Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978

Towards Institutionalized Unemployment

Towards Institutionalized Unemployment

$100 million a year is being paid out for people to [ unclear: rot] on the dole. In many overseas countries that sort of thing is accepted. In fact, there are people who say that it's a good thing to have a pool of unemployed. 'Keep the workers in line. It is not a good thing. It is a tragic and wasteful thing. If it continues, and a permanent pool of unemployed is allowed to become accepted, then the whole social and economic structure of the country will be affected.

We are three million people, fighting like hell to survive in an overseas marketing situation that is stacked against us. If we come to accept that a large proportion of our potential work-force can be written off and their efforts and their contributions wasted, then we are virtually throwing in the towel. In that sort of situation, New Zealand will only slide further and further into a stagnant and deeply divided society.

Photo of Bill Rowling

Equal opportunity, equal rights, equal respect and concern for the individual cannot exist in a country that allows many of its people to live in that sort of situation. It flows through into so many other areas. Already, the figures of access to pre-school education, to higher education, to effective health care, show a disturbing weight against those in the lower income groups.

To allow that to continue, is to institutionalise poverty and to turn our backs on the sort of society that generations of thinking and caring New Zealanders have fought for. That decision, whether or not we are going to accept that trend, or do something about it, is the most critical choice that faces all New Zealanders today. There is not one of us that can stand aside from that choice, because we will all ultimately be affected.

That is why the Labour Party is totally pledged to fight for two unshakeable commitments. The restoration of the right to work. The restoration of the right to a basic living wage. It is out of those commitments that we have forged a very radical new taxation policy. Not because we want a batch of election year handouts. There is no room for anything like that, and our policies certainly do not represent that. But because through taxation we can leave real money in working people's hands, we can lift production and get people off the dole; we can break the poverty cycle that is placing a crippling pressure on wage, and price demands.