Written By: - Date published: 3:58 pm, February 27th, 2011 - 26 comments
The coming welfare reform is less a welfare policy and more another industrial relations policy in drag.
That’s because it won’t just be beneficiaries that suffer under this new regime but the majority of Kiwi workers too.
Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, February 24th, 2011 - 153 comments
There’s a hard truth to NZ politics at the moment. It’s not one people like to think about.
But it helps to be reminded every now and then: everything is a lie.
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, February 23rd, 2011 - 182 comments
The Welfare Working Group wants to get poor women to breed less by giving them free long-term contraception. Sure, this is all an ‘Overton window‘ exercise but eugenics? Seriously? Trying to stop one ‘undesirable’ strata of society from breeding is one step from forced sterilisations. Has the Right reverted 80 years?
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, February 22nd, 2011 - 88 comments
Aucklanders – the fight back against the worst recommendations in the Rebstock report starts now. Join us – Auckland Against Poverty – in a picket, 2pm today outside Work & Income, Sel Peacock Dr, Henderson.
Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, February 21st, 2011 - 23 comments
The Salvation Army has a Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit that comes out with some very well researched material. Their State of the Nation is compelling reading and their fear of the government’s welfare proposals coming out tomorrow speaks volumes.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, December 14th, 2010 - 21 comments
National are consistently attacking the vulnerable in society – those who cannot fight back and complain. This is where a lot of their cuts are aimed at – those who need it most. Be it in health, education or welfare.
And in several recent health and education National cuts have hurt the most vulnerable – our children. Not just the massive ECE cuts of Tolley, but cuts hurting those at the bottom even more.
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 pm, December 13th, 2010 - 66 comments
Interesting piece by Sue Bradford over at Pundit. If the quote attributed to John Key is for real, it’s a shocker: “If we cancelled welfare to 330,000 people currently on welfare, how many would starve to death? Bugger all.”
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 pm, December 7th, 2010 - 25 comments
The Nats like to talk tough about “benefit fraud”. But ONE News reports that simple incompetence in the Ministry of Social Development costs three times as much. Perhaps cutting more public sector jobs, and putting the remaining workers under even more stress, will help fix the problem, do you think?
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, December 2nd, 2010 - 11 comments
The recommendations of the Nats’ welfare working group are, predictably, good old fashioned Tory welfare bashing. In contrast a report released last week by the Anglican Social Justice Commission shows just how misguided the ideology underlying this attack on welfare is.
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, October 28th, 2010 - 24 comments
There was some expenditure that didn’t qualify under the old scheme…We’ve looked to broaden that out. John Key on Warner Brothers, 27 Oct 2010
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, October 13th, 2010 - 59 comments
Treasury have made their submission to the Welfare Working Group. Amongst the usual beneficiary-bashing and demands for privatisation, there are a couple of rare admissions that workers’ rights need strengthening. Which do we think will make it through…
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, September 28th, 2010 - 97 comments
Life isn’t hard enough already for solo parents, according to the Nats. So they’re going to make it harder.
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, September 2nd, 2010 - 21 comments
To find out who it is, click here.
Will this individual’s personal file be read out in Parliament by Paula Bennett?
Will this beneficiary’s sex life be investigated by WINZ as grounds for disqualification?
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, August 26th, 2010 - 63 comments
National know the first rule of government: never have an enquiry unless you know what it will say. The latest “Working Group” is the one on Welfare. Paula Rebstock’s team include a couple of medical professionals who specialise in brain injuries, a couple of private sector providers of welfare-to-work programs with a vested interest in …
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, August 14th, 2010 - 19 comments
Britain’s turfing 75% of people off their long-term sickness benefit on an arbitrary test. Let’s hope the Welfare Working Group doesn’t get ideas.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, August 10th, 2010 - 98 comments
If the political world can be split into Left and Right, is there any issue which is better at dividing us than welfare? Inevitably, the Tory attack on welfare has begun. The Rebstock report “dutifully deliver[s] the findings the government wants to hear”.
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, June 10th, 2010 - 73 comments
According to Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, the welfare debate could get nasty: “we may even see an ugly side of New Zealand”. Well here’s a newsflash – the welfare debate is already ugly. The Nats have worked long and hard to make it ugly. Paula Bennett the ugly side of New Zealand is you.
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, June 9th, 2010 - 30 comments
The best form of welfare is a decent job. During it’s nine years in power, the fifth Labour government cut the number of beneficiaries by 150,000 by getting people into work. So assisting more sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries into work is a good idea. But you can’t help people into jobs that don’t exist. The danger is that the government will simply make it harder for people to get the help they need.
Written By: - Date published: 1:36 pm, May 6th, 2010 - 25 comments
The budget for Whanau Ora, which has been billed as a magical, ineffable revolution in social welfare will be just $33 million a year. What a joke. Whanau Ora’s budget will be less than twice that of that other great fizzer, the John Key Memorial Cycleway. I predict it will have about twice the effect as well.
Written By: - Date published: 12:13 am, May 6th, 2010 - 56 comments
But which Peter did pickled Paula pick?
Written By: - Date published: 5:34 pm, May 5th, 2010 - 41 comments
Apparently Paula Bennet is not aware quite who she has appointed to advise the Welfare Working Group…
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 pm, April 29th, 2010 - 148 comments
It looks like Paula Bennett is getting desperate as the Privacy Commissioner’s report looms.
Perhaps it’s time someone explained to her that “personal responsibility” is more than just an attack line to use on beneficiaries.
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, April 24th, 2010 - 56 comments
The Nats are looking to cut $1.8 billion in spending over four years. Where from? What and who will be deemed to be “low quality” in need of “weeding out”? The answers are going to tell us a lot about the National Party’s values…
Written By: - Date published: 6:42 pm, April 8th, 2010 - 41 comments
The Whanau Ora Taskforce report is out and it fails to even attempt to answer simple questions like ‘why is Whanau Ora the best way to help families’. It provides no evidence it will work. Check out the graphic to the right – what does it even mean? All we do know is Whanau Ora will put public money in unaccountable private hands and be privatisation by stealth.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, April 7th, 2010 - 37 comments
Remember “the underclass”? They were briefly fashionable in National circles in 2007. Now that they are the government National’s policies for the underclass seem to involve a good deal of beneficiary bashing. Invalids are being thrown off their benefit before the new legislation is even in effect. Election promises are being broken to remove the carrot and wield the stick. How will this help the underclass?
Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, March 30th, 2010 - 27 comments
The Maori Party says it was ambushed on National’s welfare reform policy, which Tariana Turia opposes. The Minister and the Associate Minister are at odds on the issue. Does this mean that the Maori Party will be making a stand? Don’t hold your breath…
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, March 9th, 2010 - 45 comments
There are 276,000 jobless Kiwis. The seasonally-adjusted trend on dole numbers is still on the rise. Many other people fall through the gaps and are unable to get public assistance in their time of need.
What better time for the Minister for Social Development to bugger off for five weeks?
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, February 18th, 2010 - 17 comments
BLiP gives the best definition of the Key Government’s billion dollar Whanau Ora plan to date: “Whanau Ora = privatisation of social services.â€
Yeah, it does. But I’m still struggling to understand what social services. Will Whanau Ora providers be running hospitals and clinics? Will they be running schools? Will they be making dole and super payments?
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 9 comments
It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 41 comments
Asked to explain his billion dollar policy Key says: “Whanau Ora is a way of saying we’re going to measure outcomes, instead of just inputs into a family to give greater flexibility to a third party private providerâ€. I take that to be a long way of saying “I don’t know what Whanau Ora isâ€.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 30 comments
Whanau Ora is a terrible idea. It is the beginning of the privatisation of social services, wrapped in a cloak of Maori-centred solutions for Maori. The Maori Party and the National Party can’t agree over (among many things) whether Whanau Ora will be open to all or just for Maori but the reality is that …
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