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Those who work and pay taxes (and would feel stigmatised by accepting welfare handouts unless their circumstances were extremely dire) have every right to be indignant when beneficiaries cheat the system. So they will be disturbed by the news that convictions for sickness benefit cheating went up by more than 40 percent last year, and overall convictions for welfare swindling were up by 13 percent.

Admittedly, we’re only talking about 950 successfully prosecuted cases out of 16,000 investigations among the 258,000 people who are on some sort of benefit. But it begs these questions:

Are the authorities getting better at tracking down cheats, or is the increase in cheating simply because there are more people on benefits?

How can we tell how good the investigators are?

How many of last year’s convicted criminals were repeat offenders?

During the last nine years, Labour has done its damnedest to make as many people as possible dependent on the State – through its grotesque Working for Families policy, the dole, and that great camouflage for unemployment figures, the sickness and disability benefit. The numbers receiving sickness and disability benefits has ballooned under Labour, masking true unemployment.

The poor, and people who depend on handouts, are much more likely to support the Labour Party at elections. So their theory goes, and they’re often right. No one who seeks to increase their wealth through honest personal effort would ordinarily consider voting Labour.

Nigel Pinkerton, an economist with Infometrics, agrees that welfare dependency is harming this country. Writing in the Dominion Post on August 16, he said:

“The current Government likes to play the part of the all-powerful provider. If you take tax off the workers and hand it around, you might make more friends than enemies. You may bribe students, increase the number of people on welfare and, instead of simply cutting taxes for nine years, hand out billions in badly designed packages such as Working for Families.

“New Zealand has come a long way in the past 20 years. Favourable economic conditions have produced near full employment, swelled the Government coffers and raised wages across the board. Yet it is clear the Government has been unwilling or unable to reduce our reliance on welfare.

“Even adjusting for inflation and population growth, the Labour Party has succeeded in increasing our welfare bill. Last year, it spent more than $17 billion on welfare, or $4100 for every man, woman and child in New Zealand.

“Cutting taxes would have returned money directly to workers and their families. Students would be paying off their loans faster and people would be less likely to turn to the Government for help, because their wages would be higher and they would be paying less tax.”

Just across the page from Mr Pinkerton’s article is one describing how more than 1000 people turned up to a Wellington job recruitment fair staged by Western Australia, where average salaries are twice that of New Zealand. More than 95 of them were prison officers.

We can expect that, as more and more jobs are lost in these hard times, there will be a strange and unaccounted-for increase in the numbers of sick and disabled people, and a larger exodus of skilled people to places like Perth.

But what are we to do with benefit cheats, who lack the means to repay what they have stolen? Unfortunately, there is only one answer: they must be taken into care. That’s to say, taken into the nearest prison.

And welfare policy must be changed so that anyone considering nicking taxpayers’ money should understand that henceforth they will run the risk of losing any chance of any benefit, ever. This could well produce a surprisingly large number of willing workers, as well as many miraculous recoveries.

Meanwhile, it’s reported that the New Zealand population now stands at 4.27 million, up by 40,300 thanks largely to 35,000 new babies born in the year to June – now there’s a triumph for Working for Families and Solo Mothers. Unless we reverse the socialist policies of the last nine years and put welfare back in its place, that’s another 35,000 kids who’ll be heading West in about 18 years’ time - joining the hordes who already form the vast New Zealand diaspora.

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