Benefits ‘an incentive for the poor to breed’

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 10

Benefits ‘an incentive for the poor to breed’

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Welfare benefits have been described as “an incentive for the poor to breed” by a National member of Parliament, Mr Ross Meurant (Hobson). He said that the Government should be withholding incentives from the poor to breed if it were serious about ending poverty. With some exceptions, the maxim “poor breed poor” was an accurate account of how poverty was perpetuated, Mr Meurant said.

In many cases, those receiving the Domestic Purposes Benefits or “solo mums,” as he called them, in the less fortunate socio-economic category, were encouraged to have additional children to qualify for increased welfare payments. "If the Government is really serious about doing something about poverty in this country it should stop providing incentives for the poor to breed,” Mr Meurant said. Rather than providing such “breeding incentives” the Government should provide tax con-

cessions to those who had fewer children. Mr Meurant was immediately contradicted by National’s social welfare spokesman and former Minister of Social Welfare, Mr Venn Young. Mr Young said Mr Meurant was not expressing National Party policy and the problems were , much more complicated than Mr Meurant’s solution.

It was National . Party policy to support families and a National Government would continue the D.P.8., he said. Mr Meurant has made the headlines several

times since his election to Parliament last August. In his maiden address in Parliament he cited by name a number of Maori radicals whom he accused of disloyalty to ’New Zealand. He was speaking under absolute privilege in Parliament, so none of those named were able to sue him for defamation. Then Mr Meurant’s Auckland garage was set alight, while his car was in it. Last week Mr Meurant called for subsidies for the productive, rather than the unproductive, in New Zealand.