BIG DADDY

John Key has a new 'plan', but its the same plan as all his other plans - bash beneficiaries.

Do you think all the people who banged on about Labour's 'nanny state' during its nine years in government will be hogging the talkback lines in the next few days angrily denouncing the 'daddy statism' of John Key? Can we expect to hear Michael Laws, Leighton Smith, John Tamihere, Mike Hosking and the other usual suspects demand that Big Daddy stay out of people's lives? Will they declare war against Big Daddy?

After all, Key has announced that he is inviting himself into the lives of some of our more youthful beneficiaries and proceed to boss them around. He is going to give them food stamps and some pocket money and supposedly put them into 'training' for jobs that don't exist.

Much of Big Daddy's 'compassionate conservatism' will be done by organisations that are fronted by friends of Big Daddy, like John Tamihere for example. This is privatisation by stealth and the 'service providers' are lining up for their share of the cash.

It doesn't matter that over 170,000 people are out of work and many additional thousands are under-employed. It doesn't matter that Big Daddy has no idea where the new jobs are coming from. He was optimistically banking on a revival of the global economy but since the global economy is going to hell in a handcart, he now tells us that the rebuild of Christchurch and the Rugby World Cup will produce the jobs. Fat chance.

But this doesn't seem to matter to Big Daddy and his supporters on talkback radio, this is all about making moralistic judgements about how young beneficiaries should be treated. According to Big Daddy young beneficiaries are out there smoking their Benson and Hedges and drinking their alcopops at the taxpayers expense and the party is over.

The implication, again, is that the welfare state is somehow responsible for the jobs and economic crisis. But the responsibility for the crisis lies squarely with a political system that has wrecked the economy by implementing failed policies of cuts and austerity.

Big Daddy has nothing to offer in terms of policies to stimulate growth and create jobs so instead is blaming young people for the unemployment crisis. It has always been a favourite tactic of the political right to blame unemployed people for the lack of jobs. These morallistic judgements are then used to lay the foundation for launching savage attacks on our welfare system.

Once again we are witnessing a government that is very good at attacking the unemployed, the young, the sick, the weak and the vulnerable while protecting New Zealand's wealthy and powerful elites.

Coming to a capitalist crisis near you - youth rates.