welfare
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A “Culture of Entitlement”?
Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, August 17th, 2017 - 48 comments
With the current dialog about welfare, It is time to look at the people who are the real beneficiaries, of the welfare system.
Who use the educated and healthy workforce our system provides
The people who say “everyone should stand on their own two feet”, “you don’t work you don’t eat”, and “take personal responsibility”,
The business sector.
This is life on a benefit for ill and disabled people
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, August 16th, 2017 - 68 comments
A must read Guest Post for anyone thinking about poverty and welfare this election – a former social scientist turned welfare beneficiary speaks out on WINZ’s state-sponsored neglect of more than 84,000 long-term disabled New Zealanders.
Labour’s policies
Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, August 15th, 2017 - 65 comments
A list of Labour’s announced policies to date and an easy way to compare them to other parties’ policies.
Brutal
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, August 14th, 2017 - 157 comments
Punitive welfare settles into a new low.
Do you?
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, August 11th, 2017 - 69 comments
In the interests of keeping it simple, an obvious fact or two and a basic proposition.
Green MP Marama Davidson on keeping the faith
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, August 10th, 2017 - 90 comments
“We will not forget the thousands of you who came to us with your stories of hardship”
NACT
Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, August 9th, 2017 - 5 comments
“Here’s a new idea for the Tories: Why not ask a simple question every time you propose a course of action: Is this morally just?”
Real and poor
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, August 9th, 2017 - 27 comments
It’s time to hear what poor people have to say about being poor.
James Shaw: “I completely support what Metiria has done”
Written By: - Date published: 8:42 am, August 8th, 2017 - 277 comments
Shaw in his own words on where the party is at.
Messages for the Left
Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, August 6th, 2017 - 107 comments
Kōrero Pono writes about the class divide within the parliamentary Left and the importance of the wider Left’s message in this election.
Gower on Turei’s sacrifice
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, August 5th, 2017 - 47 comments
Consider the sharp contrast between the lies and dirty politics that the Nats have brazened out in the last 9 years and the way that Metiria Turei fronted up and took responsibility for decades old youthful mistakes. Gower is right that it has headed off the Nats’ attack lines and they will be fuming.
I too, am not resigning
Written By: - Date published: 6:29 am, August 5th, 2017 - 210 comments
“there’s one standard for women who were fighting their way out of poverty and another for rich people who know they won’t really get called to account for their own personal histories so long as everyone involved keeps quiet.”
Pencilsword: Greed vs Need
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, August 5th, 2017 - 10 comments
Toby Morris explores the differences in how tax fraud and benefit fraud are dealt with, and asks where our sympathies should be.
Metiria Turei will not seek ministerial position
Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, August 4th, 2017 - 177 comments
At a noon press conference Metiria Turei announced that she is not resigning and will continue to lead the Greens, but she is not seeking a ministerial position in a new government. She takes responsibility for her past, but the work on a fair welfare system is more important than any one person.
This is why we need the Greens in government
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 4th, 2017 - 247 comments
Metiria Turei speaks from the heart about how hard it is to be on welfare, and the need for a more compassionate, caring welfare system.
Raging at Metiria is not about the fraud – it’s that she sided with the lepers
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, July 27th, 2017 - 324 comments
Graham Cameron cuts through the obsession over fraud to the cultural values of the last 30 years and the fear beneath.
Beneficiary reduction targets, homelessness and suicide
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, July 26th, 2017 - 41 comments
Most people would be shocked to learn that each WINZ case manager is assigned the target of getting a certain number of people off the benefit every month. This is one of the reasons why we have such a punitive and aggressive welfare system. Fewer than half of those removed from the benefit go to jobs. The Nats neither know nor care what happens to the rest, but links to the rising number of homeless and our shocking suicide statistics should be investigated.
Greens: Grandparents and children deserve better than National’s ‘penal welfare’
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, July 25th, 2017 - 34 comments
National’s ‘penal welfare’ approach is failing kids, failing caregivers and failing New Zealand.
#IamMetiria
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, July 20th, 2017 - 35 comments
If you know that feeling of dread when you get a WINZ letter, or if you’ve had roiling anxiety from being ‘called in’ for a WINZ interview, or sighed with relief when the letter from WINZ turns out to be a replacement community services card, then follow #IamMetiria. And if you just don’t recognise those, then you might want to follow #IamMetiria to find out why others do…
I am Metiria
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, July 19th, 2017 - 75 comments
If you’ve ever left a WINZ office crying because you asked for help and were humiliated instead #IamMetiria
Lefties on fire
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, July 17th, 2017 - 95 comments
The best of twitter from the weekend.
This is not an image of a Low Flying Penguin.
Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, July 16th, 2017 - 62 comments
It’s also is not a picture of a person claiming entitlements who has not felt compelled to bend the truth when dealing with WINZ. Both images would be equally difficult to find.
The Greens’ new welfare policy
Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, July 16th, 2017 - 312 comments
“Green co-leader Metiria Turei described it as one of the most important Green policies in her 15 years in Parliament.”
Labour coming in from the cold
Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, July 13th, 2017 - 63 comments
Amongst all the hooha of the political week, Labour did something pretty cool with its winter heating announcement. They made a policy for all beneficiaries. We should be paying attention to what underpins that because there is potential here.
An appropriate apology and an issue that needs fixing
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, June 2nd, 2017 - 103 comments
The Ministry of Social Development illegally penalised a woman who refused to name the rapist father of her child. The case shines a spotlight on an issue that needs fixing.
Still spinning “social investment”
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, May 7th, 2017 - 36 comments
Directing welfare spending where it will do most good makes sense. But let’s make sure that that is what it is, not an excuse to simply cut funding, stigmatise, and target “undesireables”. National’s record does not inspire confidence, to say the very least. Then there’s the hypocrisy…
Social investment meets the surveillance state
Written By: - Date published: 11:14 pm, March 4th, 2017 - 47 comments
First they came for the budgeting services. Now we know that every social service agency has to provide clients’ private personal data to the Ministry of Social Development or get no funding. Apparently it’s essential to Bill English’s much-touted and little understood “social investment” strategy, which is sounding more like something out of Orwell’s 1984. […]
Spinning ‘social investment’
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, January 14th, 2017 - 54 comments
Bill English has co-opted the old term “social investment” to replace another old term “targeted welfare”. Simon Wilson (writing at The Spinoff) has bought into the spin and written a deeply confused piece about it.
The Centrelink fiasco
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, January 6th, 2017 - 29 comments
In Australia the Turnbull Government is implementing a policy that will demand in 12 months at least 200,000 Australians repay benefits they were entitled to because of faulty data mapping.
Briefing Papers: And so this is Christmas…
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, December 23rd, 2016 - 107 comments
Alicia Sudden reflects on Christmas at The Briefing Papers: “Yet this brief annual window excludes the elephant in the room: that this poverty is a consequence of our welfare system failing to provide the support it was intended to.”
The Future of Work Commission report
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, November 6th, 2016 - 17 comments
The Future of Work Commission report has now been released. It contains 63 recommendations including the tentative implementation of a universal basic income and a that voluntary work for approved organisations allow beneficiaries to continue to receive a benefit.
- Tuesday 18 March
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