So the Labour Party’s $20 boost for benefits was bullsh*t

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
39
1524

So the Labour Party’s $20 boost for benefits was bullshit & we warned the Government to not allow the dirty Wellington bureaucrats to claw it back – WHICH THEY DID! So over half of beneficiaries won’t in fact get the $20 promised!

Majority of beneficiaries won’t be $20 better off despite Budget boost

In May’s Budget, the Government announced it would lift all main benefits by $20 a week on July 1 in order to help vulnerable New Zealanders put food on the table and pay their power bills.

But modelling from the Ministry of Social Development for Budget 2021 shows that 193,000 individuals and families are estimated to receive less than $20 per week because the additional financial assistance they receive for accommodation or other costs will fall as a result of their main benefit rising.

It is estimated 178,000 people will receive an increase of $20 or a little bit more.

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You can’t promise $20 knowing that less than half would actually get it!

MSD have seen this increase as a way to make revenue by clawing it back from beneficiaries, this money is for the poorest, it’s not so fucking Wellington bureaucrats can build themselves a new glass palace in Wellington!

This months benefit rise will take child poverty from 18.4% to 17%.

So sure, cheer about that 1.4% like it means something but don’t pretend it actually does.

I’m getting a tad sick to death of listening to Jacinda and other apologists from this Government tell us with straight faces that lifting 30 000 kids out of poverty is somehow a meaningful response to the poverty crisis.

It is not.

Look, even if, and I mean IF, they actually do lift 30 000 kids out of poverty (and I say IF because we saw how their promises of jobs from the Provincial Growth Fund were a joke) so even IF they lift 30 000 kids out of poverty, that still leaves a staggering 190,000 children in poverty!!!

You can’t boast about saving 30 000 kids while leaving 190 000 behind and still ask for a pat on the back!

This isn’t leadership, it’s capitulation.

If only we could put in as much effort  lifting children out of poverty as we do on middle class tax breaks for electric cars, a billion dollar bike lane and hate speech legislation.

We hate beneficiaries so much that a crumb is sold as a mountain.

 

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39 COMMENTS

  1. I’m surprised this got through to the keeper on OneWokeNews. The luckless feckless one will be sent to a Te Reo re-education class for the balance of the year.

    Katniss Bradbury continuing to learn that district 13 and it’s leadership is nothing different from the capital and John (Key) Snow….

    • A team of 5 Full-Time, competent reporters, coupled with a Web Developer could easily produce more meaningful news than OneWokeNews and PropagandaHub combined.

      Can we get a union of interest.co.nz, newsroom, thekaka, thedailyblog and maybe kiwiblog?

      As for Stuff and RNZ, they have contracted the woke virus and are unable to play, results pending.

      • It would be an interesting dynamic that’s for sure. It would allow for some meaningful analysis of the topics of the day that is sadly missing currently by the feckless ones

  2. Labour are quickly becoming a waste of space in government, aren’t they? A bit of a bad joke.

    But you’ve just got to love the fiscal prudence of the MSD, straight out of the best neo liberal manual. I’m sure the Minister of Finance was wrapt!

    The give with one hand and taketh with the other.

  3. Putting aside the self centered whinging for a moment.. The $20 rise was applied to the processes that were put in place pre 2017, and so after doing their usual dry calculatiobns, the drones that feed the machine that the nats taught us to fear and worship, have taken some of thet $20 back, as it constitutes an increase in income, and will impact on whatever special assistance being paid.. For that not to happen I suspect there would have to be a comprehensive rewrite of the paradigm the machine operates under..
    In order for that to be effective, then it has to be done dead right, or the tory drones in the ministry will find ways to dud beneficiaries… It’s why they have those jobs in the first place.. Never forget, that we have a government that isn’t the colonial privilege party now… They are the enemy of the dogs of royalty, and nothing short of sedition will be beneath those tasked with the persecution of the masses on behalf of their colonial masters…
    Timidity and inexperience in dealing with the machinations of career abusers is no excuse, but I get that it was never going to be easy to reset a situation that has gotten so deeply entrenched, and so fundamentally rotten…

    • Stefan

      That excuse was vaguely valid for year one and maybe just, year two of this government although having spent so long in opposition, they had little excuse but plenty of time to see the way governments work in NZ. In fact they had former ministers who knew exactly the way things are. But they didn’t bother studying much of anything, they appear to have turned up to work in opposition to eat their lunches. Phil Twyford definitely gives evidence to that.

      By year 4 and now a majority there is no excuse to be this pathetic. What it sceams at me is if this was a genuine attempt to improve beneficiary lives Labour are too incompetent to be in government. But if it was a cynical exercise in public relations, which is what it looks like, well they’ve failed there too.

    • never going to be easy to reset a situation that has gotten so deeply entrenched, and so fundamentally rotten…

      It is, and they have to. Clear it out and start over is the best way.
      Needs to be simplified, streamlined, universalised, – one basic payment for all beneficiaries, an amount that is clearly enough to at least survive on! With caps on rents, at least until there are enough houses available for everyone, and removal of the GST on basic foods and essential services.

      • Why a block of NZ cheese costs twice as much in NZ as in Aus

        Remove the GST on our own essential NZ foods NOW!!!!!!!!

        …. I feel so angry about this … It is so fundamentally WRONG!!!
        And it hurts everyone – the farmers and growers as much as ALL KIWIS!!!!!
        Especially the children!!!!!

        (What is WRONG with those stuffed pretenders in the beehive?????????? They are blind and deaf to the obvious.)

  4. No thanks Carmel, as a jobseeker who trained in public service I want a $100k+ public sector job not an insult $8 increase in benefit. I want to be treated like you and your mates in the public sector, with dignity, respect and a chance at life. I will actually work rather than sitting on my arse telling the world how amazing things are. If you can’t provide that to an indigenous citizen with two tertiary qualifications who has worked their entire adult life then fuck off and let someone in to the role who will provide me with opportunity.

  5. …and 3.5% inflation.

    This will mostly go on food and fuel. Largely irrelevant to me but it will bite in the Labour heartland in South Auckland. This is what happens when stupid people vote in stupid governments.

  6. These labour addicts must think that because Goering was not as evil as Hitler then it must mean Goering was ok? They just don’t understand that Jacindas Labour is so far to the right she is now just as right as Bill English’s Party. She abandoned the poor when she forever abandoned a capital gains tax. She is a fraud. Not ever to be trusted.

  7. An extra $20 per week for families who are wholly or mostly reliant on social welfare will not reduce child poverty by 1.4 percent because the increase needed to do that, say at least $60 per family per week, isn’t being executed. This increase will barely keep up with our rising food and petrol prices and our inflation rate. Furthermore, it excludes a whole lot of families who are receiving financial assistance for their accommodation. I therefore disagree with the premise that the $20 a week benefit increase will reduce child poverty by 1.4 percent. The real figure is likely to be less than 0.6 percent. What the $20 benefit increase will do is line the pockets of single beneficiaries, a significant portion of which have limited work skills and qualifications, at a time when most employers are actively seeking and recruiting skilled workers. It would therefore have been wiser to have spent the funds on an increase in work based courses and literacy and numeracy programs, computer classes, and the like for this group of single beneficiaries.

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