If National comes out promising to attack gang welfare dependency you can bet your bottom dollar the Left will counter with, “But what about the children?”
The Left is as prone to manipulating children as pawns in their pro-welfare arguments as the gangs are in using them as meal tickets.
Just remember when you start hearing the objections:
The vast majority of adult gang members have received a main benefit. 62 percent for 5 or more years. Over half (59 percent or 2,337) of all gang members had benefit spells that included dependent children, either with or without a partner.
This will not include those children on a sole parent benefit whose mother is the main recipient.
Sixty percent of the 5,890 children of gang members have been abused or neglected. The alleged perpetrator of abuse or neglect was more often recorded as the children’s mother than the gang member.
Statistical source
How can anyone advance an argument that the taxpayer should continue to fund an environment that is so bad for children?