Social welfare overhaul party s ‘greatest test’

Press, 25 February 1980, Page 2

Social welfare overhaul party s ‘greatest test’

I for I' aBm 1 ’ mnvement -and I oyer y ears was the lilsMHsafflt - and develNew Zealand’s system, the ■ ’*w’' Leader of the Labour I I* 1 . %<r .Dt R- Lange) told northern South L ’ d conference at ®Eou& yesterday. p*7? f we.?look at the system ®^v ; and many of our attiB des to it> we would see K?/principles on which it founded lying in ruin,” Krygar 'after year more mili of dollars had been tnriiked «into thfe welfare an d Jailed to I achieve even adequate re-

“There are hundreds of; “ children in my electorate, and throughout this country, whose lives are being crippled by such minor ail- ; ments as untreated ear infections. They don’t hear, ■they don’t pass exams, and they drop out of society — i while parochial pressure : groups scrabble over who gets a head or body scanner or an open-heart unit,” he ■ said. i The smaller community . hospitals that lay at the heart of genuine regional community development • were being wiped out. 1 “If we are serious about ' achieving social justice then . we have to be ready to accept the reality that there

hwill be very real financial restraints. "There will be no hand- ; outs, but then they have been shown not to work; there will be no wild prom- , ises, because we are in the I business of governing, not • promising; and there will be no buckling to pressure groups, because we walk to ■ our own direction and not > theirs,” Mr Lange said. The challenge and the problems were very real, but ! if the Labour Party was not prepared to take hold of the : welfare system and straighten it out, “no-one else will.” “I believe that our rethinking will have to be built around five key points. > — “We have to shift the > whole emphasis of the sys-

tem from one that simply props people up in a state of dependence, to one that gets them back, if at all possible, and as soon as possible, to a state of self-re-liance. — “We have to start thinking about policies of income maintenance, built round the concept of a basic living income for all, rather than cling on to the scramble of unrelated, unequal and often unjust benefits and subsidies that simply breed bureaucracy and interference in people’s lives.

— “We have to make the clearest possible distinction between any system that hands out money and any system that hands out practical preventive help, and in doing so, hopefully we can find our way out of the negative, pin-pricking clerical jungle that today is supposed to stand for social welfare. — “We have to decentralise, as much as possible, away from the centre and back into the natural support of the local community. — “We have to ignore, side-step or just plain outshout those groups in the community whose entrenched and selfish hangups prevent change,” Mr Lange said.