Education and Health and Social Welfare

Decentralise education, health and social welfare

These three categories account for the vast majority of government spending.

The best way to redistribute power from central government to local government is to allow health, education and possibly social welfare to devolve to local government. The health, education and welfare function at national level would be for servicing, research, and coordination.
1. People should receive benefits in their own right. When a woman is the secondary breadwinner in the household, she disappears in all of this.
New Zealand welfare entitlements are not based on individual but joint assessments. This system is having a negative impact on many families. It can undermine marriage or partnerships – separation in order to get a benefit. The system should be changed so that welfare entitlements are based on individual needs rather than household income.

2. The second idea is for a form of universal basic income in which all citizens over a certain age are entitled to receive from the state a certain fixed amount of income (financed out of general taxation) regardless of their employment status.
The Social Security Act 1964 should be repealed and a new system devised which provides an untaxed universal basic income sufficient for people with families to live on.
Implement, as Gareth Morgan has suggested, a state paid income for all adult New Zealanders.
This is called a Guaranteed Minimum Income, Basic Wage, Universal Income, National Dividend, etc, etc. Our version should be called a “Kiwi Dividend”. … The name “Kiwi Dividend” more correctly labels it as a payment made to all citizens as of right rather than as an act of charity.

(This section to be reviewed in the light of our policies on timebanking and the reciprocity principle in Nature).