Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jul 2012
Source: Marlborough Express (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2012 Independent Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.marlboroughexpress.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1139
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

APPLYING THE TEST

If you don't get a job because you have failed a drug test, or would 
do if you took one, then the nation probably won't rush to comfort 
you when Paula Bennett cuts your benefit.

After all, it is galling when the Government cites cases where 
job-seeker beneficiaries have said flatly that they would not pass a 
drug test. The Social Development Minister says these people should 
face sanction, and they shall. But things are not that straightforward.

There are plenty of pitfalls. One key question will be how the 
authorities can determine with any certainty that it's really the 
prospect of a drug test that stops a person going after a job like 
forestry. There may be other reasons why someone is up for all manner 
of hard work, but just not in forestry.

The Government should not presume drug testing is putting a 
beneficiary off applying for a job. But how does he prove he's not 
concealing a drug habit? By taking a drug test to show he's clean? 
This would mean he's tested if he wants the job and tested if he doesn't.

Some of middle New Zealand won't have a problem with that. They 
should. There's a difference between accepting that some industries 
need to use drug testing, and accepting that the state should be able 
to drug-test any job-seeking beneficiary.

Prime Minister John Key has said people who are meant to be available 
for work should be able to pass drug tests. Reasonably enough, this 
invited the question about going further and just cutting people off 
benefits entirely if they used that money to buy drugs.

Mr Key said that was "another debate". Really it's the same debate - 
one that should take account of warnings from the New Zealand Drug 
Foundation that cutting support for drug users would reduce their 
chances of rehabilitation or the arguments that people turfed out of 
benefits because of their drug habits are liable to turn to crime to 
maintain their needs.

The question also arises whether the job-seeker benefit is really 
where people with serious drug habits belong in the first place.

Clearly we shouldn't be financing people's drug-enhanced joblessness 
and maybe the changes to the new Welfare Reform Bill next year can 
help tidy up some of that. But it won't be easy and the fine details 
haven't been worked out yet.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom