Sliding in the polls, have a crack at beneficiaries: National's drug test policy follows a well-worn pattern

It's cynical politics that stokes a popular prejudice that unemployment is a personal failing, and it lets the government off the hook for its failed economic management, argues Neale Jones.

National never lost voters promising tougher sanctions on beneficiaries. Yesterday’s announcement of random drug testing is the latest in the party’s sorry history of framing an economic failure as a personal one.

It is true that unemployment is rising. Stats NZ's latest figures put it at 5.6% for the June quarter, the highest in more than a decade. That is 171,000 people out of work, around 50,000 more than when this government took office.

To listen to the government, you would think those 50,000 people had suddenly become lazy and morally dissolute. Christopher Luxon told unemployed school leavers last year to "get off the couch, stop playing PlayStation and go find a job". David Seymour, backing the drug tests policy, described the alternative to work as being to "get stoned, stay in bed".

High unemployment tells us nothing about the character of the unemployed. It tells us there are not enough jobs. When the Great Depression left as many as three in 10 New Zealand workers without a job, it was not because they had all lost the will to work. The economic system had collapsed.

Standard economics explains why unemployment is high right now. Trump's war in Iran has pushed oil above US$100 a barrel and petrol to $3.50 a litre. His tariffs, now 12.5% on New Zealand exports to the United States, are dragging on trade.

At home, the government has made a bad situation worse. The building industry is in a deep slump, and still reeling from the decision to scrap almost 3,500 Kāinga Ora homes. In May it announced another nearly 9,000 public service jobs would go by 2029, so every public servant who still has a job is spending less while they wait to find out if they are next.

A responsible government would do something to fix this. It would be building houses while builders are short of work, and it would stop pulling spending out of a weak economy. 

But that would require hard work and perhaps even some self-reflection. It is much easier to blame the people who have lost their jobs, or who cannot work. So National's solution is to spend $1.5 million a year on 10,000 random drug tests, with more to follow.

The tests will find next to nothing. We know because jobseekers have had to pass a drug test for any job that requires one since 2013. In the year to June 2018, 47,115 were referred to those jobs. Just 170 failed, and that figure included people who did not turn up. That is 0.36% of referrals, probably lower than you'd find in most workplaces on any given day.

None of that will trouble National because the policy is not meant to get anyone into work. Social development minister Louise Upston says this "isn't about punishing someone because they haven't found a job". Of course it is. The cruelty is the point. It stokes a popular prejudice that unemployment is a personal failing, and it lets the government off the hook for its failed economic management. It no doubt focus-groups brilliantly and may well win National votes.

It is cynical politics and it follows a well-worn pattern. National has a crack at beneficiaries whenever it needs red meat for a conference or wants a bump in the polls near election time.

In August 2011, John Key told National's conference that 16- and 17-year-old beneficiaries would be given payment cards that could not be used to buy alcohol or cigarettes. They were already too young to buy either. The delegates cheered anyway. Twenty-five days before that year's election it was solo mums: any sole parent who had another baby while on the benefit would have to look for work once the child turned one. Eleven days out, it was drug tests.

In 2017, less than three weeks from polling day, Bill English promised to halve the benefit of young jobseekers who turned down drug rehab. In 2023, the traffic light sanctions were unveiled 18 days before the election. Now, 30 days out from an election where National is sliding in the polls, we get random drug tests.

As someone who grew up the son of a solo mum on the DPB, I find this kind of politics particularly shameful. The welfare state gave me security in childhood at a time when our small family was vulnerable. I know many people who have had to rely on it more recently, former public servants among them, to get through after this government took their livelihoods away.

If anyone in this story is lazy and morally dissolute, it is not the growing number of New Zealanders who are out of work. It is a government that would sooner kick them while they are down than help them back on their feet.

Neale Jones is a former senior adviser to the Labour Party.