Ongoing drug-test sanctions contradicts Government’s rhetoric on drugs
Reports that two-thirds of beneficiaries who fail drug tests are still having their benefit sanctioned contradicts the Government’s so-called health approach to drugs. Auckland Action Against Poverty is calling on the Government to immediately act on its word and end the drug-test sanction regime.
“We’ve got a hypocritical Government punishing beneficiaries who fail drug-tests yet speaks of moving towards a health based approach to drug use, reassuring people it was not aiming to continue applying this sanction last year”, says Ricardo Menendez March, Auckland Action Against Poverty Coordinator.
“The drug-testing regime is not only expensive, but most people who are subjected to one don’t test positive for drug use. The people who test positive and have a substance abuse problem need support, not punishment.
When news of this broke last night that WINZ have been lying about punishing beneficiaries who fail drug tests, Green MP Jan Logie came out and said that she was shocked WINZ misled her.
Really? What else shocks the Green Party?
The sun rising?
Tides?
Basic principles of electricity?
We know that WINZ have a toxic culture and that they are staffed by sadists who love the power imbalance they have over beneficiaries. We see time and time and time again abuses by the State on the most vulnerable and when they get caught out, what happens?
Nothing.
The only reason the head of Stats quit last week was because the mistake impacts people beyond the poor, it impacts electoral boundaries and Government spending.
WINZ are a neoliberal welfare agency focused on punishing the poor and beating them with a bloody great big stick, all Labour have done is put a small cushion on the stick.
Who the fuck is actually running things? The elected MPs or Wellington Bureaucrats?
Let me guess, no one will be punished at WINZ for deceiving our MPs.
sack them too many public servants aren’t doing their jobs and too many managers are fucken racist time for proper change not lip service
The ministers in Adern’s government are to quick to abandon principle to avoid being beaten with a stick themselves by the likes of Hosking and MSM. They seem to be totally out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. Kiwibuild showed that they didn’t understand that developers don’t build homes for those who can’t afford them. It was a lack of affordability and failure of social provision, which they seem to have addressed by using current social housing land to build private homes. This is to offset costs to avoid borrowing. Why they agreed to the fiscal stability pact designed by the new right wing technocrat running the greens is anyone’s guess. For the first time in my life I can see no clear party to vote for. I was hoping we had got third way triangulation out of our system with the Clark government. Alas no.
I belive the plan at the time was to raid the twenty billion dollar Defence Capability Plan in order to increase social spending.
Carmel Sepuloni needs to come down on these paper-shuffling sadists like the wrath of an angry god. National pretty much stacked government departments with partisan bureaucrats and they seem to take a perverse delight in sabotaging the current government’s efforts to turn the ship around. Some people desperately need reminding they’re supposed to be ‘objective’ and ‘impartial’ servants of the state, not National Party cheerleaders there to throw a spanner into the works for shits and giggles.
I like it 🙂
Hey, if senior public servants had the talent of that crew in your photo (although hopefully not the same sense of ethics), Big Data Fascism would be looking pretty damn attractive.
I believe all MPs should be drug tested at the end of each financial year.
If anyone fails I don’t have to pay my taxes.
Tough love.
Breathalyze them all every time they enter parliament. If there’s any publicly-funded drug use we ought to be cracking down on, it’s being drunk in charge of a country.
These drug users are buying the drugs with money that is supposed to be supporting them and their unfortunate family. Are we doing them any favours by turning a blind eye to its effect . Once discovered these people need to be obliged to go on a rehab programme attendance is compulsory to getting any benefit. I constantly see employers wanting staff for low skilled work that could be done by these people as a entry into the work force give them some pride in their ability to earn a living
I can’t see that attempting to get drug users off drugs before they are ready to quit will be a productive use of money.
BTW you do realise that our current rehab services are all massively over run and underfunded? Where the fuck would the compulsory rehabbing benes go when people who want to quit drugs can’t get assistance?
You also apparently do not realise that many people on SLP are there because they are drug addicts. Are you saying that all drug addicts should no longer receive SLP? Because….both medical doctors and work and income agreed to put them on a benefit.
I just fucking love people who have NO ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of the benefit system proclaiming solutions which..aren’t.
Go volunteer as an advocate in one of the many charities that assist beneficiaries in the Work and Income system and get an actual opinion based on fact, not dreamed up assumptions.
If the government can sack the Waikato DHB over its disgusting and brutal treatment of Nicky Stevens’ family, endorsed by its complicit insurance company, why can’t it do the same to the senior management of WINZ?
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