MSD culture as toxic as it has always been
The cruelty here is almost unbelievable…
Officials keep quiet after Lake Alice compensation botch-up
- MSD doesn’t say if it’s checking Lake Alice torture survivors’ benefit decisions after compensation botch up
- The agency wrongly denied accommodation supplement to a Lake Alice survivor, but the decision was overturned
- Former human rights commissioner criticises MSD’s stance.
Officials are not saying if they’ve checked to make sure survivors of torture at the notorious Lake Alice child and adolescent unit haven’t wrongly had benefits cut because of compensation they’ve received.
RNZ reported last month that Paul Zentveld, who has a King’s Service Medal for services to survivors of abuse in care, was unable to pay his rent and was living in his house bus in a public car park after his accommodation supplement was cancelled when it shouldn’t have been.
Zentveld is one of more than 100 Lake Alice survivors who opted for a $150,000 compensation payment for torture suffered during the 1970s at the unit, overseen by Dr Selwyn Leeks. Others have negotiated settlements through arbitration.
Ministry of Social Development rules say compensation for Lake Alice survivors or assets they’ve bought with compensation money should not be considered when they’re assessed for benefit entitlements.
RNZ
…the State tortured this guy, made him wait decades for compensation and then wrongfully took his welfare away because we had given compensation.
FFS.
I have told you a billion times that MSD are scum!
MSD homelessness denial at the centre of their latest scandal tells you everything about how far bureaucratic cruelty has been normalised in New Zealand. When officials start calling visible suffering a “narrative”, it’s not just incompetence — it’s moral rot.
MSD document says there’s ‘no evidence’ hundreds of New Zealanders are without shelter
A government document says it is a “narrative” that hundreds of New Zealanders live without shelter, and there is “no evidence” to validate that.
RNZ
Why so many vulnerable people fear WINZ
I have mad respect and aroha for doctors, nurses, teachers, firefighters, care givers and public servants, but I despise MSD and WINZ.
They have toxic cultures that actively loathe and despise the vulnerable and broken they are tasked to assist.
I have heard so many terrible stories from inside WINZ and MSD, I believe staff become so damaged by dealing with the desperation of others that they actively become spiteful.
For MSD to try and laugh off homelessness numbers as unreal, shows how out of touch they have become and why Community Groups are needed to help people navigate the deliberately obtuse system.
MSD and WINZ are there to punish and threaten and make welfare so difficult to access that the desperate are driven away.
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Talk to chippy bomber, suggest that he run on a policy of firing all msd staff who then have to reapply for their same jobs if they can prove they aren’t society haters. Or run on a policy of a minimum benefit for everyone in the country no questions asked, means tested to what you have, and do away with winz, their madeup rules and obligations, and their harm to communities. Is this how chippy and the rest are thinking, or are they too dumb and comfortable to care?