OPINION: Lindsay Mitchell.
Immigration Minister, Erica Stanford, criticizing ACT’s proposed levy on immigrant workers, said it will fall to farmers to pay it. Farmers need immigrant workers because:
“There are certain regions in New Zealand where there is low unemployment or there are Kiwis who are simply not willing to do some of those jobs, be it in agriculture or aged care,” she said.
At December 2025, one of the lowest unemployment regions was Canterbury at 3.7 percent (all of NZ is 5.4%).
At the same time there were 41,676 working age (18-65 year-old) people in Canterbury dependent on a main benefit.
Some will be unable to work due to some form of incapacity. But there are, nevertheless, just under 10,000 Jobseeker beneficiaries described as work-ready.
There are just under 7,000 sole parents on a benefit. Being a sole parent doesn’t prevent the parent from working. A great many do.
Farmers or residential care homes cannot be blamed for wanting people who actually do want to work.
But the government can be blamed for running a welfare system that encourages and perpetuates idleness. A lot of the people “who are simply not willing to do some of those jobs” have never worked; come from families (a term used loosely) who have only a passing acquaintance with the notion, as did the prior generation. The welfare system sustains this lifestyle by paying generously for children and making very few demands on sole parents (who very often are only of ‘sole’ status for the purposes of collecting a benefit). This is the norm in certain communities.
The political response? You get a minister protecting her own patch by blaming another’s. Erica Stanford feels quite free to tell the press there are people who simply don’t want to work. Can Louise Upston do the same? Dare the minister in charge of the welfare system tell us that there are Kiwis who won’t do particular jobs so the taxpayer has to stump up for them and their kids? The kids who will go on to be the next generation of work dodgers.
This is evidence-based fact. Treasury can show you all the relevant data. And yet decade after decade governments have failed to successfully tackle the problem. They tinker at best.
Again, it’s acknowledged that some people genuinely need support but it isn’t in excess of 400,000. The true level probably lies at a third of that. That claim is based on the fact that after the working-age benefit system was introduced, when values were similar and the department of social welfare properly understood its role, there was only ever 2% of the 18-65 year-old population dependent.
Today that number sits at 12.7 percent. And it’s poor policy – or policy for the ‘poor’ – that drove it there.
