Welfare sanctions don’t work – all they do is increase child poverty

Have benefit sanctions actually worked?

Benefit sanctions have not worked – probably largely because there are not enough jobs for beneficiaries to move into, one economist says.

Rob Heyes, principal consultant at Infometrics, has looked at the experience of benefit sanctions introduced in 2024.

RNZ

 

Welfare sanctions don’t work – all they do is increase child poverty!

Back in 2024, this Government was warned that their punitive welfare polices would push between 7000 to 13000 more children into poverty.

It’s 2026 and the Government has pushed 23,700 more children living in hardship, over 10 000 more than the Government had been warned.

Look, I’m no social policy expert, but when you are warned that your policy will push tens of thousands of kids into poverty, you probs shouldn’t ‘t do it!

This Government did the exact same thing with Homelessness, they were told that their policies would create a tsunami of homeless, it predictably happens and their solution is to arrest the homeless!

What are they going to do with more children slipping into poverty? Arrest them too?

The Salvation Army State of the Nation report which found:

• 43,500 people estimated to be in severe housing deprivation
• 400 less transitional housing placements and allocated funding for housing support cut by $80m
• 156,000+ children living in material hardship
• Salvation Army food parcel distribution increased 7% to 90,250 parcels last year
• Pacific unemployment was at 12.3% and Māori Unemployment at twice that of the general population.
• and Domestic violence numbers are surging

The reality is the Government has damaged the economy so badly that benefit sanctions aren’t working because there literally is no jobs to force them onto.

Time and time and time again this Government gets warned about the social carnage their policy will create, they shrug and say, ‘nah’, and when the exact counter productive outcomes occur, this Government just glosses over their failure!

If you support this, you are the problem!