How smart is John Key? Well, that remains to be seen. As far as foreshadowings go, things could be worse. What he lacks in oratory, he makes up for with speechwriters. His Burnside speech hints at interesting things. One of them was a theme I have been playing with for my imaginary book; the role of the private and voluntary sectors in welfare.
In my imaginary book, WINZ is renamed Life Support. Work for the dole is called internship, which every business is enrolled in. In return for a ten percent drop in tax, businesses donate ten percent of their work time to charity. Some businesses already do this.
Thing is, community service has been given a bad rap. If someone says "Community Service", one thinks of criminals working off their sentence, or nuns in soup kitchens. The virtue of charity has been crushed by thirty years of consumerist Me-Firstism. Don't blame Roger Douglas. You might as well blame the car, the colour TV, the Walkman. This happened. Now what?
