Of course Pakeha will get better benefits – that’s the way it’s designed!
How is any of this a surprise?
Covid 19 coronavirus: White New Zealanders more likely to get new, more generous benefit
White New Zealanders are much more likely to get a new, more generous welfare payment introduced in response to Covid-19.
The Government was warned that it was creating a “two-tier” welfare system which could potentially worsen racial inequality when it introduced the higher, tax-free, more accessible benefit in May.
As TDB has been pointing out since the pandemic erupted, Labour’s cowardly failure to reform the toxic culture inside WINZ will come back to bite Labour in the arse as Kiwi’s who have never interacted with the malice of WINZ come into contact for the first time and are horrified at the spitefulness of WINZ…
‘We’re hidden’ – unemployed man one of many denied benefit help
A Canterbury man who cannot find work or access a benefit says he is part of a growing group of New Zealanders whose unemployment is hidden from any official figures.
…this is fast going to become a political problem for Labour.
Labour are gutless when it comes to WINZ for two reasons.
The first is political, the second is political.
The first reason Labour are cowards when it comes to reforming WINZ is because decades of bashing beneficiaries means the average Kiwi has been trained to hate beneficiaries with the kind of zeal Fascists show when burning books. 35 years of the neoliberal experiment have robbed most workers from having union representation and this has seen our wages fall further and further behind Australia. Those working people look at the pittance they get paid each week and compare it to the welfare cheque with envy. That resentment is easy for politicians to whip into spite for political advantage and it is such an advantage that Labour are too scared of getting on the wrong side of, that’s why they have done very little to actually make beneficiaries lives better.
The second reason Labour are cowards when it comes to reforming WINZ is because they know the toxicity is so deeply rotted to the core that only wholesale sacking of most staff could cure it and Labour are too spineless to face off against the Wellington Unions to do that.
WINZ is a neoliberal welfare agency whose main concern is to say no to as many beneficiaries as possible. It is purposely obtuse, it lies to beneficiaries, it manipulates beneficiaries, it punishes beneficiaries and it uses extraordinarily intrusive surveillance into their lives to catch them out in ‘relationships’ which they then criminalise.
The application for the dole is 70 pages long.
That’s an application for a group of people who have large literacy problems.
WINZ is a neoliberal welfare stick to beat the poor with, it is purposely designed that way.
That’s fine and dandy to NZers when that stick is believed to be aimed at Maori, Pacifica, the young and the poor, but when it’s aimed at decent hard working white volk, all political hell is going to break lose.
More and more of these ‘decent hard working white volk’ stories will start exploding on social media as the newly unemployed who’ve luckily never had to ever interact with WINZ are exposed to the exhilarating sadism of WNZ staff who will gleefully do what they are trained to do, find a reason to decline welfare.
For decades, WINZ have lied to beneficiaries about not being eligible for welfare until their redundancies run out, they are a broken organisation whose burnt out staff are too toxic to do anything closely resembling good any longer.
When Carmel Sepuloni is your solution, you’ve misunderstood the question. She’s Paula Bennett without the charm.
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I’m white/Pakeha & have long loathed having anything to do with WINZ. I’ve been accused by a WINZ employee of being a malingerer – she “stepped back” a bit when I said that she was impugning the integrity of my doctor. (I’d been diagnosed of an incurable autoimmune disease & which I taught about when a nurse tutor.) I’ve had to fight for allowances that I’ve legitimately qualified for. I’ve had to fight to retain money from my (sold) home that I needed to be able to pay for another home (that I was searching for) & & &. I had to deal with a WINZ employee who wore a piece of plastic with the word “Manager” on it – when the sub-branch WINZ office didn’t have a “manager” (she lived/worked a lie! There was no such established position!). I’ve had to put up with a lying Wellington WINZ boss who covered up for her lying “manager” in the sub-branch WINZ office that I was supposed to attend. I could continue, but the above is more than sufficient IMO.
WINZ sounds as if corrupt practices have crept in and because there is no supervisory control over their operations. Our services are increasingly in the hands of bigots and despots I think. We go to so much trouble to have elections and then get a performance of what a government looks like, in the eyes of some set designers and entrepreneurs of a theatrical production. Labour had better show commitment to the traditional ideas, as it appears that the functionaries are likely to behave unprofessionally at best and like psychopaths at worst if the present system continues.
Yeah WINZ is being run by for the most part by pricks, toady’s and arsehole’s.
Have this spade.
Excellent article.
Well stated. And today UNICEF was on NZs case-our country is ranked a lowly 35th out of 40 OECD nations-re youth suicide, literacy, housing and poverty.
This sad Roll of Dishonour is all down to our societal tolerance, or approval imo, of inequality induced by neo liberalism.
Carmel is obviously captured by the head sadists in her Dept. Nothing will change until there is direct action taken. The two tier benefits-$490 for middle class “Covid newbies”, and stand downs, sanctions, abatements, and starvation as usual for the underclasses.
My mantra at the moment is that Labour need to be re-elected so that their neo lib Caucus can be dealt to! A further three years will grant political space to organise for rolling back Rogernomics once and for all.
“WINZ is a neoliberal welfare stick to beat the poor with, it is purposely designed that way.
That’s fine and dandy to NZers when that stick is believed to be aimed at Maori, Pacifica, the young and the poor,” Yes Martyn well said but please include us elders as another discriminated poor group.
Our pension over the last 10 yrs has been reduced, and is now a pittance at less than $300 a week now and we just can’t live on this low amount now when everything else we buy is going up at the same time far higher than the pension is.
I love the piece you say about how toxic Carmel Sepiloni is compared to Paula Bennett.
Carmel Sepiloni is a bully that ‘intimates us all’ now and she must be replaced. She treats pensioners as rubbish.
It was done to enable working people to keep working so the economy didn’t fall flat on its face, and a whole new tranche of unemployed and under-resourced people be landed into poverty. That unpleasant reality is one that Labour has skirted as assiduously as people in Rotorua stay on safe paths in the areas where there is boiling mud. Plop, plop is heard regularly – all know the danger there and keep distant and safe.
Labour has felt a bit weak to look at this problem this term of government. I think we can feel satisfied that they will be able to adopt some of the already devised, excellent and practical methods of assisting people out of poverty and the stress that accompanies it in their second term. Because we, the real people, who cite ‘He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata’, have hold of their tail.
NZ is in contradiction, it wants to be thriving with good, basic standards of living, but because of the wretched pronouncements and sanctions of wicked old men in think tanks, economic, finance and business niches, we are prevented from doing what is best for us to bring that about for all. The Scrooges of the world have to be faced and we will help Labour make NZ great again with good GDP, reasonable profits, curbs on whatever needs them, and a buzz that is already nascent, becoming heard in the most distant lands.
You are laughing at other people’s misfortune through no fault of their own. Please try and think about this.
fuck no. 3 fucken years! 3!
We had 9 under a tyranny. We’ll now get 3 more under an incompetent but slightly fairer mob.
Feel that you hardcore lefties? that’s over-hyped poll results interfering with your imagination.
some warm empathic responses there. You’ll be as quick to condemn the previous nine years of welfare bashing, condemnation, stratification of the rich, stripping the core services back to the bone and worse to pay for a tax cut that went to the rich and left us all in the midst of the worst housing crisis new zealand has ever seen, resulting in an artificial class and wealth gap? Business as usual for the National and Act parties – but neither of you are interested in honesty or factual analysis here, only gloating and trolling right? That’s what makes you warm inside.
Well Sam I’m surprised you’re not a hardcore lefty yourself, as National and Act don’t have alot of time for minorities.
I am whatever I need to be, to win.
And then what?
winning
And what does your win get you Sam?
What happens after that?
What do you win?
life
Agree with your sentiments here Frank. Labour have been pretty useless at reducing poverty, inequality etc. And the 2 tier welfare package is total bullshit. The message is existing welfare recipients don’t deserve the higher welfare payments, you losers are not worth it. Harsh. Very harsh. Total Neo Lib ideology that the middle classless population want dished out by our governing politicians. The high welfare package for these same middle classes is total vote pandering by Labour for political points only. This is Labour at it’s worst, and they have done this type of shit many times over the years. This is hurtful policy from Labour and not at all showing the kindness. I’m not even sure the nasty Natz would have done this, Real bad.
I think the whole system is upside down: high profile sportsmen get name suppression while their underlings get tar & feathers https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300097077/court-reserves-decision-on-name-suppression-bid-by-highprofile-sportsman, wannabe sportsmen/army types get let off whilst traumatising women, https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/122630501/teen-who-sexually-assaulted-women-on-palmerston-north-walkway-avoids-conviction and girls in the gym, well, talk about abuse! https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/300091961/gymnastics-abuse-claims-archaic-revealing-leotard-rules-part-of-alleged-abusive-practices-in-new-zealand
Fuck off martin you don’t know what you talking about get out of the city and talk to real Nz about it