Now Treasury wants to Cut our Incomes!

Treasury has joined the fray of those wishing to cut our incomes and make life harder for us. In the first official paper yet issued by a government body, they want to force even more invalids to look for paid work before they can receive any income. Treasury recommends taking about another 80,000 people off sickness and invalids benefits and onto the dole. Not only this, but they want to force single parents on the DPB to look for work, when their child is even younger than six! This aims to save the government money whilst making life even more miserable and impossible for beneficiaries!
Every person who goes off the invalid's benefit onto another one loses $49 per week! Being an invalid is expensive! Invalids need to pay for medicines, special diets, home help, special furniture, special equipment such as wheelchairs, tele- text and so on. Those who wish to work can need special consideration and support in the work place, for example wheel chair access, or special office equipment. Are the government-or employers- going to provide this? Not likely! Instead we have heard of case officers telling a blind person to get a drivers licence, or a person without functioning arms to write or draw with a pen in their mouth! We have heard of people with mental illness being driven to distraction with terror because of pressure from their case officers to get a job, and suffering from starvation from punitive benefit cuts and stand downs.
Unemployment is rising, and yet government bodies continue to go on about making beneficiaries get paid work-which doesn't exist!. Instead of putting money into creating real work opportunities it cuts government spending and punishes those who can't find it. In the meantime those of us who do find paid work pay punitive secondary tax , whilst others get tax cuts!

Switch people to dole, says Treasury
(See the rest of the following article by Simon Collins at:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10678225 )

About 80,000 people now on sickness and invalid benefits could be shifted on to the unemployment benefit under radical welfare reforms proposed by the Treasury.
A Treasury report to the Government's welfare working group recommends reclassifying all 144,000 people on sickness and invalid benefits into three categories based on their ability to work, shifting those with some capacity to work in the near future on to the unemployment benefit.
It also recommends requiring sole parents to look for paid work before their youngest children turn 6, and contracting out most welfare services to private companies or charities.
But its hard line is softened by other proposals to extend sick leave and parental leave entitlements, and to let sickness beneficiaries earn more from part-time work before having their benefits cut.
The welfare working group, chaired by economist Paula Rebstock, has been given until next February to come up with proposals to reduce long-term benefit dependency.