bashing, it's not cruelty,
it's what you would expect in a transactional relationship.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, particularly when you think of that traffic like system,
so that it's not as it just comes out of
the blue. You're getting a warning, you're getting some capacity
to change and so on. The one thing I think, Mike,
where they might want to put some more thought and
is about getting work ready. What you don't want also
is that people turn up to a job and then
don't like the job and they spend in and out
of their job. So what the government didn't do much today.

(01:42):
The yesterday in terms are talking about it was getting
work ready, and I suspect that because the politics don't
play for them, they wanted to look to their crowd
yesterday about sanctions.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
But which was my question. I mean, how many people
are actually the problem versus how much of this is
just hey, look we've done this and you can't argue
with it.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
A little bit of both. Actually it's a bigger what
was under the last government, because sanctions had basically can't
wait to a large extent. You're seeing a startup and
this growth in the number of long term beneficiaries even
though the job market was actually very very tight. So
it does demonstrate the need of balance in this mic.
And I think, well, I think you under the one
thing that was happening very well under the last government

(02:18):
was the idea of at least building some capable skills.
So the idea of getting people a driver's license and
a site safety suspige it and so on, just so
they could go get a job in construction for example.
All of that I think is a really important part
of building the capacity for people to move off wellf here.
So most people do want to do that. I mean,
there are some people who just want to stick around
and do nothing, and they should be sanctioned, of course,

(02:39):
But most people want a job, so we should have
a bit of yin and yang, and this about making
sure we can do both.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
I agree. The problem the other day with the unemployment
figures is half the people who lost their job between
I can't remember sixteen or eighteen or eighteen or nineteen
or whatever, what they're doing with that, not in school,
with no qualifications. Unemployed. There's something fundamentally wrong, there isn't there.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Absolutely, it always happens when you get unemployment you see
in the public. Double that for young people, double it
again from our specific people, double it again for those
people living in rural and regional New Zealand. And that'll
be going on this time too. I'm sure the numbers
will demonstrate that they always do. So this is about
your absolutely right, making sure that our skill system provides
kids with work ready skills, which is about literacy, numerously

(03:20):
and so on digital skills. But it's also about activating
support systems for them because in every of the dead
fashion system is it's not going to turn her out
on a time to do that sort of stuff, and
a lot of it's about really buck six things as
a sad driver's lessons, some basic work ready skills, and
then turn up skills and where are uniform skills, customer
service skills. All of those things become quite important. And

(03:41):
I think WHENS in this case where those kids are
spinning straight back out into welfare, can do a better
job of doing some of that kind of work. I
know they already are doing it. Some great people inside
those wind's officers doing some of that work. I think
we need to do more of it because that'll build
an employer confidence about taking these kids.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
On exactly well. Un felt appreciate it. Phill A Riley,
former Welfare Expert Advisory Group member.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
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