Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, August 11th, 2008 - 39 comments
Categories: benefits, john key, national, same old national -
Tags: beneficiaries, benefits
That nice man, Mr Key, the one who says the old Left/Right divide is over, that he’s a new man with a new (ambitious) vision for New Zealand has rolled out an unprecedented and exciting policy today: beneficiary bashing.
At present, we have a world-leading benefit system. By investing in staff, WINZ has become more than a cheque-issuing service, it actively helps people into training and into work when those are appropriate choices given individual circumstances – the results speak for themselves. National will abolish that and instead (in a move one could almost term ’Nanny State’) implement a one-size-fits-all programme, requiring all people on the DPB to enter work or training training once their youngest child reaches 6. A couple of issues off the top of my head: the DPB gives women the freedom to leave abusive situations – they can have the money and time to raise their children alone, National’s policy will be a barrier to that if the children are over 6; a person on the DPB doesn’t necessarily need skills training; DPB numbers are falling from 113,000 in 1998 to 96,000 today; 60% of DPB recipients are caring for a child under 6; many recipients are already in skills training or work (20% have some income on top of their DPB) .
Now, even if you do think there are legions of women who are bludgers and would rather raise a kid on $250 a week than work, there’s the rather serious problem that National’s previous attempts at beneficiary bashing have done nothing to reduce benefit numbers and expenditure. (sources: RBNZ, Stats, MSD)
It’s important to remember, this policy isn’t really about making a better benefit system, it’s about whipping up anti-beneficiary sentiment (‘if it weren’t for them, I could have bigger tax cuts!’) to get votes. Like all National’s policy, at least the stuff it has made public, this beneficiary bashing is an election strategy, not a governing strategy.
[PS. It was only a matter of time before some unimaginative hack referred to the secret agenda recording as 'recorder-gate' or 'cocktail-gate'. Tracy Watkins didn't disappoint, any more than usual.]
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“The Labour Party-led Governments have offered huge incentives for welfare-dependant parents to get into work”
Try being a struggling father bringing up children on peanuts rogered gnomer, you wouldn’t know anything about the poverty trap !!
WINZ are guilty of unlawful gender discrimination and it WON’T change with John Wee at the helm !!
It is not benefit bashing to want people to better themselves, its not benefit bashing to make it harder to stay on the benefit, its not benefit bashing to trying and get people on a benefit in to work programmes.
Its benefit bashing to say to them “You don’t have to do a work programme, its not your fault that you haven’t found a job in six months, its not your fault you haven’t got a job, but don’t worry Aunty Helen will look after you and save you from that big bad WHITE man who is rich”
I see you put a high value on the colour of peoples skin BrettDale.
Born in the muldoon era I grew up in south auckland, a suburb called otara.
Muldoon failed to address family violence with his term, he was too busy thinking globally and “thinking big”.
As a result I came away from Otara with bronchiectasis, several allergies, a couple of congential defects with my health deteriorating to the point where now I have a couple of eye diseases, an oral disease and osteoarthritis accompanied by seizures, post traumatic stress and a muscle disorder.
The compensation we get for failure of the national party (or labour in recent times for that matter) to respond? $230.00 per week.
We have had muldoonism, rodgernomics, the mother of all budgets and now with key we have darwinism.
Everyone out there is complaining about tax’s the cost of living, but 20 years ago a basic benefit was the equivelent of 75% of minimum wage. today that sits at just over 55% of minimum wage with everyone wanting the proposed $15.00 an hour taking us to what the equivelent of 48% of minimum wage.
Remember that the ministry od social development answers to no one, they are one of the only branches of government left allowed by law to use descrimintory legislation, one of the only branches for which government fails to provide an advocacy service and are also well known for not providing full disclosure on cost entitlements to clients, a case manager as an example can decline to help you on costs even when you go with a doctors letter, and they arent trained medically at all.
And remember that they only pay 80% percent of what they believe your actual costs to be with limits on the amount you can claim overall.
Think about it people the ones you know and love try suriving on this when they are sick, when they are in need and many of you spend more than this on entertaining yourselves each week and still want more breaks from the government.. I really question who the moochers are here.
National ransoms the country after stripping all assests leaving as with no asset base to build on for the future and they do this every time, borrow, put us in debt and then we throw labour back in to fix it up again.