The purpose and principles of the social security act
It helps when you are going somewhere to know where you are going and why. Hence it is important to get the fundamental ‘Purpose and Principles’ of the Social Security Act fixed as soon as possible. The current ones have taken us a long way in the wrong direction. As the Irish might say, if you want to get to a better place, best not to start from here.
The Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG report) Whakamana Tāngata: Restoring Dignity to Social Security in New Zealand made this point, advocating strongly that before reform, we need to agree on new ‘Purposes and Principles’ for the welfare state. It has taken government over four years to even begin to face this issue and the signs so far are not promising. Despite the detailed and careful work of WEAG following wide consultation it has been necessary, apparently. to produce a glossy report “The Foundation for Change Amending New Zealand’s Social Security Act 2018: the next phase in New Zealand’s Welfare Overhaul Work Programme”. With many large colour pictures of a happy smiling, diverse but healthy NZ families the spin machine is well oiled. The substance is less impressive.
The report is not yet publicly available but is the basis for a limited consultation process before it is considered by Cabinet. The proposed ‘Purposes and Principles’ are a tinkering of the discredited current ones, nothing like the substantive re-envisioning demanded by WEAG or argued by CPAG.
We should remember that Labour itself was responsible for the current dog’s breakfast of the ‘Purposes and Principles’ section of the current Act. Labour introduced the amendment in 2007 that stressed the primacy of paid work making outlandish claims for example that “work in paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic wellbeing.” Social security was to be there only after people had looked to their own resources. Its purpose was to (grudgingly) relieve hardship, not to provide any kind of belonging and participation outcomes and security. Paid work featured 9 times.
The National Opposition in 2007 could not believe its luck. In the House, Anne Tolley, rubbing her hands in glee, said ecstatically:
“ National is supporting this bill going to select committee. Why on earth would we not? We had been arguing this for seven years we want to tighten up the provisions in this bill this is basically just a wet dish rag of a bill designed to make the government look as if it is doing something but it is actually not doing very much at all” Hansard 2007
Labour’s changes to the Act, paved the way for National (2008-2017) to further undermine the welfare state by emphasizing the primacy of paid work and downplaying community responsibility and unpaid caring activity. Being sick or disabled was no longer a reason not to be ‘gainfully’ employed. Beneficiaries were subject to new planning and activity requirements which meant that if they didn’t start planning for paid work they could have their benefit cut.
A further unravelling of the welfare state was encouraged by the 2007 aim““to enable in certain circumstances the provision of financial support to people to help alleviate hardship.” This saw ever tighter targeting of welfare assistance with severe sanctions for non-compliance. Poverty was used as a weapon to get desired behavior and an ugly culture developed in WINZ. For example, their powers to determine a relationship; its nature, its starting point and whether to prosecute. Penalties were imposed for infringements of the rulebook rule alongside an appeals process stacked in MSD’s favour and without oversight by an outside body.
An another unpleasant feature of the 2007 changes exploited by National was to expect that before asking the state for anything people should look to their own resources. “…that where appropriate they should use the resources available to them before seeking financial support under this Act”.
The culture took hold that if the beneficiary had borrowed money because they could not survive on a benefit such loans could be treated as income reducing entitlement to the same benefit. CPAG was involved in a case (Ms F) in which a family loan resulted in a review of a sole parent’s five years’ expenditure and establishment of a debt of overpaid benefit of $127,000. A High Court decision was needed to get this over-turned but there was no review of the practice and the implications for others similarly affected but without access to pro bono legal resources to sustain an 8-year fight with MSD.
So it is with some surprise that the latest efforts to rewrite the ‘Purposes and Principles’ retains “where appropriate [beneficiaries] should use the resources available to them before seeking financial support under this Act”.
The primacy of paid work is slightly moderated to “employment, where appropriate, offers the best opportunity for people to achieve wellbeing”. There is no visionary statement about the purpose of social security being not only to alleviate actual poverty when it occurs but to prevent it and enable participation and belonging in society. Rather the best that can be can be mustered in the 2022 report is “Social security contributes to the wellbeing of the community by providing support to reduce poverty and hardship.”
It is shameful that the work of WEAG is invisible, and even more time is expected of past WEAG members and voluntary organisations like CPAG to engage in so called consultation on what looks like a make-work exercise.
What can one say other than this bloody Labour Government has more intent in furthering neoliberalism than in promoting Left wing policies? LINO indeed. Shame on them and on their incompetence.
The fact is that open ended welfare entitlement entrenches failure. It is evident that children born to solo mothers on long term benefits are vastly more likely to suffer from abuse, fail in school, become depressed, suicide, take drugs and commit crime. A study in NZ of gang membership shows that the vast majority of these lost souls were fatherless and clung on to gangs looking for a male role model.
Certainly welfare needs to change but maybe not in the way you think.
It is obvious that people who drive cars tend to have the most vehicle accidents! People who drive trucks tend to be given greater instruction, the task is regarded as important, and they are paid to do the job, there is an incentive to do it well, and advance themselves by being in a job which is hard, but respected.
Apply the car driving methods to the very important but ridiculed task of raising, caring and guiding children, train the mothers and have refresher courses and people who sententiously cast doubt on the value of the women to be alive at all, would see them change for the better. The hate and distaste and refusal to properly educate and respect the women because they are not well-regarded and then only mothers, means that they never get past the lower level of education and carry this lack of endowment by the state onto the new generation.
The antipathy even malice that some mothers face, and mostly from men who are often totally twisted and self–centred, but also from nasty women, holds back development of people’s best gifts, abilities and ability in decision making reducing the advancement in all spheres of attainment.
Sorry if this is too long and serious for you know-alls to bother to read and absorb to expand your tiny, shrivelled minds.
Your analogy holds some water, in that you wouldn’t hire truck drivers who are illiterate drug addicts.
Andrew your type is a millstone we have to drag around, those that are attempting to be positive. Those of us who only briefly have some heavy angst could keep these old songs at hand. Don’t waste your time in discussing things with sad sacks who enjoy doing down the group that are failing. The haters love to hate, let them. Dear, dear, have a cup of tea.
Getting angry is a waste of energy and so Is mounting good arguments – to those who won’t listen and carry them forward. Too much talk, talk. It’s just repeating stuff that was said in the last century.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z45EB4TiYz4
Accentuating the positive
You can’t hold back a good woman!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0
I reckon on using these as a rallying cry,. Better than a tear in the eye!
So would this glossy report, “The Foundation for Change Amending New Zealand’s Social Security Act 2018: the next phase in New Zealand’s Welfare Overhaul Work Programme”. With many large colour pictures of a happy smiling…etc, happen to be printed by the Government Printing Office by any chance?
good point- it is an expensive exercise as is the consultation process. The glossy colour pictures make it very expensive to print out on a home printer
Just a small point.
The Government Printing Office was privatized/sol many years ago.
Sold to Graeme Hart
In 1989, He successfully bid for the Government Printing Office for $23 million which caused considerable controversy.
Thx Susan, meanwhile corporate welfare goes deep as a ‘result’ of covid. The poor are given assistance in the form of ‘rent subsidies’, [lucky landlords]. And the completely lost camp at parliament and are ignored by our ‘kind’ Labour government. Is political trust even a happening ?
THat’s not what the camp at parliament was about and I have no sympathy for them.
Rosielee The protestors were not necessarily dirty smelly poor, there were some conspicuously well-heeled persons turned up to support them, like Russell Coutts, some shiny Real Housewife of Auckland, double -breasted Winston Peters, various apparently qualified professional persons, Donald Trump supporters, wavers of upside down flags, dopey mumsies, violent nutters. But to say, as Poto aWilliams seems to be saying now, that they were marginalised by outside online influences, is major over-simplification, and does not let government off the hook for the fact that there are persons who are marginalised in very real ways. This of course does not justify them bullying and harassing folk who feel differently from them- while they loudly espoused freedom, love and kindness. And they’re still out there.
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Glory to Ukraine?
They do NOT want to fix the problem of a sadistic and cruel MSD/WINZ.
It’s NOTHING to do with money/costs. That is JUST a conveninet excuse to get further ‘buy in’, from ‘those sorts’.
If it was about money they’d be WAY WAYT more effort on tax evasion by the ‘wealthy’.
From Morgans report (the big kahuna ?) in about 2000. You could pay every man, woman and child $200 a week and still make a profit by the cost savings of not needng most of MSD/WINZ.
Bullshit Andrew have you been on a benefit ? I was on a benefit intermittently and got the TIA so I could go to university. There a benefits to having a decent benefit system as long as people are helped along the way as I was so they can get of welfare.
When you are on a benefit now and for some time back, it becomes obvious that in the back rooms of the social welfare office the message is given out that you don’t giver a shit about ‘the people’ and they are fed the diet of people being lazy, and that is akin to being an axe murderer, and that there are plenty of jobs available but they don’t want to work etc. It is top down oppression and classist stuff, uncaring, callous, and hostile. People act in a way that reflects the attitudes that they are exposed to. If it becomes ingrained to hate the petty demeaning authority that they are so often confronted with, they carry on the antipathy sd noghing gets better. And I can’t blame them for not being able to overcome the debilitating prejudice. But with some help, such as what Celia Lashlie and her team were trying, people can see an alternative path.
An extreme example of rising like a phoenix is Douglass the freed USA slave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass
It can be done, but it is so hard that on one’s own it’s a trek too far quite often.
The opinion was…whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion I know nothing. … My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant. … It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. … I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.
Interesting that they were practising Oranga Tamariki methods there and then. If I was Maori I wouldn’t want Maori names given to doubtfully legitimate and certainly unkind pakeha behaviours.
Is that the key gagarin? I’ve been thinking – have to watch out or Richard Pebble (just a stone’s throw away) will sue me for using his unique book title.
If we started now , getting the 11 and 12 year olds interested in the environment they would be ready to take over from their gormless elders starting in a small way about 21 after taking a diploma course teaching them what they need to know about everything in general; it would be a new rite of passage. Reintroduce some ritual like a coming-out ball for older youth to aspire to, a great dance that everyone can afford, no snootie long dresses, but smart looking once in a while – something coloured with flowers on or trees, the environment theme.
Government has to turn to and help with health camps and outdoor long weekends for families, have experience mixing with people, and knowing how to cope in an outdoors setting without making it too hard. More like USA summer camps – they have had them in the past, as we always copy let’s do that too. The Education Department and schools should have horticultural camps to keep interest in the land and maintain experience gained in horticulture at school and at health camps. They could learn about plant hormones and learn to cope with the idea of being a live fertile person, both physically and with fertile minds to take care of.
I think we have to make this the century of unwrapping philosophy and life to the youngsters early on and let them go through some adulthood entrance like a bar mitzvah for the boys – similar- and one for the girls – to prepare both genders for thinking adulthood, not just sex and nobs and money, but life.
At Seventeen – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SuavKHes_Y
The authorities insist on long school years and so remaining children for longer, but we have the internet to help with learning. Labour introduced Tomorrows Schools that opened up the way for parents and their children to decide what they wanted to learn, and believe; hence anti vaxx myths! Kids grew up quickly in medieval times, let them do so now too, start work at 12 at some interest and skill that they have chosen, at a few hours per week, within school hours. They need change but also assistance if they are going to make up for their dozy parents (including me) having not been able to get breakthrough on the future. Present adulthood is so strange and blase’, they will be nowhere ready if things go on as present.
Grinny house buyers and renters – half alive and steal the rest of their selves from the young ones who are left drained. And parents are teaching children to be snobs, unkind and judgmental, and money and sports mad, with no effort at helping the mind and humaniities stuff. Television and these other content providers, all set the bar too high , and doing simple things for oneself is being dismissed by corporates; let us do that for you, we can do it so much better (seeing you are just an ordinary person). Let our hologram teach you how to live. Bah!
We need a government that will guarantee every single ‘able’ person can have a job that will give them a decent standard of living, a house, shelter, decent food. Then and only then can we do away with the unemployment benefit. I would be in for this. Let’s not be silly about this, there are lots and lots of jobs that councils and governments don’t seem to be able to keep up with, imagine we wouldn’t have litter, clean rivers, no wilding pines there are endless jobs out there but many of these are never ever advertised. BUT PAY THEM PROPERLY!
Obviously we need benefits for those who are ill, on their own with children, who need their mother or father or primary care giver and not to go into all the appalling child care places.
We need family benefit again so that Mother’s have some income for themselves.
But we will always have people who fall by the wayside and we need to have much much better mental health and addiction services to help those people move on with their lives.
Because some people can pull themselves up by their boot straps doesn’t mean everyone can, it is part of being human.
So true Michal. If the government worked with people needing help instead of imposing its threadbare community spirit on them, it would be a decent society. But the well got poisoned a long time ago, and that distrust of welfare and beneficiaries its a virulent strain. Also add to it the narrow-minded, herd-following of people and when in the middle class on higher salaries, they feel they are at the zenith of life and everyone should live like them. But just ensuring that others have a life that suits them and is up to a certain standard which may not be that of the midde-class should be the bottom line. Be a bit tolerant of different others, but not too much seems to be the answer.