Doubting Need

Bashing beneficiaries to get them back on track.

Ain't too high to touch
And it ain't that deep to fall
See faith won't pay the bills (Oh yeah)
But doubt won't save us all

We alright
She alright, he alright, we alright

Doubt - by Samm Henshaw and Wretch 32

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What do you do if you’re at the heart of a centre right wing coalition and you’ve already played your trump card - tax cuts? Do you stand around like a one-trick pony as your coalition partners make hay from all the concessions you rolled over on and let them take all the credit for sticking it to the bottom feeders? Can’t be having that.

Last week you decided to avoid discussing crime and healthcare, so you ended up rolling out a new plan for teaching maths to kids. But then you remembered that Nicola Willis, and others like Mark Mitchell, had been displaying their mathematical abilities since the election and it wasn’t exactly inspiring confidence.

Crikey it was only the other week that Labour were asking Mitchell if he knew how to count to 500. To be honest you weren’t entirely confident how he’d answer. So what now? How will you distract people from the fact that things are essentially the same as when you took over, except where you’ve made them worse, but now you’re out of bullets?

Well there’s one old reliable tactic to fall back on - bashing beneficiaries.

If you blame people for being in need, and make it clear it’s entirely down to them malingering and blowing their welfare cheques on booze and ciggies, that could work. Plus if people are busy pointing fingers at those on welfare they might not look too closely at why unemployment numbers are rising, or the role you might have played in causing that.

Basically a win/win situation.

You get to look well hard, the bottom feeders look bad, and you steal back some of the kudos for bashing the vulnerable from ACT and NZ First. So that’s what National did…