Simon Bridges is back where National love to be, bashing beneficiaries…
Benefit sanctions need to be harsher – Simon Bridges
Simon Bridges has blamed a rise in the number of Kiwis receiving Jobseeker Support on the Government’s easing of sanctions.
At the end of December there were 134,000 on what used to be called the unemployment benefit, up 11,000 on the year before – even as the official unemployment rate hit a decade-low of 3.9 percent.
“It’s an outrage,” the National Party leader told The AM Show on Monday. “I warned this would happen – it has.”
Last year the Government told Work and Income case managers to ease up on penalties and sanctions against its clients. In December 8500 sanctions were applied, down from 14,500 the year before, RNZ reported.
“Under us, the biggest one was not turning up to a job interview – you had to do something like that four times before we started docking your benefits,” said Mr Bridges. “That’s fair. None of that’s happening now.”
…couple of things here.
Firstly, the draconian welfare reforms that National implemented were far harsher than Bridges is pretending here. Beneficiaries weren’t missing 4 job interviews and then having their benefits stopped, they were missing phone calls for appointments and having their benefit stopped. Bridges is trying to make National’s welfare cruelty look reasonable, it never was.
Secondly these reforms were pointless and simply malice masquerading as social policy. Drug testing beneficiaries and forcing contraception onto young girls all failed miserably.
Thirdly, this sort of harsh line on those in poverty was what saw Housing NZ throw over 2000 beneficiaries onto the street and needlessly blow $120million on decontamination costs we never had to spend. It was what saw 1000 prisoners per year for 5 years needlessly stay in prison at a total needless cost of $500million. It was what saw so many beneficiaries become homeless and led to massive blow outs in emergency housing in motels.
So National’s punitive approach makes that spiteful part of the NZ psyche feel good that poor people are being punished and are suffering, but it ends up costing us a fucking fortune!
So why is Simon peddling counter productive and expensive punitive bullshit?
Because his voter base love to bash the dirty filthy benne.
The truth is that welfare needs to be dramatically increased, sanctions dumped and moves towards a universal basic income adopted. That is a truth Simon and the National Party will die in a ditch to prevent because they know that if the poor actually benefited positively from welfare, they would start voting rather than recoiling from the process in the way they do now.
If beneficiaries and the poor voted in huge numbers, National would never gain power ever again so National have to promote a punitive welfare model and make the process as dehumanising and damaged as possible, hence the toxic cultures inside our neoliberal welfare agencies.
The ease with which Bridges is allowed to manipulate and lie about beneficiaries and use them as political collateral without any critical analysis by the mainstream media shows how hard it will be for the new Government to reform welfare away from this counter productive cluster fuck and into a system that truly helps the poorest and most vulnerable within society.
Its just good ole fashioned class war politics coming. Left v Right. You’ll know which side youre on or else you’ll get run over, or, you can stand on the sidelines and watch.
this guy is a dick head
@ MICHELLE.
He’s also a narcissistic sociopath and is therefore the enemy. He could also, in fact, be quite mad.
To foment such dis-ease within a society is either as a result of an insanity or he’s being paid to unbalance the work force and us, the majority, for no doubt a nefarious and clearly secretive reason. And let’s face it. We only have our country to lose.
He needs to go and there needs to be a Royal Commission of Inquiry into what it is, exactly, that’s going on within National and Labour’s old guard. I’m being serious. We have dangerous politicians creating an underclass day by day who will go on to become damaged thus damaging to our society for generations to come.
We have to try something. Otherwise, we’re just toothless mutts barking at the foxes in the hen house.
Funny you should say ‘enemy’ Countryboy, I had concluded that the Nats and their fellow travelers see the poor as the enemy, and an enemy which they themselves deliberately created.
The previous govt demonised ‘havenots’, and even touted poverty as a life-style choice.
If they really believe this, then they are total dimwits and not fit to to be in Parliament. The stability of society needs parliamentarians with the ability and the vision to act in the interests of everybody. Forget about moral issues, that’s foreign territory to them.
It’s not long since we had National PM,Bill English, writing off all our young men as useless druggies. In a country where these same young men are topping themselves in tragic numbers, this was pretty unforgivable, more so if it was to facilitate bringing in cheap overseas workers and keeping wages down.
English’s allegations didn’t stack up, but they show the chilling ruthlessness of some politicians with their own agendas, and if as Countryboy suggests, they are deliberately fomenting social unrest, then they are mad, bad, or both.
One of the first things I thought of when those three young guys
crashed and burnt in ChCh, was whether they were aware that the govt regarded them all as write-offs. I used to teach boys that age. They were all great. I used to say, “Aim high,” and I am very angry that the country’s previous leader was announcing to the media that they’re no good. As a mother I am angry too that we have politicians failing to recognise and to cherish our greatest resource.
If Bridges is deliberately trying to turn us against the poor, then he has a hell of a nerve professing to be a Christian, but I guess that’s beside the point. He’s still an idiot.
Critical analysis by the NZ MSM died along time ago Bomber and that is one of the main support systems of the neo liberal state that the media do not cover the effects of trickle down and do what they used to do so well and that was informing and educating us about the real issues.
Unless it is a negative swipe initiated by the National party at the current government or ” celebrity mania ” you wont get informed investigative journalism just ZB , Media Works and TVNZ and others right wing enforced opinion.
You did make one vital point and that was if the poor were participating and voting the effect would be enormous.
If only they knew the power they really have.
Monkey see Monkey do, what about a class action lawsuit against the Natz for :Inciting Racial and Economic Hate: lets start with a complaint to the Race Relations Conciliator
Dear RRC
Them Natz c@#$#$% are at it again, bashing me and mine in the press to stir up hate speech and prejudicial behavior towards my socio-economic target group.
Just because we wouldn’t vote for them at the last election.
Can you please put their collective nuts in a vice (you’ll find them stuffed in Judith’s purse).
Yours Sincerely
The Poor, The Sick and the Homeless of NZ
Seems like New Zealanders have lost faith in New Zealand’s ability to make poor people rich.
Good summary. And the willingness of the welfare department to revert to poorhouse-type enforcement since 1991 is disgraceful. NZ’s soul is amid the underdogs. But I’m open to the Right finding an alternative?
Oh, the worst bit is National wouldn’t be such arsholes if the population didn’t support them, but they do, don’t they? The ignorant and selfish in denial are out there in huge numbers. In fact it’s hard to find people that are not, such is the prevalent hard headed culture in NZ. That’s the fight, the people not the pollies. They just doin their job representing this very large mob, don’t need to sell it to them, they are like it anyway and that’s a worry.
People support them Greenbus because of the way in which msm contours its stories.
It would be comical – eg the way Dom-Post ladies adulate rich boys Key and Mitchell – if their influence were not so uncertain. The journos may all take each other more seriously than the thinking public actually does.Don’t know about television as I don’t watch it.
There are much worse people than Bridges – my Nat neighbours see him as the best of a bad bunch; I gather that he appears in women’s mags – I’ll ask my news agent who actually buys them.
If Fairfax girls are promoting- creepy – Mark Mitchell, then considering the type of persons which the National Party consists of, their being lead by an ex-Police Dog Handler may be profoundly apt. But it has to stop there.
A man whose most significant action while making millions out of
the terrible ruins of post-war Iraq seems to have been re-uniting a lost dog with it’s owner, may need someone to explain to him that here in NZ
politicians are meant to represent the people – all of the people – and dog-handlers represent the dogs, and the Nats. That’s all.
Self interest, greed, ignorance, denial and more self interest is the kiwi character. I reckon it comes across as dim witted hard headedness, but whatever. I can’t see anything that will change their minds. Any article or news about anything at all to change improve modernise will set them off.
They don’t really watch the msm, why would they? They fuckin know everything! I’ve said before, we may have to wait till they gone.
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
Yeah, it’s really not surprising that the right-wing bash the poor. It’s part of their instinctive defence of the rich and powerful.
I’m all for taking National to task for doing a shitty job of helping our less fortunate families and beneficiaries over the 9 years they were in government. However, the $120m needlessly spend on decontamination of Housing NZ homes. Please can someone explain to this simple mind why this was a deliberate harsh action by the National Party to toss poor people out of their homes. I am fairly certain there were plenty of private landlords who also mistakenly spend $$ getting their houses tested and decontaminated needlessly. It wasn’t that they wanted to throw their money away it’s just that was the advice given to EVERYONE not just Housing NZ got sucked into that trap. Or at least that was my understanding. Happy to be proven wrong if someone has some facts they can refer me to. While we are at it. Can we also start petitioning for longer terms for government. 3 years is pathetic. Hardly any momentum can be gained in such a short time and so we ended up giving 2 or 3 terms to parties that should really only have 1. Don’t you think?
1 – The National Party and Housing NZ were told years ago that they were misinterpreting their own policy on meth testing.
2 – The National Party and Housing NZ refused to listen to that because National wanted to privatise state housing and the narrative that dirty filthy beneficiaries smoking the dirty P was a good news headline.
3 – The decision to take a hardline zero tolerance position was a political one, that makes the $120m needlessly spent their fault and the over 2000 beneficiaries thrown onto the street their fault and the tens of thousands awarded in costs spiteful and wrong.
The bit that pisses me off in all this sanctions and welfare BS is disabled people who through no fault of their own are lumped into the same basket and treated the same way as unemployed people, its not like its their fault they are disabled and disadvantaged yet get punished the same way.
It signals to society to treat the disabled poorly.
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