Excerpt:
Lawyers acting for hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients who have had unlawful “robodebts” raised against them have urged the Government to apologise over its handling of the scheme and promised not to use the apology against the Government in court.

Government Services Minister Stuart Robert announced on Friday that the Government would pay back $721 million for 470,000 debts raised under the scheme, which matched annualised income data from the Australian Tax Office with income reported to Centrelink by welfare recipients. ABC Article Linked Here
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The voice of Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) is Ricardo Menendez March, a fierce anti-poverty campaigner. He would be a most invaluable person to have as an elected parliamentary representative. In this September election he is standing for Maungakiekie, for the Greens.

This from Wiki: “The core of Maungakiekie is the suburbs of Auckland clustered around the Southern Motorway, and the most southern parts of Auckland City facing the Manukau Harbour. As at 2008, these include Penrose, Panmure, Onehunga and Royal Oak. In character, the seat is a minority-majority seat, with a large Māori, Pacific Island and Asian population. It is also quite a young seat, with 46.8 percent of the seat’s residents under the age of thirty.” Wiki on Maungakiekie

In the 2017 election the seat was taken by National’s Denise Lee, with 15,063 votes.
Labour candidate Radhakrishnan took 12,906, the Greens’ Chloe Swarbrick, 4,060.
Had the Left combined their votes, they would have won.
(Chloe is now running for Auckland Central against Nikki Kaye.)

Ricardo Menendez March by Scoop

You are correct in the way you describe WINZ. It is good that those workers made redundant by the effect of the virus are getting the extra but it means that a large number of workers will not know how terrible the state is to real benefituries until after the election.

WINZ/MSD staff apply policy rather than the legislation when they can get away with it, mis inform, omit, stand down, sanction, and lose documents as a matter of course! These judgemental staff can also be personally rewarded for NOT providing the assistance vulnerable people seek. They also intimidate, spy on, and generally make beneficiaries lives a misery. AND then they rub it in by establishing debt incurred by the low level of support in the first place. Plus there is massive societal stigma against beneficiaries, to the point where the Shipley Govt. ran “dob in a bludger” junior Stasi type TV ads, and Helen Clark’s “jobs jolt” restricted freedom of movement around the country for beneficiaries.

If this Govt is reelected a Basic Income and new social security agency have to be a priority. Perhaps a few of the Two Tier “$490 bennies” from the Covid middle classes, may actually end up supporting such a call once they have been degraded for a few more months by WINZ/MSD.