Decoding Responsibility: Welfare Recipients and the Enforcement of Parental Obligations

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1998 a ‘Code of Social and Family Responsibility’ was proposed by the New Zealand Coalition Government of the time. This paper will examine responsibility from a Derridean perspective, arguing that, while couched in general terms the Code was aimed primarily at welfare beneficiaries' parental responsibilities, and used to justify the possibility of programmes of surveillance and control of the poor. While the Code was subsequently scrapped, I will argue that not only did the Code's notion of responsibility lack respect for beneficiaries, it also enabled the enactment of policies, practices and strategies which have since become integral to government agencies even though there has been an election of a more left-leaning government. Central to these is the Health Funding Authority's ‘Strengthening Families’ programme, ostensibly aimed at helping beneficiaries achieve better outcomes for their children by helping them meet their care, control and support responsibilities. In effect this programme is an enforcement of parental responsibility-state surveillance of welfare beneficiaries beginning at the very birth of a child.