MSD and WINZ are scumbags who delight in abusing those vulnerable and weak who require their aid.
We never point this out on the Left because many on the Left are mates and friends with these staff and unions in public services meaning any criticism of their inhumanity is considered a dreadful treachery.
Well. I’m a heretic.
MSD and WINZ have used abusive means and cruel tactics against the very beneficiaries they are supposed to care for and I will always slag them off…
MSD staff banned from using fake social media profiles
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) will permanently ban staff from using fake profiles on social media sites to spy on beneficiaries in fraud investigations.
…they create these fake profiles to spy on beneficiaries so they can catch them out in a ‘relationship’ the boundaries of which MSD never explain. Once they believe you are in a. ‘relationship’ they claim benefit fraud and use that to make money off the beneficiary.
It’s like a puritanical panty sniffer going through your laundry to try and catch you out having sex by sniffing your sheets and underwear.
It’s a sickness beyond sickness.
They create fake spying profiles to catch beneficiaries in bullshit ‘relationships’ so they can then accuse them of benefit fraud and start taking money off the beneficiary.
The process is to make living on welfare so difficult and hard that it drives people from welfare or traps them in debt…
Northlanders owe nearly $80m to Ministry of Social Development
Beneficiaries owe record $2.1b to Govt as cost of living soars
…this is the neoliberal welfare industry for you.
The madness is that MSD sees this debt as an asset!
They have a vested interest in loading more debt up on beneficiaries! We have loaded up billions in debt to the poorest amongst us creating debt slaves.
The state are acting like a drug dealer peddling desperation and entrapping people into literal debt coffins.
When MSD aren’t dealing in desperation loans, they are using vast mass surveillance powers to trawl through beneficiary social media accounts to catch them out in what MSD decides as ‘relationships’, and then claim beneficiaries are committing benefit fraud and then put them in debt to MSD!
461,000 Kiwis are struggling with MSD debt, this is a political decision to keep the poor in debt traps so they are compliant with the way they are treated.
Social Debt is a means of control.
Run an interest rate
inflation control lever on unemployment. Unemployed are the feedstock for the “neoliberal welfare industry”. Watch NAct privatise MSD debt to Baycorp, Gravity and the like.
Pretty sure that ACC used to privatise alleged debt to bullying Baycorp, and perhaps they still do.
There is easy evidence that proves Martyn’s point–during peak COVID a second tier benefit was created for middle class people at around $490 per week. People in a relationship where one had lost income, well the partner could keep working full time with no effect on the benefit amount. Try that on a standard Jobseeker!–you will be pursued for years.
MSD/WINZ know exactly what they are doing with their punitive degrading approach. They knew middle class people would be shocked and appalled if they encountered the vindictive case managers, loss of previously supplied documents, underpayments, and debts that working class people get.
Yes, they created two classes of unemployed, deserving and undeserving,
Apparently losing your employment through a pandemic means it was not your fault, and you are deserving of support. Losing your employment through retrenchment caused by deliberate Government or employer policy is all YOUR fault, and you are not deserving of basic support, moreover, you should be further punished.
It was a disgusting display of prejudicial discrimination.
Wait till National’s welfare crackdown gets into full swing, and MSD targets will reward case managers giving sanctions for the most minor breaches, such as not answering a phone call in time. You can imagine the case managers hitting the highest targets after adopting the old 1.25 second phone calling technique. Hmmm was that a crank call, or was it MSD? It’s very quick and easy to stoop to underhanded immoral tactics, just like when MSD used private investigators to dig up dirt on abuse victims. How could the morals of that ever be explained? Is there no policing of the public service?
MSD will lie and tell people they have evidence of a relationship and then offer to avoid prosecution if you admit that you’re are in one. I know this to be fact because the lieing scum tried it on me years ago. I told them to prove it.. they almost did a back flip trying to tell me they had me and i was going to jail unless i admitted it. I told them to ring the police.. i’ll wait. The poor investigator looked so shocked i almost felt sorry for him. After a couple of hours of interviews i told them to go fuck themselves and refused to engage any longer and to just ring the police… guess what happened.. nothing.
In any other govt dept that would be called entrapment and collusion to elicit a false confession. After my experience i can tell you 100% that hundreds if not thousands of others would have folded and admitted to a false accusation for fear of losing an income to feed their kids. I’m willing to bet if an audit of 20 random relationship debt proof was made at least 50% wouldn’t have enough evidence for a conviction of fraud.
Never admit to anything. Always require proof. If they fluff around or refuse to show evidence tell them to fuck off. Most times its a anonymous disgruntled ex or nosy neighbor who would never stand up in court or even agree to allow thier statement used….
Remember… MSD cannot create a debt for fraud unless you admit to it. Or they prove it in court.
As for baycorp.. they only have power over your credit rating. Once that’s screwed (the moment your account lands with them) tell them to fuck off too.
I believe that MSD if satisfied with whatever evidence they hold can claim a client is in a relationship and cancel payments on their own say so, regardless of “admissions/confessions”, putting the onus on the client to undertake any appeal process, that MSD oversees or, ultimately take an appeal to the courts.
Perhaps someone with expertise can clarify.
If they believe that the evidence will stand up in court then yes. I’m saying that more than half the time they don’t have that evidence without an admission. If they go canceling benefits willy nilly without said evidence, they are breaking the law.
Sounds like a return to uptight Victorian times. It was better when the poor knew their place. As there won’t be any jobs soon the officious PTB can continue insisting that people find jobs, and die down the mines etc as it used to be. When did the wealthy learn that remove the tablecloth and still have the table settings trick? Try it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSj_MVUsBzg
Then go onto bigger things. Remove a political social-society and gradually replace it with an autocracy while people are distracted by the legerdemain in the Treasury’s ledgers (it’s known as jam tomorrow.)
But surely you must realise by now that WINZ is a splinter group of the interests of a business oriented minority we think of as our political representation born of a democratic system of governance which it isn’t, and wasn’t. When are people going to try to understand that we AO/NZ’ers have no democratically elected governance because the governance we have isn’t that. It’s business or rather criminals doing criminal things which have yet to be made illegal. What we do have is a multi-layered form of highly fragrant fascism, an autocracy, funded by the money we innocently give them in good faith to have them behave in a manner we would expect of them.
But 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a $50 million base figure then going upwards after tax and their enablers, the four now foreign owned banks, ASB, ANZ, BNZ and Westpac, who take $180.00 a second after tax out of AO/NZ 24/7/365 would suggest otherwise.
The biggest problem we face in AO/NZ isn’t the fact that there are 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a $50 million base figure then going upwards after tax and their enablers, the four now foreign owned banks, ASB, ANZ, BNZ and Westpac, who take $180.00 a second after tax out of AO/NZ 24/7/365 … it’s us. We’re our own greatest enemy because we have no idea what to do about them.
We’re jammed in gear. We’re stuck inside a mentally-blocked resistance-limbo. We have no organisation to which we can cling to. We have nothing. They took our unions, they have our money, they’ve brainwashed those who are now most in debt to our most ferocious trade competitors to defend their abuse by mindlessly voting for our abusers and almost no one can comprehend what it is exactly that it is that’s going on here. It’s like an episode of Black Mirror on acid. Bullying and intimidating helpless people for trying to cling to some kind of life while encouraging the billionaires, the millionaires and the foreign owned banks is about as disgusting as it can get.
We urgently need to look past the cause and focus instead on the cure.
Since when did people have to borrow benefits and repay at a later date. By definition if you need a benefit then you do not have the ability to repay……wasn’t this obvious when this manic system came into being?
IMHO….ciggies and booze are not a part of a family welfare spend, so they get into debt and ask for more to ‘feed the kids’