by Catherine Delahunty
This week, our MPs have reallocated some of their portfolios in the wake of Sue Bradford’s departure and the arrival of new Green MP David Clendon. One portfolio to change hands is Work and Income, which is now being looked after by Green MP Catherine Delahunty.
There have been some concerning announcements in this portfolio recently. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett recently announced that the government will pursue the agenda of welfare reform signalled before the election, despite the dire economic circumstances and unemployment figures we are currently experiencing. She also signalled that the government wants to move more people off the invalids’ benefit and into work.
In this week’s podcast, Catherine talks about the Work and Income portfolio, what she makes of the government’s recent announcements, and her own experience setting up a beneficiary advocacy group on the East Coast.
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Published in Environment & Resource Management | Featured by Catherine Delahunty on Mon, November 16th, 2009
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
In my view beneficiaries advocacy services are required in every town & city thru out the country.
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As usual roles are mixed up here: Catherine is the defence attorney rather than objective judge. I couldn’t trust Catherine (or Sue Bradford or..) to handle the welfare portfolio.
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Those on the right are quite happy for their government to be ‘objective’ (ha!) and judgmental, while those on the left would prefer their government to have the people’s interests at heart.
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I had an interesting experience last night.
I was helping an old associate with some interpersonal problems, ended up sitting in a room with four individuals other than myself.
One of those individuals was my associate, the rest were her flat-mates. Two of the flat-mates are on the invalids and the other is about to reach the age where she can apply. There is also one other flatmate, also on invalids, not present at the time. The young one about to reach the age has every intention of applying and will most likely get it despite having a under-the-counter job that is near full time as her doctor says she qualifies. Of the two other flat-mates whom were there one was essentially the same as the younger, the other was the mother of the lot and was on invalids not because she could not work, she did, but because she wanted the extra money. Likewise, the flatmate that was not present, I was informed, worked in excess of 40-hours per week in a central city location under-the-table and still somehow qualified for invalids.
I am by no means saying that all or even most invalids are like this but that if this happens at even this incidence there is something very wrong with at least one part of the mechanism. I suspect it has a lot to do with the doctors and their willingness to accept the word of the individual. A inquisitorial system has its place, as does dedicated doctors.
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Anyone in Wellington who needs help with WINZ can get free advice from the Peoples’ Resource Centre in Lukes Lane, they have a crew of benefits rights advocates who have a huge amount of experience and are compassionate and confidential.
sapient,
Your anecdote is interesting as you don’t appear to have any intention to actually inform (a mother and her female children, all with adequate health damage to qualify as elegible for Invalids’ Benefit, well, what could they posssibly have experienced that could make all of them eligible? As a feminist who has worked with abuse survivors, I can pretty much guess, but I won’t in public as this would be both prurient and breaching putative privacy concerns.)
Your purpose is to make snide allusions to ‘bludging’, as Cath has said, this is a dog-whistle approach to problem-solving.
How about we turn it upside down, and look at the conditions that create the need for benefits?
Employers who don’t have adequate industrial safety programs; domestic violence; poverty & drug use (including alcohol); environmental pathogens and endocrine disruptors from agrichemical use, which are increasing our ration of terminal cancers from one generation to the next; landlords who delay maintenance to the point of creating slum housing; the list is long and ‘inglourious’.
The social welfare legislation in NZ was created just after the last Depression, when the first Labour Government came to power.
If you would like a window into the state of working class lives before it began, read John A Lee’s The Children of the Poor, where he describes the descent into prostitution of his older sister from the age of twelve (then the legal age of consent) until she died, aged 19.
It was a novelisation of his childhood in Wellington in the years between the Wars, 1919 onwards, and describes the area of Thorndon Gully (now under the motorway) which was the subject of some of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories – an area of damp, ill-ventilated hovels in which the working classes kept alive by the skin of their teeth, as day-labourers around the CBD.
Those slums, and the area off Taranaki St known as Wellington’s Chinatown (Frederick & Haining Streets) have long been demolished and forgotten – but they were the drivers of social policy to prevent the forced labour of children, to support widows, and families abandoned when the work dried up & the men moved on, as well as those who were permanently injured in workplace accidents, but still living and with dependants to care for.
If you think NZ society will tolerate a return to Edwardian social practice, you may have need for some psychiatric counselling of your own, to sort out that delusion. Do some research on Dunedin, and you will find that similar conditions existed there.
The main goals of the 20th century were to improve maternal health, reduce infant mortality, and increase overall life expectancy. As a society, we achieved much of that by mid-century, so that the generation who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s had the best of the social policy roll-outs. Adults enjoyed near full employment, hospitals were being funded for rollouts of new medical technology, lives were saved from previously fatal conditions.
The cost of this is it’s continuance … now, we realise that we have created an expectation of social policy delivery that our ageing, mostly underpaid, mostly underemployed workforce can’t sustain, and the few who have higher incomes and sufficient worldly goods to enjoy a comfortable life, don’t want to subsidise or socially insure those who are less fortunate than themsleves.
It has taken merely 3 generations for this mindshift to happen within our society, and most of the back-sliding occurred as a result of the privatisation agendas of the last National Government in the 1990’s.
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Katie; That was a very good post you obviously know your stuff. I might also add that the excesses of capitalism that led to the 1929 crash was not only restricted to Wellington and Dunedin it was worldwide as you probably know.
I am also reading a good book called ‘The Whispering Years’ by Harry Bowling It is about East End London by the docks where men with families had lost their jobs and the only jobs available were for non union workers working for subcontractors who took short cuts and hired gangs of thugs to keep them in line. I don’t want to give away the plot.
This seems to be a bit like the temping scene today. We need to remind the younger generation just how much the union movement has won society in terms of human rights after the depression and WW2.
Now we are stampeding straight into the 19th century in terms of human rights and that’s just the way the capitalist elites would want it!!!!
They are up to all sorts of tricks to cloud the issues and we don’t have to look very far to see evedence of this.
The latest ploy used by these trolls is to present socialism as communism in order to promote the ‘Big Bogey’ theory.
Then once the ‘Big Bogeys’ get a hold of somewhere and ‘collapse’ someting then we have the ‘Domino’ theory as promoted by the late war criminal senator Robert MacNamara.
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Katie,
Sorry for the late reply, I did not see your response until Drakula commented.
It would help if you actually read what I posted rather than what you wanted me to have posted. I do not object to the IB and have on many occasions stated that I support individuals legitimately on the benefit being provided for to the best of our ability. My point was not one attacking the existence of the IB but one criticising the way it is run.
I think I provided a plentitude of data which was more than enough to establish that there is very large abuse of the benefit here. The criteria for the IB are cited as:
They all work over 15 hours, two more than twice that. By definition they do not qualify. Their personal circumstances otherwise, so long as they are not blind, are legally irrelevant to their qualification. I only know the details because they were, liturally, laughing it up. This points to a major flaw in the system.
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We also produce a Benefit Fact File by annual subscription with quarterly updates. This is a plain English explanation of area of social welfare law and policy and is over 50-pages long.
Check out our website: http://www.wellingtonpeoplescentre.org.nz
Graham Howell
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Beneficiary bashing!
While I am not accusing Sapient or other readers of this steam but knocking individuals or by implication all beneficiaries of a particular type buys into the Governments agenda of beneficiary bashing. The Minister, Paula Bennet has had three significant attempts at beneficiary bashing. Recall her attack on the two women and the Training Incentive Allowance. She also attacked large families who were geting their full and correct entitlement including Family Tax Credits. She has also attacked those needing food special needs grants. I suspect it is a softening up process for more systemic attacks via the 2010 Budget.
I also have comments in relationship to Sapients criteria for IB as there is an inaccuracy. The criteria actually is 15-hours in “open” employment, and even with this, agreement with the Department of Work and Income can be arranged to allow people to be employed for more than 15-hours in open employment for up to six months and possibly longer. This creates a permissive or permitting environment that on the one hand tries to asist people back into full-time work while also recognising the fact that relapse may occur. I do not know all the details of those Sapient suggests/implies are rorting the system and do want to point the figure, let alone draw inferences as to how well or not DWI administer the IB process. My reading of the Auditor-General’s report into the IB/SB is that the Auditor-General did not understand all the issues involved and that the report writer relied heavily on narrow views held by some in the Ministry of Social Development.
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an area of damp, ill-ventilated hovels in which the working classes kept alive by the skin of their teeth
You mean New Zealand, don’t you.
(Sorry, it is SUCH a straight line) .
I am afraid that I tend to agree with Sapient. If the IB is being used by people who are able to work and willing (as indicated by the fact that they are working) to work, one has to at least suspect that there is a problem. If the cause is as you guess, then the question is how to adjudge it to be permanent? People DO recover from all sorts of trauma. I can’t imagine what it is like to be one of those people, but I do see an awful lot of people pick themselves up and get on with life after some pretty awful stuff.
This is not about the Edwardian standards advocated by National or the sub-Edwardian versions endorsed by ACT, it is about the appropriateness of the “permanent” disability being offered. I think that Sapient has made an error in not recognizing that “permanent” is actually 2 years long in terms of the law so it can and likely WILL be reviewed, but I believe that once people are certified on IB, most can be expected to try to remain there. Which means that reviewers will be screening reluctant witnesses to determine if a recipient should be pushed out of their comfort zone.
The whole process is adversarial though. Which seems to me to indicate a basic wrongness underlying it. Something to think about, to be sure.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
What do you mean I don’t recognise the 2-year expanse of ‘permanent’? It was listed in the criteria I quoted.
The problem, as I see it, is that if they can choose their doctors and one doctor put them forward for the IB when they do not in reality qualify then they will tend to return to that doctor or one that is recommended by that doctor so as to retain their ‘entitlement’.
People and doctors whom rort the system hurt others whom are in genuine need substantially and, to a lesser extent, hurt also those whom are members of society in general.
~
I much prefer inquisitorial/continental systems to the adversarial approach to justice; the same has every reason to apply to the scheme as well.
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Graham Howell,
Those criteria are not my own but are taken directly from the ministry of social development website.
These individuals had regular work and it was most certainly not authorised given their emphasis on me – an almost total stranger with no obligation to them – keeping it a secret.
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Several issues:
Firstly – Do not rely on the MSD website as it only the gospel of some official and not necessarilly the law. Discretion exists in all sorts of areas as is interpretation of any peice of law. My own expeience with taking cases as a beneficiary advocate has forced significant reinterpretation by MSD following the case because the judge accepted my interpretation rather than MSD/Crown Laws. (This does not my cleverness but, rather their foolishness)
Secondly: While not saying these folks you have met are honourable in all matters I would not make assupmptions about what is known or not between them and DWI case managers. And yes benefit fraud does exist, I have met some of them… it is form of white collar criminality.
Thirdly: The process of being granted IB or SB is much more than finding a sympathetic doctor. DWI can request an independent opinion by a so-called “designated doctor”. Beyond this DWI does not have to accept the medical opinion of even the designated doctor even if the medical opinions indicate grant the IB. Should the applicant be declined by DWI they need to appeal to a medical Appeal Board (two GPs and an occupational therapist or psychologist typically).
Fourthly: While not specific to IB eligibility there is much evidence of DWI inability to ensure correct take-up. For example, DWI/MSD can assess eligibility to third tier assistance hardship assistance based on known costs such as rent. Yet based on this very knowledge/analysis MSD admit take-up is 80% of those eligibile in the best service centres and as low 30% in the worst. And strangely brown folk are worse off than white ones.
Poverty sucks and the arm of state with specific responsibility to alleiviate it – and note I do not say elinminate – is poor when the hard questions are asked.
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Graham Howell,
So someone whom can, and does, work over 40-hours a week should receive the IB?
While it is true that I do not know that the case workers do not know this, it is also true that, accepting what they have said as the truth, the work they do is under the table.
~
As to poverty, it does not exist in any real sense in this country where even the poorest live comparable to kings of old (the homeless being the obvious exception, but that is an entirely different matter; one of mental disturbance and personal choice). I have many factors impairing my functioning, I had to stop working and my doctor continues to suggest that I stop studying and start sitting on my arse. I survive on substantially less than the unemployment benefit (and I have to pay it all back) and yet I would consider my lifestyle rather extravagant considering im not actually earning any money.
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Hi, I have been off line for a few days, in Rotorua assisting the beneficiary advocacy group there to help local citizens get their full and correct entitlement under the law.
The Social Security Act prescribes and describes various entitlements and criteria. There are some areas where it state assistance “may” be provided and this requires decision makers to use their “discretion”. That is being fair and reasonable, taking into account relevant facts and disregarding irrelevant ones.
I agree whole=heartedly that applicants and those receiving support have legal obligations as do the public servants. If some are breaking the law they need to account whether this is getting assistance they are not entitled to, or not providing assistance when this is the case.
As for poverty. Few,if any New Zealanders are in the same plight of those in Africa and no one has said this. Nevertheless, poverty is recognised in this land of milk and honey and it has real consequences for the state (and us collectively) to say nothing for those trapped in this malise. I also agree some can survive on the benefit. I recall some living under bridges or in wooded areas in our cities stating they can survive on the main benefit alone. Such living is not encouraged or expected of parents and their children and a sign of Jim Bolger’s “Decent Society” is that we all should be able live in warm housing, have security about our living arrangements, have food and that our chidlren are not discriminated against by virtue of the source of income of the parents, and maybe take part in our community (as the Royal Commission into Social Welfare satted in 1976?). Sadly too many New Zealanders are developing a belief that it is okay to discriminate against people on benefits. I would hope Green members with such views would reconsider.
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Katie, Graham and Sapient all make useful points, but since each have their prejudices there is some disagreement when there is very little need for it.
I have worked on three organisations that aimed to help the unemployed. I found if one is selective one can justify all the main arguments.
1. They need to stay on a benefit and deserve all the help they can, versus they don’t want to work and are bludgers.
2. They are unemployable V they are fit for work.
These people in need are only responsible for their part in the situation. If there are no suitable jobs available then even if someone can work is is cruel to blame them for not getting a job.
Also from my personal experience, of being on IB for a year, declaring income from casual work can lead to loss of the benefit and great difficulty in get it back. So the incentive from the benefit system was to do it under the table.
However there are people whose attitude is that they deserve support for everything and have no responsibility to help themselves. These people need tough love to change their attitude. One I failed to help had the attitude the employer should be grateful for any work he did because his father had a job (since gone) where he could featherbed. This person ended up in jail.
Another person I helped had cerebral palsy but a good mind and a determination to work but was considered unemployable because of his disability. He would have made a good work supervisor because of his intelligence and work attitude.
I agree with Catherine that people deserve respect and understanding. This requires suitable training for WINZ employees. Most do not understand the situation and often they only look at situation from their present position. So they have the attitude, ” I was unemployed and got this job so everyone can get job.” What they don’t understand is that, in times of high unemployment, for every unemployed person that gets a job there is one less vacancy for the rest of the unemployed.
E
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E-phophet says “What they don’t understand is that, in times of high unemployment, for every unemployed person that gets a job there is one less vacancy for the rest of the unemployed.”
If anybody really beleived that, there there would never ever be any point for anyone getting a job – cause they would only be taking someone elses.
It’s just like Sapients case of clear benfit fraud – instead of condeming what is clearly a criminal act, Katie comes up with every excuse under the sun to defend it.
Defense of the indefensible does not help the cause ot those who truely need help – it does the opposite.
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I think the point being made was that there is only so many vacancies around at any one point in time, and once a specific vacancy is filled that vacancy no longer exists. Matching applicants for vacancies is complex, and just because a vacnancy is filled does not mean those regsitered as unemployed or even on the UB will drop as the vacancy can be filled by someone in an existing job (and their position is not necessarilly filled) or by someone not registered (for example partner of someone in paid work).
We also have the situation were existing job are falling ()both part-time and full-time) and newly created ones are not picking up the new unemployed.
The rise in registered unemployment and those on UB is going up, and yes some of these people gain paid work. This can be full-time forever, for a specific period, part-time or casual. The job market for most vacancies (and pople on UB) is very much an employers goldmine. They can plunder and the worst plunder quite unfairly.
In a longish career working with the unemployed – and my name can be googled, rather than those with psuedonyms, few genuinely do not want paid work. Many can become dispirited from lack of succes, or have views as to their value as workers hence have been known to say to “no” potential employers.
The power structures that exist around employment and benefits for those without paid work make it easy for accusations re bludgers, or being unfit for work. I’d have thought Green Party members would have an understanding of these structures and refrain from the generalisations, although as with everything specific accusations can be made. After all, there are good employers out there.
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Graham,
I do not generalize all beneficiaries as bludgers, etc., but there are clearly some cases, even many cases, where the beneficiaries are bludgers. These individuals ruin it for all beneficiaries in that not only do they divert funds from the genuinely needy but they allow outsiders to paint all beneficiaries as if they too were bludgers. It is these people that need to be clamped down on and it is these people that we need to make it look like we are clamping down on so as to increase public opinion of beneficiaries. It is not unlike how I think the censorship which kevin was promoting can only hurt the queer community.
It is my belief that if they have been on the benefit for a substantial period of time, living of the work of others, then they should take whatever job comes their way. Even if they hate it. Even if it is picking up dog sh*t. They can then change to a better one if they can find it. There should be no right to turn down work past the first couple of months. If WINZ finds a job you should have to either do it or stop receiving the benefit.
We cannot afford to support people while they hunt for their ideal job, especially if their qualification for such a job is based on a delusion.
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Gosh, if I were able to distinguish between deserving and underserving poor in the NZ context, gosh I might be God or some other such creature. No, let me retract this. I am not God and do not wish to have this ability. I am a citizen, not some one desireous of attcking those without power.
We have too many who believe they have this mandate employed by the state and those commenting on life and they exercise this power with huge “success”.
I guess one reason why our judicial system used to believe in the accused being innocent does not apply to beneficiaries as they now need to prove they are deserving.
This inludes it seems accept whatever damn job is offered whatever the means and purpose, whatever human rights principles may be at stake, whatever care arrangements for family… the list goes on. Attacking those on benefits is so so easy, even if the attacker claims to only attack the undersiving. How does decide. Should we put them in jail or have them beg forgiveness from hose without sin.
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Graham says “Gosh, if I were able to distinguish between deserving and underserving poor in the NZ context,”
If you got a family who are all working full time and claiming the UB or IB or ACC, then you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to distinguish who is deserving and who is undeserving.
Sapient said it well above. When people keep trying to defend the indefensable, it harms rather than benefits their cause.
If people are REALLY concerned for those on a benefits, surely they would be at the ftont of the que to root out those ripping off the system.
It’s appalling that people on average and low wages are paying taxes that go to people who earn much more than them (those who have a benefit AND a full time job).
It’s also disgusting that there are people who make all sorts of excuses for these criminals.
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Graham,
There is the presumption of innocence in the judicial system in almost all instances. The prosecution must show, beyond reasonable doubt, that the individual is deserving of punishment; guilty. Likewise, the applicant should show, beyond reasonable doubt, that they are deserving of the benefit.
The benefit is not a right, it is a privledge. Someone utilising said privledge does have very real costs to society. Thus it is appropriate that an individual should have to prove themselves worthy. This judgement of worthy is not some flimsy moral judgement to be made by god but is to be compared against the written law.
Care for the family has no place being taken into account with the UB as not all on the UB have families that they need to support. As BJ has said, that should be managed through an entirely differnet benefit. Alterations should be made where those alterations are the most effective, not at the bottom of the cliff.
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Photonz1, If benefit fraud, which you describe, is alleged then there is process to deal with that allegation and it is for the courts to determine. I do not support benefit fraud but I do recognise the fact that proof is needed rather than someone said this. Too many false allegations have been made. And I dispair at the the lowness of wages for most in NZ. Did you know the gap between highly paid and lowly paid in NZ ihas grown by some degrees of magnitude since the mid-1980s when we started on th economic is experiment.
Sapient, well side-stepped. The Social Security Act does indeed specify criteria that applicants need to meet. Once that criteria is met the benefit is granted, and it is not then the role of some in society who deem they have to right to then categorise some on benefits as deserving and others as not deserving. Your previous comments have made allegations of benefit fraud and that some on benefits are deserving and others not so. If the state believes Joe or Sara do not meet the criteria in relation to the benefit they are on they have the ability to challenge that individuals eligibility.
Some history, according to Magaret McGlure’s A Civilised Society: A history of Social Security in New Zealand 1898-98, Pension Dept officials shortly after the awarding of the War Pensiuon after the end of WW1 argued against its universal nature for returned soldiers who became unemployed or sick because suspected malingerers could not be denied assistance….. things have mot changed.
More history, between 1938-84 the NZ welfare state was built on the concept of full employment…. and we had very few beneficiaries as a consequence. The then government reneged on this policy, and they have ever since and the numbers on benefits has been a social issue ever since with the victim of this renegging being blamed.
The relationship between the wage gap and renegging of the full employment promise and attacks on beneficiaries are all related.
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Kiaora Graham,
Bearing in mind you didn’t bother to reply to an email I sent you sometime ago for help with a WINZ problem!
I think beneficiary advocate individuals/organisations are in my view applaudable, as they help many as they have me in terms of defending our/their rights according to the law!
In particularly a BIG THUMBS UP to the ones that are courteous enough to reply!
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Freeadverts, apolgies for none response but I have found nothing in my personal email nor that of the Benefit Rights Service (brs@wpc.net.nz)where I work under the name freeadverts. Please send again, attention Graham.
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Sweet az Graham!
Irrespective of it been ancient history & bearing in mind you’re not the only advocate who hasn’t bothered to reply, your apology is accepted!
& of course you won’t find it under freeadverts!
Kia kaha tonu
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