Bennett weighs in and wins
0 Comments | Dominion Post; Wellington, New Zealand, Aug 1, 2009 | by WATKINS Tracy
PAULA BENNETT must have a midas touch. Her efforts to shut down a couple of solo mums before their criticism of Government policy got any traction should have backfired – but she has emerged from it the darling of talkback and the web instead.
That a Government minister can decide at any time to make public the details of how much a private individual earns may smack of a bullying nanny state and big brother rolled into one – but if Bennett knows her audience, she also chose her victims well.
It’s a pity it’s not so easy to get MPs to cough up details of what they spend their $300-a-week expense allowance on, of course – but, as solo mums Natasha Fuller and Jennifer Johnston learned this week, the privacy debate is not a two-way street.
The torrent of vitriol unleashed against Fuller and Johnston has shades of the race relations backlash sparked by former National leader Don Brash in 2004 with his “one law for all” Orewa speech.
Brash attempted to surf a similar wave of discontent with his Orewa speech a year later that targeted the DPB as a “career option” and threw out more adoptions as the solution.
But there was not the same rich vein of discontent to mine. It might have been a reflection of the fact that they were more prosperous times. Either that, or squeamishness at Brash’s blunt- stick approach. No such squeamishness this time. Bennett might have known she was throwing Fuller and Johnston to the dogs by releasing details of how much they earned on a benefit. But probably even she was taken aback by the angry edge to the voice of middle New Zealand.
When Labour leader Phil Goff announced his botched “welfare for all” policy, this was the public mood he was attempting to tap into – the rising resentment that there are no welfare cheques waiting for couples who’ve worked all their lives and fall on hard times when one of them loses their job.
But Bennett the Westie has bulldozed right over the top. She went for the jugular and found it in the form of a couple of solo mums.
Fuller receives $715 net a week and Johnston $554. Talkback’s cup ran over with anger at the women having their hand out for more in the form of training incentive allowances when they received the equivalent of $37,000 and $28,808 a year. If there was a common thread, it was that the women made more from the state than most hard-working families received in their pay packets.
Two issues had little attention during the furore. The first was that generous welfare assistance is also paid to working families. A three-child working family on Fuller’s income for instance, would receive an extra $261 a week from Working for Families; a little more would go to a family on Johnston’s income
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