That is the only way to describe the regime's sudden policy to apply a parental income test to 18 and 19 year old jobseekers. Legally these people are adults, and their parents have no legal duty to support them. But apparently now they will be made dependent.
The ostensible purpose for this policy is to encourage 18 and 19 year olds to work. That's bullshit, and everyone knows it. The simple fact is that, thanks to National's engineered recession, there are no jobs. And even the people who Chris Luxon thinks 18 and 19 year olds should be working for say so.
(The real reason is to juke the stats so National can meet its self-imposed target to cut jobseeker numbers by 50,000. They can't do it by getting people into work, so they'll just throw them off benefits instead. And they will call this "success").
Cutting benefit eligibility when there are no jobs does not incentivise anything. It is nothing but an exercise in pointless cruelty. But it is so very, very National, isn't it? Its what they always do: blame and victimise the young, rather than admit that they fucked things up.
