Long term model or beneficiary bashing?

Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, September 14th, 2012 - 21 comments
Categories: national, spin - Tags: ,

Somebody get me a Tui’s billboard please:

Benefit tally ‘not an excuse for hard line’

Finance Minister Bill English denies the Government will use a $78 billion valuation of the lifelong cost of benefits as an excuse to get the public to buy into a harder line on welfare. …

Sarah Thompson, of Auckland Action Against Poverty, said the study was futile and National was simply trying to scare voters into accepting hard-line policies and get people off benefits whatever the cost.

But Mr English denied the valuation was to provide an excuse to make tougher decisions about welfare – saying the Government would actually be spending more as it tried to get people off long-term benefits. …

Mr English said the valuation was an important “performance tool” and would change the behaviour of the Government by forcing it to confront the long-term issue rather than accepting it was an unavoidable cost.

Chair of the Work and Income Board Paula Rebstock said it was important especially because it would be repeated annually.

“When you take a long-term model, there’s no place to hide.”

When you take a long-term model, there’s no place to hide. Interesting, don’t you think, the issue – the only issue – that the Nats have chosen to take a long-term model of?

Just think of all the long-term term issues facing this country. Superannuation and the care of the elderly – the Nats DON’T want to think about that. The economy and transport in an age of declining oil – no long-term model there. Inter-generational inequality and poverty? Where the hell is that long-term model? Carbon emissions and climate change. Well we actually had a long-term model for that, the Nats are busy gutting it (looking for a place to hide from the laws of physics).

Long-term model – yeah right. If the Nats had the inclination and capacity for long-term thinking then there are much more important issues than this. It’s just a tool for beneficiary bashing. How utterly pathetic is that?

21 comments on “Long term model or beneficiary bashing? ”

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  1. Olwyn 1
    14 September 2012 at 8:42 am

    It seems as if this long term model could be reframed: “This is just a fraction of the cost of replacing industry with a property market.”

  2. just saying 2
    14 September 2012 at 8:57 am

    The long-term plan involves entrenching the idea of endlessly reducing numbers on welfare, and the quality and kind of supports it provides, as the worldwide depression continues to deepen and paid work becomes harder and harder to come by. For caregivers of young children, the sick and the disabled and those without lucrative skills, all but impossible. Decent work for decent pay – forget it.

    And any beneficary with any kind of capability will be on call to the wipe the arses of their betters, any time, any place. And do it for a pitttance and with a smile. Those who aren’t of use in this kind of way will eventually be starved out if they are unable to fall back on the kindness of family and friends to provide for them, or appeal through their “worthiness”, to the charity of the rich.

    That is the plan

  3. Bill 3
    14 September 2012 at 8:59 am

    It’s not simply a tool for turning the screws on people claiming entitlements. It’s the necessary groundwork that must be in place for privatising services. And as I pointed out yesterday, the inflated figures (and they are inflated) allow for one of two things.

    1. ‘Performance’ indicators as viewed against this baseline will be over stated. And where a private concern is dealing with admin and being paid tax payer money on ‘results’, it becomes a short term cash cow. Doing nothing would have the appearance of making great strides.

    2. WINZ will look to be making great strides and so private concerns will be supplied false or misleading projections on earnings potentials under any ‘cash for results’ formulae (which is how these contracted out services usually operate…cash for measurable results). And when they pick up the contracts and realise that the inevitable short term gains from an inflated base line have played out, they will have no option but to get very fucking brutal as they attempt to bring their results into line with forecasts

  4. marsman 4
    14 September 2012 at 9:50 am

    Gordon Campbell at Scoop calls Paula Bennett a troll and points out that her figure of 70 odd billion dollars is based on everyone on welfare last year being on welfare for the rest of their lives i.e, she is a lying troll at that.

    • David H 4.1
      14 September 2012 at 11:23 am

      Yeah I read that and I was really tempted to forward that little bit to her, But I don’t need her fat ass all over my privacy.

      • framu 4.1.1
        14 September 2012 at 12:20 pm

        oh thats an easy one

        “this in no way represents or approves, whether in an explicit or implied capacity, an agreement or consent for you or any other person to release any personal information held by yourself or any other department of state to anyone”

        stick that on the end of every single communication to bennet whether its needed or not

      • xtasy 4.1.2
        14 September 2012 at 5:19 pm

        I think they call this “extrapolated” figures, and yes, Bennett is a vicious kind of “troll”, I must agree.

        The report is a bit like “creative accounting” to me!

        • Akldnut 4.1.2.1
          15 September 2012 at 7:22 pm

          Using these figures “whether inflated or not” are an admission of Nation having no plan or being able to get beneficiaries into work!

          Useless Bastards

    • Colonial Viper 4.2
      14 September 2012 at 9:40 pm

      is based on everyone on welfare last year being on welfare for the rest of their lives

      That’s exactly how confident National is of creating new employment.

    • michelle 4.3
      3 May 2017 at 3:45 pm

      well that troll (pull the benefit) will be gone soon so don’t worry she will get her come up ins

  5. mike e 5
    14 September 2012 at 9:52 am

    Lame stream media lets National perpetrate nasty bene bashing while letting National of the hook on Job losses!
    Millions spent on bene bashing longterm cost of overpriced Consultants.
    170,000 JOBS =230,OOO SHORTFALL =NATONOMICS
    60,000 FEWER JOBS

  6. Jim in Tokyo 6
    14 September 2012 at 11:32 am

    Remember when they got almost away with this during the manufactured ACC ‘crisis’ ? It’s the exact same strategy – cook up a scary figure and kick it out into the media, who hoover it up with nary a fact check and start beating the drums and before you know the suckers are begging for the Government to ‘do something’.

  7. mickysavage 7
    14 September 2012 at 12:01 pm

    You should compare this approach with the Government’s changes to the ETS.  All of the regulatory impact statements have had the financial data withheld.
     
    So we are told how much beneficiaries are going to cost but not allowed to know how much subsidising major polluters is going to cost. 
     
    Can someone explain while they should be treated differently?

  8. xtasy 8
    14 September 2012 at 5:00 pm

    So while putting together some dodgy figures in that corporate style report for MSD, why not bring it into perspective by adding up the total GDP income figures for the country over a life-time span? Then these figures would not look so impressive or large at all.

    The report appears to include all kinds of “costs”, some of which are costs in other areas, caused by benefit dependence, and it should also be put into perspective by putting such ‘other” costs in relation to the whole population generating such “costs”.

    All this is intended to do is: Support those that want to give welfare a bad name and encourage bene bashing, no doubt about it.

    What were the costs of getting that report made by the way, and were they justified, given that MSD have their own staff and experts able to do this themselves?

  9. xtasy 9
    14 September 2012 at 5:26 pm

    Another question that should be asked, but which the largely “media release” focused mainstream media seems to ignore, is: What were the instructions given to the company that prepared the report? What criterias were set for them to meet, what were the “expectations” and the asked for type of report?

    Maybe this is worth pursuing by way of O.I.A. request?

  10. prism 10
    14 September 2012 at 9:55 pm

    This editorial for Dompost could have been written years ago, decades even, and filed away ready to be trotted out with insertions of latest prosy polly who’s riding in to town to clean it up with guns blazing.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/7663588/Editorial-With-parents-rights-come-obligations

    Bloody predictable, doesn’t say anything new, just the same old smug critical diatribe and uses the Kahui’s as an example of beneficiaries. And it says that somehow they were receiving $2000 a week, with four beneficiaries living in the same house. Acshully most beneficiaries aren’t like the Kahuis. As I say I think the edcom has just been recycled. It’s JAMMY (just another mean-minded yuppie) piece.

  11. blue leopard 11
    15 September 2012 at 2:04 pm

    Perhaps we have failed to factor in the extent of the slowness that those holding right-wing views have of grasping basic economic factors i.e perhaps we are witnessing an historical event; that of a right-wing government finally realizing that unemployment has costs involved and perhaps they are in the process of realizing how it is better to create an economy that doesn’t depend on unemployment.

    Hopefully they might be in the process of realizing that the profits enjoyed by those enabled (through higher levels of unemployment) to pay the absolute minimalistic of wages doesn’t, in fact, make amends for the huge costs involved of the keeping of people unemployed required to achieve these non-living wages.

    Something that more intelligent approaches have realized at least a century ago.

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