Whether or not you agree with the Abbott Governments tightening of welfare rules, there is at least one thing that they achieve - they demolish many of the arguments used to justify the denial of basic social safety net to New Zealanders living in Australia. It has often been argued that giving New Zealanders access to the meagre Newstart Allowance would see Kiwis flocking over the Tasman to claim the dole. These claims always relied on the supposition that Australias unemployment benefit was much more generous than New Zealands. In reality, the difference has always been small - not enough to justify welfare shopping. Who would uproot their life and spend thousands of dollars moving their family across the Tasman just to claim a few dollars extra in welfare payments after several years? Now, with increasingly tight rules in Australia, there is even less reason to believe that Kiwis would come here to exploit the social security system. Similarly, it has been argued that Kiwis should not expect something for nothing - they should be lifters not leaners. This argument ignores the simple fact that Kiwis in Australia pay the same taxes as everyone else - they help fund the social security safety net, but are denied access to it. Now this argument has even less force. There can now be no claim that those on the Newstart Allowance are leaners - they will be expected to work to receive any government assistance. Even if Kiwis were to have access to unemployment support, they would still be working and contributing to the Australian economy. Whilst the Government may have just destroyed much of the apparent justification for its current policies in relation to New Zealanders, we are not particularly confident they will change their policy stance. Unfortunately, we have seen multiple justifications for the 2001 changes over the years. As soon as one collapses, Australian Governments seem to cobble together a new one. The maintenance of these policies seems to defy logic and does not stand up to reasonable argument. We can only hope that sooner rather than later, the Australian Government will see sense and adopt a reasonable and fair policy towards trans-Tasman migrants.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 00:30:01 +0000
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