RALSTON: Alison Enright, explain to me exactly how actors actually get their money.

ENRIGHT: Most actors are independent contractors, so they may work for a very short period of the year. Some of that work is relatively highly paid, but a lot of the work they do is low paid, for example most theatre work. Cooperative theatre, apart from the major productions, they might actually do a month's work and not actually come out with any money at the end of it.

RALSTON: In a theatre cooperative, they'll rehearse, they'll put on the production, and at the end of it they'll try and divide the spoils, but there may be no profit.

ENRIGHT: The hirers of venues, and the technicians and the advertising people get most of it usually.

RALSTON: So they are not really waged or salaried. They don't get sick leave, ...

ENRIGHT: Oh no, none of that sort of stuff. No they have to pay their own taxes, their own ACC. They have to put aside money for rainy days, which there are quite a lot of usually.

RALSTON: Kim Pieters, in the broader sense artists are very much the same. Would most artists and actors be in that position Kim that they have to go on to the dole? I mean surely every now and again they must get a payout, and what happens when you do have an exhibition or a show and you do get paid?

PIETERS: Well you go off the dole off for a while I suppose, and you are able to live off that, maybe. But not necessarily. Exhibitions cost money to put on, for the artists.

RALSTON: Gareth Morgan, what's your perspective, watching this? It is like an arts subsidy, the dole, isn't it?

MORGAN: Firstly, let me say I think acting is a real job. It's obvious it's a real job because people who are successful at it make heaps. But there's a heap of them that make nothing. So if you are going to start paying the dole to actors then you are going to have to pay it to rugby players who aren't in the top level; the thing just keeps going. And what about people who are raising children in the home. The genie's out of the bottle here. The way to solve it is quite easy; drop the dole. [KR1]

RALSTON: Drop the dole?" Get rid of it entirely?

MORGAN: That's right. You've got a border problem. What you've got to do is make people want to participate in the workforce. There's no shortage of jobs. That's one of the big illusions out there; that there's a fixed quantity of jobs. There is no shortage. A lot of us create our own jobs; actors create their own jobs actually. [KR2]

ENRIGHT: You don't get paid for it; it would be fine if you could.

MORGAN: Whether you get paid for it just tells you how the market values your work. We all suffer that. There's a lot I do that I don't get paid for. That slacks me off too.

RALSTON: Yeah, bur that'd kill the theatre stone dead, wouldn't it. If there was no dole, if they said 'look I'm sorry, actor doesn't qualify', let alone if they pick up what Gareth said and just drop the whole dole system, how would that affect NZ theatre?

ENRIGHT: Well that would be probably the end of it. In the past theatre has always relied upon cross-subsidy from higher paying work in film and television. But now you've got a reduction in the amount of money that's being paid through Creative New Zealand, a reduction in the number of paid films ...

RALSTON: You can argue, Gareth, I would have thought, that there is a real public good in the theatre and the arts.

MORGAN: But there's a lot more public goods than being an artist, and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense. I actually think that bringing up children is a public good as well.

ENRIGHT: Paid parental leave is something else I strongly believe in.

MORGAN: Where do you stop? Then you have to tell me who precisely is it you would like to pay you for it.

RALSTON: Let's bring Peter McCardle into this as Employment Minister and the author of the whole Community Wage concept. What do you make of this?

McCARDLE: The reality is that we take a very sensible and balanced approach. People who are artists, actors, can register. But when they register we ask them to list a couple of options, and, one of which we expect to be one where there is a reasonable chance of getting an offer of employment. So we've got several hundred if not a few thousand people registered who have a preference for some form of art. It may be photography, it may be acting, it may be music. But at the same time it's very important to look at the unemployment benefit or the community wage as interim support, and we ask people on a sensible basis to have a look at other options. And as you and other participants in the debate would know, many of our artists in New Zealand do have other forms of employment that assists them to make ends meet while they look to pursue greater employment in their chosen profession.

RALSTON: Peter McCardle is the author of the "work for the dole scheme". Actors are in their way working for their dole?

PIETERS: Yes they are. And it's a very valid way of working too. I think it's a matter of New Zealanders asking whether they value artists work or not, and whether they are prepared to pay for it.

RALSTON: That's a good point. It's better than scrub-cutting for the dole, isn't it? It's got to be better than weeding the lawn, the council's lawn or something like that. At least they are doing something reasonably productive, where there is some element of public good.

PIETERS: If people are committed to their work, it's pretty bad to expect them to go and do something else; to go and scrub-cut when they've put a lot of energy and commitment into their artistic work."

McCARDLE: I want to make something very clear about the community wage. Now we are not into putting people into who may be artists or who have other skills into work experience like scrub cutting. That isn't suitable. This community wage ... [interruption]

RALSTON: Acting is surely their way of working for their dole?

McCARDLE: We actually have people in some schemes that have a big artistic component - if that is what the local staff and the job-seeker can best organise to help them maintain their work habits and their contacts and their skills.

ENRIGHT: There's no consistency; where you've got funding on the basis of no wages for the performers; how's that promoting professionalism? The way this is dealt with in other countries is things like evening tax over several years.... In Ireland, they have tax-free status for artists.

RALSTON: Gareth Morgan, in your free enterprise survival of the fittest jungle, the arts community in NZ would just wither and die?

MORGAN: I don't think that's right, actually. Presumably there's some merit to the work, so people will want to see it; will want to consume the product.

RALSTON: I don't know if we've got the scale of population in this country that can support ...

MORGAN: There's a global market for art ...

ENRIGHT: There's no global market for a theatre production in Queen Street or at the Silo Theatre.

MORGAN: Well that's market reality; that's the value that people put on it. But I think that what the discussion really has highlighted is the flaw in the "work for the dole" scheme.

RALSTON: Which is?

MORGAN: The flaw is quite simple. It's that some administrator ... has to choose what's work and what isn't. And so that scheme, I think, is doomed. I think the way you have actually got to handle this sort of thing, of being out of work, is that you have unemployment insurance. When we do have paid activities we put something aside as insurance for when we don't have ...

ENRIGHT: We already do that when we pay our taxes.

MORGAN: Well that's necessary. s soon as the government starts opening the treasure chest and saying well we'll pick these winners and we'll pay for this, you've got problems.

RALSTON: Well let's bring Peter McCardle back in here, because Gareth Morgan calls your scheme flawed, and I did notice the Upper Hutt Employment Trust Pilot scheme of "work for the dole" seems to have been deemed insolvent.

McCARDLE: It has its problems. But Bill, it's very important I address the naughty comments by Gareth. First of all, this is the Community Wage. "Work for the Dole" is an approach taken overseas. Our Community Wage is far superior to any international "work for the dole" scheme I've seen. Our community wage encompasses training, it encompasses community work, and it encompasses other organised activities that are suitable for the job seeker to help them maintain their motivation and self-esteem.... [IR1]

McCARDLE: The Community Wage has the flexibility to enable the staff member with the job-seeker to look at the work options that are available in their region, and to develop the most cost-effective strategies that help that job seeker get into paid employment and compete for it.

RALSTON: Back to our starving artist in Dunedin, Kim. What's your solution, is there a solution?

PIETERS: We're still in negotiation, talking to the local [NZES] people down here. It's working; although sometimes people - artists, musicians or whoever - report to the Employment Service and get a bad deal, because it's not policy here; it's only dependent on the person that you talk to. ... It's very inconsistent.

RALSTON: Alison Enright ... do you see a solution to this; what do you see as the one key that will solve this once and for all?

ENRIGHT: Well, a proper Arts policy with adequate funding, where we meet our international obligations, for example the UNESCO recommendations on the status of the artist; when you actually say that artists are a good and valuable part of any society - an important part - and you make sure that there are opportunities for them to gain productive work. Actors don't want to be on the dole; they want to have productive work. In the United States they have tax cuts for people who give money to the arts, [although] there is a problem with that.

RALSTON: I'm almost too scared to ask Gareth Morgan for his solutions.

MORGAN: Well I just think that being an artist is like being a sportsman; there are amateurs and there are professionals, and the amateurs do it for the love of it and the professionals do it because other people get value out of their performance. No difference.

KR1: Gareth Morgan, in addressing the same consistency problem that Universal Basic Income addresses, seeks to universalise at zero. Rather than make distinctions between actors, other groups of self-employed contractors, and unemployed wage/salary workers, he would adopt the ultra-extreme solution of abolishing the whole benefit system. (I expect that he is quite consistent, in that, if he favours a low flat tax - as I believe he does - then he also favours the abolition of the kinds of tax benefits that are being raised on 1 July.) UBI is an obvious, consistent and non-extreme solution. While Morgan clearly does not support a UBI, Morgan's consistency argument does support a UBI. [back]

KR2: Supply-driven jobs open up a whole new dimension to economics that simply doesn't fit the orthodox model, in which people choose jobs (indeed careers) based on the market price for the service. Prostitution is a classic example of a supply-driven job; there is a steady market, but the market for sexual services is not the central dynamic that explains changes in the quantity of sexual services supplied. Prostitutes are just one group of people who make their own jobs when there are insufficient alternatives.

Supply-driven jobs are not necessarily "bad"; eg most artists are artists first and foremost because it is what they want to be rather than what market forces demand. They simply represent an interesting aspect of the labour market; a challenge to economics which has not been well met by economists. [back]

IR1 [13 July]: In the earlier statements by the Minister on community work he said that if a person was already doing community work this would be recognised. In this statement he again refers to community work, but he doesn't say that the Department's approach to community work, according to several reported cases, is that if the beneficiary is already doing some or even a lot, it does not qualify. It is only 'organised' work in the community that qualifies. Work disallowed includes teacher aiding and voluntary work with community welfare agencies. It is this approach by the Employment Service that is giving the Community Wage the punitive, non-supportive reputation that is spreading around the country. [back]

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