The first is gangs, through the hardy perennial of parties claiming that they will be the toughest on law and order.
Even if her comments were ill-advised, there was a certain refreshing honesty about Labour police spokeswoman Ginny Anderson yesterday claiming that her National counterpart Mark Mitchell was spending the election campaign "going around the country scaring old ladies".
Yes he is — fear mongering about crime is hardly a new political tactic — but Mr Mitchell was also correct in his retort that "old ladies" are not the only ones frightened by crime — for example and speaking generally, old ladies do not not run the vape stores, jewellery retailers, appliance stores and dairies being ramraided on a seemingly daily basis.
When not complaining about ramraids Mr Mitchell and many other politicians are cracking down on gangs . . . and quite rightly so too. Gangs have few, if any, redeeming qualities, and the vast majority of New Zealanders would feel much safer and much happier if they did not exist.
The second sector almost guaranteed to become a political football at election time is beneficiaries. This is a sector much harder to demonise, although some parties seem to be doing their level best to do so.
Although New Zealand has a low unemployment rate and a high rate of people in jobs, the number of people on the Job Seeker benefit has increased slightly, mainly due to demographic rather than economic factors. Politicians like to paint many of these people as sponging off the state, living a life of luxury at the expense of the taxpayer. In some cases this hoary cliche may well be true, but in the main it will not.
As with any system there are some who will abuse it, but many of those who have found themselves among the long-term unemployed are there through no choice of their own and would like nothing better than to be engaged in gainful employment.
National social development spokeswoman Louise Upston conjured up an appealing soundbite yesterday when she said her party’s benefits sanction policy would help the kind of person who shows up to a job interview in their pyjamas. But her hearsay Oodie-wearing applicant would surely be the exception, not the norm.
More interesting was Ms Upston’s insistence, in similar vein to likely coalition partner Act New Zealand but not as strident, that sanctions had to be used to "encourage movement from benefits to work".
National is proposing a traffic light system, requiring more strenuous steps by people to find work until they could potentially find their benefit reduced. Act has been more dogmatic still, saying it would remove benefits from drug-addicted and mentally ill people who did not seek support to find work. Both parties share a view of the virtue of work and regard efforts to make people get a job as help rather than harassment.
Those who deal with the long-term unemployed, on the other hand, have a very different view.
In 2018, the government set up the Welfare Expert Advisory Group to report on the social security system, and its findings are the most up-to-date research we have in this area. Members of the group have stressed that while sanctions might work in a minority of cases, it is very much a minority.
Veteran social policy researcher Charles Waldegrave said sanctions were generally counterproductive when applied to low-income families.
Meanwhile, colleague Kaye Brereton, who has received the QSM for her work on behalf of beneficiaries, said: "What the sanctions research said was that this intervention by government agencies going ‘we know better than you about how you should manage your life’ is something that creates more stress for someone and really moves them further away from being ready and able to work."
Proof positive, if any was needed, that voters need to consider more than the soundbite when assessing the policy position of any political party this election campaign.
