Posts Tagged ‘paula bennett’
Doing nothing as dole numbers rise
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, October 13th, 2010 - 17 comments
It was a year ago that Paula Bennett first declared victory over rising unemployment. Since then, John Key has been working his economic strategy hard: high-fiving every schoolgirl he can find, playing with spiders, announcing and re-annoucing literally tens of kilometres of cycleway, smiling and waving till it hurts. But dole numbers are rising.
Disaster tourism
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, October 8th, 2010 - 28 comments
The Christchurch earthquake required the suspension of democracy nationwide for 18 months. But Key had time to take a week in Hawaii. And the Social Development Minister is able to go off on a ‘study’ holiday in the US. And Gerry Brownlee, who needed all those powers to rush through laws, has spare time to intervene in The Hobbit dispute.
Solo parent bashing
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, September 28th, 2010 - 101 comments
Life isn’t hard enough already for solo parents, according to the Nats. So they’re going to make it harder.
Paula’s forever blowing bubbles
Written By: - Date published: 11:16 pm, September 6th, 2010 - 15 comments
It’s been nearly two years now of Paula Bennett declaring that the unemployment crisis is over. Yesterday, she put out a press release titled ‘More than 6,000 beneficiaries find jobs in August‘. Wow, 6,000 in a month, pretty good. But Bennett must have been hoping we wouldn’t read beyond the title. The fact is that 900 more people went on the dole than came off it. The total number of beneficiaries just keeps climbing.
Failure by the numbers
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, August 24th, 2010 - 2 comments
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months before Paula Bennett came to office – 22600
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months since Paula Bennett came to office – 52200
Fiscal cost of extra people on the dole (welfare payments and lost tax) – approximately $1 billion
Money in this year’s budget for jobs initiatives – $31 million
Two peas from a pod
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, August 1st, 2010 - 35 comments
The activities of the dishonorable Minister for Social Development and Employment Paula Bennett has been increasingly reminding me of the blogger Whaleoil. Consider the number of common points of obnoxious behaviour. The similarities are quite striking. The main difference is that one is a blogger opinionating on current affairs and the other is a minister of the crown with the responsibility for large numbers of dependent people.
Bennett up in flames in Rotorua
Written By: - Date published: 1:49 pm, July 14th, 2010 - 49 comments
The protest rally held in Rotorua, held its slogan high with nearly a hundred people in tow. “Kill the Future Focus Bill, or it will kill you!” was out in front along with cut outs of Paula Bennett, complete with fangs, risque cleavage and that famous leopard skin trenchcoat -all the props of an actor satirising the working class as she attacks us.
God, she writes like she talks
Written By: - Date published: 2:44 pm, July 5th, 2010 - 55 comments
Paula Bennett in a letter to Tariana Turia: “Because of that sort of addiction it can be really tough on them and you see, certainly, financial hardship being increased and I think also with that sort of stress you can look at domestic violence,”. I don’t think that sentence would pass the national standard.
Privacy Commissioner refers Bennett complaint
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, June 23rd, 2010 - 47 comments
After many months the Privacy Commissioner has ruled on the Paula Bennett case, referring it on to the Director of Proceedings. Will Key now take action? Of course not – there don’t seem to be any consequences for any kind of illegal or unethical behaviour in Key’s government.
Authoritarian Key
Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, June 22nd, 2010 - 28 comments
Once again the government is employing the power of the state against someone who has embarrassed them.
Perhaps when Key talks warmly about Singapore it’s the authoritarianism he likes.
Welfare debate already ugly
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, June 10th, 2010 - 74 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.
Bennett in yet another privacy breach
Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, May 29th, 2010 - 77 comments
Audrey Young reports that Paula Bennett has once again abused the trust and power that is given to her as a minister in her campaign to paint all beneficiaries as bludgers. I don’t know anything about this family. But if this family is not entitled to their benefit then Bennett should do her damn job and get them off it. If they are entitled then she shouldn’t be accusing them of being bludgers.
Privacy Commissioner tells Bennett to pay up
Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, May 27th, 2010 - 122 comments
For her own petty political purposes, Paula Bennett has put Natasha Fuller through hell. Now (finally) the Privacy Commissioner has asked Bennett to apologise to Fuller for the damage she caused and pay her $15,000. Predictably, this awful person has refused. Paula Bennett, you are a disgrace to your office and a disgrace to New Zealand.
Key ‘not sure’ which Bennett he appointed
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 pm, May 6th, 2010 - 82 comments
Prime Minister John Key explained today that there are two Paula Bennetts and he is unsure which one is Minister of Social Development. The two are easily confused. The first Bennett is a solo mum who relied on the DPB. The second Bennett attacks DPB mums, forcing them to seek work.
Pickled Paula picked a pair of Peters
Written By: - Date published: 12:13 am, May 6th, 2010 - 56 comments
But which Peter did pickled Paula pick?
Bennett floundering over Saunders
Written By: - Date published: 5:34 pm, May 5th, 2010 - 42 comments
Apparently Paula Bennet is not aware quite who she has appointed to advise the Welfare Working Group…
John, it’s time for Paula to go
Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, April 30th, 2010 - 230 comments
[Update: TV3 now admits its ’emails’ were a Facebook exchange between Fuller and a friend and Fuller says she made up the money offer. For fuck’s sake, TV3, you can’t run a story based on someone’s Facebook comments. Still, Bennett should not have been meeting with a complainant just before the report is due out. It’s clear she is looking to avoid an embarrassment]
Corrupt
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.
Paula Bennett prematurely opens the champagne, again
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, April 20th, 2010 - 8 comments
Paula Bennett is celebrating the fact that job ads are on the rise. The bad news is the numbers indicate like we are still, a year after the official end of the recession, not at the point where the economy is creating enough jobs to keep unemployment in check, let alone bring it down. Time to put away to bubbly, Paula, and get to work getting Kiwis back into jobs.
English should follow Bennett’s lead
Written By: - Date published: 11:02 am, April 13th, 2010 - 27 comments
Well, I’m pleasantly surprised. For once, Paula Bennett has played it straight on the benefit numbers. She hasn’t slapped herself on the back, even though last month’s benefit numbers are the best we’ve seen on her watch (in line with normal seasonal variation). If only Bill English could follow suit, rather than claiming credit for illusionary movements in the government’s books.
Paying MPs’ court costs
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, April 7th, 2010 - 22 comments
I don’t have a problem with MPs being able to get public funding for court cases arising from their professional activities. You wouldn’t expect private sector employees who are taken to court over their actions in their job to be forced to pay their own way. But what a sense of entitlement Gerry Brownlee has.
Sticking it to the underclass
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, April 7th, 2010 - 39 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?
Over-promise, under-deliver
Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, March 31st, 2010 - 7 comments
The Key Government is constantly promising us great results and actually do nothing that improves things for New Zealanders. English, Bennett, Brownlee, and Tolley are prime examples of this MO. While they promise great things and fail to deliver unemployment is rising, wages are falling, crime is up, and the government has no plan to move us forward.
Espiner on the right-wing smear machine
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, March 31st, 2010 - 16 comments
The Nats run orchestrated smear campaigns coordinated with ministers’ offices, bloggers, and tame journos. National doesn’t want to and can’t engage in real political debate on the issues. So it is reduced to mud throwing. Some brave journo needs to shine a light on what is going on here. It is not good enough for the government to get away with using its proxies to wage secret smear campaigns.
Beneficiary bashing – an inglorious National sport
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, March 30th, 2010 - 30 comments
Lifted from comments for wider reading by commentator acclaim.. Beneficiary bashing in this country is definitely becoming uglier by the day. It seems that Paula Bennett’s attacks on beneficiaries seemingly condoned by the Prime Minister has given prejudice free reign in the country. It is now permissible to demonize a vulnerable group in society based […]
Bennett: a complete failure
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 pm, March 28th, 2010 - 72 comments
What a complete failure Paula Bennett is. If you could bear to sit through her interview on Q+A yesterday, you would have heard nothing but vacuous crap completely divorced from reality and her actual policies, which are opposed by Treasury, Health, and the Attorney-General. There are 67,000 more working age people on benefits than when Bennett became minister and she has no plan to reverse that.
Laissez-faire or fairly lazy?
Written By: - Date published: 3:33 pm, March 27th, 2010 - 5 comments
Fran O’Sullivan’s write: “Till now, Key has operated a rather laissez-faire approach to Cabinet management.” I think she meant “fairly lazy”. She points out that Gerry Brownlee and Paula Bennett have been allowed to go out and essentially lie to the public about their policies only to be embarrassingly exposed by an increasingly awake media (helped by the blogosphere) because Key isn’t paying attention.
What support are the Nats giving beneficiaries?
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, March 26th, 2010 - 84 comments
Paula Bennett is saying that her benefit bashing policies are about “supporting people into work”
What is that support?
I see punishment. I see threats. Where’s the support?
Where, for instance, is the kind of support that Bennett got as a beneficiary? Training assistance that helped her get into work.
Jobs only real benefit reduction policy
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, March 24th, 2010 - 18 comments
You can’t ‘force beneficiaries back into work’ by ‘giving them a kick in the pants’ if there’s no jobs for them to go into. This supposed ‘get tough’ approach won’t get people off the benefit. It’s a cynical exercise in political marketing to make the government look active and distract from the real issues. It is no coincidence that this policy was released a day after the mining policy.
Glorified holiday for Bennett
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?
The minister who cried ‘recovery’
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 pm, March 7th, 2010 - 43 comments
Can someone at MSD please explain to Paula Bennett a season is? Our lazy minister is once again claiming victory over rising unemployment because of the seasonal drop in unemployment numbers. Worryingly, the decline between January and February was less than the average in recent years.
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Factors include: taste and difficulty of hunting. Long before Predator Free 2050, I was doing my part to rid New Zealand of invasive beasts. I was a deer culler for the New Zealand Forest Service in the 70s and 80s, spending months at a time in my assigned block in ...1 day ago - Governor-General Visit To Niue
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IRD rushed through an impact assessment of its advertising strategy to share taxpayers' details with Facebook and other social media platforms last month, within days of telling the Minister it "continuously" reviews its processes to ensure safety. ...1 day ago
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The government is being accused of copy and pasting Uber's position on contractors - and adopting it as official policy. ...1 day ago
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National’s Greg Fleming said he’d lie on the tracks to stop a controversial heavy rail project. Now that project is on his Government’s fast-track list. The post National MP renews vow to ‘lie on tracks’ to stop rail project, now on fast-track appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago - Could the Darleen Tana saga finally be coming to an end?
This evening, Green Party delegates will vote on whether to get the now independent MP turfed out of parliament. Here’s a quick recap of how we got here. Another day, another Green Party meeting. Why should I care? This one’s been a long time coming. Some seven months after first-term ...1 day ago
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We expect that our doctors aren’t being paid by pharmaceutical companies when they prescribe us medicine. Should medicinal cannabis be any different? You can imagine the outrage. A major pharmaceutical company opens a clinic to prescribe its opioids via online consultations and prescribes pain pills to thousands of New Zealanders ...1 day ago
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Consumers don’t need to know how open banking works, but if it is going to succeed, they need to be able to trust it.Much of the work on open banking – and media coverage – so far has centred around the enabling legislation, framework and technical platform development.There’s a risk ...1 day ago
- Newsroom daily quiz, Thursday 17 October
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp');Got a good quiz question? Send Newsroom your questions.The post Newsroom daily quiz, Thursday 17 October appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
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Dame Lois Muir felt this month like she’d been chosen in the Silver Ferns for the first time again – 64 years after the fact.The reason lies inside two “lovely little boxes” she keeps within view which carry a pair of gold pins, moulded in the distinctive curl of a ...1 day ago
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Opinion: On Sunday, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced that Cabinet had agreed to pass the Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill into law. The bill, which was reported back from the select committee in June, will create 12 new high protection areas, five new seafloor protection areas and two extensions ...1 day ago
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Forestry Minister rejects suggestions that Tairāwhiti’s forestry industry is over after last year’s cyclones The post Forestry will continue in Tairāwhiti, but it’s going to look different, McClay says appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
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Was the Christchurch terrorist one of us? We know he wasn’t literally, of course. He came from Australia, was radicalised online and in Europe, before he moved to New Zealand, which he found to be a laid-back and convenient place from which to stage attacks on two, potentially three mosques, ...1 day ago
- Daily crossword, Thursday 17 October
The post Daily crossword, Thursday 17 October appeared first on Newsroom. ...1 day ago
- The good, the bad and angry of the flourishing menopause industry
It used to be something we didn’t talk about, like periods and anxiety.But menopause is emerging not just as an issue that’s coming out in the open, but as a vehicle for all manner of profitable products.“It’s a real marketing opportunity now,” says writer and menopause expert Niki Bezzant. “There’s ...1 day ago
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