More beneficiaries to face sanctions under new Govt – minister
New Social Development Minister Louise Upston says she’s expecting more beneficiaries to face sanctions under the Government’s plans to shake up welfare.
During the election campaign, National promised a range of changes to stop what it said had become “entrenched welfare dependency” under the previous government.
The party had said a “lax application of sanctions” had contributed to the problem.
Speaking to Q+A, Upston said of the number of people sanctioned: “I would expect it to increase. It’s a consequence of people not taking actions to help themselves.
The minister said the Government would be pushing ahead with National’s plans to introduce a traffic light system for beneficiaries.
She described it as a “graduated series” of steps and, for people on the red light, pointed to non-monetary sanctions like money management and community work experience.
But according to National’s pre-election plans, other sanctions can include benefit reductions or benefit suspensions. Asked how people who have their benefits cut would pay to survive, the minister said there would be a “range of options”.
“If they are not fulfilling their obligations, then it is quite clear about the fact that the welfare system will not support them beyond that point,” Upston said.
When pushed on the question, she responded: “They might go with family, they might go with friends, there might be others that look after them.”
Look at the ignorance of Aunty Dolores Upston’s comment.
Where will beneficiaries go who she cuts off welfare, “They might go with family, they might go with friends, there might be others that look after them.”
We know beneficiaries can’t go to family, friends or ‘others’ because they are most likely already using those people for support!
Bernard Hickey highlights the disgusting abuse of power here…
Tax cuts paid for by up to 13k more kids in poverty
The Government has reverted indexation for main beneficiaries to price inflation from wage inflation under Parliamentary urgency to save money for tax cuts, which it has been advised could drive an extra 13,000 kids into poverty.
The savings are also $1.36 billion less than National estimated before the election, expanding its fiscal hole created by the rejection of its to $2.96 billion foreign buyers’ tax to a total of $4.33 billion over four years.
The National-ACT-NZ First Government used urgency in Parliament yesterday to revert indexation for main benefits to prices from wages, in a move expected to save less than a third of the money National needed for tax cuts, MSD advised.
MSD advised the indexation change, which won’t apply to those on NZ Superannuation, is likely to put around 7,000 extra children into poverty and up to 13,000, reports Thomas Coughlan via NewstalkZB.
The change will also only generate $670 million in savings over four years, which was less than a third of the $2 billion in savings over four years hoped-for by National in its pre-election tax-cutting plans (page 7).
…taking money from the poor, for the rich, rammed through under urgency!
No more carrots for the bennies, they gonna git da bash!
We are taking out of the mouths of children in poverty to give rich landlords a tax cut – we should all be ashamed of ourselves at the butchery of public good this spiteful Government are ramming through under urgency, which is the way this new hard right racist climate denying Government AND their supporters love it!
National Policy will see a tsunami of beneficiaries and state tenants thrown onto the streets and that’s fine by the supporters of this vile hateful Government because that’s what the redneck supporter base want – vengeance!
For 6 years they chaffed under Jacinda and twisted in fury at imaginary Māori takeovers, post covid bitterness and anti vax quack science, and now they have their revenge and those redneck, banjo twanging, cross burning rednecks (and their apologists) get to burn the libraries they so deeply hate.
One of Jacinda’s true legacy’s was ‘kindness’ and it forced the State which previously loved bashing anyone too weak and poor enough to be able to fight back, into being kind and stopped them from using cruel sanctions.
This new hard right racist climate denying Government however LOVES using the State to bash the poor and so we have the beginnings of the purges and the sanctions and the cruel penalties alongside the new rules to kick out State Tenants which will inject an explosion of homelessness, poverty and desperation back into our already withered social infrastructure.
Add these sanctions to ACTs desire to punish drug addicts and the mentally ill on welfarewhile targeting welfare fraud (and ignoring white collar crime) and we have a cauldron of toxic right wing revenge fantasies masquerading as social policy.
The lives of beneficiaries and state tenants are about to become far, far, far more desperate, damaged and corroded.
This policy will only drive up harm, domestic violence, suicide, crime and homelessness.
13 000 children pushed into poverty so this hard right racist climate denying Government can give their rich landlord mates a tax cut.
How dare you defend this because of something Jacinda did that you hate?
How is pushing 13 000 kids into poverty for tax cuts to rich people a fucking justification for anything?
New Zealand, you need to take a good hard long look at yourself and ask if all your Covid anger has twisted you into something terribly bitter, warped and fucked up because allowing 13 000 children – Fucking! Children! to be pushed into poverty so we can fund tax cuts for the rich is an abomination.
if you can’t admit that, you have become the problem.
We are a bigger, better, kinder, smarter people than this hateful hard right racist climate denying Government!
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Big problem for Nationals welfare policies is that those who Do have jobs are going to need more welfare than if we just raised welfare 40%. Those that do work need more resources to work than just sitting on welfare. And those who work don’t have the same access to training programes, government sponsored work programes like grants for licenses or tools or whatever. Your average kiwi household needs about 70k to survive where as winz clients going into work barely make 30k. The tax cuts coming down won’t even tickle you may as well give them the 15k beneficiaries are entitled to. That’ll do more to relive pressure on families by a long way.
Food is about 100% more expensive than a year ago so what fucking inflation index are they using that this change won’t immediately double benefits?
As for kindness at MSD – lol – still incompetent, I swear they’ve gotten more incompetent. And still sending random threatening letters over routine nonsense.
They are using the CPI, but they will use the change between what it is now, to the point where they are set. That will be a small increase, which is why they are doing it that way.
The FPI (food price index) shows much higher increases than the general inflation (CPI), but they aren’t tying the benefit to that, despite people on the benefit spending disproportionately more on food and basics than what the CPI captures.
Who’s not on a benny of some sort in this broken country?
We need a CGT to help fund the state. Ardern had a chance to introduce a CGT, but lost her nerve.
You are right Ardern copped out. She was hugely disappointing on this. Nothing stopping these wankers, though.
Correct now its clear National have no nerve, just cold hard ice cold veins.
Even more reason to have a Commissioner for Children. A half-decent Human Rights Commissioner would address this issue. This country’s flagellation of the innocent children of the poor is a national disgrace.
What makes all these wankers think that 15k a year is sending the country broke .And remember they pay tax on that 15k so they end up with even less .Those two bitches in that picture earn that per week how is that logical that they need 15k a week but expect you to live on 15k per year .
Hea hea Gordon would like to add, ‘those two nasty bitches in the picture.
And here is the kicker…officially today there has been a name rebranding….
It is now..
Health New Zealand
te whatu Ora
Rebranded from..
Te Whatu Ora
health new Zealand
At a cost of millions!
Whilst Penny pinching Upston up herself destroys families. Not only that this corrupt government are cutting jobs in the health sector.
This is a sad sad day in NZ politics.
no problem with corprate communism though
I blame the media numpties are so easy to expose but it doesn’t happen…frankly a 3rd form debating society member could do better
Upston was on Checkpoint last night, responding to questions about the CPAG report of thousands of secondary school teens working 20-50 hours on top of school work, to help their families pay for essentials.
Upston didn’t really seem to care about the issue, from her tone. She only had mantras that the current govt had measures to fix the mess they had inherited, and the fix would involve tackling inflation and the high cost of living – but she had nothing extra to offer the families struggling to pay bills and their hard working teens, whose schooling is suffering.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/509295/fixing-cost-of-living-crisis-will-help-children-out-of-poverty-minister-louise-upston
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018926233/15-000-teenagers-working-up-to-50-hours-to-support-families
And on MSN this morning one of the comments was something like – “I hope these children learn the lesson that their parents shouldn’t have had children”. Which is very helpful.
Let’s hope Upstons children learn not to be like her…failed marriage.
That’s plain nasty MHK but we already knew that about you.
Gosh perhaps I should follow your nasty snide underhand comments where you naively believe people cant see through your very immature comments but we already knew that about you.
One good thing, you didn’t disagree with my comment because you know it to be true.
You were probably the result of a mistake Bob given your appalling posts.
guerilla surgeon Think she was Minister for Women when Key’s serial ponytail pulling was publicly revealed. She failed to speak against female harassment. She could at least have advised parents to have their children’s hair cut off when creeps like Key are having their bit of fun. Failed there too. Telling kids that their parents shouldn’t have had them is as rotten as it gets. Louise needs to be told that every child counts, and that dumping on them is pretty sick
Yes but it seems Bob the firsts support of Upston and Key’s ponytail pulling antics was okay, despite the trauma suffered by the waitress. But then again, we know what a vile, nasty person Bob is, it’s on show every single time he posts.
Cry harder loser.
Don’t come crying to us when there’s more kids ram raiding a decade from now
50,000 NZers are drawing superannuation while continuing to work past retirement age and receive more than $100k per year. These people could donate a year of their super to 50,000 impoverished kids without breaking a sweat, and change the lives of both parties.
On the other hand, the government could increase taxes on the wealthy and do it properly – forever.
Yeah, we all know how the problems of people with very little money can be solved by denying them money
The WEAG report should have been implemented in full by Labour, but they danced around it. It would have been bedded in by now and harder to totally claw back–another opportunity lost.
Labour cannot be let of the hook for the Cap’n’s Call fiasco where any semblance of democracy in NZ Labour was overridden by the then PM while on an overseas trip to scotch wealth tax or CGT, which his own senior Ministers Robbo and David Parker had developed on evidence from an IRD Report on rich bludgers.
Anyway looking forward, this is the worst time for vulnerable people to have to interact with MSD/WINZ, you have to have a phone and lots of data to contact the fuckers–and they ARE out to get you and not inform of entitlements, let alone deliver them.
The answer is to build a Green/TPM campaign (include Labour when they move Chippy on maybe) for a Basic Income for all, and disestablishment of MSD/WINZ.
100% accurate analysis Tiger Mountain
By the way noticed that when questioned by Jake Tame about being on the benefit herself Upston said yes I was and it was the worst time of my life. Wow you dumb ass guess how much worse it would have been if you didn’t have the benefit when you needed it. This is a good example of Jack Tame really softballing, he didn’t even bring up that obvious question of how she would have managed without the benefit. Meanwhile he hardballs Chloe over a fucking sentence.
Lone Comet It beggars belief that any normal woman who has had to nurture, nourish, clothe and care for children in conditions of extreme hardship, would voluntarily consign other parents and children to the same damaging deprivation. Oddly enough, nether Louise nor horrible Paula, look as if they’ve ever gone without much themselves. The latter even had to have her tummy closed off as she got so fat.
Huh you could call th
Yes Gentle yet she never stopped overindulging in her ego manic personality or enlisting rich listers.
Acrobatics are required when the Govt. presents all this contradictory stuff on welfare. Reserve Bank wants higher unemployment as no doubt do a number of employers to put downward pressure on wages etc. So unemployed should be heroes of the nation in the fight against inflation?–no–they are demonised as filthy couch dwellers not wanting to contribute.
The Natzo ex bennies are rather pitiful, from SirKey (raised on a widows benefit in a secure state house tenancy) to Paula Bennett to Upston. Ladder pullers one and all.
Yes, and when she was on the benefit, they didn’t have all the sanctions and they had the Training incentive allowance until pull everyone’s benefit Paula got rid of it, once she used it herself, they are ladder pullers.
Ladder pullers all with a very healthy suspension of reality going on up top. They are a mix of nasty, cruel stupid and indifferent. Just the type you don’t want as politicians making laws.
Heh you could call that fat shaming but I get your point about the greedy me me type of person she appears to be. She is a nasty awful low infi type and you can see it in her screwed up face when she makes one of her low bar comments putting someone down. You know suck it up (Golriz) or zip it sweetie (Jacinda) etc… she has the empathy and low cunning of a hyena and the attack style.
Lone Comet. Could call it fat shaming, could call it racist, could call it misogyny, could call it the next door dog’s name, but the fact remains that horrible Paula remains the archetype Nat female: loud, flashy, vulgar, smug, self-satisfied, and terribly terribly damaging. Her public pronouncements about J-L Ross were disgraceful, and her attempts to muddy the good work being done by a kaumatua at Te Puea Marae in housing the homeless, seemed to me to be malevolent and vindictive. A big person would never have behaved like this, a larded-up harridan did. She suited Key and English just fine. If Louise wears her shoes, God defend our children.
The wealthy just don’t get it. When the masses reach a tipping point where they’ll be left with no option but to take what they need, then they may get it. Then everyone loses and it’ll be too late.
Liberty4NZ. The wealthy have well-insulated lives. They rarely lose. But a rich man like Luxon, professing to hold Christian values and meant to be a political leader, acquiescing in damaging our most vulnerable wee lives, is morally indefensible. He should be called out on this, but no matter what, he’ll be ok, and he knows it. Mr Family Man, all donning matching pj’s at Christmas, is as sickening as Louise. Sepuloni was pretty useless, but this one is worse. None of them care.
Getting people “off jobseekers and into work” at a time when unemployment is already expected to increase can only mean one thing… It’s the 90s all over again
You might expect that even a government as thick as this one would eventually understand that austerity for the young and the poor dooms them to a lifetime of lower incomes.
Where is the economic acumen these pathetic National and ACT losers have been pretending to for generations? Were there decent jobs, not flooded with illegal migrants, they’d halve the DSW costs overnight.
This is political theatre – torturing the poor to reinforce the Nazi message Arbeit Mach Frei. Roll on the day when NZ’s poor stand up against these cruel and stupid assholes. Fuck them up – they’re killing our people.
Once again the carousel has stopped with an uncaring corrupt National led Government…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350183053/i-am-terrified-how-nationals-benefit-changes-may-impact-disabled-community
No wonder Upston was a solo mother…
Any changes affects someone group somewhere, you can’t please all the people all the time.
Disabled don’t vote National, who cares.
Maori (when they do vote) don’t vote National, who cares
And so on and so on….
These groups should have voted harder lol
The coalition is only interested in pleasing less than 5% of the population. You know, the ones that gave them all the money.
NSC displays yet again what a horrible nasty person he is.
Im right displays yet again what a horrible nasty person he is.
Bob is simply a troll and idiot.
No he’s not Bob. This stupid woman has stood up in Parliament and basically admitted she wouldn’t have been able to get by, and by implication you could say she wouldn’t be where she is if she didn’t have a benefit! What a f’ing hypocrite. She probably got dumped by someone like “I’m right”. You know the type, bolt when they have responsibility. Very Coalition. Louise Upston is the female version of that little douche bag Simeon Brown and his approach to most of the councils on water reform. “Hey you are completely f’cked with no chance but you need to lift yourself of it”
We can be and should be thanking our lucky stars we now have a government,the Coalition,that will deliver for all New Zealanders.
Labour stood for no one stood for nothing.
Except the disabled, so no, not all New Zealanders. Oh and those working in the public sector. Bob the idiot once again displays his ignorance.
We are under a facist government.
National similar to a Putin government, kill your opposition.
“Labour stood for no one stood for nothing.”
Terrible literacy.
Juvenile comment but we have come to expect that from Bob.
You have lost it Bob.
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