by Metiria Turei
Last month one-time Act party candidate and full time crusader against the DPB Lindsay Mitchell released a statement criticising National for not implementing their draconian pre-election welfare policy. According to Ms Mitchell, who writes from the leafy Wellington sea side suburb Eastbourne, what is needed is a bit more carrot and probably a rather large beneficiary bashing stick.
[National is] not delivering for people on benefits who need more carrot and stick to become self reliant.
Obviously unsettled that the small section of New Zealand society that enjoys beating up on those less fortunate was getting antsy Finance Minister Bill English started talking up getting invalids out to work last Sunday.
Now Bill wasn’t talking about those on the shorter term sickness benefit – Nope Bill was talking about those on the invalids benefit. Among those eligible to be on the invalids benefit are the terminally ill and completely blind.
Perhaps under National we will have blind and terminally ill people earning a crust selling flowers on the streets a la Victorian England.
However some people are never satisfied – particularly those that want to see invalid’s regularly work tested and out earning a crust – even though finding a job is becoming harder for completely able bodied kiwis.
You see Bill English thinks now is the best time to be getting invalids out there looking for jobs with unemployment yet to peak.
Three weeks ago – according to Bill English – New Zealand was going to take twenty years to recover but now a few weeks later it’s apparently the right economic time to be pushing the blind and terminally ill onto an ever-expanding labour market.
Published in Featured | Health & Wellbeing by Metiria Turei on Wed, November 4th, 2009
Tags: Bill English, DPB, invalids benefit, Lindsay Mitchell
More posts by Metiria Turei | more about Metiria Turei
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While it may not have blind, lame, terminally ill people selling flowers in the street to eke out a living, it does sounds like a return to designated doctors and some form of work capacity testing to me.
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I was under the impression that those on the IB were on the IB because their, chronic, medical condition made it such that they were unable to participate in any meaningful work. It would seem I was wrong?
If they are able to participate in meaningful work then they should not be on the IB in the first place and thus work testing has its place, though more as a ‘should you be on here’ than as a ‘get your arse out to work’. I would not consider it acceptable, should my impression be correct, to force IB’s out to work. I would say there is more room when it comes to the SB but ultimately if making them work exacibates the illness and just means they will ultimately be on the SB longer then it seems rather counter-productive.
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The regulations set the period for which a person’s restricting sickness, injury, or disability must be expected to continue in order to qualify at 2 years
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Why is this relevant “who writes from the leafy Wellington sea side suburb Eastbourne”? You probably earn more than she does Metiria, you ever actually met her, or does a snide little personal envy jibe just make you feel good in the morning to spice up your argument?
Yes, everyone who wants people off of welfare is “bashing them”, because everyone on welfare works so hard for that money and are so grateful to the people who DID work for it, aren’t they? So grateful they write hate mail to Lindsay Mitchell because they believe, due to your philosophy in part, that they are entitled to the money of others and shouldn’t be accountable for that.
Of course there are terminally ill people and blind people on the invalids’ benefit, but there are also people on it who appear in court, indicating they have some capability to work.
Besides nothing the Nats have said is about “pushing the blind and terminally ill to work”, it’s about looking at why the number on invalids’ benefits has gone up 61% in 10 years, are people really becoming disabled at a ridiculously alarming rate? Or should taxpayers just keep dishing out money and not ask questions about how this is working?
No, this is a beat up, that scares those on invalids benefits who are chronically disabled, and has a bit of a sideswipe of envy ridden abuse thrown in. Sue Bradford would talk to Lindsay Mitchell, bit hard for you Metiria is it?
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Toad,
Thanks for that. That is almost exactly what I had thought it was.
So, yes, as per 3 there is a place for work testing assuming the person does not qualify under 1a or 1b per the definition under 2. I think it is fair to say that people qualifying under all but 1b per 3 should not be expected to work even if they should conceivably be able to work more than 15 hours.
That said, there is a lot of technology out there to help the blind nowadays. Plenty of blind academics achieving plenty. I know there has been a fair bit of research in psychology into utilising brain plasticity to allow people to see via sensations felt in the back. Achieved some degree of success, don’t know what happened to it though and I would imagine it requires the brain actually be able to perceive images in the first place.
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well it’s only amateur night but – lets see about sub-plots here.
National makes their bedmates look stupid – outrageous.
Suddenly MMP’s approval rating is at 51% supposedly.
Clumsy but effective.
The text is verbal effusion.
I walk the dog for exercise – others fly kites meh?
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This is true. Helping people with disabilities to find work and do work is good. There are a number of government-funded agencies who do this, though there are questions about their effectiveness.
But it is not what ‘woek-testing’ by the Department of Work and Income is about. I think that’s more about tellinhg people that they should be able to find work, and therefore shifting them onto the unemployment benefit.
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libertyscott said: …because they believe … that they are entitled to the money of others and shouldn’t be accountable for that.
Um, you mean like Double Dipton and Hide the Airfare, Scott?
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Yes, but if there is a reasonable expectation that they should be able to find work then they should not be on the invalids benefit in the first place. The unemployment benefit is where they would belong. If they legitimately have no chance of finding employment with their condition or the opportunity for such employment is only very small then they should not be considered able to work and thus should stay on the invalids benefit. Someone with a bad back cannot participate in much heavy lifting but there are still plenty of other opportunities open to them (analogy).
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As someone who suffers from a “bad back” I can assure you that it incapacitates me from much more than heavy lifting. I can’t stand for long, I can’t sit for long, I often walk with difficulty and am likely to stumble, and I get through the day in a sedentary occupation only with painkillers and having learned to work through the pain.
When I first injured my back I couldn’t work at all, and then for a while could only manage 15 hours a week. There is no surgical intervention that will help. As age-related degeneration sets in on top of the injury, there is a good chance I could meet the medical qualification for invalid’s benefit before I reach the age of 65 (more likely I would go back onto weekly compensation as my condition is consequent on an injury).
So please don’t dismiss a “bad back” as something inconsequential or akin to malingering.
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Toad,
I am not dismissing a bad back as malingering. What I am getting at is, as you admit, some with a bad back are able to work, even if with discomfort and thus many with which a bad back is the only problem have no entitlement to be on the IB and thus, if on it, should be removed.
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libertyscott – was it ‘leafy’ that got you het up?
Why is this relevant “who writes from the leafy Wellington sea side suburb Eastbourne”?
Have the elite commandeered leaves as a symbol of their high station?
My neck of the woods is leafy-as! Should I vote National? Act?
Should we prune the leaf from the Green Party logo?
What were you alluding to?
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Back up Sapient!
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you have my sympathies toad..
i had one for about a year once..
it’s hell..
moving hurts..and you freeze up if you stay still..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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The lolly scramble is over people, if the labour party had of had more respect for the welfare system perhaps this would have never even happened.
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This is a Green Party blog.
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They did create the situation we are discussing no?
Perhaps the greens should have encouraged their friends to have more respect for the genuinely sick, instead of watching them throw a big lolly scramble for 10 years.
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You’ll find the Green Party has always had a very sensible Health policy Shunda and Labour took scant regard of much of it.
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Yeah I’ll take your word for it, they sure treated you guys like crap.
That nice mister Key might treat you fellows a bit better, you should give him a call
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Did they, Shunda! I’ve not heard that theory before! That’s fresh and new and has quite frankly given me a new outlook on the whole political scene!
National are treating the environment and other issues that greenies like me hold dear, as disposable napkins with which they are wiping their greasy chins.
Get with what’s happening NOW, Shunda. Leave your old niggles at the door.
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Greenfly: As a member of the Green Party I didn’t find Shunda’s remarks about the Labour Party in the least bit offensive, in fact it happens to be true.
The labour party at it’s inception claims to be a social democratic party that split with the socialists but they still have a social policy of looking after the sick and infirmed.
The Greens have the same empathy that includes the sick and infirmed as it does on environmental issues.
That is the essence of a civilised society.
As capitalism becomes more and more monopolous and imperialist it’s first concerns is only with the survival of the fittest.
What do you all think of mayor Michael Laws’ idea of steralising those who have been a long time on benefits?
This is from a man who bans bikie and Nazi regalia that adorn bikie patches.
Michal Laws would would have been a man after Adolf’s heart!!!!!
Don’t you think?
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“National are treating the environment and other issues that greenies like me hold dear, as disposable napkins with which they are wiping their greasy chins.
Get with what’s happening NOW, Shunda. Leave your old niggles at the door.”
Its not an old niggle greenfly, The Greens need to get closer to national for the very reasons you mention. Are you gonna throw stones from the outside or change things from the inside? now who was it that said that……
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Carrot and Stick is right Met. An astounding lack of compassion…ime people don’t understand disability until something like that teaches them the hard way.
And will Bill place himself at such liability for the inevitable damage such negligence would bring to many?
Should make for some interesting Litigation.
Have we checked this Country off the UN Human Rights Declaration then?
Imo the ‘duty of care of Government’ seems to have been absent from NZ for so long – that many do not understand the concept.
Essentially NZ is already a parlous place for the Infirm – O/S Courts would be necessary to restore Justice here. The Offices of those who are supposed to provide checks and balances are either part of the Problem, or short funded into deliberate failure.
Ask the H&D Commission for their view.
This is one can of worms Bill shouldn’t play with – in the same way that 4 year olds shouldn’t ride Motorcycles.
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PS Lawsy is Primarily a ‘shock jock’. He will say any outrageous thing – long as he gets some attention.
A bit sad to see someone passing their time with their Potential Untapped.
That is a type of crippled in itself.
Yes Adolph did also exterminate those the Nazi’s termed the ‘work shy’.
A good method of disposing of those who may not support you.
Perhaps corruption and mass murder are the greatest sins of the Dictator.
It begins with this type of Vilification.
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Good post. I completely agree with you. It’s ridiculous to have the invalids having to work ever more with their physical/mental difficulties interfere..
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The suggestion that we shuffle into the folds of National’s gown (impregnated as it is with coal dust and the sour odour of money that isn’t allowed to see the light of day) excites me even less – embracing their regime in order to ‘make some gains for the environment’ is, in my mind, a mistake waiting to happen. I believe the actions of this government need vigorous opposition and the Green’s could be that measure against which their behaviour is measured (and found to fall short). The Maori Party stand to make gains for themselves by the very method Shunda describes – by crawling into the tent and applying a muzzle and blindfold, but like Sue Bradford, I’m not craving a relationship like that.
As for Laws – he’s playing his public and ripping off their scabs. The suppurating pus that oozes out so freely from them, excites him and heightens the pleasure he takes in manipulating people.
If there was no one rising to his smelly baits, he’d be a lone, loon voice, but there you are, legions of support! Talk-back gold. Just as Brash et al harnessed it for the Iwi/Kiwi campaign to great effect (slow burner but it paid off in the election that put National in to power) and will now slide through the very changes that they terrified the country with, because the ‘left’ won’t whip-up, in a Laws/Brash/Brownlee-like manner, hatred and fear.
Work with these people?
Hmmmmmm…….
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This brings back memories of the 1991 benefit cuts, when National talked about a “carrot and stick” policy to get beneficiaries into work.
Around that time there was a brilliant cartoon in (I think) the now long defuct Auckland Sun newspaper of Ruth Richardson beating a donkey around the head with a stick while Bill Birch rammed a carrot up the donkey’s arse, asking “Are you sure we’ve got this the right way round, Ruth?”
18 years on, just substitute Paula Bennett and Bill English…
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Certainly there will be some people receiving an invalid’s benefit who cannot work at all. What Labour had been doing is asking certifying GPs to provide more information about the limitations of a patient’s incapacity in order to more intensively case manage them ie get the person the specific help they need to return to mental or physical fitness. They focussed on those who were judged capable of working part-time. By their own admission some invalid beneficiaries are and would relish the opportunity. National is merely formalising that approach with work-testing rules. An incentive is allowing a person to keep more of their earnings from part-time work, but while promising this National, hasn’t delivered.
Disincentives do not lie in cutting payment rates. That would incur increased hardship. But it needs to be harder for some people to access this benefit because once on it, leaving is very difficult (hence the never-reversing growth). The fastest growing group of invalid beneficiaries are those with psychological and psychiatric conditions. There are more people reliant on a sickness or invalid’s benefit for reasons of substance abuse than because they have cancer. Why not require people with addictions to participate in treatment programmes? Greens are usually at the forefront of calling for more rehab help for people in prison. Why not the appointment of agents (family member, church, Maori health authority) to receive and manage the benefits of someone likely to spend it on more self-destructive behaviour? The Maori Party would probably approve of such an approach under their whanau ora push. This sort of regime would provide better help and prospects for recipients but also act as a deterrent (or disincentive) to others.
The numbers on an invalid benefit have grown at 8 times the population growth since the mid-70s. I have come up with at least ten reasons why and each is a debate all by itself. For instance we are not caring for the mentally ill well enough. Putting them into the community supported by a benefit may have been an improvement for some, but it has also isolated and endangered others. In most lives work is a panacea if it is possible because it provides far more than just an income.
The number of part-times jobs has actually grown in each quarter of this year so there are opportunities arising out of the changing labour market.
I am no longer a member of ACT because I do not support their illiberal stance on law and order. Although you seem to have gotten the impression I am a fan of ‘punishment’ that is a misapprehension.
Finally your 2008 Hutt South candidate also lived in Eastbourne though I do not know relevance that had to her personal beliefs.
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Greenfly: Just alluding to it being a rather pointless comment, unless you engage in sneering based on where someone lives. It’s well known Eastbourne is a relatively expensive place to purchase property in Wellington.
At least Lindsay has taken the chance for a right of reply. For example, I’d advocate for invalids’ beneficiaries there being no abatement rate for the benefit if they work except the marginal income tax paid on the additional income. In this category of benefit it would be a very positive incentive.
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Plenty of sarcasm, emotive ignorance, and negative Voting means the wasps have been upset and might even sting – howzit? Right on the money.
So Peoples Medical Information should cease to remain Private?
That is usually a long debate that arrives at the conclusion that peoples privacy is more important today, as it has never been the subject of so many Hackers, legal and other.
Perhaps exponents realize they wouldn’t want Media or Govt. crawling through their old nappies with their legendary attention to accuracy. Doctor’s word is Law and railing about it? – well I don’t like Parking Tickets either – too bad.
The Notions that a. People want to be on Welfare
and b. That it is a ‘Paid Holiday’
are part of a contemptible Sadism that prevails thoughout our society, especially in our Medical Professions.
Psychiatrist M.Scott Peck describes it well in his book ‘Denial Of The Soul’.
The people I have worked with who have found it ‘hard’ to get off the Benefit, shouldn’t try, because they are profoundly Disabled.
The number of Suicides amongst these should make it abundantly clear to anyone that these people often lead lives of unremitting pain.
Anyway going to help a woman recovering from Breast Cancer – shall I pass on the Nature of Cruelty out there?
I think not.
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Lindsay deals in facts, what a pity the Greens don’t give it a try sometime soon.
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Bro – your hero Hide has been revealed as a thief and a suck-up. Is that why you’re here, trying to irritate the Greens? Is this actoid-displacement behaviour? Drop Rodders a line and tell him what you think of his ‘born to rule’ attitude and share your remedies for the ‘foot in mouth’ disease he’s displayed recently.
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Does she really, BB? Lindsay Mitchell had an op ed in the NZ Herald a month or so ago:
Well, not according to the University of Michigan’s Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy:
So poverty levels, contrary to Mitchell’s assertion, dropped right through to 1973 and remained reasonably stable through to the early 1980s.
And they started to decline in 1993 – three years before the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton. Mitchell is wrong again.
And to claim the trifecta of inaccuracy, under the welfare reforms Mitchell lauds poverty levels rose between 2000 and 2004.
Or maybe she’s using a different measure of poverty to the researchers at the University of Michigan. We just don’t know.
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BTW, the big thumbs up @Lindsay 7:59 AM is becasue she has blogged this on her own blog and it is attracting all the righties here.
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I think there is a substantial difference between identifying those who are on the IB who could work part-time and work testing them while jobs are hard to find – work testing would add stress to the life of a person who does not need any more stress. If people want the help to find part-time work fine. But it’s not as if there is a problem of inter-generational dependency caused by people being on the IB.
The real problem is unemployment amongst youth and parents raising children in poverty. The problem which was easing there is now worsening again and this needs government attention.
SB and IB numbers are growing worldwide across the economic cycle – this is a function of an aging population and some public health issues – such as diabetes/diet and lung and heart health (smoking/diet) as well as hospital system burdened with waiting lists. This is exacerbated whenever access to pensions is reduced by raising the age of eligibility. It’s no surprise that those who want to toughen up policy to those on SB and IB are also the ones who decry “nanny-state” PC for trying to deal with the causes of some of the ill-health – anti-smoking and healthy diet campaigns.
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There was a big shifting of people off the dole and onto IB. I suspect that that rate of change will probably be diminished as people who actually belong on IB are on it and those who were not transferred should not be, and so we have (I think) a situation that has not yet reached a steady state. It would take someone with copious resources (time) to go through the stats and work out what the long term STABLE rate of people needing to go on IB is. Shucks… Is there such a thing? I THINK there is but I don’t have that sort of time.
But the recently alarming rate of people going onto IB may not be as significant in the long run.
Then there is the fact that for everyone on the IB who is being considered for a part time job because they can “sort-of” work, there is someone who would qualify for IB but has a partner who is carrying them, who might want to work but is not able to find anything within his/her limits. Which gives that particular family a fair handicap, particularly if there are children in the mix.
…and this all needs to be couched in terms of the “war-on-drugs” which so encourages the population to use the cheapest most damaging concoctions available when they turn to chemical recreations. ‘P’ is almost a guaranteed trip to the head-doctors.
I don’t think making the evaluations mandatory is as smart as it looks though. Most case workers have the wit to work out what is hopeless and what is not. The waste involved in finding the exceptions where they MAY have got it wrong seems unlikely to pay for the effort of re-evaluating everyone regularly to see if they have recovered from their autopsy. It isn’t un-doable but it is IMHO, very likely to be a waste of time and money.
respectfully
BJ
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Quick! Throw some crusts! Gulls!
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There probably was a move from the dole to SB and IB in recent years – as jobs became available and WINZ was removing people from the UB they came across those with barriers to work issues and no doubt moved them onto other benefits – these could have been addiction issues or people with health issues resulting from years on unemployment poverty. This probably happens a lot at the end of a strong growth cycle. Coinciding with this a look at those on SB and IB who could work part-time – give WINZ staff a new focus as numbers on the dole reduced – including treatment programmes for addicts etc.
But to do this when UB numbers are back at a 15 year high places huge pressures on staff. Apart from treatment programmes which probably pay off it should be a back to basics and perhaps a general look at reducing barriers to those on the SB and IB working part-time (if they want), it should be focus on youth unemployment and parents raising children in poverty (increasing the other income earnt before abatement helps here and also for the general unemployed only able to find part-time).
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http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2009/11/us-poverty-rates.html
responds to your points about US poverty rates.
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Valis: Please can we have a list of the merely outrageous, in case some of it deserves attention?
Drakula: According to Freakanomics, abortion on demand would achieve the same results, apart from the political ones. I have difficulty imagining Mr Laws supporting it, because it would cause costs and freedoms for the wrong people, and break the wrong scabs, to use greenfly’s terminology.
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As an aside there was the opine that Roe v Wade resulted in less children being born to the disadvantaged and this led to the falling crime rate. It may be false conclusion, as another reason is that crime predominately occurs amongst the young and the baby boomer population was aging when/before the rates began to fall (another was the peaking of crime rates coinciding with the end of the baby boomer bulge and 80′s policy – Volckers “beat stagflation” recession and the Reagan era cut backs in government spending).
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Valis: Please can we have a list of the merely outrageous, in case some of it deserves attention?
I was thinking very generally rather than in this specific area, though no doubt a read of Paula Bennet’s press releases would give you plenty of examples. For instance, I think Brownlee has purposely not ruled out mining in national parks so that he can do it later when the list of areas to be mined is announced, so it looks like the govt has listened to the people, etc, in the hopes that people will see it as a reasonable compromise and stop bitching.
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I suspect that many of those who have posted here have no actual experience of what an Invalid’s benefit covers, and how it is different to a Sickness benefit, or indeed, a Disability Allowance that can be attached to another benefit, or given as a top-up to part-time employment.
Each of the above scenarios exist to fund different scales of disability/degenerative illness, and differing levels of permanence; with terminal diseases being the hardcore IB recipients.
However, don’t worry your little right-wing hearts about those with terminal diseases, this situation resolves when the patient achieves terminality.
See Mary Potter Hospice’s website (or indeed, any hospice of your own choosing) if you’re having trouble understanding the concepts of degenerative, painfilled, terminal disease, of which cancer is merely the most commonly understood form.
The purpose of an Invalid’s benefit is to fund Doctor’s costs, medication, pain-relief, treatment that has beneficial if not curative effects on the illness, and basic needs of daily life. It exists for those who are too debilitated to work as their condition exacerbates, and who have no earning partner or close relative supporting them.
In other words, those who are ill, functionally destitute, and occupationally incapacitated.
Having once watched an elderly relative die of liver cancer, I can safely say that I would rather that continued access to morphine and professional care existed for those who must exit humanity in this condition, than that a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat stripped this suppport from the poorest of our society, for simple political capital.
The measure of a civilised society is how the weakest amongst us are cared for by the strongest, that is all.
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Actually, all of those things except ‘basic needs of daily life’ are supposed to be covered by a disability allowance, and your personal disability allowance is calculated based on the actual costs of those things, as near as can be ascertained (unless the actual cost is over the maximum, in which case you don’t get it all, and will have to cover the extra from your invalid’s benefit).
The Invalid’s Benefit is higher than the Unemployment Benefit, but lower than the National Superannuation that everyone over 65 automatically gets, whether they need it or not.
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Fly; You are on to it I reck’n…it wasn’t what the Thick Hide Did. It was the arrogance with which he responded….and THIS man is a Public Servant????
Someone better tell him then – he thinks he’s Mussolini.
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“Someone better tell him then – he thinks he’s Mussolini.”
ridiculous. Only Micael Laws is Mussolini!
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Greenfly I take your point I don’t think that we should compromise one iota with the national.
What they say has proven to be not what they deliver.
I know a few people on sickness and invalids benefit. those on invalids, well it’s the last station of the cross and those in position of power need to have a little more empathy.
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“[National is] not delivering for people on benefits who need more carrot and stick to become self reliant.” Lindsay Mitchell could be partly correct were disabled people given the opportunity to define that carrot. So what could that big juicy organic carrot look like that enticed disabled people into work?
Respect – People with disabilities say that attitudes are the biggest barrier to living an ordinary life. The language that disables us would be removed from media and public service usage. No longer would we be referred to as ‘special’ or ‘handicapped’. We’re ordinary people who deserve respectful language.
Disability Strategy funding – If it were properly implemented people with disabilities could return to work. Yet there is no centralised funding for the implementation of the Disability Strategy and it remains on the shelf until there is.
Transport – A comprehensive network of accessible public transport would be introduced to enable disabled people to get out their front door.
Web Access – The web accessibility standards http://www.webstandards.govt.nz/ for government that recently became mandatory would be properly resourced to hasten their implementation. These enable blind people and those with low vision to access the web with ease. Being blind is not a reason in itself not to work but not being able to access the most commonly used working tool is.
The torridly named ‘invalids’ benefit, which further ostracises those on it could then be renamed to something more dignified.
What about the stick part? Disabled people have long been told they need to harden up and get back out there. Disabled people need access and support not sticks, a few walking canes maybe, but the real sticks should be used to stir up society to take responsibility for removing the barriers that prevent people with disabilities participating fully.
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Rachel is right. Not all invalid beneficiaries are terminally ill or don’t want to work. I have a daughter on IB who would LOVE to be able to hold down a normal job, has tried very hard to get jobs, has even started some but been unable to keep going. It’s extremely stressful and demoralisng to be treated like a second-class citizen and very hard to live on the income too. WINZ do not help to find work, and were not helpful about how to manage the balance of income and benefit when she has managed to find work. On one occasion, it was one of those semi-casual jobs where you might get up to 15 hours a week (the maximum an IB is allowed to work) – or less. WINZ took it that it would be a regular 15 hours per week, but in fact it never was. She got anywhere from 4-9 hours a week but had her benefit abated as though she was working 15. I thought they should have balanced it up at the end of the year, but they didn’t.
Now, she has managed to find a couple of people who pay her to do housework a couple of hours a week which just about makes it possible to survive (with help from us). She has registered with a group that looks for work for people with disabilities but they have never found anything for her. There is just too much competition from ‘normal’ people. And she HATES being on the IB by the way.
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Bill & his cronies are just puppets & a mouthpiece for those pushing the New World Order or One World Government agenda.
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