Open letter to the Honourable Carmel Sepuloni – end the horror of the neoliberal welfare state
Dear Carmel, this is your inheritance…
Hardship grants at record highs as welfare state ‘frays’
Emergency hardship grants are at record levels because basic welfare provisions have been “methodically” squeezed, the Child Poverty Action Group says.The group says in a new report today that the new Labour Government needs to rewrite the principles of welfare law after previous Governments led by both Labour and National gave priority to helping people back to work.
“The first task is to examine the underlying values and principles that would be at the foundation of policy changes,” it says.
“Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) believes these principles must include adequacy, belonging and participation, simplification, removal of discrimination, reduction of disincentives and a welfare system that puts children first.”
…Labour’s greatest challenge in front of it right now is the ideological right wing acolytes who have taken up residence in our public service. Like cancerous tumours, they have spread their hateful right wing beliefs and infected every inch of what should be a welfare system designed to protect and help rather than punish.
We have seen example after example after example of how these smug vicious people damage and kill the poor they are supposed to serve. Hounding a beneficiary into suicide for a debt that never existed is a sickness and total abuse of the power of the State over the poor.
Once upon a time in New Zealand, the agencies of state welfare were constructed as an instrumental and direct means to ensure our egalitarian values.
Social welfare was seen as a way to redistribute back to the most vulnerable amongst us and these agencies were critical in carrying out that redistribution.
There was a pride involved in this public service, our compassion made us unique and it built the values from which we as New Zealanders have benefitted from.
That simply is no longer the case.
For the last 30+ years, the neoliberal experiment has turned our once egalitarian welfare state into a neoliberal welfare state. The branches of social welfare, the MoD, CYFS, Corrections, Parole Services, Housing NZ, WINZ and Mental health have all been warped and mutated into weapons to punish the poor for being vulnerable.
In a culture of selfish consumerism where success is private and failure is personal , we see the poor as victims of their own circumstance rather than as a result of the hegemonic structures of power.
The poor, the vulnerable, the weak, the sick and the disabled do everything in their power now not to be needing assistance from these Government agencies, because these Government agencies don’t help, they only punish.
We have a MoD who put homeless people into illegal housing.
We have a WINZ service who break people each day and force them to grovel on their belly to make ends meet. Who perform mass surveillance spying on beneficiaries to catch them out in ‘relationships’ despite WINZ not telling anyone what the actual relationship equation is and we have 60% of beneficiaries oweing WINZ money because WINZ claims they’ve defrauded the system by having a ‘relationship’.
We have a Corrections department that is more interested in hiding prisoner suicide stats than actually looking after their prisoners (more on that developing story next week), more interested in locking 10 000 NZers up for profit than rehabilitating them.
We have a Paroles Service that almost every NGO despises having to work with because it’s staffed by people who enjoy the power they have over prisoners lives and are concerned with only throwing them back into prison.
We had a CYFS that sexually molests, abuses and assaults the children they are supposed to look after while continuing to remove children from families.
We have a mental health system more interested in allowing people to die than help them.
We have a Housing NZ more focused on throwing people out of their homes based on flawed meth testing than providing shelter to the poorest amongst us.
For me, nothing sums up the horror of our neoliberal welfare state more than what happened last year with the Auckland Action Against Poverty beneficiary clinic they held for 3 days outside a South Auckland WINZ office. Over a 1000 people lined up to beg for help from activists to gain some type of assistance from WINZ.
Just comprehend that Carmel.
WINZ are so spiteful to these people that a 1000 of them lined up to gain assistance from AAAP. Some had walked since before dawn to arrive in time to get help. Many were in tears and emotionally distraught by the way WINZ had treated them.
What kind of an indictment is that?
After 9 years of National, our public service has become a highly politicised and increasingly ideologically damaged entity which threatens to stop any progressive change that the new Government may want to enable.
Highly politicised because public servants have manipulated rules to provide their political masters with information they shouldn’t be able to access, (Winston’s pension over payment being the most recent example), and increasingly ideological because almost the entire welfare state is geared towards punishing beneficiaries rather than helping them.
If the new Government want to force their agenda through, they must begin by radically purging previous political appointees. There are thousands of positions that now need filling on various Quangos throughout the country and Labour needs to start immediately there to ensure their eyes and their ears are sitting on Boards to ensure policy implementation isn’t being stymied by right wing Public Servants.
Now would be a good time to sit down with the PSA to see if they are genuine in improvement of public service values rather than protecting their members jobs. If such a partnership is possible, Labour could use that relationship to force the State sector bosses to change ideological direction, but Labour could also force change by supporting socially progressive NGOs critical of social policy to critique the welfare agencies.
Setting up a whistle blower 0800 number so that public servants can dob in their managers and bosses who are ignoring their public service obligations would also be a good means of forcing change.
Passing new policy is one thing, having a right wing public service implement it is another.
If you are serious about changing welfare in NZ Carmel, then end the punitive debt and crushing punishment that is dealt out to those on Welfare. The bullshit need for the disabled to send in letters annually for disabilities that can’t be ‘cured’. The penalty interest rates put on welfare overpayments, the culture of fear that alienates and the staff who refuse to inform beneficiaries of what their actual rights and entitlements are.
Give AAAP a contract to critique your welfare departments and fund them to help beneficiaries gain their rights. Nothing will make a neoliberal welfare department jump like contempt media criticism.
Carmel, you have inherited a nightmare but you can make and force real change on this right wing monstrosity.
All power to your arm and good luck for 2018.
A fantastic letter Martyn best ever.
Just add that MBIE who at the heart of the ideological right wing hateful beliefs is Steven Joyces carefully deberate policies platform he established for the very reasons you have stated here and must be disbanded entirely now;
…”Labour’s greatest challenge in front of it right now is the ideological right wing acolytes who have taken up residence in our public service. Like cancerous tumours, they have spread their hateful right wing beliefs and infected every inch of what should be a welfare system” designed to protect and help rather than punish.
And while they are at it labor is nnow very aware that MBIE was also responsile for many underhanded ‘shoddy contracted deals’ under Joyce’s administration.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/04/09/keith-ng-vs-matthew-hooton/
Good try, I would appeal for the same. But it will be rebuffed with the ‘fiscal prudence’ argument, no doubt about it, wait and see. True welfare policy that looks after people will still be considered something of a ‘nice to have’ policy.
At the same time the Nats will hammer on about Labour and its allies handing out free tertiary education to those who do not need it (kids of high earners, millionaires), same as some other ‘handouts’.
A damned lot more thought should have gone into some that is contained in the ‘Family Package’.
Next year will decide whether it will be a one term government or not.
Well it would be wonderful if WINZ could be made to behave compassionately and beneficiaries were treated as people in need of help not viscous criminals trying to rip off the taxpayer.
It would also be wonderful if the government would do something to help the large, but unknown number of workers, trapped in casual jobs with effectively no holiday, sick or statutory holiday pay and certainly no access to things politicians take for granted like maternity leave, holidays and weekends.
Not holding my breath however.
Especially when all beneficiaries are tax payers themselves. This is where so many people get it wrong. There is an assumption that beneficiaries do not pay taxes. This is not actually true.
Awesome.
Keep it up.
We need people to speak out loud and clear and take a stand on all this exploitative neo liberal garbage.
What about bringing back the Special Benefit, allowing case managers some discretion to increase benefits, so people can survive. With the introduction of Temporary Additional Support (also a misnomer) they brought in a CAP on that, which must not be higher than 30 percent of the base benefit rate. That has caused many people real hardship over the years.
Or change the criteria and rules for TAS, so they resemble the ones that used to apply for the S.B. before it was phased out by LABOUR from 2007 onwards.
Let us not forget, Labour was part of cutting and capping benefits, even under Aunti Helen. Also did they bring in the stronger work focus from 2006/2007 on, trying to move sick and disabled off benefits, albeit with a slightly less ‘relentless’ approach then.
Yeah well , – we are now 9 or more years on from that and conditions have deteriorated majorly. Back then there was difficulty with housing but now because of National and their insane and deliberate plan to sell off state housing , create a speculative property market boom , the unemployed and the low waged are now truly in shit street.
SOMETHINGS GOT TO BE DONE !
And fast.
And Martyn has highlighted just a few solutions as well as the problems.
And Carmel can do it. As can this government. Unfortunately we cannot afford to take the foot off the throat of any govt now simply because we have been let down too often for the last 33 years.
Its nothing personal – but there has to be major changes as to how this country is being run.
………………………………..
“These talks are about a change in the way this country is run. Both economically and socially.”
– The Right Honourable Winston Peters.
………………………………..
Peters said ” the sell off of New Zealand interests to overseas buyers was the “continuing story of this country’s decline since the 14th of July, 1984”.
– The Right Honourable Winston Peters.
………………………………..
… ” We don’t like extremists, – we believe in laws and policy’s that support the mass majority of New Zealanders , and not just a small elite ,… who may have gotten control of the political system and the financial funding of political party’s , … shows that in this campaign ” …
– The Right Honourable Winston Peters.
………………………………..
New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html
Of course I agree with your assessment of the problems Bomber, but as always, I caution against encouraging “our side” to do things that we would look at in horror if it was our opponents in government doing them.
The change that’s needed goes deeper than that. The public service needs to be totally independent of the government, so they can act in the public interest regardless of whether that government wants them to or not. The new government needs to end the practice of public service bosses being political appointees. Otherwise all the good they do can be quickly and easily undone by a more right-wing future government.
The PSA are a union. Protecting their members jobs is their job. Would you be encouraging them to collude with their members bosses (in this case the government) if National were still in power? Of course not. However, I expect they would support a radical change to the structures of the public service as outlined above.
Feed it to ’em Martyn.
You are speaking the truth. ALL OF IT.
It is time to rectify and reject the skulduggery of 33 years of neo liberal theft.
Now Carmel ? ,… you need to listen to what Martyn is saying. And if any of Carmels friends are reading this , you need to urge her to take a look herself. You have it in your hands to changing this ugly thieving neo liberal ideological oppression.
We are counting on you to do whats good , right and proper.
There’s people suffering out there.
Thousands of them.
And not only is it Christmas time and the message that conveys ,… its time to get this country back to how it was before the thugs , the thieves and the political opportunists hijacked our country.
Its time to eject the destructive neo liberal ideology from our laws , the way we do things and from our health , education and welfare system.
” The bullshit need for the disabled to send in letters annually for disabilities that can’t be ‘cured’.”
That is 100% right, Martyn. I have a close friend with a permanent disability. She needs a wheelchair to get around.
Every year, WINZ sends her a letter demanding to know if she still has her disability and requiring confirmation from a doctor.
Shorty of Jesus Christ laying hands on her, my friend’s paralysis (waist down) will be with her until her last days on this earth.
That is how distorted and insane our current system is.
If Labour can’t address this simple abuse then I might as well have voted National.
(Scarletmod, please note my new email address.)
I agree Martin. There is a need to clean out the bigots and bring in some real people that have the ability to show compassion and kindness. Not many of those left I dont think.
Yes, the whole atmosphere inside a WINZ office is just really horrible. From the security guards at the door , the lines of depressed desperate people, the corporate-styled ‘case managers’, the entire system is just dehumanizing and degrading from start to finish.
The whole system is punitive in nature, in the sense that ‘job seeker obligations’ seem like they’re there to hit people with sticks. You can actually sense the contempt of the people that wrote the texts flowing off the page – there are clearly people at MSD who seem to think that their role is to inflict punishment on the unemployed.
Anyone long-term unemployed is viewed as a criminal (and treated as such), but what these MSD people don’t seem to have any empathy for or understanding of is the difficult individual personal circumstances that may have resulted in persons becoming and staying unemployed in the first place.
What’s particularly disgusting is that you have whole teams of ‘investigators’ at MSD dedicated to looking for evidence of ‘criminality’ among the unemployed.
The level of benefits is near impossible to survive on whilst remaining within the strict letter of the rules, but then any deviation from the rules is viewed as further evidence of criminality… almost anyone is at risk of being viciously attacked and persecuted by MSD, in some unfortunate cases people literally hounded to death I read.
Now there’s going to be some bad apples in any group of people, whether they’re working or not, so why all the focus on the unemployed specifically?
I was on a jobseekers benefit and I was unfortunate enough to fall under the gun-sights of MSD investigators, who apparently wasted thousands of dollars and hours of police time trying to find evidence of criminal offences, a quite remarkable trick given that I’ve never even had so much as a single parking ticket or library fine in my life before! This sort of insanity must stop.
The whole system is deranged, and simply changing the people or the culture won’t help much (although it would be a start). You can’t ‘fix’ a deranged system, it needs to be completely scrapped altogether and replaced with something radically different.
Really, bringing in UBI is the only real sensible answer in the long-run. Simply give every citizen a minimum amount of money (universal basic income), no questions asked. But the world where UBI has been implemented would be a very different, far more civilized world from the one we currently live in.