Tag Archive for 'benefits'

Bludgin’ ain’t so easy

Published
by
Guest post
on December 18, 2008
in welfare
. 46 Comments

So, I’m out of work. I was employed on a contract and when it came up for renewal the boss told me business is too tight, have to let me go. It wasn’t their fault and they were pretty good about it. For the first few weeks I just looked for work but there’s not much going so I thought I better get on the dole. That’s what it’s there for.

I’ll tell you what though, anyone who reckons that its easy to get on the dole and there’s heaps of bludgers hasn’t ever tried it. Firstly you have to go along to this seminar about how to get a job. I had to wait 3 weeks before I could get into one of those seminars. Then I had to get a meeting with a case manager, take along all these forms and hopefully get on the benefit. But seems I’m not the only one in this situation. I was going to have to wait until February to get meeting at the nearest WINZ office. I managed to get a meeting at an office in another suburb instead just 3 weeks later. That was last week. All my papers were in order and I was accepted. Got my first dole payment. After tax, it’s $184. Not much left after $150 a week in rent. I’m lucky to have some savings to get by on but you’ve got to worry about others less fortunate.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re lucky to have benefits to keep us going when we fall on tough times. Just don’t go thinking that people like me are bludgers. It isn’t easy to get the dole and it sure isn’t easy to try to live on it. It’s great to have it while you need it but, like most other people on benefits, I’ll be keen to get work as soon as possible.

- Ben the wannabe worker

Should the sins of the father be visited upon the children?

Published
by
Guest post
on August 13, 2008
in benefits and national
. 90 Comments
When the DPB was first proposed it had a very simple purpose, to allow mothers to leave abusive relationships, to allow them to protect their children from beatings, alcoholism and psychological abuse. It was intended to ensure that those children would have a real chance at a healthy and happy life. It did not, and could not, provide true equality to children raised in single parent households, but it could try. 
Since then the DPB has changed, it is not exclusively for the children of solo mums, or exclusively for the children of an abusive parent. It remains true, however, to its original goal: ensuring that children in single parent households have a real chance, that their disadvantage is minimised.

Children in households dependent on the DPB have three key sources of disadvantage: financial (the DPB is well below the average income of a household with children), parenting (two loving parents can provide more than one in many ways), and acceptance (many people will negatively judge a child of a home “on welfare”). The parents in these homes, by and large, try their level best to give their children the opportunities that most other kids have.
One of the options for children in two parent homes is a stay-at-home parent: a parent who focusses their energy on creating a supportive, stimulating, warm and loving home. Many families scrimp and save to achieve this, and many make other choices with both parents working to gain other advantages for their children. But two parent homes have that choice, their children of two parent homes have that option.
With a change in the DPB forcing the solo parent to work that option has been taken away from the children. One of the precious pieces of equality will be taken from some of our most vulnerable children.
The DPB, as it was first created and as it continues today, is decidedly New Testament where a child should not be punished for the sin of the parents. No child should be disadvantaged because one of their parents was violent, or left the other. No child should be disadvantaged by the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.
The changes proposed by National are decidedly Old Testament; the sins of the father will be visited upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
Anita.

Gordon Campbell on Nats’ welfare plan

Published
by
Dancer
on August 12, 2008
in benefits and national
. 15 Comments

Dog whistle politics to some, beneficiary bashing to others. But is there logic to National’s policy on benefits? Gordon Campbell asks:

Will John Key’s policy announcement on welfare this afternoon do much to resolve the problems it claims to address? Hardly…

It is as if National felt the need to beat up on beneficiaries somehow, and somewhere - and so it picked primarily on solo parents, the group of beneficiaries widely recognized as being in LEAST need of extra motivation to get off the benefit.

One angle I thought was interesting was a study done by the Ministry of Social Development which looked at the health (and mental health) status of sole-mothers. If they are already more likely to be sick then sending them out to work with penalties if they don’t is not likely to lead to good outcomes, for either the parent or the children.

And one question I was hoping to hear asked - what are the penalties planned for those who do not abide by the rules? And what happens if there are others (like children) living in the household?

There’s a fundamental difference in approach here with both sides arguing that the studies back their logic. However as Simon Collins suggests:

…there are other factors besides welfare in the breakdown of the traditional family, and forcing parents into paid work may not be the answer.

Ambitious for beneficiary-bashing

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on August 11, 2008
in benefits, john key, national and same old national
. 39 Comments

That nice man, Mr Key, the one who says the old Left/Right divide is over, that he’s a new man with a new (ambitious) vision for New Zealand has rolled out an unprecedented and exciting policy today: beneficiary bashing.

At present, we have a world-leading benefit system. By investing in staff, WINZ has become more than a cheque-issuing service, it actively helps people into training and into work when those are appropriate choices given individual circumstances - the results speak for themselves. National will abolish that and instead (in a move one could almost term ’Nanny State’) implement a one-size-fits-all programme, requiring all people on the DPB to enter work or training training once their youngest child reaches 6. A couple of issues off the top of my head: the DPB gives women the freedom to leave abusive situations - they can have the money and time to raise their children alone, National’s policy will be a barrier to that if the children are over 6; a person on the DPB doesn’t necessarily need skills training; DPB numbers are falling from 113,000 in 1998 to 96,000 today; 60% of DPB recipients are caring for a child under 6; many recipients are already in skills training or work (20% have some income on top of their DPB) .

Now, even if you do think there are legions of women who are bludgers and would rather raise a kid on $250 a week than work, there’s the rather serious problem that National’s previous attempts at beneficiary bashing have done nothing to reduce benefit numbers and expenditure. (sources: RBNZ, Stats, MSD)

It’s important to remember, this policy isn’t really about making a better benefit system, it’s about whipping up anti-beneficiary sentiment (’if it weren’t for them, I could have bigger tax cuts!’) to get votes. Like all National’s policy, at least the stuff it has made public, this beneficiary bashing is an election strategy, not a governing strategy.

[PS. It was only a matter of time before some unimaginative hack referred to the secret agenda recording as 'recorder-gate' or 'cocktail-gate'. Tracy Watkins didn't disappoint, any more than usual.]

The headline you didn’t see

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on June 20, 2008
in economy, social issues and workers' rights
. 93 Comments

‘Unemployment benefits at record low.’
The number of people receiving the unemployment benefit has fallen to just 17,465. That’s the lowest number since at least 1979. At the same time, Sickness Benefit numbers fell 1,542 (3%) in the last year, DPB numbers are down 12% in the last five years. Overall, benefit numbers have dropped by 120,000 since National was booted out of office.

Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars has been saved by the reduction in unemployment benefit numbers this year alone, money that can be spent on other public services.

As the Left has always said, work is the best form of social security. Rather than the punitive approach favoured by National, the Government has realised people don’t want to be on measly $200 a week benefits and has helped them into work.

In the world of mini-scandals, it’s easy to forget about this bedrock stuff; ensuring there are jobs for people is one of the most important things a government does. Let’s hope the astounding success we’ve seen in getting people off benefits and into work continues.

[But wait, didn’t we have all those headlines on the ‘shocking’ unemployment numbers in May? Why would unemployment be up but benefit number down? It’s hard to say. It's worth noting that the benefit numbers are a definite count by MSD of the number of benefits it is paying out, but the unemployment % is a survey figure from Stats NZ and has a small margin of error.]

More on benefit levels

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on May 12, 2008
in labour
. 60 Comments

It was disappointing to hear National Radio this morning summarise the recent debate over benefit levels as ‘benefits are not keeping up with the cost of living’. Benefits are keeping up with the cost of living – they are adjusted every year to keep them in line with the cost of living (that’s what the Consumer Price Index or ‘inflation’ is). What benefits are not keeping up with is incomes, because wages are rising faster than the cost of living. In fact, real incomes are up 15% since Labour came to power. Beneficiaries are not worse off, but everyone else is better off.

That’s not an argument against raising benefits though. Benefit levels are shockingly low, $184 a week on the unemployment benefit is simply not enough to support a decent life for yourself, let alone a family, in most of New Zealand. The Government could and should increase benefits to a more decent level, say, the 28% of the average wage they were before the 1991 benefit cuts (they’re 21% now), and should be indexed to the average wage like superannuation is, rather than inflation. That would carry a cost but a relatively small one because so many people have come off benefits under Labour. The cost of the benefit system has fallen 36% under Labour because fewer people are using it, some of those savings should be directed towards remaining beneficiaries.

There is some basis to the idea that benefits can’t be too close to wage levels otherwise they will act as a disincentive to work but there’s a simple solution to that – keep raising the minimum wage.

Undo the cuts

Published
by
IrishBill
on May 11, 2008
in history, labour and national
. 56 Comments

Good to see Ruth Dyson finally admitting we have left beneficiaries behind. I would hope now that there would be a lot more done than simply indexing benefits to wages though. Increasing the benefit to real pre-1991 levels would be a good start.

A lot of people know about the benefit cuts but not many know about the rationale behind them. At the time the plan was to increase the “gap” between welfare and work in order to make people compete harder for jobs. Effectively it forced people to take lower and lower wages for any job they managed to secure.

The figures treasury and the National party used for the benefit cuts were based on what they called the “New Zealand income adequacy standard”. In theory this was a poverty line. In effect it was well below that. Figures for the cuts were based on research from Otago University’s department of human nutrition which determined the lowest level of income people could survive on while maintaining basic needs such as balanced dietary intake. Unfortunately this lowest level was based on things such as bulk purchasing, slow-cooking cheap cuts of meat, making food from scratch and a whole lot of other saving methods that presumed time and skill. The Dunedin researchers discovered that in practice nobody was able to feed themselves properly on their minimum food budget but that didn’t stop the National Government adopting it and cutting it a further 20%.

The results were predictable. Coupled with other National party policies such as market rents for state housing tens of thousands of New Zealanders fell into extreme poverty, food-banks sprang up and third-world diseases such as TB, glue-ear and meningitis ran rife. In 1996, 473 New Zealanders ended up in hospital with rheumatic fever - a poverty-related disease that was virtually unknown in most western countries since the 1960s - and one in four of them died from it. The next year the National Government launched a publicity campaign that misrepresented benefit fraud levels and attacked beneficiaries as bludgers. Prior to the 1990’s people who could not get a job were thought of as vulnerable people we should all look after. No longer.

Some of the worst effects of the cuts have been ameliorated by income-related rents, PHOs and the fact that we have had a period of strong economic growth and at the moment there are few people on a long-term benefit and there are plenty of jobs. But if the economy slows we’ll find out how little we’ve moved on from the 90’s. Until we increase the benefits to a meaningful level and start thinking about social welfare as, well, integral to the welfare of our society then we will not see wages for low-skill jobs increase without minimum-wage intervention and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of New Zealanders will continue to risk the same poverty we saw in the 1990’s if we have a downturn.

As an aside, I note that Judith Collins claims better budgeting advice is all that is needed. It reminds me of how in the late 90’s Jenny Shipley claimed beneficiaries just needed to grow their own vegetables and everything would be fine. I hope Labour does something to fix this. After reading Collins’ delusional comment I know National won’t.