Changes to benefit sanctions regime welcome, but…
A new government-imposed rule at WINZ that requires a more senior manager to sign off on the imposition of a sanction on someone receiving a benefit has already led to a 20% drop in the daily number from just over 100 to about 80.
This is welcome news but it should be just the start of a new culture being imposed at WINZ.
The incoming Labour-led government has tried to claim that the aggressive sanctioning of benefits was something that was started under the last National government.
That is not in fact true. The biggest drop in the numbers receiving benefits that was not accompanied by a similar drop in the level of unemployment happened under the last Labour government led by Helen Clark. The number of people receiving an unemployment benefit went from 78% to 21% of the broader “Jobless” number between 2001 and 2008 as measured by the Department of Statistics. That could only be achieved by denying people their legal entitlement.
But much more needs to happen.
Appalling “errors” continue to be reported. One woman who was falsely “dobbed in” by someone had her benefit stopped without any investigation.
Last week a woman got a letter from IRD saying she owed WINZ $568.18 because of a Working For Families overpayment mistake that WINZ had made. IRD was demanding repayment and threatened to charge penalty interests on the alleged “debt”. This poor family with their kids was simply being bullied over a tiny debt. Compare this to the way tax cheats are treated with kid gloves – if they are investigated at all.
Imposing sanctions has been proven ineffective and leads to perverse negative outcomes in a UK study.
The Guardian reported May 22 that the study found “benefit sanctions do little to enhance people’s motivation to prepare for, seek or enter paid work. [Sanctions] routinely trigger profoundly negative personal, financial, health and behavioural outcome.”
I am convinced that the punitive sanctions regime was designed to stop people accessing entitlements. The subsequent dramatic drop in the number of people receiving benefits relative to actual levels of unemployment is directly the cause of the surge in the number of people needing to access foodbanks and being forced into homelessness.
We don’t have to wait for the outcome of the recently appointed Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG). WINZ should simply be ordered to stop the sanction altogether being imposed on families with children immediately.
Agree with you Mike, the whole system needs to change towards genuinely helping people into secure good paying jobs or training and upskilling that leads to the above. If people own money and it was not their fault they need to write this of like they do with government balls ups and we have seen millions wasted by our last government and Labour are guilty of this to. How do I know I use to be a beneficiary but we got treated a lot better then people have in the last nine years.
Making WINZ assess who gets their benefit cut more accurately is the act of a timid government, the middle class people who worry about the people at the bottom of the heap but don’t actually know any of them will think the problem has been solved while there are still 80 people every week who end up with too little money to live.
Given that food, clean water and housing are human rights, and given that you can’t get those in out country without money is WINZ not in breach of basic human rights every time they cut off someone’s benefit?
See my comments on Bomber’s similarly dismissive piece on this policy change. Having a human staff member manually check all benefit suspensions/ cancellations, instead of letting the WINZ computer system do it automatically, is a significant step forward. It’s only one step, yes, but Carmel acknowledge’s that. If we want this to be just the opening credits of a much longer movie of welfare reform, we need to start writing the script we want for that movie, not whinge about the length of the opening credits..
Every time they cut off someone’s benefit unfairly, yes. What about when they cut off someone’s benefit because that person has declared that have started a fulltime job and don’t need it anymore?
not winz its our government that are in breach human rights and the worst government was the national government
I am a former beneficiary. Work and Income New Zealand are renown for their petty conduct lacking in compassion and laced with a healthy suspicion of the client. I know because I have been on the receiving end and aside from not being any fun, it raised some serious questions about their competence.
WINZ look well after their ‘Advisors’, for sure:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/msd-releases-oia-info-on-dr-bratts-and-other-senior-health-advisors-high-salaries-nearly-4-years-late/
And some of their Advisors rely on BS or misinterpreted ‘evidence’:
https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/read-the-journal/all-issues/2010-2019/2015/vol-128-no-1425-20-november-2015/6729
But they then go on about their so called BS ‘evidence’ as if it was all so scientifically real, which it is not:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/msd-dr-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-on-worklessness-and-health-publ-post-19-09-16.pdf
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/msd-and-dr-david-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-claiming-worklessness-causes-poor-health/
And then they hit clients with hideous sanctions, if they do not comply to biased doctor’s assessments and internally flawed decisions, throwing them into misery and life threatening situations.
I wonder how they ever got away with this, but that is NZ Inc BS, galore, it would not pass the test in many other developed countries, like the meth testing scandal, they ALL get away with it, especially this flawed Advisor:
https://nz.linkedin.com/in/david-bratt-04069514
And he is still kept in his job, we note.
Much more needs to happen than to bring in watered pot plants and water coolers and toilet access into WINZ Offices, which seems rather cosmetic, I think.
“We don’t have to wait for the outcome of the recently appointed Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG). WINZ should simply be ordered to stop the sanction altogether being imposed on families with children immediately.”
Never a truer word spoken, thanks Mike!
I add, stop this one sided emphasis on families with children, and children in poverty, which is of course right, but include those on sickness and disability benefits, they got damned little or nothing for years, in any form of practical and honest help.
Assistance to trial work may be good for some, but the open job market is HOSTILE towards most with impairments and disabilities, it simply does not work for many.
I’m no cheerleader for either WINZ or the Clark government, but to be fair …
> “The number of people receiving an unemployment benefit went from 78% to 21% of the broader “Jobless” number between 2001 and 2008 as measured by the Department of Statistics. That could only be achieved by denying people their legal entitlement.”
… couldn’t it also be a reflection of Working for Families picking up some of the slack, allowing underemployed people with kids to make ends meet without having to jump through all WINZ hoops to receive an unemployment benefit?
There’s nothing worse than getting a little dribble of paid work when you’re receiving the dole. You have to decide whether to declare it as soon as you know it’s coming in, and have your dole payments docked before the money arrives in your bank account, or delay until the money comes in, creating an overpayment and potentially a bunch of agro. Worst case scenario, declaring one-off paid work can result in benefits being suspended or canceled, because the computer system has assumed that one-off work is a regular job. If I had kids during the Clark years, and enough part-time work to do without the dole once Working for Families came in, I would have told them exactly where to stick their benefit.
NO faith in WINZ at all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-33tL5OJMc
We fight you all the way, until the end of the game, you declared war long ago, CEOs.