All Louise Upston needs after draconian welfare penalty announcement is a Coat and 101 Dalmatians

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
49
1036
Spot the difference: Trick Question, there is none.
This afternoon the National Government announced their new traffic light system designed to further punish people for being poor, when it’s the government’s fault people are poor in the first place. 
“This is another disturbing announcement from Christopher Luxon’s racist government that reflects exactly the opposite of peace and well-being for many communities of Aotearoa. They’re being pushed beyond their thresholds and it isn’t right” says Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) media spokesperson and Coordinator Brooke Pao Stanley. 
Sanctions don’t work, and will only exacerbate existing issues we have in our communities due to poverty. We should be looking at solutions that address poverty in meaningful ways like a high trust model at Work and Income and Liveable Incomes for all peoples to name a few.

Effectively if you fart, they throw you off welfare.

This is what our social policy has become, a culture war revenge fantasy that is focused around punishment, sanctions and making getting welfare almost impossible.

Draconian eligibility welfare changes that then make the statistics look good but don’t actually explain the social carnage this policy is creating in our Communities, other than building a Mega Prison for the wave of poverty crime about to hit NZ as this Government throws 50 000 people off Welfare as the Reserve Bank Governor is crashing the economy and spiking unemployment which is hurting young Māori the worst.

Meanwhile Big Tobacco, Trans National Mining and the Real Estate Pimps all get juicy tax loop holes funded by the poorest amongst us.

How Nanny State is it for ACT to demand the pittance paid is on some card they can monitor?

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For a political Party that claims to be about small Government and freedom and getting Government out of your face, here they are like a ghoul sitting on the shoulder of beneficiaries micromanaging what the can and can’t buy.

What a fucking hypercritical abomination of social policy that is!

We have become such a mean and spiteful people thanks to ACT, NZF and National, all because post-Covid bitter Kiwis were incandescent with spastic rage that Jacinda had the temerity of saving 20 000 lives.

This is what we is now.

This is what we have become.

 

49 COMMENTS

  1. Upston and Willis are the paula benefits of the current government .Sadly they are continuing the work of ms Bennet when she was a minister with their continued attacks on the women and kids of NZ .All good when you are earning hundreds of taxpayer dollars an hour ,to be a misserable person and shit on the people that are struggling at the bottom of the heap .No doubt they supported Potaka throwing defensless people onto the streets on sunday after he had been to church pretending to be a caring good mormon boy .Another member of the skin head gang shitting on his own.No doubt there are homeless momons out there still expected to give 10% of nothing to the church so they can fund his re election .

  2. Upston is yet another example of someone who turned to the state for support and then tells everyone to get f’d. She’s like Chhour. Somehow we are supposed to be filled with admiration at their tough background as they act like arseholes. Luxon has just said the vast majority are compliant so why all the energy in going after a few.

    You want freeloaders, go after those that stand against CGT. They are the bludgers that are really harming the country.

    • Yes …i see Luxon is trying to make $290,000 tax free dollars, (whilst not having had to lift a finger), by selling one of his ‘investment’ properties in Onehunga at the moment…

      Now whose the bludger ??

  3. Upston is horrid.
    She was a single mum at a young age, got married had two more children then seperated.
    She began law school and didn’t achieve the minimum grades to go into the second year.
    Now with her draconian welfare policies, the irony is that her self stated worst years were as a single parent.
    When she was minister for Women she was dumped because she was an abject failure.

    The equally horrid Nicola Willis told NZ that her tax cuts were great because the extra money would allow people to decide for themselves how to spend it.
    Now we have Luxon and Upston stating that we will control your spending by way of a nanny state card.
    Right there is all the evidence we need to confirm we are living under a dictatorship.
    In 10 short months this government has taken our country back decades, the likes we will never ever see again.

    • The card is a bloody good call, no booze or ciggies allowed on it, food and essentials only!
      Well done this government in making sure the kids of welfare recipients have food in the house.
      Kids get fed before the booze and ciggies…how can you not think that’s a good thing? Is it purely because this Govt introduced it and not Labour?

      • You dirty filthy Nanny Statist ‘I’m Right’ – you are always the first to scream Nanny State ‘I’m Right’ when the Government gets anywhere near you, yet it’s fine for the State to sit on the shoulder of Beneficiaries like a ghoul micromanaging their life.

        Just admit you are a hypocrite.

      • So it’s a good call only when National/ACT do it even after Willis said kiwis should be allowed to choose what they do with their money? You and your right mates are hypocrites.

      • Adolf Im right. Had one useless ball and got done in, or did himself in, in a hole in the ground. Now not missed.
        Try to see Im right for what it is. Not as human but more as a narrative. Im right comes here to denounce humanness and to promote totalitarianism. If the reverse is to be true then a couple a dozen beers and a couple of packs of 50 gram tobacco weekly would do more good than harm. Happy people rise. Unhappy people sink and are more easily exploited.

        • Wait what???
          Did you crawl from under a rock white cell…a cpl doz beers is around 50 bucks (25 a dozen), 50g of tobacco is about 80bucks, you say a cpl of packs a week!
          So that’s about 200 bucks on booze and tobacco a week, and according to you:
          “a couple a dozen beers and a couple of packs of 50 gram tobacco weekly would do more good than harm”
          I guess you don’t know how to budget then, or prioritise family necessities.

      • Well done the Labour government of the time feeding hungry children in schools. Essential to start of a good start in life. National/ACT/ NZ First not so much.

      • No it’s because Luxon keeps saying the vast majority comply so why all this energy on a non problem? What does the card system set up cost?

        • Exactly Wheel. Luxon making a massive issue out of a non issue.
          Surely he could spend the time on big business tax fraud, trusts and those wealthy companies not paying any tax.
          It’s easy going after the little guy because he doesn’t fund your coffers.

      • ” Kids get fed before the booze and ciggies…

        And the shareholders and landlord’s dividend ,,eh I am Right !

        The problem here is that its not just the beneficiary but all of the working poor who are just a job loss away from being enslaved by the system that persecutes many good people who don’t drink or smoke tobacco and are terrified of the future that awaits them and their children under the regime and false beliefs that you believe exists.

        I am out here every day in the wasteland created and voted for by shits like you who have no conception of what this unregulated capitalist system and its effects are imposing on good hard working people while they are ignored , exploited and deliberately being extorted by their poor wages and putative tax theft in favor of your blood sucking leeches who exploit them all in the name of democracy and free market economics in our parliament.
        ” Well done this government in making sure the kids of welfare recipients have food in the house. ”
        Mate I work in support services on the minimum, wage , pay my taxes , and I am extorted when I go take feed myself , pay my accommodation , pay my ever increasing power bill on my meagre income so right wing pricks like you can pontificate about poor people with no resources because of unregulated capitalist market economics polices ensure that beneficiaries’ and the many ” working poor ” continue to be denied basic human and economic rights so parasites like you can justify your own cruelty and inhuman actions and legalized destitution against your own country men, women and children.

        We believed in New Zealand once about a fair playing field for all our people.

        Until I’m Right and people like him imposed their own extreme unregulated system on so many his now exploited country men, women and their children.

    • National are SQ. Yes, Upston seems to me a bit of a bovine projecting her self-loathing onto others, but nobody IMO could be as vile as Bennet: vindictive, vulgar, and shit-stirring. It’s easy to see why Key liked her, but I’m puzzled that sanctimonious little Bill English did. Both women belong in the dark ages and they make my skin crawl as mothers.

  4. Upston is not unreasonably disliked for failing to support women when PM John Key was indulging in his creepy fetish for ponytail pulling. Her silence created its own ongoing echo.

    But if, and it’s a very big if, getting more New Zealanders into work means fewer immigrants imported to do it cheaper, and to keep wages down, and to add to our homelessness tragedy, that may not be such a bad thing. Wellington’s Mayor Tory W may drop her proposal to have the Islamic Call to Prayer rung out over the capital city five times daily, adding to the ongoing noise of collapsing sewers and searches for places where one can safely poo.

    • the reason we have high unemployment is all the 100k imagrants that have come this year and they are still flocking in .And these people want to allow more RSE workers in to pick fruit while they have increased unemployed by 100k since coming into office .

      • Gordon walker. It’s ok, Luxon says they can get jobs as digger operators. Luxon says it’s a ‘cool ‘ job, reverting to adolescent-speak. I spoke with an unemployed woman in her 40’s who was sent out as a night time taxi driver in Sth Auckland. Luxon and Upston wouldn’t fancy doing that and nor would many. Now he’s proposing that “ unemployed “ persons can become digger drivers. He’s off the planet and maybe his rocker, IMO.

    • Record numbers of kiwis have left in the last 3 months with most going to Australia. That is very telling.
      Getting more kiwis into work requires quality wages Gentle and that’s the issue with this right wing government, they openly believe in a low wage economy and that is why we get cheap imported labour because the government keeps wages low.
      Labour increased wages and the right cried blue murder. Now police and health professionals are off overseas.

  5. The ultimate Bennie Bash from Prosperity Christian Baldrick.

    A high trust model was employed during COVID for employers particularly and middle classes on the $490 pw second tier benefit–partners could still work! try that now with MSD/WINZ. The punitive new welfare measures are a No Trust Model. Sanctions for missing a meeting or not responding to a phone call. Do these fuckwits not know that people run out of petrol, bus money and phone data? Of course they know, that is the point–to put the slipper in. Cards to monitor spending–no chocolate or lotto for you vermin…

    Reserve Bank and capitalist economists say we must have higher unemployment to battle inflation and put downward pressure on wages, then rather than celebrate jobless and sacked as heroes of the nation they are further brutalised. What–the–fuck–is that about?

    Ultimately when the CoCs are despatched, we will need a Basic Income for all citizens that abates if you ever earn significantly, the winding up of MSD/WINZ. In the meantime…welcome to NZ hell for the bottom 50%.

    • “Reserve Bank and capitalist economists say we must have higher unemployment to battle inflation and put downward pressure on wages, then rather than celebrate jobless and sacked as heroes of the nation they are further brutalised. ”

      An observation I’ve long made. And what’s it about?
      The ultimate goal of the neoliberal based economy and society is to be one virtually indistinguishable from a slave economy. Penalties to match, recall the fate of Spartacus.

  7. Luxon demands that everyone must be prepared to work and it’s not fair that they aren’t.
    Meanwhile he has increased unemployment levels which has condensed the employment market.
    This is a neoliberalism construct to control the economy and to lay the blame at beneficiaries feet for not finding employment isn’t fair.
    Having 7 properties isn’t fair, underfunding health and the police force isn’t fair.
    Luxons priorities are so morally bankrupt he makes Trump look a saint.

  8. We are seeing part one of ‘welfare that works’. Part 2 is coming under the guise of social investment.

    • jay11. WINZ used to have work brokers who met with clients face-to-face and liaised with employers. This woman’s proposal of telephone meetings is dehumanising and certainly, as you say, morale destroying; a failed law student charged with ushering people into jobs is bloody ridiculous.

  10. Luxon on RNZ and breakfast this morning talked about being fair to taxpayers like me when his government policies are shitting on us too with poor run-down unreliable health services, public schools being neglected again, increases in public transport costs to get to work, congestions charges, rates have already gone up in fact everything has gone up including unemployment and more immigration to add fuel to the fire.
    My partner whose worked since he was 16 years old got an extra 3$ last week from our dopey mean, lying incompetent finance Minister and I got 20$ extra whippy do this got swallowed fast. Now they are coming for the beneficiaries claiming only a few abuses the systems yet punishing all, fucken cunts the lot of them we need to get rid of them asap.

  12. These fuckers forget that benies are tax payers as well you know .Most people forget that you pay tax on all income if you are a bottom feeder unlike the top feeders who get tax cuts and tax credits and pay next to nothing

    • Really, they get taxed with tax payers money and handed tax payers money!
      What part of paying tax on tax payers money don’t you get?
      They are ‘paid’ by the taxpayers, so paying tax on tax payers money they still are negative tax payers.

      • Well you could look at it this way, if beneficiaries didn’t pay tax on their benefits they would have more cash in hand that’s not taken out for tax, plus you find out when you are on a benefit and per chance you earn an extra bit of money how much tax you actually pay because they can’t wait to take it off you

  14. Unemployment data is showing the job market is crashing, thanks to this feckless bunch of neoliberal nutters and their assault on our economy.
    To simultaneously attack the growing numbers dependent on welfare shows how souless and corrupt the CoC is.
    The growing anger and resentment will erupt here, as it has in other countries.

  15. The thing we must remember about Louise Upston is that she’s demonstrably unintelligent. She’ll be smart enough to put her shoes on the correct way round but when it comes to intelligent and tactical kindness to those whom most need her help she’s as dumb as she looks, as are all right wingers. They beguile themselves with their own brilliance but are really as thick as jenny shipley’s arse cheeks.

    • So being on the right means you are stupid.Do you not see that is the same as saying the left are losers or Maori are unreliable
      . Funny how people on the right are usually wealthy and in good well paying jobs just saying are you saying all their bosses are stupid and cannot see how poorly their businesses are run.
      I do not see it as benefit bashing when you ask someone to make the effort to work.

      • The right are in well paying jobs because mummy and daddy gave them a handout or the social upbringing enabled them a head start. It’s like you saying the left are all losers. Maybe time to get back to your imaginary food bank job Trevor.
        Funny how people on the left are more considerate, more compassionate and have higher morals and ethics rather than the right who are so entitled.

  17. Nasty, vindictive politics targeting the most vulnerable – Sounds about right.

    It’s going to be a predictable death by a thousand penalty/late fees when seeing more than half my supported living payment is going out by direct debit on rates, power and home insurance.
    I wonder who will be first to go to court and get this inhumane shit overruled? I’m never working again because of my chronic pain degenerate spinal conditions, caused by physical labour that’s common in elite athletes, that means I can’t walk, sit, stand twist, lean, tilt or carry without inflaming an exasperating base line.

    Get a cv together and be work ready – get fucked.
    Get farmed out to agency to massage the books – ditto
    Medical review – Don’t bother, I’ll pop down the cathos place and get them to ask the pope to certify my spine has miraculously straightened. Twats.
    Cut my benefit – Just go straight to the appeal so we can all go off to human rights.

    • Oh yeah, and the car will have to go because petrol, tyres wof’s and reggo aren’t essentials, so that’ll be me cutoff and made effectively housebound, unable to attend any future in person appointments and interviews.

      Ill thought out hate project going poof quicker than a brown paper bag full of miner cash anywhere near Shane Jones

  18. Mountain Tui: Beneficiary sanctions & targets don’t add up

    Written By: Mountain Tui – Date published: 1:23 pm, August 13th, 2024 – 5 comments
    Categories: benefits, child welfare, Christopher Luxon, Social issues, uncategorized – Tags: beneficiaries, KPIs, Louise Upton, sanctions

    This is an excerpt from Mountain Tui’s substack post

    National’s beneficiary sanctions announcement wasn’t really new news.

    Most of it was announced as part of National’s pre-election suite.

    In September 2023, Stuff headlined the traffic light system with: Advocates see trouble with National’s ‘traffic light’ plan to cut benefits.

    And yes, that included sanctions such as ‘money management’ i.e. the cashless payment card that Upton said would control what beneficiaries can buy – and where.

    Upton said the sanction measures would help child poverty targets. Questionable – especially as National was told their beneficiary indexation changes would push 13,000 more children in poverty. And in response, the government quietly shrunk child poverty targets last month.

    Plus, she noted ~1500 people had their benefits cancelled last quarter, but has no idea what happened to them.

    And when asked if there was any global evidence of sanctions’ effectiveness, Minister Upton misrepresented an MSD study, saying it proved that sanctions help with motivation and getting people back to work.

    https://thestandard.org.nz/mountain-tui-beneficiary-sanctions-targets-dont-add-up/

  20. ” Kids get fed before the booze and ciggies…

    And the shareholders and landlord’s dividend ,,eh I am Right !

    The problem here is that its not just the beneficiary but all of the working poor who are just a job loss away from being enslaved by the system that persecutes many good people who don’t drink or smoke tobacco and are terrified of the future that awaits them and their children under the regime and false beliefs that you believe exists.

    I am out here every day in the wasteland created and voted for by shits like you who have no conception of what this unregulated capitalist system and its effects are imposing on good hard working people while they are ignored , exploited and deliberately being extorted by their poor wages and putative tax theft in favor of your blood sucking leeches who exploit them all in the name of democracy and free market economics in our parliament.
    ” Well done this government in making sure the kids of welfare recipients have food in the house. ”
    Mate I work in support services on the minimum, wage , pay my taxes , and I am extorted when I go feed myself , pay my accommodation , pay my ever increasing power bill on my meagre income so right wing pricks like you can pontificate about poor people with no resources because of unregulated capitalist market economics polices ensure that beneficiaries’ and the many ” working poor ” continue to be denied basic human and economic rights so parasites like you can justify your own cruelty and inhuman actions and legalized destitution against your own country men, women and children.

    We believed in New Zealand once about a fair playing field for all our people.

    Until I’m Right and people like him imposed their own extreme unregulated system on so many his now exploited country men, women and their children.

  21. This government is criminally lying to deprive citizens of their rights. ” An accountant who has been on a JobSeeker benefit for more than a year was shocked to be told yesterday that his payments will be cut by half next week, for being a no-show at a meeting for which he had no record. ”

    https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/jobseekers-already-being-warned-of-benefit-cuts/ar-AA1oJYYg?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=ACTS&cvid=89e20aa4ea25476389b29aea546b91bf&ei=31

    The dirty tricks bastards are in full swing.

    ” Mate I work in support services on the minimum, wage , pay my taxes , and I am extorted when I go feed myself , pay my accommodation , pay my ever increasing power bill on my meagre income so right wing pricks like you can pontificate about poor people with no resources because of unregulated capitalist market economics polices ensure that beneficiaries’ and the many ” working poor ” continue to be denied basic human and economic rights so parasites like you can justify your own cruelty and inhuman actions and legalized destitution against your own country men, women and children. ” 100%

  22. Liar Luxon getting caught out blatantly lying on RNZ this morning about WINZ resourcing. Worst PM ever.

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