Manage and make productive: The New Zealand National Party’s social investment policy

Abstract

New Zealand National Party’s 2022–2023 policy of Social Investment, which if adopted, will legitimise the management of young unemployed in the name of correcting and helping them. Zygmunt Bauman’s (1989) concept of ‘rational bureaucratic culture’ is used to examine the aims to bring the ‘abnormal’ citizen into the tax-paying fold. The policy will ‘manage and make productive’ young welfare recipients to avoid them ‘bludging’ and encourage them into ‘productive work’, no matter how menial. Using philanthropic monies alongside funding through Vote : Social Development is a new development which removes the state’s sole financing of its safety-net responsibility. It will see a new interpretation of Principal: Agency policy.