The neoliberal welfare complex from MSD to WINZ to Oranga Tamariki utilises big data to justify reducing universal funded welfare to just the worst cases.
This allows for mass surveillance powers over beneficiaries and introduces the digital welfare state…
‘Digital welfare state’: big tech allowed to target and surveil the poor, UN is warned
UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty says in devastating account big tech companies are being allowed to go unregulated in ‘human right free-zones’ and not held accountable
…for Labour, they walk a tightrope between their beneficiary voting block who ar being dehumanised by the neoliberal welfare state and the angry voters whose own poverty makes them eye welfare cheques with jealousy…
Govt won’t make financial hardship grounds for MSD debt write-off
More than $500 million is owed to the Ministry for Social Development for recoverable hardship assistance and grants – up more than $100 million on what it was four years ago.
The loans are used to cover essentials like school uniforms, power bills and car repairs, but there have been growing calls for the government to reconsider how it treats this debt.
Beneficiary advocates, budget advisors and charities working with struggling families have mooted debt write-offs as a way to ease the financial pressure.
Ronji Tanielu from the Salvation Army said when people come to them for help with food or housing, more often than not, they’ve got an underlying problem with their finances.
“They turn up saying it’s food, but actually when you unpack it, it’s finances – it’s debt, it’s fines, it’s overpayments.”
He said a good deal of that debt was owed to the government. Figures for the last financial year showed Salvation Army clients owe more to government departments than to finance companies.
Claire Dale from the Child Poverty Action Group said beneficiaries had to turn to loans from MSD because they had no other choice.
“Because they can’t save, they can’t protect themselves against a crisis,” she said.
“We need to increase the benefit levels for a start and if another crisis occurs for a family, Work and Income should have the capacity to forgive impossible debt.”
MSD can write off debt in cases where they’ve made an administrative error or it’s deemed uneconomic to recover the debt.
But Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said she’s not looking at making changes to make serious financial hardship a ground for debt write-offs.
..this despite poverty actually getting worse for the most vulnerable and them being forced to queue outside WINZ at 2am…
A poverty ‘crisis’: New figures show demand for food, housing
Record numbers of people are asking the government for help to pay for their food and accommodation, with frontline community workers labelling the situation a ‘crisis’.
…without any real plans to reform the neoliberal welfare state and without any political courage, this Government have utterly failed beneficiaries.
Maybe some smiles and a bit of Jacinda magic will keep the poor fooled that anything resembling transformative change is coming their way, and that could possibly trick them into voting Labour again in 2020, but if nothing meaningful comes from a second term, the anger from this voting black will be ready for populist manipulation.
It isn’t really clear now what Labour, saw as the critical areas that needed change during the election campaign. They did tell us, but, the lack of change has been overwhelming. The public have the idea of an opposition during its time between elections as identifying areas of need and areas where they feel they can do better. They then build up a portfolio of policies they then campaign on, preferably some time before the election. They also map out a broad idea of how these policies will be delivered and what they will cost.
Labour seemed so keen after their win, but this quickly changed to a group of people who clearly had no articulated plan to implement detailed policy in the areas they had campaigned on. Rather than setting goals and making any changes required to achieve them, they seem to have continually given up when faced with an underfunded public service either no longer able to deliver or ideologically opposed. They also seem to have been captured by the notion ministers can only act on advice. The fact they tied both hands behind their back with the pointless fiscal stability pact has meant a self imposed inability to deliver on policy which was obviously going to cost money. They have established working groups to look at issues, good. Yet in the case of MSD, ignored the majority of recommendations because it would have upset “hard working” centrist voters, who don’t see working for families they get, as welfare benefits they need because their employers are underpaying them. I’ll let you into a dirty little secret. The majority of the poor in NZ are now working poor. They need to start spelling this out so the Natz divide and conquer strategy wont work anymore. If they do have strategists they need to be fired. They actually need to start implementing their list of promises. They need to fund this by borrowing if required. No BS involving PPP for public transport and paying six times as much for something over the next 100 years. They need to start helping people like they said. Because if they don’t, they might get a few centrist votes, but they will lose their base vote and National will be back and restarting its path of destruction pretty much from where it left off. The only upside of that may be that it may remind Labour of its legacy and show the aberration that has been the past thirty years.
It’s worth remembering that not so long ago democracy in NZ was not universal and to be eligible to vote you needed to be male and a property owner or have independent wealth – government for the property owners by the property owners – as president Lincoln might have put it.
When the Labour government dropped it’s push (more of a timid hand wave then a push) to introduce a capital gains tax earlier this year it was a stark reminder of this fact. An elected governments role is to exclusively serve the interests of a property owning middle class and the owners of capital who enable that middle class to obtain assets.
Add to this a working class paying off the mortgages of property owners through rent and still persuaded to see beneficiaries as the cause of their dire economic circumstances and its easy to see why the poor come at the very bottom of the list. Advocating for them will terminate a political as happened to Metiria Turei in 2017. Jacinda Adern was once a powerful advocate for ending child poverty. Not any more – the types of wealth re-distributive policies recommended by most experts would require a very different type of government one that would need to work against the sole interests of capital and it’s aspirant middle class servants.
Martyn;
+Orwellian back to the future symptomatic days ahead, – 1984 comes to town.
Who said ‘knowledge is power’?
Only someone who wanted to exact harm upon us did it.
“MSD can write off debt in cases where they’ve made an administrative error or it’s deemed uneconomic to recover the debt.”
If this is so, then why was the fact of Winston Peter’s NZ Super over-payment, due to WINZ’s own administrative error, so speedily circulated around Peter Hughes, Anne Tolley, Paula Bennett etc right through to politically partisan media, to ridiculously try and wallop Mr Peters ?
If this is so, then why, earlier this week,did a WINZ spokesperson state that WINZ do not have the legislative authority to wipe debts ? Why not get that authority ? Do any of them actually know what they are doing ?
It is unconscionable and amoral for the poorest people in the land to incur debt due to WINZ cock-ups, and to be then held liable for those debts.
It is probably not legal either, and a test case needs to be taken against WINZ to establish this, as the Coalition Govt clearly lacks the moral fibre to do the right thing. They are no doubt counting on the fact that poor people are not nearly as sexy as dead miners when it comes to doing a bit of virtue signalling.
Austerity is the key word here. Citizens may not see for sale signs out side WINZ, MSD or the Ministry for Children but they can see benefits being cut, kidnapped children. And storing big data isn’t cheap.
Bernie says real change never comes from the top down but from the bottom up.
Weather Jacinda makes it back or Bridges – Luxon are cracking the whip it will continue to be business as usual in the land of the long white cloud and the rugby world cup.
Tell me again how this Labour government is any better than Keys government.
At least Aunty Helen managed to achieve some things.
Not many but some.
By all accounts people are worse off now than 2 years ago.
We live in a kind dictatorship, governments voted in by the silent majority, those who own property and have vested interests, to keep most rather unchanged, so the status quo prevails.
Those really suffering and in need will always be treated like beggars by the ‘do well’ brigade, those owning property, operating businesses and having secure jobs.
Jacinda and Grant are too scared to upset the do well people.
Love your NZ idealism, hate the lack of response.
Big downer on Maori from working class Pakeha in my experience … unless they married Maori. Like how Auzzies come here.
What a thin soup if Jacinda, like Justin, makes it back. What thin things left over from the ‘redistribution to the rich’. Does any one deny that was what it amounted to? The last 40. In NZ 30 % richer, but not America.
What needs looking at is the meager $300 per annum non refundable dental treatment special needs grants. That pays for just one filling these days, at many dentists. So with poverty still comes poor dentures. It is quite disgusting really, that people are expected to repay so much, which is for essential goods and services (also home appliances and the likes).
Then they force people to accept Haier products, and not Fisher and Paykel for fridges and the likes. How ‘patriotic’ to subsidise the Mainland Chinese export industry and penalise New Zealand manufacturers.
Labour lost their ways long ago, and make no effort to rediscover what it once stood for.
I realise beneficiaries always scratched the same itch as unionists back in social democratic days. So, shoulders shouldn’t be placed here. But when we force them off the ball, vital, essential.
Our real heart. Jacinda isn’t going to force them off the ball but she can leave benefit raises and housing funding. Her younger generation, gay and lively, disgusts me. The neediest are not just the moral but the economic heart of Godzone. And they can’t take anymore.
It’s the same program as the labour-Greens coalition, just under differ auspices.
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