The Government is ramping up plans to throw 50 000 beneficiaries (including those with disabilities) onto the scrap heap…
Govt ramps up threat of sanctions on beneficiaries if new obligations aren’t met
The Government is ramping up its threat of sanctions on Jobseeker beneficiaries not fulfilling their obligations by introducing a new requirement to attend a seminar within a fortnight of their benefit starting.
Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston announced today a new Kōrero Mahi – Let’s Talk Work seminar, which beneficiaries must attend within the first two weeks after they start receiving a benefit.
All new Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations are required to attend the seminars, including those on it for health reasons, Upston told reporters at a job fair in Porirua today.
Those who didn’t comply could be sanctioned – have their benefit cut – unless they had a good reason.
Remember, we are throwing 50 000 off welfare to fund a $2.9billion tax break for the richest landlords.
The political project of the Right is to starve the State of revenue so that wealth can’t be redistributed in the first place.
They attack the universals the Left fund and build to only focus on funding the ‘worst case scenario’ welfare cases which only serves to drive more people into poverty rather than give them a standard of living they can grow from.
Indeed this Government’s agenda will push up to 13000 children into poverty!
The reason the mental health foundation need to cut is because this Government is more focused on the interests of their donor mates than the people of New Zealand.
We need a new taxation and regulation model to stop the neoliberal rot. We need to remove the yoke of taxation from the 90% and reset it to the 10% richest.
It should surprise no one that WINZ is one of the most complained about welfare agencies…
MSD receives almost 5000 complaints about staff in two years
People seeking support from Work and Income say Ministry of Social Development staff are lacking compassion.
In the past two years, the ministry has received close to 5000 complaints in relation to MSD staff’s bad handling of clients looking for help.
…MSD and WINZ are purposely obtuse so that they can catch beneficiaries out and make them debt slaves for ‘welfare fraud’.
MSD and WINZ do everything to not inform people of what they are actually entitled to on purpose until they get caught out doing it.
Look at how our welfare system enslaves beneficiaries into debt slaves…
Māngere mum faces crippling debt after flooding ruins her state house
A mother of four has been plunged further into debt after her government-provided home was ruined in the Auckland floods.
Jayde Jones’s Kāinga Ora home was built on a flood plain, and lifted off its foundations when a historic deluge swept across the city.
Jones believes the state housing agency should pay to replace her belongings; Kāinga Ora says that’s the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).
MSD coughed up just $500, and while Work and Income did provide another $6000, that’s money Jones will have to pay back – adding to her already sizeable Work and Income debts.
There is a deep cruelty built within our user plays welfare state.
When beneficiaries are in need beyond the meagre crumbs they are paid as a benefit, they can ‘borrow’ the money from MSD (who charges interest).
This is nothing more than debt slavery. MSD use their opaque rules to catch people out via ‘relationships’ and have access to mass surveillance tools to hunt these supposed enemies of the state.
Where is our basic humanity?
We need urgent solutions to the billions in debt that many have with the State, be it student loan, fines, tax debt, benefit ‘fraud’.
The problem is that MSD and WINZ see that debt as an asset and use it that way on their balance sheets.
They see enslaving the poor into debt as a means of total spectrum dominance on the under class to ensure total subservience to the State.
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So first we will take away your job and throw you out with the trash .Then after a week we will interview you ,call you a lazy bastard because you are not working and take away the benefit that you have not even recieved yet .
Then we will mark your file with a stamp which says LAZY BASTARD ,Then we will foward your details to OT and instruct them to uplift your kids because you are living on the street and cant cloth or feed them .After that you will be coscripted into the army to be sent where ever AUKUS wants cannon fodder .
Can’t see us fighting the Chinese with our little population how bout we just tell the Yanks to fuck off?
Or we will send you to live at the refurbished Waikeria fun park and adventure playground, and once we fill that to overflowing, will then send the rest to much lower cost facilities in asia as a kind of exchange, in that we take asian students that we educate here and they accommodate our unruly bottomfeeders, under conditions far more terrible than would be allowed in NZ, a kind of bootcampkonzentrationslager.
The reverse robinhood of taking from the poor and giving to the rich makes sense if you believe in trickle down, in which case the greatest economic boost could be obtained by reducing the top tier over 180K taxrate down to zero, and the resulting massive trickle down would turn NZ into an economic nirvana, a trussed up Luxon Willis wonderland, but anyone with a speck of commonsense and the most meager grip on reality would know, that it’s complete bullshit.
Hocking our tomorrows to fund tax cuts for today is inflationary and unaffordable payday lending mentality. What if there’s another financial crash, another cyclone, another earthquake? What if the new bird flu becomes another 1918 flu pandemic? Will the govt then not be able to put in place a wage subsidy as Labour did, that kept the country going, because they’ve already raided the pantry for unaffordable tax cuts, and then find the pantry is bare.
And NZFirst conspiracy supporters insisting that we don’t do any lockdowns or close the borders, because the next pandemic is some kind of fake news 5g infowars qanon media beat up giggery pokery?
If you could bottle commonsense and sell it as snake oil, you could not extract a single drop from the current coalition. Please come back Jacinda, all is forgiven, your seat has been kept warm, and your friend Chloe is there to give you a hand.
Jacinda could get her old gang back together. Chloe is the go. Then tempt Grant back into politics. Even Judas Winston, who is currently under the spell of the Evil Emperor and Deluded Sleazemore, I sense may still have some good in him. And if only a way can be found to turn Winston away from the dark side, his powers could be used to defeat the Evil Emporer, and rid us of this Koru club Sith Lord, who is busily slicing away at the public service and the treaty, with his light sabre.
Ban Thomas twitter.com@BenThomasNZ Jan 21, 2023
When Key resigned we did a GBLT emergency pod & I wrote a couple of quick takes for the Spinoff & Stuff.
When Ardern resigned we did a GBLT emergency pod & when I checked my phone afterwards there were requests for comment from CNN, NYT, NPR, Singapore Radio, The Times, etc.
Sending them to a seminar isn’t exactly throwing them under the bus.
If the seminar actually has useful content for finding a job it might be good. Unfortunately with Louise Upston involved it is probably more like visiting your parole officer. It’s hard to feel there’s a genuine commitment from someone who takes loads of cash from wealthy donors.
We have an ACT bot in the house
Try it something then see what you think. I got made redundant once in 2008 & thought I would see how good the supposedly marvelous (according to the conservatives) state support system was. After most of the day, lots of waiting & various forms I gave up & have found my own work ever since I did not even claim any covid assistance as I had enough to survive without it even though it did substantially reduce my income for a while.
You are missing the point that jobs are not available so training people for invisible jobs is simply a gravy train for the training provider. I hear on the news that the education dept is getting consultants to do the work of the dismissed employees so that exposes how stupid the system really is.
Making people get off their arse to help themselves, has been deemed a cruel & unusual punishment.
Ennius Disagree. A woman emerging from an abusive marriage, or anybody having just experienced a significant bereavement in their lives, may be totally incapable of engaging fruitfully at a seminar two weeks later. A fired or redundant person may also require more expert assistance than the Ministry of Social Development is capable of providing at a seminar.
One size does not fit all.
This is very wrong, ruthless, and another unjustifiable waste of my tax payer dollars.
If you read the article (and the article is correct) it’s information giving.
it is throwing them under a bus.
The seminars are a pathetic joke.
I have been too one when Paula Bennett first set them up.
As for winz work brokers they are as useless as a bulls tit.
The Temp employment agencies do a better job than they do.
@ Annus.
‘Them’…? ” Sending ‘them’ to a seminar…” ” Throwing ‘them’ under a bus.” You’re a tiny brain-fart part of a much larger problem mate, not a solution now fuck off.
Its only a start – many more punitive rules will be added over time. This government doesn’t give a crap for people – only the money … nothing else
It cares about the people paying for benefits.
Maybe, but this isn’t necessarily the best way to do things, and it could end up costing more in the long run.
No jobs in Auckland and we are at high unemployment levels…a result of right wing governments, fact.
5 months in charge so this might wing government cannot be blamed .It takes time to shrink an economy and this current state of affairs can be laid at Labour’s feet. That is another reason for them to be voted out .
It shrank under the previous National government and Labour only had 6 years to repair the damage left by 9 years of Nationals damage. Now this…
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/05/14/record-number-of-kiwis-leave-nz-stats-nz/
Note the previous record was 2012, again under National. People are leaving in droves and we are left with the dregs of immigrants like yourself Trev.
National always screws the country over.
Bullshit Trevor this lays squarely at Nationals feet, fuck off with your excuses!
Police & Corrections are hiring if you are interested.
Yes Mark because most have left for Australia so there will be a few underpaid positions available.
You looking for a job then? Or do you belong on the other side?
A newly unemployed will appreciate the opportunity to get back on the wheel, and get a job. Long term unemployed, will struggle with this, as overtime people become demotivated. However, people need respectful jobs, whereby they can fulfill their material needs, for self esteem, mental & physical health and to be a role model for the young ones.
These arsehole make out as if the beneficiaries get a lot of money! I think the benefit is about 8,000 a year? I mean how is that feeding out of the trough? You cant let people starve this isn’t Gaza
$30000 for a couple $14000 for a single person Not a lot to live on so it is good we have a government that wants people in work and is trying to help.
Wanting people to work and having jobs to offer them are two separate things given that there is record unemployment because of National.
Keeping people down can render them fairly helpless and incapable of bettering themselves and ergo powerless. This solidifies the power of the “ haves”, is societally counterproductive, and brutal.
Good. Small state is the solution.
Never in history has a big state worked.
Oh yes. Ignoring the Nordic countries success I see. What a twat.
yep – turn MSD and associated Minister into a website. A simple IRD check is all that’s needed. Let an AI run it.
Little Sleazemore with his power-stiffie will be all over this like genital herpies.
Good people really need to read this from The Guardian. Know your enemy and all that.
The Road to Freedom by Joseph E Stiglitz review – a vision of progressive capitalism seems too little, too late
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/12/the-road-to-freedom-economics-and-the-good-society-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-review-an-ardent-but-flawed-defence-of-progressive-capitalism
“For Reagan and the brains behind his neoliberal puppet, the role of government is to get out of the way and let the unfettered orgy of self-interested neoliberal economic life express itself as nature intended. Taxation is theft and interventionist industrial policy always a mistake, except when it involves bailing out failing banks in reward for tanking the economy.”
The creation of urban wealth ( Perhaps more correctly labeled the thievery of it from our agrarian economy.) has fucked our financial security and now that those particularly unfortunate albeit rich chickens are trying to find a roost, any roost. They’re desperately casting their bloodshot eyes around trying to find scape goats and who better to blame than the poor and the vulnerable. What scum the rich are. What cowards. What dirty, vile, crooks. And as for the foreign owned banks? Ban them from trading here. It’d be as simple as that. Fuck them! Write off our mortgages to them then asset strip them and return that money, our money, back to us to support our most vulnerable then tell the banksters to fuck off, and make sure they do.
But wait? Oh look? Beer and circuses!
I went to one of those seminars, WINZ staff forced jobseekers to stand up in the large group and tell them their name, circumstances and histories – breaching client confidentiality and the Privacy Act. MSD currently rack up seven complaints per day and this has been occurring for years, they are the New Zealanders in breach of the social contract. For them to punch down on the most vulnerable is not only hypocrisy but a breach of human rights.
Off topic.
The ACT dream of gutting of public education has commenced. NZ will soon be mini-USA with religious reality denying maniacs everywhere, Science deniers, history denial rightwing propaganda centres for children.
All mainlined into the formative minds of children.
And all on the taxpayer dollar.
This really is a catastrophe.
Charter schoolz
Yes Richard, this is a fucking disgrace tax payers money for private enterprises, thats all the evidence we need to show how corrupt this government is.
I live in the notorious job black spot of Buller on the West Coast and I’m unemployed.
Job ads are mostly medical, council management, mining or mining support like heavy vehicle servicing and Talleys, all of which I’m unqualified for, not that I’d ever be complicit in the climate change genocide industry or active anti worker companies.
Rather than sit on my 57 year arse, living the dream and spending all the farmers and wealth sponger class taxes they haven’t managed to avoid paying, I set up as a sole trader with IRD and did groundsman stuff where I could find it.
Declaring everything, on the good weeks I earned gross over the $160 threshold I forfeited the 70c on the dollar and had my benefit reduced, and had to put aside 25% for the tax and acc bill (which I paid in full on the day I filled in the IR3) – I made it work.
Now my back is fucked in two places and I’ve been in pain for months struggling on – degenerate, and at present moderate scoliosis in the thoracic and cervical spine, on top of the untreated wedged lower vertebrae and associated nerve damage I have from 8 years ago. No acc.
Seriously, and I truly mean it, good fucking luck to the cunt who tries to make me compete for numb nut jobs with kids 3x younger for minimum wage, just to get the numbers down or fulfil a revenge fantasy.
I have a sick note from the doctor that runs out on the 20th. I told her that I didn’t want to be signed off full time because I have to still do the work when I get it because the money is so shit, and of course someone will see me and dob me in, and that’s another new game I have no intention of playing.
Edit: spondylosis not scoliosis, whatever the f that is.
” You cant let people starve this isn’t Gaza ”
Nothing compares to Gaza. If you want a reality check on actual real life hell check out Al Jazeera or the Palestinian news information agency and imagine that was your family or your precious children suffering unnecessarily in this man made hell on earth.
Meanwhile our own man made evil regime is being enforced and rolled out again and again with the same inevitable carnage and economic casualties every electoral cycle while the same groups continue to grow their wealth and protect and enrich themselves at the expense of many of the good people in our own country legally.
The ones like the guy today who parked up in his open top Mercedes coupe with his radio up loud so everyone could not notice him driving up with ABBA’s Its a rich mans world blearing out then preceded to park in the space for a disabled person at my local Aussie supermarket. I kid you not !
Most people around just cringed and some were angry but the intent was clear.
These people and there are many of them own all of us , our children’ future and our country.
No wheelchair or any sign of a physical disability. Just one of Chris and David’s entitled donors or supporters.
Most people just gave him a disdainful look or the finger
Any wonder a record 1000 people a week are fucking off to other shit holes .
Dont here the skin head gang leader blabing about that now do we .He was hysterical when 200 were leaving under the last government but is shocked to fuck and back now his magic wand is stuck up his arse and does fuck all .So much for turning things around in the first 100 days ,just like Key was going to have wages match AUS in his first term .
the breakdown of the fossil fueled industrial age – the Anthropocene. I’ll give you a technocracy for free – openstar – if you want to pick a winner – fusion would be one. dyes. vats, stills we’re good at it – hilux races on the biofuel or a plaidl nirvana – I’d accept a small fusion reactor next to auckland – lol
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