More Punitive Bennie Bashing on the way
Despite welfare numbers jumping thanks to the economic crash engineered by the Reserve Bank Governor…
Jobseeker Work Ready benefit numbers increase by 12% in a year
The number of people who receive the Jobseeker Work Ready payment has increased by almost 12% in the past year.
…National are intent on bashing the bennies again…
Labour attacks Govt decision on hardship assistance for sanctioned beneficiaries
The Social Development Minister went against her officials’ advice in not allowing beneficiaries on non-financial sanctions to access hardship assistance.
From next year, new non-financial sanctions are being introduced as an option for some jobseekers who fail to meet obligations to seek work.
It includes a community work experience sanction, requiring them to find and complete work experience at a community organisation before the sanction is lifted.
A draft Cabinet paper from July shows officials recommended beneficiaries under this sanction should still be able to access hardship assistance – with which minister Louise Upston disagreed.
…this Government have come after the disabled, state tenants, renters, workers, Māori and the environment.
They’ve already come after the beneficiaries with threats to cut 50 000, but the reality of economic carnage out there has seen more on the benefit!
That shouldn’t be a bad thing, there will be more who need help, but the Government’s target is a political stunt to bash beneficiaries and the Social Investment mode will demand deeply punitive tactics to meet those targets.
National see any public spending now as wrong because they need to find the money for the borrowed tax cuts and the $2.9billion
We have taken from the disabled, from beneficiaries, from Māori, from worker, from renters and the environment while manufacturing a crisis in public health – we have done all of this to give the richest tax cuts!
What have we become New Zealand?
We have allowed our petty bigotries, our wilful ignorance and our blind rage to be manipulated by the Hard Right to implement policy that benefits them, not us.
Bashing beneficiaries won’t solve poverty, it will just warp and embitter it.
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“The social investment model, with its emphasis on financial liability to the state, became a major influence on Oranga Tamariki’s practice. It led to an increase in the early removal of tamariki Maori, especially babies, from their birth families”
https://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=408831
The problem with that so-called solution is we already know children who spend time in State residential care are more likely to end up in prison and on benefits.
There are some major issues here apart from sadistic and punitive treatment of beneficiaries.
–RB wants higher unemployment and downward pressure on wages
–CoC wants mass state sector sackings because they want various privatisations and ACT believes in a small state except where it benefits corporates and capital
–CoC wants unemployed punished and squeezed to the point of going off MSD/WINZ books, partly to reduce the spend and partly because they are hateful tory twats
–CoC wants evictions of state tenants and denial of assistance
This all leads to a whole lot of trouble–homelessness, illness, stress, petty crime, violence, as the comfortable Bennie bashing kiwis are already discovering.
So the upshot is that it is time to reform a national Unemployed Workers Rights movement like we had in the 1930s, 1980s and 1990s, including more beneficiary advocacy to enforce entitlements.
Meanwhile migrant labour is still coming in for caring, health, agriculture and seasonal Pacific workers for horticulture. Migrant labour is ok if a number of things are in place–but guess what, little exists in terms of fair treatment, housing etc.
Surely capital needs customers…which high unemployment, low wage economy and people not buying stuff would undermine? Maybe the parasite class have done the figures and realise they can still turn a tidy profit even with a permanent underclass living crap lives. But…in NZ there is a large sector of SMEs and self employed who are being hit by lack of customer purchasing power, I talk to some of them every week in the North.
Hārema, 21, is on the Jobseeker benefit because after a year and a half of applying for jobs, he is still searching.
When he moved to Auckland in March last year, he was homeless, but through a programme with Kaupapa Māori based youth organisation Mā Te Huruhuru, he was put on the benefit and placed into Kainga Ora housing.
He said after his weekly expenses are taken out from his benefit, he is left with few dollars to spare.
“After my rent has been taken out, I’m left with $230 and $100 of that goes towards kai, which barely lasts me a week, then I’ve got about $30 to put on power. Then my internet bill is quite expensive and that kind of leaves me with nothing really, so I’m just barely surviving.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/531113/the-sanctions-have-done-nothing-jobseekers-say-they-struggle-under-traffic-light-pressure
When we leave people with so little, is it any wonder some may turn to crime?
Beneficiary bashing has been a National Party political sledge hammer since Muldoon 1975.
It’s the same as Maori bashing has been a National Party political sledge hammer since 1975.
As Lisa Simpson says none of your problems are because someone is on welfare.
100% true.
As Lisa would also say none of your problems are because of Maori.
100% true.
But appealing to centuries old Right wing White prejudice, greed, ignorance, and entitlement enforced with majority power always wins.
The Right wing actually don’t need any real political policy on anything because bashing Beneficiaries, Solo parents, Immigrants, Maori, Feminists Gays, and Environmentalist is so much easier and much more successful.
The Right wing voter always devours minority bashing like Hyena on meth.
The ACT party won their way into Parliament on the Cheatie Principle bill simply evoking centuries old White prejudice, ignorance, entitlement, greed and power.
Politics is easy for the Right wing because all you have to do is evoke
generational prejudice and ignorance.
Conversely politics is hard for the Left wing because you have to challenge
generational prejudice and ignorance.
That’s why I despise The Platform who appeal only to White, Right wing , prejudice and ignorance. That’s why I salute The Daily Blog who challenge prejudice and ignorance.
Upston the Impaler, dropping more and more punitive sanctions on beneficiaries, to get them to be more compliant, and to “help” them by punishing them, and lift them from poverty by cutting their income, and improve their mental health by increasing their stress.
Is similar thinking to Netanyahoo dropping more bombs on Gaza, to somehow make things better. Both are mindless.
If a beneficiary can’t get a job, why would they be able to get community work eperience, and what if they also cannot get community work experience, what then? Many of those unemployed were previously public servants, that the govt fired to fund tax cuts, but the scorched earth slashing of the public service has not reduced the total amount required to run the public service, then the govt’s tremultuous upending of so many lives of many it used to employ, seems altogether pointless.
If it really is in dire need of money to balance the books, then CGT and excise on a legalised cannabis market, would raise billions, it’s not rocket science, and a better option than cutting funding to hospitals!
And there are numerous other simple things the govt could do to reduce beneficiary numbers: for example, why should the govt charge anything for a benficiary to get a licence, since it’s in the govts interest for the beneficiary to have a licence, doesn’t make sense. And extending prepay mobile top ups back to a year instead of the 4 weeks that it is nowadays, would help to stop people running out of phone credit.
Neoliberalism: the direct route to our future state of oligarchic feudalism, aka the slow race to the bottom for all but the 1%