benefits

Categories under benefits

welfare (366)

Working our way forward

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:50 am, October 13th, 2008 - 16 comments

It was inevitable that the focus of media coverage of Labour’s announements yesterday would be the deposit insurance, it’s a good self-centred middle-class story. But the important stuff, as Irish pointed out last night, is the re-training money, the speed-up of infrastructure construction, the money for sewerage, housing, and anti-erosion projects. The deposit insurance simply acts to […]

Social Report shows Kiwis better off

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 31 comments

MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 […]

Pulling the ladder up behind him

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 2:18 pm, August 13th, 2008 - 16 comments

A lot of you won’t remember it but there was a time in this country when being on a benefit wasn’t seen as the fault of the person receiving it and the idea of a social welfare system was about just that: the welfare of our society. It took a campaign of right-wing scaremongering through […]

Should the sins of the father be visited upon the children?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 8:30 am, August 13th, 2008 - 91 comments

When the DPB was first proposed it had a very simple purpose, to allow mothers to leave abusive relationships, to allow them to protect their children from beatings, alcoholism and psychological abuse. It was intended to ensure that those children would have a real chance at a healthy and happy life. It did not, and could […]

Cartoon: Attacking the poor

Written By: all_your_base - Date published: 10:45 am, August 12th, 2008 - 21 comments

The Child Poverty Action Group thinks that National’s welfare policy is likely to hurt vulnerable children.

Gordon Campbell on Nats’ welfare plan

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 10:36 am, August 12th, 2008 - 15 comments

Dog whistle politics to some, beneficiary bashing to others. But is there logic to National’s policy on benefits? Gordon Campbell asks: Will John Key’s policy announcement on welfare this afternoon do much to resolve the problems it claims to address? Hardly… It is as if National felt the need to beat up on beneficiaries somehow, and somewhere […]

Nats bashing on solo mums

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 4:28 pm, August 11th, 2008 - 110 comments

Wonder of wonders, the Nats’ benefits policy has an 11 page document attached to it. Oh, wait, it’s mostly just stats ripped from the MSD website and long-winded rewordings of the bullet-points, not actual detail of the Nats’ policy. So, what have we got from the party that proclaims it wants more disciplined spending, less […]

Ambitious for beneficiary-bashing

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:36 am, August 11th, 2008 - 40 comments

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 […]

Unemployment to 3.9%

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 1:20 pm, August 7th, 2008 - 15 comments

Unemployment rose again last quarter but remains under 4%. It has now been under 4% for 16 of the last 17 quarters. Interestingly, the number of employed people also increased last quarter but more people came into the workforce who were previously not looking for work. So, workforce participation grew faster than employment grew, meaning […]

Collins beats up on the sick, again

Written By: Tane - Date published: 2:59 pm, August 6th, 2008 - 15 comments

The dreadful Judith Collins is once again peddling lies about sickness beneficiaries to try and soften the ground for National to throw our most sick and vulnerable citizens back into work if they ever regain power. In a press release this afternoon, Collins screams: “the latest figures showing that the number of people on the […]

Act now to protect workers’ wages

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:40 am, June 19th, 2008 - 55 comments

Times are going to get harder for workers in the next few years. Unemployment is set to rise to 4.5-6% (still well under 1990s levels). The wages of those who keep their jobs won’t rise as fast. At the same time, prices are rising faster, particularly petrol. What […]

Some facts on benefit numbers

Written By: Tane - Date published: 5:49 pm, May 28th, 2008 - 34 comments

Hear that sound? It’s Judith Collins banging the sickness beneficiaries drum again. Fresh from a sensationalist report on the front page of the Dom today, Collins is demanding the Government and the Department of Work & Income: “admit they are failing beneficiaries and failing doctors because Labour is more focused on pushing people on to […]