The Management of Welfare Reforms: Problems and Future Hazards

John Jensen

Recently New Zealanders have been spurred and buffeted by a succession of economic and social changes. Although many of the fundamental features of the welfare state remain, the social policy landscape has changed and is still changing.

This paper seeks to offer a bird’s-eye view of the changed landscape in an effort to identify features that will be prominent in future thinking on welfare policy, and to consider whether the recent welfare reforms provide lessons about how future reforms should be presented and managed. The focus is on income maintenance, because reforms in this area have generated the most extensive and intense public responses, and this is where the greatest public resistance is likely to be encountered. After listing the major reforms, the government’s rationale and the public’s reaction, the paper discusses those issues that are likely to emerge as increasingly important.

The two main conclusions are that: (1) the pace of reform has created “reform stress”, which has become the focus of an increasingly sophisticated and informed critique, but the lack of good information about the effects of reforms has limited the capacity of the Government to respond; and (2) the pressures of the reform process are likely to increase.