The 50,000 reduction won’t just apply to the work-ready though. It’ll target those on the health or disability jobseekers benefit.
This isn’t social policy, it’s right-wing revenge fantasies.
Because the rump Right have become a social media vortex of malice and spite, they need to keep throwing raw meat policy to their baying mob.
Targeting 50 000 beneficiaries with disabilities so National can afford their $2.9billion tax subsidy for the richest Landlords while borrowing $15billion for tax cuts is an obscenity!
The disabled deserve our compassion and our kindness and our chary and our generosity.
There but for the grace of God go I!
I find it hard enough to get around the world as an able bodied person, living with a disability makes these people super heroes as far as I am concerned.
To threaten them with sanctions and penalties for not being well enough to get a job flipping burgers isn’t social policy, it’s State imposed misery!
And the reason why we are harassing disabled beneficiaries? So National can give their rich real estate pimp donors $2.9billion!
We elected this Government of Malice because everyone was grumpy with Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives from Covid.
This is what we is now, this is what we have become.
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Health NZ has been issued a directive from this government to save money by instructing no new positions to be advertised and to not replace existing roles upon staff leaving.
This after Reti promised to invest in our frontline…
https://www.national.org.nz/waikato_hospital_issues_prove_there_is_a_crisis
This is exactly the same mantra the last time we had a National government.
NZ’s health system is under significant strain given the under investment and ever increasing population.
Expect health to collapse in NZ and many to head for Australia( again).
Martyn – I hope this is not true…perhaps they (Health Job seekers/Disable Job Seekers) need to be transfer to the Invalid Allowance…
Nathan it has already started.
People on the SLP are being harrassed and their local doctors is not being good enough for case managers and having to get hospital specialists to approve the continuation of their SLP.
We all know hospital specialists are overwhelmed as it is.
Go onto any facebook winz advocacy group and read the reality of WINZ case managers actions.
Case managers are making it as hard as possible to get on the slp benefit ( old invalids benefit)
It is quite true. I have a friend who is a disability advocate and he is terrified of where National are taking us.
It is very deliberately an attack on them.
The medical test for Supported Living Payment (previously Invalids Benefit) is much higher than Jobseeker Support with a medical deferral of the work test.
It is profoundly negative that in a sparsely occupied long narrow country (apart from the Tauranga, Hamilton, Auckland triangle) of barely 5 mill population that this type of crap can go down in 2024.
The dark kiwis have long made up around 40% of the population, sitting on stolen or dubiously acquired land in the provinces, running dodgy bourgeois SMEs, or self employed tradie munters. Social media has added to the breakdown of collectivism bought in by neo liberalism. Academics long predicted the “atomisation of the working class” and so it has turned out with numbers down certain rabbit holes.
Bennie bashing is cowardly enough, but those promoting attacking those with various illnesses and health conditions should be first up against the wall…face it–austerity is war on the poor and it is fight back time.
People are going to need practical assistance and organisation more than ever during the time this CoC lot are in office. Will Winston pull the pin when he has to hand over the Deputy PM possie to Atlas Dave?
In the meantime…
• Revive Peoples Centres
• Beneficiary Advocacy
• Pātaka Kai open pantry movement
https://www.patakai.co.nz
• Join your union if in work
• Get politically active
“This is not a ‘freedom’ we want or need.”
Which of your “freedoms” can we dispense with? You know ACT will.
That old reactionary Heinlein in “Starship Troopers”, where you only got citizenship if you’d served in the armed forces, decided that disabled people ethically had to be found a job. Even if you are blind you might be put to work counting the hairs on the backs of caterpillars with your extra sensitive fingers or something. I’m pretty sure many disabled people are quite capable of working and would like a job – but some can’t, and I doubt that the Minister gives a shit about distinguishing between the two. Conservative government is about punishing people you think are beneath you. Whether it’s women in the case of abortion, minorities, or just the lower classes. The Elizabethans lived in fear of the lower classes, and you only have to look at the comments on MSN to realise that Conservatives here often do as well.
We are living in a Robin Hood movie. King Christopher “LackCash” is the feeble monarch with the Sheriff of Peters wielding the real power, while David Gisborne gathers the poor and disabled’s food. Unfortunately, Robin Hipkins is still deciding whether he should take from the rich and give to the poor, as he promised not too, the last time his Merry Men fought. We are currently relying on Maid Chloe, her retinue (dressed appropriately in Green), and Castle Te Parti Māori to challenge the King and his cronies, until Robin joins them. Where is Sean Connery, when you need him?
So the man that claims he want less government wants more government oversight and punitive action of parents.. Too bad if you have a chronically ill child.
While poor and unwell people suffer we must be ever mindful of the misery of the 14 multi-billionaires, the 3118 multi-millionaires each with a minimum $50 million after tax and the four now foreign owned banks earning $180.00 after tax every second twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year and lets not forget to mention the top ten salary earners list where individuals are on seven figures a year.
luxon is a dumb ugly bully and he needs sat on his arse.
When I started school I was a skinny little red headed kid and probably border line ADHD when I think of it. But worse, I was born to my father’s wife’s sister. Yep. Gossip fodder around the Southland spuds and chops I can tell you. The spittle would have flown, the false teeth would have clattered as the outrage would have blasted out over the tablecloth.
So, when a wee rural kid, and an only child to boot, and I did get booted but never at home, like me was dropped off for my first school day in rural Southland I had no idea what to expect. Think of it this way… It may have been similar to a sweet little black kid being dropped off into the middle of a Clan Meeting creche. What was worse, or better, depending upon how one looks at things, was that my mum and her sister, the one married to my father remember, loved each other. My father, however, was entirely another matter. He loved himself. What can I say?
So, there I was. An odd little cunt with two mothers now standing right there getting the strap in front of the class for what ever trumped up charge was going. Usually fighting, but also the swearing leading up to the fighting. I learned from getting hidings, that a punch to the throat was far more effective then to try and hit a kid in the face. Besides, you could get nasty infections from their filthy little teeth. A headlock’s good too. I used to wrap my spindly legs around any bully then I’d strangle them until they screeched, more a gurgle actually which didn’t take long usually.
It wasn’t until I got to St Peters College that I started to comprehend the value of a good education delivered by people with the best intentions. I also had rough and unruly uncles in deepest western Southland who were either moonshiners or plain and ordinary drunken brawlers. Gun shots and swearing were as common as sparrow chirps in Tuatapere and Pukemaori.
It was from that seemingly chaotic time that I inadvertently learned that you don’t take shit from nasty, ugly cunts and yet, after all that time, I see good people thinking they must take shit from nasty, ugly cunts but perhaps worse, it’s they to whom we must pay to be abused in return. Luxon, seymour, peters et al should simply be removed from our parliament buildings. Pot smoking Uni students would be far better generally, more kind and more interesting than these fucking hideous creatures. They’re not fit for purpose. They have less than zero respect for those of us who are at most risk while those of us at perhaps less risk are psychologically rendered immobile to help and protect our fellow human beings by well marketed psychological barriers while our politicians suck the cocks of the hyper-riche. That must stop.
Read Professor Stanley Milgram and in particular a reference to an assault that led to the death of a woman at the hands of her boyfriend in broad day light in down town NYC. That, is a metaphor for us. We’re allowing narcissistic bullies push us around while stealing our money to syphon off to their Masters. That must stop.
Know your enemy.
Professor Stanley Milgram.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
Harvard University.
https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/stanley-milgram
Your problem with people being asked to find something they can do in return for being paid ?
Oh, believe me, disability rights organisations have our grave suspicions about the current Coalition of Cuts. If you think this is bad, look what happened in the United Kingdom under Cameron’s Minister of Works and Pensions Iain Duncan-Smith. Under his rule, Incapacity Benefit (their equivalent to our Invalid’s Benefit) was brutally slashed and disabled people found themselves in rent arrears, homeless, deprived of transport access and without domestic support, as well as unable to travel to work where possible. Eligibility was farmed out to human resource corporations like Serco and Atos, and often subject to repeated wearing appeal procedures. Disabled suicide, homelessness, hate crimes and self-harm dramatically increased.
You think the Nats and ACT wouldn’t go that far if they thought they could get away with it and no-one was watching? Iain Duncan-Smith discussed this here, at a Maxim Institute junket, back in 2011.
If a disabled person could do it they would already be doing it, Anne. What a stupid comment.
Back in the good old days 😉 before Roger Douglas and Richard I’ve Been Thinking Prebble had power to crack down on feather bedding, bosses in Government businesses and even private businesses would help their community by making work for people who were a bit disabled or a bit skitzo. So rather than have those people on a benefit they were on a stable low wage and grateful for a job. May be a bit of sweeping or light lifting. They got a fair go. They were dignified members of the community not useless unemployed outcasts. Muldoon who was to the left of the current Labour party ensured people were paid to do something rather than paid to do nothing except get depressed.
cannot the nat mps find decent well paid jobs for the disabled in their offices? no thought not
The sick and disabled should not be written off. They still want to be as useful as they can be baring in mind their condition. Social security staff should get a bonus for everyone they can place in a useful job within their capacity
Everything you see Chris Bishop you think guffaw, guffaw, guffaw!!
” –austerity is war on the poor and it is fight back time. ”
I have listened for and waited for the call to arms to fight and its never eventuated or has anyone to lead it.
There simply is no political or social will to confront it by any elected financed party ( NAT ACT LINO ) to prevent it
The reality in this little Island tax haven at the bottom of the world is that no one represents or cares about poverty that can do anything meaningful to address it and it now is simply a cost of capitalism and a market driven economy.
If a Labour government elected with a majority in the parliament can’t or won’t act then I don’t believe we will ever be able to implement policies that can seriously confront the impact of free market austerity.
40 Years of neo liberal plutocracy has ended any resistance to the status quo.
More punching down on the most vulnerable in society. What a bunch of losers this government is showing itself to be.
How economic inequality harms societies | Richard Wilkinson
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw
@16thJune2006
4 years ago
These research findings are so important! How come every politician that wants to do good isn’t talking about this and acting on it!? We need to spread the word and make sure politicians know about this, and act on it, instead of serving their own greedy short sighted interests and those of their backers!
@joshlicht1359
1 year ago
The terribly sad thing is, in the eleven years since the talk was given, house prices have essentially doubled in the western world. Successive governments have done nothing to change this unfolding calamity. This increase in house prices has not been matched by wage growth, essentially making the wealth gap even more toxic.
@stephaniewatts1849
6 years ago
A thousand people with a million dollars to invest in the economy is far better than one person with a billion dollars to invest because the billionaire will hedge his risk by investing 500 million and hoard the rest