The National Party plans on enforcing current benefit sanctions to address what it says are people getting a "free pass", if elected next year.
Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
During his first annual party conference speech on Sunday, Christopher Luxon promised to help young people who wanted to work into a job but warned there would be sanctions for those who didn't.
Taking aim at young people who had been on welfare for more than a year, he said "You might have a free ride under Labour, but under National, it ends".
About 100,000 people who are able to work are receiving the jobseeker benefit.
The numbers for the year at the end of June showed a 9.7 percent decrease in work-ready people on jobseeker support compared to the previous year.
To test its plan, the party would focus on "about 2000 young people" on the jobseekers benefit in its first year in power, Luxon told Morning Report.
"If it works we'll flow more funding from MSD into the community organisations so they can take on more and more of that work.
"The guts of it is we want to make sure people get a proper assessment, they get a very individualised plan and then they get support even if they start that job within the next year."
Luxon told conference attendees those who "blatantly do not follow their agreed plan" would face sanctions, but gave no further detail.
He told Morning Report there would be consequences for young people not meeting their obligations.
Currently if someone doesn't meet their obligations, their benefit could be cut by 50 percent for four weeks.
Their benefit could be stopped for 13 weeks if it happened again.
Luxon said under National there would first be a non financial sanction which included extending money management out to 25 year olds.
Sanctions weren't enforced under Labour and the current sanctions programme would be applied if National was in power, he said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern criticised National's proposed welfare changes saying the party didn't understand what was already happening.
There was already support to help young beneficiaries into work and sanctions that could be used, she told Morning Report.
Luxon said there was a clear policy gap that National was trying to address.
"The real problem is we've got is businesses are crying out for workers up and down the country, all sectors, all regions and yet at the same time we've got low unemployment, record job vacancies, we've got a doubling of under 25 on the job seekers benefit for over a year."
Community providers would be brought in to help, and funding would be redirected from the Ministry of Social Development.
"Because we're not prepared to fund failure, we actually need to be able to engage and power up and scale up community organisation," Luxon said.
Support services believe National's new welfare policy was outdated, and would worsen the situation for beneficiaries.
Asked if National would also be addressing tax avoidance, Luxon said: "We're going to be tough on tax avoidance, we don't believe tax avoidance is acceptable either."
