The Post: There’s a long way to go on poverty. How will we get there?

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“Look, I was a mum on the DPB; it’s not a great life. And I don’t wish that on anyone. It’s incredibly challenging while you’re on it, and incredibly challenging to get off it.”

For Louise Upston, National’s welfare and work spokesperson, this story forms part of her credentials for fighting poverty, should her party win power in October. But then one of her predecessors, Paula Bennett, had also been a welfare recipient, and her time in office was marked by beneficiary-bashing and harsh financial sanctions.

Back-stories, in short, aren’t enough. But Upston’s intentions are positive. Interviewed in her Parliamentary office this week, she essentially promises to retain Jacinda Ardern’s Child Poverty Reduction Act. “We don’t have any plans to change the legislation,” she says, “and we don’t have any intention to change the [related] targets.”

How, though, would National meet them? Under successive governments, this country has reduced the proportion of children in poverty, on two key measures, from around 15-20% a decade ago to 10-12% now. But the 2028 targets set by Ardern would require us to slash those numbers still further, to just 5-6%, in line with the world’s best performers – and New Zealand’s record pre-Rogernomics.

Upston’s plan is twofold. First, reduce the costs poorer families face. “Deal with the cost-of-living crisis; that deals with inflation and housing costs.” Central here is the $75-a-week Family Boost childcare subsidy: “After housing costs, childcare is your biggest cost.”

Second, get people off benefits. “The current Government’s efforts have been around lifting benefit incomes; our focus will be on supporting people into work.”

She returns to this theme over and over: “We know that the life outcomes from long-term welfare dependency, for children from benefit-dependent homes, are worse, and all the evidence tells us this.”

But does it? If benefits were high enough that recipients enjoyed a decent life, could afford all the basics, and lived in warm, dry homes, would that “evidence” hold? What if the problem is the inadequate payments, not the beneficiary status? “Well, that’s a different philosophical argument,” Upston says, not quite answering the question.

Even after recent benefit increases, some recipients remain $50-200 a week below the poverty line. Under a National-led government, they would remain poor unless they found jobs. “Which is why our focus is getting people off welfare and into work. Unapologetically.”

National would, moreover, increase benefits in line with inflation rather than wages, even though the living standards of beneficiaries would then fall further and further behind those of working people.

This would treat working-age benefits differently to pensions, which are set at two-thirds of the average wage. “Yes, but one’s a benefit, and one’s an entitlement,” Upston says – a stance some would dispute.

Another problem: four out of 10 poor children have a parent in full-time work. What would Upston do about poverty wages? Nothing, directly, though – again – she’d aim to reduce the costs those families face.

Upston would, on this evidence, struggle to hit the 2028 targets. Still, she’d want National to be judged on how it treated the most vulnerable. “I think every government does... No New Zealander wants to see children in hardship.”

It’s curious, though, that having once been a beneficiary, her instinct is not to make that life easier for others but to help them escape it.

This reflects, perhaps, a tension between liberals and conservatives. The former believe benefits should be generous, and social support extensive, so recipients can hold their lives together and then rebound. And indeed, in countries with higher benefits, people often spend shorter spells on welfare than they do in harsher regimes.

Conservatives, by contrast, emphasise immediate job-hunting, and sanctions. Beneficiaries quickly get their payments cut, or have the state manage their money, if they don’t meet their work-search obligations.

Now, any welfare system, unless it is completely unconditional, will deploy some sanctions. But there is growing evidence that widespread sanctions don’t get people off benefits more quickly. Indeed they actually slow that process down, according to the latest research, by adding stress and chaos to already stressful and chaotic lives. They can cause immense damage.

It’s unfortunate, then, that Upston would give them a greater role. But she would also deploy carrots alongside sticks. Beneficiaries under 25, for instance, would get a detailed needs assessment, a job coach and a job plan.

Invited to blame individuals for their situation, Upston instead strikes a sympathetic note. “People, for a whole range of circumstances, have very challenging times, very challenging circumstances… so what we have to do, when those life interruptions happen, is help people up faster.”

She also mentions having met Northland families “who had the most complex and challenging lives that I think most New Zealanders would not even contemplate that Kiwis live. I know we’ve got a long way to go.”

Indeed we do. But how we get there, and whether everyone makes it, may depend greatly on which of its two faces, liberal and conservative, the National Party wants to favour most.