Protest on Feb 22nd, 2011, Bennett's office, by Auckland Action Against Poverty, with Waitemata Unite and others. See
Welfare Working Group's Infamous Report
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Beneficiaries Labelled as Mentally Ill
National Seeks Mandate for Welfare Cuts
National plans to make the Welfare Working Group’s notorious recommendations key election policy. The ethnic-cleansing style recommendations include forcing the sick and disabled into work, long term contraception injections, compulsory vaccinations, making single mothers with a second child go back to work when the baby is 14 weeks old and cutting benefits for child truancy, failing to get child 'health checks' or refusing treatments.
A ministerial group (including Beneficiary Bashing Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett, and Not Achieved Education Minister Anne Tolley) will make the final decision, and legislation is expected around September this year. WINZ looks set to be replaced by Employment and Support New Zealand (ESNZ) in July 2012, with all benefits being replaced by a single Job Seeker Allowance.
Benefits cut and no jobs
Benefits are at half their pre- 1991 levels in real terms compared to the minimum wage. A quarter of New Zealand children (and rising) live in poverty. Child abuse levels are through the roof. The Red Cross distributes food to hungry children in our schools. Food prices are soaring and 271,000 are officially jobless. Aotearoa’s unemployment rate continues at 6.6%, up 0.5% over the year, and that’s excluding Canterbury. Anecdotally, staff at a North Shore WINZ office have reported a rise in applicants from around 40-50 a week to 800 a week since the recession began. Youth not in paid work is staggeringly high at thirty five per cent.
Despite this alarming poverty and unavailability of jobs, the National Government continues to pursue an “unrelenting work focus” (Ministry of Social Development catch phrase) and plans to drastically slash the remaining benefits and to “reduce considerably those on sickness and invalids benefits”. Thousands have already been taken off the invalids benefits losing $50 per week. The Rebstock Razor gang wants to reduce spending by nearly a third from around $4.7b to $3.4b per year by 2011 (dishonestly represented as $47b and $34b which is the amount for the entire ten years.) It aims to cut100,000 people off the welfare rolls in the next decade above those who will get jobs with the projected economic recovery. Overall, it hopes reduce those on a benefit from 360,000 to 100,000 by 2021. It also plans to increase the proportion of beneficiaries having to seek work from 37% to77%; with possible work for the dole.
Commentator Gordon Campbell puts it this way: “If the American models for these reforms are anything to go by, those 100,000 people will not simply vanish – they will turn up on our street corners, living out of cardboard boxes.” At the same time the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development earns around $ 540,000 per year (2009 figures). “Now how many 'ordinary' wage and salary earners could live off that?” (Radical, beneficiary activist, in Indymedia discussion)
Not Having a Job is now Seen as a Mental Illness
In order to slash the numbers on the welfare rolls, a key target of the Welfare Working Group (Razor Gang) is the half of the 145,000 sickness/invalids beneficiaries which it says have “unmet mental health needs” which prevent them from working. The ministry admits that it could take “several years” to turn these 72,000 'mentally ill' people into a source of profits. “But we can't wait a year to start ... so we are getting on with training people. Those people will be essential."
Professor Des Gorman, a member of the Rebstock Razor Gang, and chairman of Health Workforce NZ proposes that the Government trains more mental health nurses, and more general practitioners to take “ a special interest” in mental health and addiction. He calls for ACC style 'rehabilitation' to be available, which no doubt roughly translates as “work will set you free” (arbeit macht frei”).
While it is a good idea for those making decisions about the lives of 'mentally ill' beneficiaries to actually learn something about the subject (as at present none of the Regional Health Advisors or designated doctors working for WINZ have a clue) ; the new courses will undoubtedly be a vehicle for the government’s “unrelenting work” focus. It’s likely to become increasingly difficult for anyone (especially a trainee) to question this semi- fascistic approach whose real intent is hidden behind caring language. Here’s an example of the Welfare Working Group’s misuse of language. And here’s the NZ Herald editorial , ‘Work helps ill beneficiaries get better’, replicating the MSD stories as if they were true, and their solutions as if they were commonsense: “Psychological disorders, led by stress and depression, accounted for the entire increase in sickness benefits and a third of the increase in invalids benefits from 1996 to 2002.”
The trainees could well become 'essential', working for low wages, employed by private contractors or NGO’s, learning how to diagnose “mental health needs” in every second sickness beneficiary and prescribing work cures and benefit cuts for most of them. Perhaps underpaid trainees might even run programmes at boot camps for the sick, mentally ill and disabled, similar to those for law breakers and unemployed already being criticised by John Key’s Science Advisor.
And where is this 'Mental Health'’ money coming from? The short answer is-beneficiaries and the sick will pay for it with cuts to benefits and services! Unlike in Australia, where A$2.2 billion extra per year for five years has been provided to 'help' the mentally ill into work , nothing extra has been provided in National’s Budget. So the money has to come out of existing funds for Social Development and Health, despite talk about $1.3b having been “ring fenced” for the project.
The view of unemployment as a ‘mental illness’ is a form of victim blaming. Rather than admitting the truth that the capitalist system needs unemployment to keep wages down and profits up, this view blames the individual for their predicament and suffering. It promotes the delusion that therapies and drugs for the individual can solve the problem of unemployment. The only thing that can solve unemployment is to end the system that creates it!
Co-option of Health Professionals
Robert Steenhuisen, co-chairman of the National Committee for Addiction Treatment spoke out in support of these proposals. With a background in compulsory addiction treatment for offenders, he said that group sessions would probably work best for beneficiaries who often had multiple problems besides addictions. The possibility that some people don’t like working in groups is not mentioned. He went on to say “"People have to reach a certain level of awareness that this is how their life is and that no one is going to make it better for them except themselves".
In this arrogant prescription, there’s no mention of the social causes of people’s suffering that are largely beyond their control-unemployment rates, poverty, social isolation, racism, sexism, beneficiary bashing, harassment, state and family violence to name a few. Instead we need to learn that it’s all our fault!
Robert Steenhuisan does say one good thing though: “Working with people in groups helped them realise they were not the only ones with difficulties.” The possibility is always there for people forced together on some ESNZ programme to actually unite together to fight for their rights.
The New Zealand College of Nurses uncritically reprints an outline of the 'Work Focused Support' approach of Dr David Bratt, Principal Health Advisor of WINZ, (described by Radical as a “simple GP’ in Wellington) on their website. They describe it as “a more integrated approach to combining matters of health and disability with aspects of social wellbeing which fits well with a nursing approach”. Perhaps this support has something to do with the fact that the majority of the Regional Health Advisors employed by WINZ were intended to be nurses.
Extraordinary Powers of Health Professionals
WINZ Regional Health Advisors (some of whom are nurses, but at least one is unqualified) and designated doctors have extraordinary powers as no case officer untrained in health would dare to reject their 'advice'. Radical, a beneficiary campaigner, points out in a discussion in Indymedia , that all the RHA’s and designated doctors have an “absolute work focus.” The designated doctors (who don’t know the client and see them for only a few minutes) are often given far more credence by the case officer than the beneficiary’s own doctor. Radical says:
“I have seen bizarre and absurd 'second opinions' that were totally contrary to ( the opinions) of the normal GPs or other health practitioners (that) clients see...The onus is being put onto the ill person to 'prove' that she/he is really as ill as doctor's medical certificates state. Indirectly the Ministry also treats medical practitioners that are not working with them as 'designated doctor' as possibly not being competent enough to make the assessments they make." The only option WINZ provides for a beneficiary who is not happy with the decision of a designated doctor is to take the matter to a 'Medical Appeal Board.' The decision of this board is final.
As Radical points out, WINZ’s “unrelenting work focus” compromises medical ethics. The ethics of any health professional surely require the health interests of the patient to be put first, rather than the employer’s interests to have them on the labour market. Indeed the horrendous treatment that many people with health and disability issues have faced by WINZ has in fact CAUSED enormous mental health problems for some people. One commentator put it this way on facebook: “They have their own doctors lined up-stacked with arseholes-just like ACC....I wanted to throw up.”
Compulsory Treatment
A ministerial group (including Beneficiary Bashing Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett, and Not Achieved Education Minister Anne Tolley) will make the final decision, and legislation is expected around September this year. WINZ looks set to be replaced by Employment and Support New Zealand (ESNZ) in July 2012, with all benefits being replaced by a single Job Seeker Allowance.
Benefits cut and no jobs
Benefits are at half their pre- 1991 levels in real terms compared to the minimum wage. A quarter of New Zealand children (and rising) live in poverty. Child abuse levels are through the roof. The Red Cross distributes food to hungry children in our schools. Food prices are soaring and 271,000 are officially jobless. Aotearoa’s unemployment rate continues at 6.6%, up 0.5% over the year, and that’s excluding Canterbury. Anecdotally, staff at a North Shore WINZ office have reported a rise in applicants from around 40-50 a week to 800 a week since the recession began. Youth not in paid work is staggeringly high at thirty five per cent.
Despite this alarming poverty and unavailability of jobs, the National Government continues to pursue an “unrelenting work focus” (Ministry of Social Development catch phrase) and plans to drastically slash the remaining benefits and to “reduce considerably those on sickness and invalids benefits”. Thousands have already been taken off the invalids benefits losing $50 per week. The Rebstock Razor gang wants to reduce spending by nearly a third from around $4.7b to $3.4b per year by 2011 (dishonestly represented as $47b and $34b which is the amount for the entire ten years.) It aims to cut100,000 people off the welfare rolls in the next decade above those who will get jobs with the projected economic recovery. Overall, it hopes reduce those on a benefit from 360,000 to 100,000 by 2021. It also plans to increase the proportion of beneficiaries having to seek work from 37% to77%; with possible work for the dole.
Commentator Gordon Campbell puts it this way: “If the American models for these reforms are anything to go by, those 100,000 people will not simply vanish – they will turn up on our street corners, living out of cardboard boxes.” At the same time the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development earns around $ 540,000 per year (2009 figures). “Now how many 'ordinary' wage and salary earners could live off that?” (Radical, beneficiary activist, in Indymedia discussion)
Not Having a Job is now Seen as a Mental Illness
In order to slash the numbers on the welfare rolls, a key target of the Welfare Working Group (Razor Gang) is the half of the 145,000 sickness/invalids beneficiaries which it says have “unmet mental health needs” which prevent them from working. The ministry admits that it could take “several years” to turn these 72,000 'mentally ill' people into a source of profits. “But we can't wait a year to start ... so we are getting on with training people. Those people will be essential."
Professor Des Gorman, a member of the Rebstock Razor Gang, and chairman of Health Workforce NZ proposes that the Government trains more mental health nurses, and more general practitioners to take “ a special interest” in mental health and addiction. He calls for ACC style 'rehabilitation' to be available, which no doubt roughly translates as “work will set you free” (arbeit macht frei”).
While it is a good idea for those making decisions about the lives of 'mentally ill' beneficiaries to actually learn something about the subject (as at present none of the Regional Health Advisors or designated doctors working for WINZ have a clue) ; the new courses will undoubtedly be a vehicle for the government’s “unrelenting work” focus. It’s likely to become increasingly difficult for anyone (especially a trainee) to question this semi- fascistic approach whose real intent is hidden behind caring language. Here’s an example of the Welfare Working Group’s misuse of language. And here’s the NZ Herald editorial , ‘Work helps ill beneficiaries get better’, replicating the MSD stories as if they were true, and their solutions as if they were commonsense: “Psychological disorders, led by stress and depression, accounted for the entire increase in sickness benefits and a third of the increase in invalids benefits from 1996 to 2002.”
The trainees could well become 'essential', working for low wages, employed by private contractors or NGO’s, learning how to diagnose “mental health needs” in every second sickness beneficiary and prescribing work cures and benefit cuts for most of them. Perhaps underpaid trainees might even run programmes at boot camps for the sick, mentally ill and disabled, similar to those for law breakers and unemployed already being criticised by John Key’s Science Advisor.
And where is this 'Mental Health'’ money coming from? The short answer is-beneficiaries and the sick will pay for it with cuts to benefits and services! Unlike in Australia, where A$2.2 billion extra per year for five years has been provided to 'help' the mentally ill into work , nothing extra has been provided in National’s Budget. So the money has to come out of existing funds for Social Development and Health, despite talk about $1.3b having been “ring fenced” for the project.
The view of unemployment as a ‘mental illness’ is a form of victim blaming. Rather than admitting the truth that the capitalist system needs unemployment to keep wages down and profits up, this view blames the individual for their predicament and suffering. It promotes the delusion that therapies and drugs for the individual can solve the problem of unemployment. The only thing that can solve unemployment is to end the system that creates it!
Co-option of Health Professionals
Robert Steenhuisen, co-chairman of the National Committee for Addiction Treatment spoke out in support of these proposals. With a background in compulsory addiction treatment for offenders, he said that group sessions would probably work best for beneficiaries who often had multiple problems besides addictions. The possibility that some people don’t like working in groups is not mentioned. He went on to say “"People have to reach a certain level of awareness that this is how their life is and that no one is going to make it better for them except themselves".
In this arrogant prescription, there’s no mention of the social causes of people’s suffering that are largely beyond their control-unemployment rates, poverty, social isolation, racism, sexism, beneficiary bashing, harassment, state and family violence to name a few. Instead we need to learn that it’s all our fault!
Robert Steenhuisan does say one good thing though: “Working with people in groups helped them realise they were not the only ones with difficulties.” The possibility is always there for people forced together on some ESNZ programme to actually unite together to fight for their rights.
The New Zealand College of Nurses uncritically reprints an outline of the 'Work Focused Support' approach of Dr David Bratt, Principal Health Advisor of WINZ, (described by Radical as a “simple GP’ in Wellington) on their website. They describe it as “a more integrated approach to combining matters of health and disability with aspects of social wellbeing which fits well with a nursing approach”. Perhaps this support has something to do with the fact that the majority of the Regional Health Advisors employed by WINZ were intended to be nurses.
Extraordinary Powers of Health Professionals
WINZ Regional Health Advisors (some of whom are nurses, but at least one is unqualified) and designated doctors have extraordinary powers as no case officer untrained in health would dare to reject their 'advice'. Radical, a beneficiary campaigner, points out in a discussion in Indymedia , that all the RHA’s and designated doctors have an “absolute work focus.” The designated doctors (who don’t know the client and see them for only a few minutes) are often given far more credence by the case officer than the beneficiary’s own doctor. Radical says:
“I have seen bizarre and absurd 'second opinions' that were totally contrary to ( the opinions) of the normal GPs or other health practitioners (that) clients see...The onus is being put onto the ill person to 'prove' that she/he is really as ill as doctor's medical certificates state. Indirectly the Ministry also treats medical practitioners that are not working with them as 'designated doctor' as possibly not being competent enough to make the assessments they make." The only option WINZ provides for a beneficiary who is not happy with the decision of a designated doctor is to take the matter to a 'Medical Appeal Board.' The decision of this board is final.
As Radical points out, WINZ’s “unrelenting work focus” compromises medical ethics. The ethics of any health professional surely require the health interests of the patient to be put first, rather than the employer’s interests to have them on the labour market. Indeed the horrendous treatment that many people with health and disability issues have faced by WINZ has in fact CAUSED enormous mental health problems for some people. One commentator put it this way on facebook: “They have their own doctors lined up-stacked with arseholes-just like ACC....I wanted to throw up.”
Compulsory Treatment
Re-casting sickness or invalids beneficiaries as mentally ill, addicts, or akin to criminals provides an excuse for completely stripping them of their human rights-not that they had too many to start with!-and exercising total control over them. Many beneficiaries have spoken of the 'soft fascist', 'police state' or 'nazi'-like way they are being treated. The current proposals for compulsory treatment of beneficiaries are reminiscent of the Soviet post Stalinist era when political dissidents were forced to take neuroleptics, mind numbing psychiatric medication; or of the identical forced drugging of social dissidents (eg poets, blacks, lesbians and gays) in the USA who were unfortunate enough to be diagnosed as being mentally ill (See Mad in America by Robert Whitaker esp pps 211-219). One person reported on facebook: “Compulsory treatment has already started. People are being forced to take medication or lose the benefit as it is seen as not making an effort to get better... even if the medication makes them worse, and there are no other options.”
What needs to be done?
Many beneficiaries are finding that their lives are being increasingly controlled by WINZ designated doctors, regional health advisors, or case officers who are ignorant of , unsympathetic towards, or plain hostile to their real needs;- such as an adequate income, genuine connection to others, and some autonomy over their own lives. Adding a layer of mental health trainees and intensifying pressure to look for work, is adding insult to injury.
Under this increasing pressure, beneficiaries are fighting back spontaneously and are starting to get organised. In one case "a woman (at DSW) who was obviously stressed and desperate for some assistance was stone walled at the counter. She picked up her baby, 18month old and popped her on the counter and walked away... Suddenly, there was this huge commotion and the tone from the dept changed.” (reported on facebook).
Individually, beneficiaries resist WINZ decisions by making appeals, sometimes with the help of advocacy groups, and one beneficiary is challenging the legal basis of entire WINZ policies. Some beneficiaries are joining the new Te Mana movement to try to defeat National’s policies.
What is needed is a combined fight back of beneficiaries and paid workers, with community organisations, anti-poverty groups, advocacy groups and unions working together. Unions need to include beneficiaries in their ranks. The Unite union was set up to do this, but so far has not done so, apart from the Waitemata Branch which is successfully organising at a grass roots level.
The protests in North Africa and Europe have shown that unemployed can indeed fight back, and even lead revolutionary movements. This is giving inspiration and hope to beneficiaries here in Aotearoa. We need to drive National out, fight in our communities and workplaces, and end capitalism. Expropriate the expropriators! In its place we need a socialist society where people work together to meet real human needs, where women and children are at the centre and not the periphery, and where vulnerable members are treated with caring and respect.
What needs to be done?
Many beneficiaries are finding that their lives are being increasingly controlled by WINZ designated doctors, regional health advisors, or case officers who are ignorant of , unsympathetic towards, or plain hostile to their real needs;- such as an adequate income, genuine connection to others, and some autonomy over their own lives. Adding a layer of mental health trainees and intensifying pressure to look for work, is adding insult to injury.
Under this increasing pressure, beneficiaries are fighting back spontaneously and are starting to get organised. In one case "a woman (at DSW) who was obviously stressed and desperate for some assistance was stone walled at the counter. She picked up her baby, 18month old and popped her on the counter and walked away... Suddenly, there was this huge commotion and the tone from the dept changed.” (reported on facebook).
Individually, beneficiaries resist WINZ decisions by making appeals, sometimes with the help of advocacy groups, and one beneficiary is challenging the legal basis of entire WINZ policies. Some beneficiaries are joining the new Te Mana movement to try to defeat National’s policies.
What is needed is a combined fight back of beneficiaries and paid workers, with community organisations, anti-poverty groups, advocacy groups and unions working together. Unions need to include beneficiaries in their ranks. The Unite union was set up to do this, but so far has not done so, apart from the Waitemata Branch which is successfully organising at a grass roots level.
The protests in North Africa and Europe have shown that unemployed can indeed fight back, and even lead revolutionary movements. This is giving inspiration and hope to beneficiaries here in Aotearoa. We need to drive National out, fight in our communities and workplaces, and end capitalism. Expropriate the expropriators! In its place we need a socialist society where people work together to meet real human needs, where women and children are at the centre and not the periphery, and where vulnerable members are treated with caring and respect.
We join Race to the Bottom Street Theatre
Waitemata Unite joined a protest organised by the Auckland Action Against Poverty on Budget Day. We took part in some street theatre of a Race to the bottom of all the different sections of society. The lively protest was held outside the conference rooms in the Sky Tower, where the National Party was holding a conference about its budget. The single mother won the race!
Waitemata Unite Joins Budget Protest
National's Budget continues to favour the rich at the expense of the poor! On 20th May, Waitemata Unite joined 400 other supporters of the Social Justice Coalition, to march up Queen St, Auckland, in protest!
May Day Protest
Waitemata Unite lead the way in the march up Queen St for social justice, on May Day, 1st May, organised by the newly formed Social Justice Coalition.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Sweeping benefit changes 'horrifying'
Proposed welfare reforms that aim to push people into work are "vile" and the punitive sanctions on beneficiaries will only put further strain on community organisations, advocates say.
Eight Cabinet ministers have been appointed to the ministerial group that will consider the Welfare Working Group's 43 recommendations.
Prime Minister John Key said yesterday that National would campaign on any changes the ministerial group decided on.
The Welfare Working Group aimed to cut the number of people on a benefit from 360,000 to 100,000 by 2021. It suggested the creation of a single Jobseeker Support benefit to replace the dole, domestic purposes, sickness and other benefits. All but the seriously ill and disabled would be required to find work.
The Government has ruled out requiring women who have a child while on a benefit to return to work when their baby is 14 weeks old, but all other recommendations remain on the table.
They include tying the benefit to a requirement ensuring parents make their children go to school and get regular health checks; cutting payments to those with alcohol and drug problems who refuse treatment and providing long-term reversible contraception.
The Group's report was released on February 22, the same day as the fatal Christchurch earthquake and the Government response was delayed as a result.
Mr Key said the Government, like many New Zealanders, believed the welfare system was working as it should.
He refused to comment on specific recommendations, except to say the 14-week requirement made him "uneasy".
Former Green MP Sue Bradford said she was terrified about what might come from what she dubbed the biggest welfare shake-up since the 1930s.
"It's likely that a substantial part, if not all, of the (Working Welfare Group chair Paula) Rebstock recommendations will form part of National's welfare strategy for the election."
The reforms aimed to increase the harassment of beneficiaries and to interfere with their lives even more, Ms Bradford said. "Given that we have 271,000 jobless at the moment, that it's not about getting jobs for people, it's about harassing them to the point that they're going to go off the benefit regardless."
If implemented, the reforms would push people further into crime, alcohol and drug abuse, mental health problems and suicide.
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There were no jobs for people to go into and the Government would be better focusing on improving training, Ms Bradford said.
Taking away the 14-week threshold option may be a way for the Government to introduce another recommendation that all parents on benefits be required to look for work when their youngest child is one, rather than the current three years.
She said the changes were "vile" and "absolutely horrifying".
Salvation Army Major Campbell Roberts said monetary sanctions against beneficiaries who did not meet certain requirements would put pressure on community organisations.
"What's going to happen to them during that period of time ... children still have to be cared for, there's still got to be food in the house."
There was also nothing in the Welfare Working Group's report about the value of caring for children, Mr Roberts said.
Access to childcare services was particularly difficult in low socio-economic areas and was often a great distance from the home and work.
WORKING ON WELFARE
The Welfare Working Group's recommendations include:
Requiring mothers who have a baby while on a benefit to go back to work when their additional child is 14 weeks.
Providing beneficiaries with long-term reversible contraception.
Requiring single parents to look for 20 hours work a week once their youngest child is three and 30 hours a week when the youngest turns six.
Tying the benefit to a requirement that solo parents ensure their children go to school and get regular health checks.
Requiring 16 and 17-year-olds on a benefit to be in education, training, paid work or a combination of the three.
Providing teen parent facilities so teenage mothers can continue their education.
Requiring beneficiaries aged under 18 to live with a responsible adult or under adult supervision.
Cutting benefits for people with drug and alcohol problems who refuse to attend treatment and counselling services.
Beneficiaries who do not meet work test, drug and alcohol and other requirements would have their payments cut for two weeks by 25 per cent for the first breach, 50 per cent for the second and completely for the third. A fourth failure would result in a 13-week stand-down.
The high-powered ministerial group includes:
Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennet
Finance Minister Bill English
Justice Minister Simon Power
Health and State Services Minister Tony Ryall
Education Minister Anne Tolley
Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce
Women's Affairs Minister Hekia Parata
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5076400/Sweeping-benefit-changes-horrifying
Eight Cabinet ministers have been appointed to the ministerial group that will consider the Welfare Working Group's 43 recommendations.
Prime Minister John Key said yesterday that National would campaign on any changes the ministerial group decided on.
The Welfare Working Group aimed to cut the number of people on a benefit from 360,000 to 100,000 by 2021. It suggested the creation of a single Jobseeker Support benefit to replace the dole, domestic purposes, sickness and other benefits. All but the seriously ill and disabled would be required to find work.
The Government has ruled out requiring women who have a child while on a benefit to return to work when their baby is 14 weeks old, but all other recommendations remain on the table.
They include tying the benefit to a requirement ensuring parents make their children go to school and get regular health checks; cutting payments to those with alcohol and drug problems who refuse treatment and providing long-term reversible contraception.
The Group's report was released on February 22, the same day as the fatal Christchurch earthquake and the Government response was delayed as a result.
Mr Key said the Government, like many New Zealanders, believed the welfare system was working as it should.
He refused to comment on specific recommendations, except to say the 14-week requirement made him "uneasy".
Former Green MP Sue Bradford said she was terrified about what might come from what she dubbed the biggest welfare shake-up since the 1930s.
"It's likely that a substantial part, if not all, of the (Working Welfare Group chair Paula) Rebstock recommendations will form part of National's welfare strategy for the election."
The reforms aimed to increase the harassment of beneficiaries and to interfere with their lives even more, Ms Bradford said. "Given that we have 271,000 jobless at the moment, that it's not about getting jobs for people, it's about harassing them to the point that they're going to go off the benefit regardless."
If implemented, the reforms would push people further into crime, alcohol and drug abuse, mental health problems and suicide.
Ad Feedback
There were no jobs for people to go into and the Government would be better focusing on improving training, Ms Bradford said.
Taking away the 14-week threshold option may be a way for the Government to introduce another recommendation that all parents on benefits be required to look for work when their youngest child is one, rather than the current three years.
She said the changes were "vile" and "absolutely horrifying".
Salvation Army Major Campbell Roberts said monetary sanctions against beneficiaries who did not meet certain requirements would put pressure on community organisations.
"What's going to happen to them during that period of time ... children still have to be cared for, there's still got to be food in the house."
There was also nothing in the Welfare Working Group's report about the value of caring for children, Mr Roberts said.
Access to childcare services was particularly difficult in low socio-economic areas and was often a great distance from the home and work.
WORKING ON WELFARE
The Welfare Working Group's recommendations include:
Requiring mothers who have a baby while on a benefit to go back to work when their additional child is 14 weeks.
Providing beneficiaries with long-term reversible contraception.
Requiring single parents to look for 20 hours work a week once their youngest child is three and 30 hours a week when the youngest turns six.
Tying the benefit to a requirement that solo parents ensure their children go to school and get regular health checks.
Requiring 16 and 17-year-olds on a benefit to be in education, training, paid work or a combination of the three.
Providing teen parent facilities so teenage mothers can continue their education.
Requiring beneficiaries aged under 18 to live with a responsible adult or under adult supervision.
Cutting benefits for people with drug and alcohol problems who refuse to attend treatment and counselling services.
Beneficiaries who do not meet work test, drug and alcohol and other requirements would have their payments cut for two weeks by 25 per cent for the first breach, 50 per cent for the second and completely for the third. A fourth failure would result in a 13-week stand-down.
The high-powered ministerial group includes:
Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennet
Finance Minister Bill English
Justice Minister Simon Power
Health and State Services Minister Tony Ryall
Education Minister Anne Tolley
Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce
Women's Affairs Minister Hekia Parata
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5076400/Sweeping-benefit-changes-horrifying
Monday, May 16, 2011
They Say Cutback, We Say Fight Back
MARCH/RALLY: Budget 2011
DON'T CUT OUR FUTURE.
12 noon, Sat 28th May,
QE2 Square, Bottom of Queen St, Opposite Britomart.
More info call CSJ 09 8366389 or 0212106720
"When good people lay idle, evil prospers".
Stand up NZ before it's to late!
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Why You Need to Join Unite!:
Why you need to Join Unite! Union- and Waitemata Unite!
Unite! is a Community Union
Unite! is for low paid and casual workers, and for those who may not be in paid work for any reason, such as unemployment, illness disability, studying or parenting. We are all members of a community or whanau. We are all members of the working class. Unemployment rates are soaring. The government is not interested in creating suitable jobs that meet our needs or family responsibilities. It doesn’t value the contributions we make. It just wants to cut spending on benefits, and make us look for non- existent work. It is about to implement a number of the beneficiary bashing recommendations of the Welfare Working Group. Its basic philosophy is that ‘work makes us free’. To drive home this message it’s proposing to abolish most benefits and combine them into a lower-paid ‘Jobseeker Allowance’. Note that instead of a ‘benefit’ to which we have a right, it is called an ‘allowance’ so that we are only ‘allowed’ to get it if we seek jobs. This shifts the responsibility away from society to create jobs, onto us to find jobs. If we don’t find them because they aren’t there, or if we refuse to work for a starvation wage, or get sacked under the 90 Day Act for no reason, we are going to be blamed as ‘lazy bludgers’. Unite! is a Union for Low Paid and Casual Workers
Unite is one of New Zealand’s fastest growing unions with over 10,000 members. Many young people who had never been in a union before are now proud Unite members. We are a lively and strong union who have had many successes! We successfully campaigned to abolish youth rates. Many of our members, such as those in the fast food industry, now have better wages and conditions protected by collective contracts. Most recently the Unite! ‘UTU’ squads of activists have successfully picketed bosses sacking workers under the 90 Day Act and lockouts of workers like at Skycity. Low paid workers are learning that when we unite together and stand strong, we can win!Unite! is a Union for Unpaid Workers
Mothers are bringing up the future workers of our society. Carers care for the sick and elderly. Students work hard on their studies and still have to make ends meet in their spare time! Many of us do voluntary work, and help our communities. Now the Welfare Working Group is proposing that mothers and fathers on what is now the Domestic Purposes Benefit must work when their youngest child becomes 3yrs old. And if you have a child while on the DPB you will be punished and forced to go to work when the child reaches 14 weeks! Child centres will be allowed to take up to 75 under 2yrs with only 5 staff to look after them! Baby farming under 2’s while the mums and dads are turned into slave labourers! Join Unite! Fight against forced wage labour for mothers and baby farming for under 2’s and for the right to a living benefit!The Fight against Work Tested Benefits and the 90 Day ‘Fire-at-Will’ Act
The 2010 Social Security Amendment Act came into effect last October. Mothers with children over six , and those on sickness benefits, have joined those on unemployment benefits in having to be available for paid work, whether it suits our family or health needs or not. Those on invalids’ benefits are being forced off them, losing $50 per week and having to look for work too! We will be punished by having half our benefits slashed if we don’t comply. If we still don’t comply after four weeks, our benefits are stopped altogether! Whenever we apply for a benefit, we face a thirteen week stand down if we left a previous job “for no good reason’ or were sacked for “misconduct”. Now the 90 Day ‘Fire-At-Will’ Act means that we could be sacked from a job for no reason, and then could face a benefit stand down for another 91 days for being sacked! What’s Behind the Welfare Reform plans for Major Cuts in Social Welfare?
Why has the Welfare Working Group and Treasury proposed to savagely reduce our rights even further? Columnist Michael Laws calls us “ferals” and wants all benefits stopped to stop us “breeding”. John Key says that nobody would starve if all welfare was abolished. The WWG ‘razor gang’ wants all beneficiaries to be work tested and penalised if they do not take offered work. Invalid and Sickness beneficiaries will be medically reviewed and pressured into work. To cover up this trick they propose to eliminate benefits and combine them into a single ‘Jobseeker Allowance’. The effect will be to push people into meaningless work on poverty wages to drive down all wages towards the minimum. Meanwhile the government has raised the minimum wage by a miserable 25cents to $13 an hour when GST, food, petrol, rents etc costs will rise at over 4% plus this year. So that is a minimum wage cut! They are legislating to create a huge pool of poor people competing for non-existent or rubbish jobs while the rich are getting tax cuts and companies are getting bailouts. The government says its reforms will create jobs. Yes, the employers will be encouraged to create more minimum wage jobs on poverty wages to boost their profits!This is why you need Unite! Unite! can fight these laws!
Unite! fights for the rights of employed and beneficiaries!
Waitemata Unite! is a branch of the Unite! union
If you are a paid worker, Unite! will represent you in any disputes with your employer. If you become unemployed, you can still be a member of Unite!
If you are a beneficiary Waitemata Unite! will support you if you have troubles with WINZ getting the benefit you are entitled to. We will attend WINZ appointments with you, and can call a picket if WINZ persists in treating someone unfairly.
Unite! is picketing employers who sack any worker under the 90 Day legislation. We intend to make this law unworkable!
Lower benefits mean lower wages! Employed and unemployed need to Unite! for a living income for all ! Join Unite! Fight for a living benefits and a living wages! Waitemata Unite will fight every unjust benefit stand down!
These employment and benefit laws are unjust, and they must be changed! We need to stand strong and show the Government we will not take it!
Workers in paid employment can go on strike. Beneficiaries can refuse to go shopping or take our kids out on a demonstration instead of doing the housework. We can all go on pickets. We need to support each other. Together we are strong.
We meet every 3rd Saturday of the month at 11 am at the Avondale Community Centre, and have regular pickets and forums.
Come along, have a cuppa, get involved!
Unemployed and Employed, Join Waitemata Unite today!
Welfare Working Group's Infamous Report
The WWG's report may be found at the following site:
http://ips.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Final%20Report/WWG-Executive-Summary-Final-Recommendations-22-February-2011.pdf
On February 22nd, the day the Christchurch earthquake struck, Paula Bennett’s Welfare Working Group (WWG) released its recommendations, which were greeted with a lively and well attended protest demonstration at the Henderson office of Work and Income. The more spectacular of the two catastrophes of course received far greater attention from the media, despite momentousness of the WWG’s report, and the likelihood that in the long term the recommended welfare “reforms” could result in a higher but less easily visible toll of casualties.
At a time of high unemployment attributable entirely to the unresolved global economic crisis, the WWG’s recommendations set the ambitious target of ”at least 100,000 fewer working age people receiving welfare by 2021…” Needless to say, the measures recommended to achieve this goal are thoroughly draconian, and include intensive case management of “Job Seekers” (as all beneficiaries including sole parents and invalids are to be designated) with punitive sanctions for those who seek but fail to find non-existent employment: Benefit cuts and stand-downs and forced labour are the order of the day.
In the preamble the WWG report predictably claims, “Our welfare system has major deficiencies that need to be corrected…”. Substitute the word “report” for “welfare system” and their claim would be valid. A search of the report in electronic pdf file yields zero results for certain words with obvious relevance, namely “recession”, “depression” or “financial crisis” This glaring omission cannot be explained by culpable ignorance or naivety on the group’s part, as the report does at one point fleetingly refer to the global crisis, trivializing it as an “economic downturn” which it blithely assume will be temporary. Nowhere do they discuss whether such optimism is warranted, nor do they address its implications, which if adequately considered would make a mockery of their ideological premises. Where they recommend that the government ”undertake an investigation into whether labour marker barriers to employment need to be addressed as part of a strategy to reduce benefit dependency.” It attests to its own disgraceful failure to make the very investigation necessary to formulate meaningful recommendations, and thus implicitly acknowledge its abject incompetence to do so.
The real significance of this gross omission is as follows: By pretending that no economic crisis has occurred it becomes unnecessary to blame the government’s bosom-friends the financiers for the widespread misery it has caused, and equally unnecessary to correctly identify the crisis as the real cause of the high levels of welfare dependency that the WWG so self-righteously deplores- and condemns. Instead, the wrath of the working class at being subjected to wage & employment cuts is diverted to the convenient scapegoats in the form of the crisis’ hardest-hit victims. Thus does the working class become divided and weakened at a time when in angry unity it could rise up to threaten the abusive power of its oppressors.
More than just diverting the blame for the crisis onto its victims, the WWG’s recommendations will serve very effectively to divert the cost of the crisis onto the working class as a whole. When 100 000 sole parents and invalids are goaded into the labour market they will be competing for employment with an army of former government employees laid off by cuts just announced to the civil service. The threat of eviction if not starvation will force them to accept whatever wage employers care to offer, however low, and crisis- hit employers will be to intent on defending their threatened profits at anyone’s expense but their own. So wages will be driven down to maintain bosses profits. That this is the true purpose of “welfare reform” is borne out by other such anti-worker legislation as the 90-day Fire-at-Will Act.
Further evidence that the WWGs recommendations are tailored to suit the corporate agenda is that along with the radically “fundamental” reform of placing all claimants on a “Job Seeker” benefit goes the contracting out of welfare services to “private and community, not-for-profit sector agencies to deliver employment services.” When the “community” has been devastated (earthquakelike) by other neo-liberal cutbacks, that leaves the field clear for such multi-national “players” as Lockheed -Martin, which has extended its tentacles all over the US welfare system. Oops, this overlooks the Iwi agencies who, considering the disproportionate representation of Maori amongst the unemployed, are to be assigned a major role in achieving the aforementioned target of reduction by 100,000.
Amongst the most maniacally single-minded of the WWG’s “work-focused” recommendations (albeit only by a “majority”) is the one “that a work test in the case of parents having an additional child while on welfare should be aligned with paid parental leave provisions (when the youngest child reaches 14 weeks).” This despite paying lip service elsewhere to “identify[ing] the likely impact of welfare reform on the well-being of children.” That WWG is apparently unaware after months of “consultation” that the “likely impact” has already been identified by concerned professionals (otherwise it could never have considered such a proposal) is proof that it has been selective in its consultation.
Perhaps this last proposal was calculated to make John Key look benign in comparison when he publicly rejected it.
With respect to the last recommendation, the WWG covers its backside by recommending that “the current Taskforce on Early Childhood Education consider ways to improve the availability and affordability of childcare and early childhood education services for lower paid families and people on welfare, including reprioritising some of the existing ECE expenditure.”
True to its real agenda, Key’s government has already responded ever so benignly to this the only commendable recommendation by slashing the funding of ECE with the effect of making childcare services unaffordable to those who will be coerced into using them.
On top of punitive sanctions against alleged malingerers there is intrusive prying into domestic affairs, with for example sanctions against mothers who become pregnant while receiving a benefit. Before the last election the corporate media were trumpeting the accusatory and disparaging slogan of “Nanny State” in their eagerness to get the Natacts elected. Their deafening silence now is hardly attributable to natural disasters. Fine by them that their ideal state now offers it ample mammaries only to voracious corporate suckers. For the working class it has become a harsh, puritanical and Calvinistic Victorian patriarch, with values that match its pure Victorian economic policies.
Other comments on the report may be found at:
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2011/02/24/gordon-campbell-on-the-welfare-working-group-final-report/
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1102/S00213/wwg-shows-no-understanding-of-social-security.htm
http://ips.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Final%20Report/WWG-Executive-Summary-Final-Recommendations-22-February-2011.pdf
On February 22nd, the day the Christchurch earthquake struck, Paula Bennett’s Welfare Working Group (WWG) released its recommendations, which were greeted with a lively and well attended protest demonstration at the Henderson office of Work and Income. The more spectacular of the two catastrophes of course received far greater attention from the media, despite momentousness of the WWG’s report, and the likelihood that in the long term the recommended welfare “reforms” could result in a higher but less easily visible toll of casualties.
At a time of high unemployment attributable entirely to the unresolved global economic crisis, the WWG’s recommendations set the ambitious target of ”at least 100,000 fewer working age people receiving welfare by 2021…” Needless to say, the measures recommended to achieve this goal are thoroughly draconian, and include intensive case management of “Job Seekers” (as all beneficiaries including sole parents and invalids are to be designated) with punitive sanctions for those who seek but fail to find non-existent employment: Benefit cuts and stand-downs and forced labour are the order of the day.
In the preamble the WWG report predictably claims, “Our welfare system has major deficiencies that need to be corrected…”. Substitute the word “report” for “welfare system” and their claim would be valid. A search of the report in electronic pdf file yields zero results for certain words with obvious relevance, namely “recession”, “depression” or “financial crisis” This glaring omission cannot be explained by culpable ignorance or naivety on the group’s part, as the report does at one point fleetingly refer to the global crisis, trivializing it as an “economic downturn” which it blithely assume will be temporary. Nowhere do they discuss whether such optimism is warranted, nor do they address its implications, which if adequately considered would make a mockery of their ideological premises. Where they recommend that the government ”undertake an investigation into whether labour marker barriers to employment need to be addressed as part of a strategy to reduce benefit dependency.” It attests to its own disgraceful failure to make the very investigation necessary to formulate meaningful recommendations, and thus implicitly acknowledge its abject incompetence to do so.
The real significance of this gross omission is as follows: By pretending that no economic crisis has occurred it becomes unnecessary to blame the government’s bosom-friends the financiers for the widespread misery it has caused, and equally unnecessary to correctly identify the crisis as the real cause of the high levels of welfare dependency that the WWG so self-righteously deplores- and condemns. Instead, the wrath of the working class at being subjected to wage & employment cuts is diverted to the convenient scapegoats in the form of the crisis’ hardest-hit victims. Thus does the working class become divided and weakened at a time when in angry unity it could rise up to threaten the abusive power of its oppressors.
More than just diverting the blame for the crisis onto its victims, the WWG’s recommendations will serve very effectively to divert the cost of the crisis onto the working class as a whole. When 100 000 sole parents and invalids are goaded into the labour market they will be competing for employment with an army of former government employees laid off by cuts just announced to the civil service. The threat of eviction if not starvation will force them to accept whatever wage employers care to offer, however low, and crisis- hit employers will be to intent on defending their threatened profits at anyone’s expense but their own. So wages will be driven down to maintain bosses profits. That this is the true purpose of “welfare reform” is borne out by other such anti-worker legislation as the 90-day Fire-at-Will Act.
Further evidence that the WWGs recommendations are tailored to suit the corporate agenda is that along with the radically “fundamental” reform of placing all claimants on a “Job Seeker” benefit goes the contracting out of welfare services to “private and community, not-for-profit sector agencies to deliver employment services.” When the “community” has been devastated (earthquakelike) by other neo-liberal cutbacks, that leaves the field clear for such multi-national “players” as Lockheed -Martin, which has extended its tentacles all over the US welfare system. Oops, this overlooks the Iwi agencies who, considering the disproportionate representation of Maori amongst the unemployed, are to be assigned a major role in achieving the aforementioned target of reduction by 100,000.
Amongst the most maniacally single-minded of the WWG’s “work-focused” recommendations (albeit only by a “majority”) is the one “that a work test in the case of parents having an additional child while on welfare should be aligned with paid parental leave provisions (when the youngest child reaches 14 weeks).” This despite paying lip service elsewhere to “identify[ing] the likely impact of welfare reform on the well-being of children.” That WWG is apparently unaware after months of “consultation” that the “likely impact” has already been identified by concerned professionals (otherwise it could never have considered such a proposal) is proof that it has been selective in its consultation.
Perhaps this last proposal was calculated to make John Key look benign in comparison when he publicly rejected it.
With respect to the last recommendation, the WWG covers its backside by recommending that “the current Taskforce on Early Childhood Education consider ways to improve the availability and affordability of childcare and early childhood education services for lower paid families and people on welfare, including reprioritising some of the existing ECE expenditure.”
True to its real agenda, Key’s government has already responded ever so benignly to this the only commendable recommendation by slashing the funding of ECE with the effect of making childcare services unaffordable to those who will be coerced into using them.
On top of punitive sanctions against alleged malingerers there is intrusive prying into domestic affairs, with for example sanctions against mothers who become pregnant while receiving a benefit. Before the last election the corporate media were trumpeting the accusatory and disparaging slogan of “Nanny State” in their eagerness to get the Natacts elected. Their deafening silence now is hardly attributable to natural disasters. Fine by them that their ideal state now offers it ample mammaries only to voracious corporate suckers. For the working class it has become a harsh, puritanical and Calvinistic Victorian patriarch, with values that match its pure Victorian economic policies.
Other comments on the report may be found at:
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2011/02/24/gordon-campbell-on-the-welfare-working-group-final-report/
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1102/S00213/wwg-shows-no-understanding-of-social-security.htm
Saturday, April 2, 2011
What it's really like for single mothers
Reality ignored in parallel welfare universe
By Donna Wynd and Susan St John
Wednesday Mar 30, 2011 NZ Herald
The Government taskforce's plans amount to a punishment for young mothers.
The Welfare Working Group's final report, Reducing Long-term Benefit Dependency 2011, is arguably one of the most unenlightened pieces of work ever to emerge from a government-funded taskforce.
Most submissions were ignored, revealing that much of the consultation process was simply a public relations exercise.
The report uses the term "paid work" 242 times but "unpaid work" does not appear once. Thus, caregiving to young children by their parents is invisible and unvalued.
Parents are either paid workers or "jobseekers", but not nurturers caring for the next generation of New Zealanders.
The working group proposes a range of reforms to sort out feckless sole parents. To illustrate how these would operate they use the example of "Nikki", who has two children aged 3 and 6, works part-time at night and has just separated from her partner.
Under the present rules, Nikki will receive the domestic purposes benefit and not be expected to work until her younger child is 6.
Under the working group proposals she would become a "jobseeker", but a benefit would be unnecessary because her "co-ordinator" - a private-sector case worker paid to move people off benefits - will arrange "free" childcare at the local kindergarten and an accommodation supplement, and help her claim Working for Families from Inland Revenue and Child Support from her ex-partner.
As if by magic, Nikki "continues working, and also looking after her children".
This facile case study obscures the bothersome reality that Nikki faces. In Child Poverty Action Group's experience, the story is more likely to go something like this: Nikki and her partner find themselves under increasing stress from financial difficulties.
Her partner works long hours for low pay, and to help the family finances Nikki works 10 hours a week at night at the local supermarket.
When Nikki's partner moves out, the children are distraught and develop behavioural problems. On being notified of the separation, Inland Revenue cuts off her In Work Tax Credit and bills her for overpayments because she does not work 20 hours a week.
Eventually Nikki's meagre savings run out and she is forced on to a benefit and to seek cheaper accommodation in another part of town with few services.
The local kindergarten is full but the day-care centre accepts the unsettled 3-year-old. While the 20 hours' day care is supposed to be free, in fact it costs $150 a week, money she does not have.
Meanwhile, in the welfare working group's parallel universe, Nikki is a "jobseeker". To help meet the government group's specified outputs, she must come off the DPB and work at least 20 paid hours.
Suppose that Nikki is fortunate enough to find 20 hours of work during day-care hours. At the minimum wage, 20 hours nets her $223 a week. From this she still has to pay for day care.
Added to the 20 hours is commuting time and travel to drop off and collect the children. She also has to run the home, cook meals, help with homework and remain sufficiently emotionally stable to be a good parent on her own.
Obviously 20 hours does not give her enough money to live on. "No problem", says the co-ordinator, who organises a top-up to $408 a week under the Minimum Family Tax Credit from the IRD.
With the "In Work Tax Credit" of $60 each week plus the Family Tax Credit, she is better off than on a benefit. But only because the Government is giving her a huge wage subsidy through the tax system.
For a few weeks Nikki manages to work the required number of hours. Then the day care centre rings: the 3-year-old has measles and she has to look after him for 10 days at home. Then the 6-year-old breaks her arm at school.
Then Nikki finds she has no one to look after the child in the school holidays. Her own health suffers, and while her employer tries to be understanding she loses her job. The rent falls behind and debts start to mount.
Nikki has to claw her way back on to a jobseeker's benefit, something her "co-ordinator" is reluctant to facilitate. The last straw is when her younger child is admitted to hospital with pneumonia, contributed to by the cold damp housing in which she lives.
Back on a benefit, a few hours a week might be the only paid work that Nikki can manage. Currently earning $100 a week would give her about $82.50 extra net income.
Under the working group's proposals, extra earnings would be abated much more harshly so as to teach her that she should really be in full-time work. Nikki would now get just under $40 a week for her efforts.
The government group would also like to put Nikki on long-term contraception as a condition of getting a benefit, although it pays no regard to the freedom of her ex-partner to continue to have children when he chooses.
In the parallel universe of the Welfare Working Group, all childcare can and should be done by paid caregivers, while the mothers who are deemed solely responsible for producing them must be coerced into work, no matter how inappropriate.
What example are we setting for our children when grown adults allow such punitive policies for young mothers to be taken seriously?
* Donna Wynd is a Child Poverty Action Group researcher; Susan St John is Associate Professor Economics, Auckland Business School.
By Donna Wynd and Susan St John
Wednesday Mar 30, 2011 NZ Herald
The Government taskforce's plans amount to a punishment for young mothers.
The Welfare Working Group's final report, Reducing Long-term Benefit Dependency 2011, is arguably one of the most unenlightened pieces of work ever to emerge from a government-funded taskforce.
Most submissions were ignored, revealing that much of the consultation process was simply a public relations exercise.
The report uses the term "paid work" 242 times but "unpaid work" does not appear once. Thus, caregiving to young children by their parents is invisible and unvalued.
Parents are either paid workers or "jobseekers", but not nurturers caring for the next generation of New Zealanders.
The working group proposes a range of reforms to sort out feckless sole parents. To illustrate how these would operate they use the example of "Nikki", who has two children aged 3 and 6, works part-time at night and has just separated from her partner.
Under the present rules, Nikki will receive the domestic purposes benefit and not be expected to work until her younger child is 6.
Under the working group proposals she would become a "jobseeker", but a benefit would be unnecessary because her "co-ordinator" - a private-sector case worker paid to move people off benefits - will arrange "free" childcare at the local kindergarten and an accommodation supplement, and help her claim Working for Families from Inland Revenue and Child Support from her ex-partner.
As if by magic, Nikki "continues working, and also looking after her children".
This facile case study obscures the bothersome reality that Nikki faces. In Child Poverty Action Group's experience, the story is more likely to go something like this: Nikki and her partner find themselves under increasing stress from financial difficulties.
Her partner works long hours for low pay, and to help the family finances Nikki works 10 hours a week at night at the local supermarket.
When Nikki's partner moves out, the children are distraught and develop behavioural problems. On being notified of the separation, Inland Revenue cuts off her In Work Tax Credit and bills her for overpayments because she does not work 20 hours a week.
Eventually Nikki's meagre savings run out and she is forced on to a benefit and to seek cheaper accommodation in another part of town with few services.
The local kindergarten is full but the day-care centre accepts the unsettled 3-year-old. While the 20 hours' day care is supposed to be free, in fact it costs $150 a week, money she does not have.
Meanwhile, in the welfare working group's parallel universe, Nikki is a "jobseeker". To help meet the government group's specified outputs, she must come off the DPB and work at least 20 paid hours.
Suppose that Nikki is fortunate enough to find 20 hours of work during day-care hours. At the minimum wage, 20 hours nets her $223 a week. From this she still has to pay for day care.
Added to the 20 hours is commuting time and travel to drop off and collect the children. She also has to run the home, cook meals, help with homework and remain sufficiently emotionally stable to be a good parent on her own.
Obviously 20 hours does not give her enough money to live on. "No problem", says the co-ordinator, who organises a top-up to $408 a week under the Minimum Family Tax Credit from the IRD.
With the "In Work Tax Credit" of $60 each week plus the Family Tax Credit, she is better off than on a benefit. But only because the Government is giving her a huge wage subsidy through the tax system.
For a few weeks Nikki manages to work the required number of hours. Then the day care centre rings: the 3-year-old has measles and she has to look after him for 10 days at home. Then the 6-year-old breaks her arm at school.
Then Nikki finds she has no one to look after the child in the school holidays. Her own health suffers, and while her employer tries to be understanding she loses her job. The rent falls behind and debts start to mount.
Nikki has to claw her way back on to a jobseeker's benefit, something her "co-ordinator" is reluctant to facilitate. The last straw is when her younger child is admitted to hospital with pneumonia, contributed to by the cold damp housing in which she lives.
Back on a benefit, a few hours a week might be the only paid work that Nikki can manage. Currently earning $100 a week would give her about $82.50 extra net income.
Under the working group's proposals, extra earnings would be abated much more harshly so as to teach her that she should really be in full-time work. Nikki would now get just under $40 a week for her efforts.
The government group would also like to put Nikki on long-term contraception as a condition of getting a benefit, although it pays no regard to the freedom of her ex-partner to continue to have children when he chooses.
In the parallel universe of the Welfare Working Group, all childcare can and should be done by paid caregivers, while the mothers who are deemed solely responsible for producing them must be coerced into work, no matter how inappropriate.
What example are we setting for our children when grown adults allow such punitive policies for young mothers to be taken seriously?
* Donna Wynd is a Child Poverty Action Group researcher; Susan St John is Associate Professor Economics, Auckland Business School.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Our Offensive PM
So John Key thinks that when beneficiaries need food parcels they are making a ‘lifestyle choice.’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10707102
In December he was saying “If we cancelled welfare to 330,000 people currently on welfare, how many would starve to death? Bugger all.”
Since the tobacco tax was raised there has been a noticeable increase in smokers picking up buts from the gutters. No doubt JK thinks that a ‘lifestyle choice’, too. And when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Tunisia and brought about the downfall of a government, no doubt that was a ‘lifestyle choice', too.
Thanks to Bomber Bradbury on his Tumeke blog for this apposite remark on John Key’s callous remarks about beneficiaries:
‘John Key's grossly offensive comments on why the poor need food parcels reminds me of the famous Herman Melville quote:’
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed and well fed."
http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html
Thanks also to John Minto for a more detailed critique of Key’s gross opinions.
http://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2011/02/john-minto-what-right-has-john-key-to-lecture-the-poor/
In December he was saying “If we cancelled welfare to 330,000 people currently on welfare, how many would starve to death? Bugger all.”
Since the tobacco tax was raised there has been a noticeable increase in smokers picking up buts from the gutters. No doubt JK thinks that a ‘lifestyle choice’, too. And when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Tunisia and brought about the downfall of a government, no doubt that was a ‘lifestyle choice', too.
Thanks to Bomber Bradbury on his Tumeke blog for this apposite remark on John Key’s callous remarks about beneficiaries:
‘John Key's grossly offensive comments on why the poor need food parcels reminds me of the famous Herman Melville quote:’
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed and well fed."
http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html
Thanks also to John Minto for a more detailed critique of Key’s gross opinions.
http://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2011/02/john-minto-what-right-has-john-key-to-lecture-the-poor/
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