There is a underlying reason for this headline,
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In the above July 2013 article, Social welfare Minister, Paula Bennett proudly asserted,
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said today there are now 309,782 people on a benefit compared with 320,041 last year.
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“That’s a reduction of more than 10,000 on welfare over the past 12 months and I am particularly pleased that 5600 of them are sole parents.”
IBID
Nowhere in the article does it state where those 10,000 welfare beneficiaries ended up.
Was it in paid work?
Did they go back into full-time education or other courses?
Or were they simply dumped from WINZ’s books? Like the recipient of these letters that were recently provided to me? (We will call him/her “Citizen X” – all identifying details have been redacted to respect his/her privacy and protect him/her from possible reprisals by Bennett, her office, or MSD official. Same for the WINZ officials whose names appear on the letters.)
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A few days later, “Citizen X” received this letter. Adding insult to injury, they were demanding that an outstanding amount (an amount between $200 to $300) be repaid;
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This was despite that “Citizen X” had had her/his unemployment benefit cancelled – not because s/he had found paid employment (s/he hadn’t) – but because s/he had fallen foul of National’s harsh new welfare laws.
In part, the MSD website states,
On Jobseeker Support for more than 12 months
If you still require Jobseeker Support after 52 weeks you’ll have to re-apply for your benefit. We’ll let you know when you have to re-apply and tell you what you need to do.
When you re-apply, you’ll also need to complete a Comprehensive Work Assessment. This will identify what steps you’ve taken to find work and what help you might need from us to be more successful in getting a job.
Source
In effect, National has placed a one year time limit on all unemployment benefits. They haven’t advertised it as such – they refer to it as “re-applying”.
As Simon Collins reported in the NZ Herald back in January (2013),
The Council of Christian Social Services pointed yesterday to “a growing gap between those who receive a benefit and those in genuine need who are either losing or unable to obtain social welfare assistance”.
Unemployment increased in the two years to last September from 144,500 to 170,000, but those on unemployment benefit dropped by almost a quarter from 65,281 to 50,390.
Sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit have also dropped in the past year. Rules for both benefits were tightened in September 2010, when unemployment beneficiaries had their benefits cancelled if they failed to reapply after a year.
Sole parents were required to look for part-time work when their youngest child turned 6, an age reduced to 5 last October.
Christian Social Services executive officer Trevor McGlinchey said his members were reporting increases in demand for their services as people found benefits harder to get.
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Ironically, the tighter welfare rules may also partly explain the rise in unemployment, as beneficiaries are counted as unemployed only if they are actively looking for work. Employment slipped only slightly from 63.6 per cent to 63.2 per cent of adults in the two years to last September, but the “jobless” rose from 7.1 per cent to 8.4 per cent because those not looking for work fell from 29.3 per cent to a record low of 28.4 per cent.
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What this means is that eventually a significant number of people simply give up re-applying for the minimal amount that the dole pays ($206.21 per week).
Constant, repetitive, incessant demands for information and a less than helpful attitude created by MSD policy create an atmosphere of naked hostility.
The complexity of applying, with the multitude of 73 pages of WINZ forms and other bits of paper, may also prove to be a dis-incentive for many – especially those for whom English, reading ability, and general low education is a real problem.
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The massive number of WINZ forms and other documents handed out to applicants has been covered in this previous blogpost; WINZ, waste, and wonky numbers
These are some of the bureacratic barriers which National and MSD have created for the most vulnerable and dispossessed people in our country.
All done to “massage” beneficiary statistics.
As Bennett said, back in July,
“That’s a reduction of more than 10,000 on welfare over the past 12 months and I am particularly pleased that 5600 of them are sole parents.”
No doubt, National will use this “success” at the next election and a sizeable portion of the voting population will be sufficiently uninformed and gullible enough to accept this without question.
It will be up to those who oppose National and it’s virulent brand of right-wing politics to spread the truth; under this party, poverty and inequality will continue to worsen.
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Because even the Prime Minister has had to reluctantly concede the enormity of what we are facing,
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Pushing people off welfare, regardless of whether or not they have jobs to go to, just to massage welfare statistics, is a vile obscenity.
This will not “lift people out of poverty”, as Key has promised.
It is increasing poverty.
How long will it be before this growing poverty, sense of hopelessness, and constant attacks by National and MSD results in the inevitable outbreak of violent civil disturbance? Desperate people tend not to care – especially for the empty promises of well-fed, well-housed, comfortable politicians.
Is this really what New Zealanders want for their country?
The clock is ticking…
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Sources
NZ Herald: Welfare rules force people to struggle on without benefits
Fairfax media: Number on benefits drops, reaction mixed
Fairfax media: Hungry kids scavenge pig slops
NZ Herald: Key admits underclass still growing
References
Work and Income: Jobseeker Support
Additional
Gordon Campbell: Ten Myths About Welfare -The politics behind the government’s welfare reform process
Previous related blogposts
Class act, National – taking money of widows?!
How Paula Bennett and National are wasting our taxdollars
National ramps up attack on unemployed and solo-mums
Random Thoughts on Random Things #4…
OIA Request points to beneficiary beat-up by Minister Chester Borrows
The REAL level of unemployment
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