by frog
Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett was quick to jump on the case of unemployment beneficiary Benjamin Easton to try to justify her proposal to cancel the benefits of people who have been on the dole for a year and make them reapply:
She would not comment on what that would involve in his specific case, but said his views indicated he was in the category of beneficiaries to be targeted under a new regime of work tests due this year.
“It’s exactly the type of person that our welfare changes are meant to identify and actually move off a benefit and into work. There will be obligations on people like him that they must meet.”
Easton comes across as a bit of a plonker. Routing buses through Manners Mall, which he says he’s on the dole to campaign against, is necessary for improving the efficiency and reliability of bus operations in central Wellington. And who in their right mind would tell the media that they were on the dole but not looking for work because they were too busy running a campaign?
But nothing about Easton’s case demonstrates any need to change the work test requirements for unemployment beneficiaries. There are already strict obligations on unemployment beneficiaries to look for work. The fact that Easton was told to front up to Work and Income within 48 hours of his boasting of being on the dole but not looking for work shows the current rules are robust. His benefit has now been stopped after he admitted to Work and Income he hasn’t been to a single job interview in the three years he’s been on the benefit and has no intention of looking for a job.
All Bennett needs to do is to get her Ministry to apply the existing rules properly to ensure unemployment beneficiaries who are not making any effort to find work are picked up early. Adding another layer of bureaucracy after someone has been on the dole for a year will likely be counterproductive, because Work and Income staff will spend more time processing paperwork and less time getting beneficiaries into work.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Featured by frog on Fri, February 26th, 2010
Tags: Benjamin Easton, dole, Paula Bennett, unemployment benefit, Work and Income
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Especially with such an honest citizen to the point of his own demise.
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Completely valid point Toad,
The chap has commented on Kiwiblog and said he didn’t lie? How could this not be picked up. It’s strange.
However I know more than one sickness beneficiary that is more than capable of working and is receiving an allowance for that. They are completely honest on their forms too and find it amusing they keep getting it..
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Nothing in the work test procedures needs to be changed. However, the implementation needs some addressing.
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Slash the dole after six months and give people a job planting native trees.
I’d be happy to pay the extra tax. Get’s people involved in the community and work, and we all get more native trees.
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It’s a fine idea to have someone contributing to the community in a positive way while they are on the dole while actively searching for jobs. Just a matter of working out that balance. It wouldn’t cost anymore but would make NZ a nicer place
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Not quite sure about the minimum wage bit, but I think we’re close on this one.
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With a bit of tinkering around the edges, (around money etc) this provides a structure to an unemployed persons day, hopefully gives them opportunities to learn, and has to be incorporated with a way to help them find other jobsand benefits the community I think we have an all around winner here.
Greens should put it in the ballot! Would get past first reading all around!
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I could grow the trees for you (I’ve a native plants nursery), supervise and design (it’s my business, after all)and plant them (I’m a fit bugg*r).
However, while the sentiment expressed by Bluepeter sounds good, his use of the expression ‘slash the dole’ reveals his true intent, perhaps.
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If people are out in the wops planting trees, wouldn’t it reduce the amount of time they can spend looking for a real job? What if they live somewhere that is inappropriate for planting trees, like the middle of a city? Would they be forced to move?
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Mind you … I’ve supervised teams of barely-willing tree-planters before.
Not always pretty.
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I’ve already said I’m happy to pay more to get people engaged, off welfare, and to have more trees.
I’m not happy to pay more for people to sit around doing nothing. If that status quo is to continue, then I’ll continue to vote for paying less tax. It’s a waste of money and does nobody any good.
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City beautification programs.
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rimu – planting trees isn’t a real job?
Cities are the places that needs trees the most.
Second only to farms.
After the 70% or so of our country that has had it’s trees razed.
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Combine it with Morgan’s guaranteed minimum income, and you’d have a winner.
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pick me, pick me
- altho’, like Toad, I’m not much chop on the end of a shovel, but I can identify most of the trees & know which ones grow the tallest, etc (handy for working out what to plant near overhead wires, etc, lol).
I’d be a dab hand at organising the recalcitrant unemployed teens, too.
I’d love to be re-located by WINZ for a part-time job… Southland sounds like a place full of political potential, lol, as well as some scenery of note.
Just the small problem of a permanent, debilitating, degenerating and incurable disease process, but I’m sure BP can think of a work regime that would allow me to exercise my wit, for the 4-5 hours a day I get pain-free (from meds), on the accumulated tree-planting youth of the nation.
For the record, as I became more disabled, I was frequently turned down for jobs because I have an employment history that shows my worsening state of health, which all potential employers can access since I was employed in the public service at the time I first became disabled.
This kind of ‘silent discrimination’ by employers is the reason why the long-term disabled are finding it difficult to get employment in these recessionary days – especially when so many able-bodied folk have lost jobs in all sectors of the economy in recent months.
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I’m not talking about the genuinely ill, I’m talking about the genuinely work shy.
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It doesn’t have to be trees if people can’t fill that role, there are many activities that can take place that benefit local communities.
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Yep ok, let’s say the govt could find useful things for unemployed people to be forced to do. But while they’re doing that, they won’t be able to look for a job, will they?
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They’ll be in one. The demand for this work is endless.
I see no reason why such a job could not be flexible enough to allow for a few hours per week hunting for other jobs. It’s designed as a step up, more so that leaving people disengaged and festering on the dole long term.
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So, Peter, to clarify …’Work for the Dole’, right?
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Katie – talk about yer ‘recalcitrants’ … my best was ending up as sole ‘manager’ for a chapter of Mangu Kaha, directed to cut gorse on a wetland reserve I was responsible for….the stories I couldn’t possibly tell…
small teams of prisoners…wild creatures with sweat-collecting face-jewellery ‘doing Community Service’…
lost Gothic souls in heat-attracting black on sweltering summer days …good blokes who made mistakes estimating their alcohol intake and suitability to drive … thieves (still waiting for my loppers back you b*stard!)…soft-handed Danes wanting ‘outdoor experience in the natural world of New Zealand’, gentle, glove-wearing Japanese girls in fashion work-clothes …
You’d think I’d've developed the patience of a saint by now.
But no.
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Kinda…
But before you start flapping, you might want to consider Morgan’s guaranteed minimum income at the same time. You can exist (just) without working, but if you want a little more, then planting trees – or such-like- is on offer.
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“I’m talking about the genuinely work shy.”
Okay. How will you move the genuinely work shy off an income that they can exist on (Morgan’s) to one where they have to work?
Are you a miracle worker?
They’re more likely to be interested in other sorts of money-making, I’d have thought.
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BP, I don’t know why you keep calling it “Morgan’s” guaranteed minimum income. Gareth Morgan is a recent convert, from what I can see. It has been in Green Party policy most, if not all, of the last 10 years:
Perhaps you should be calling it Sue Bradford’s guaranteed minimum income, or Catherine Delahunty’s guaranteed minimum income.
Somehow I suspect you won’t.
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We will though Toad.
“Sue’n'Cat’s Green GMI”.
Yeah!
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‘fly –
lolz. “Oh, the sights I have seen, the places I have been..”
Once worked with a friendly goth journo.
Dark, long-sleeved shirts de rigeur, along with the neon sun-tan. Quite pretty, with the long hair, but ultimately not such a great writer when the pressure went on. Tended to just slip off & get stoned in the trees….
TOPS, STEPS, and other various acronyms I’ve long forgotten, never did much for the skills of my generation & I doubt they’d impress the current crop, who are far more technologically-geared than my high-school cohort ever were. Half of them wouldn’t know which way up a shovel is implemented
It’s rofl amusing to think that reviving this tired old plan is the best Nat’s can come up with.
Meanwhile, I know of young people who are going outside the system to create community gardens, teaching people how to grow food to feed themselves; no government scheme, just a compassionate concern for skill-sharing of a useful and sustainable nature.
Didn’t need an MP to tell them they had to do it, in fact they are the sort who’ve been keen to give Ministers advice on sustainable and organic agriculture and horticulture. If the elders don’t listen, the young’uns will just turn their backs and work with those who are ready to hear their ideas.
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Toad,
The proposed versions are actually quite different. Calling it ‘Morgan’s’ is thus relatively correct as a means of specifying the type. Though, I would suggest that “Friedman’s citizens divided” is a better designation.
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Sapient, the Greens don’t have a proposed “version”. That would require the level of analysis that you can only get if you are in Government and have the resources of Treasury and MSD to rely on. Maybe if you have the resources of Gareth Morgan you can manage it too.
Anyway, the Greens support Morgan getting the issue back in the public spotlight. I wasn’t trying to put him down – just suggesting that others have been raising the issue long before he did.
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Toad,
The party has ideals, that necessarily involves the exclusion of several possibilities; thus it creates a subset of possibilities that it may be willing to accept.
Last time I checked the party was not particularly fond of a flat tax, many members being fundamentally opposed.
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Sapient, I haven’t looked at the guaranteed minimum income issue in detail for some time (like about 7 years).
When I last looked at it a flat tax would work fine, as long as there were a (lower) guaranteed minimum income/UBI paid in respect of dependent children.
That is the only fair way I can see to get rid of the gentrification of the poverty trap that has been caused by Working for Families. You may recall – no, just realised you are way too young Sapient, but research will tell you – that WFF was originally a Roger Douglas initiative back in the ’80s (originally called “Family Care”.
All subsequent governments (National and Labour) have done is fiddle with it, but what is in place is still the legacy of Roger the Pigfarmer.
Like Jenny Shipley’s Accommodation Supplement, which effectively subsidises residential landlords, these things are very hard to get rid of once they are in place, without subjecting many people to severe hardship.
A UBI/guaranteed minimum income may be a way of achieving that.
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Toad,
Yes, the political history of this country is one of my great weaknesses when it comes to debate. I do not consider the source to be of importance and so, in lieu of research, I am willing to accept your word here.
I support a form of UBI which is allocated on a per-hour-worked basis up to about half the average work hours. This incentivises work, unlike the concepts of both the left and the right on the matter. This is one of the few forms which actually does offer an escape from the poverty trap; simply giving them money does naught in the positive and potentially much in the negative.
The support of children can be done in a number of ways, but I would not favour an increased allocation; that is simply irrational and, particuarly, dysgenic. Their are far better approaches.
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Then the labour (ACT in drag) under Roger Douglas came into power (we were all expecting a socialist left government) and the scheme would be continued or improved.
But no the PEP schemes were scraped and we all had to sign on the dole.
I think work schemes are good if they are managed well and even Blue Peter agrees with this. But having said that if the capitalist government want people to be enthusiastic about getting a ‘real’ job then they are going to have to support campaigns to lift the hourly rate, otherwise there is no incentive.
Can you see National doing that?
Also work schemes get people in a working structure and you meet a few good mates (and a few interesting ones) and that has to be a plus for people suffering depression.
The Workers Party have a good article ‘Abolish GST’ I agree it’s not doing the lower income earners any favours at all.
In Brittain you don’t pay VAT on fruit, vegitables and meat only processed food.
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Of course, if there was a (more costly still) training component the chances of a job would be higher, but this government is not going to choose this option while it prefers to cut AE and end TIA to save money.
Given the government is not going to risk the money for reducing the top rate of tax by spending it on job creation, they certainly do not intend to increase the cost of holding a pool of unemployed. No, they will live with it, hold down the financial costs of doing so and bash the unemployed to score political points.
If the central theme of the government is the enrichment of a few, it needs an issue where it can call on the majority of working people to side with them against a minority (those on benefits). The technique is an old one.
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Perhaps the work for the dole scheme could be based on more of student job search type design, where you are actually matched with a job in your area of interest/experitse and its optional. Dont forget that thousands of jobless would prefer to be in work than not. Planting carbon offsets is certainly a start, so too could be a workforce made up out of keen unemployed building apprentices, creating a task force to help with the leaky homes issue… While we are there, how about home insulation..
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SPC yes the technique is a very old one it’s known to most of us as ‘divide and conquer’and that is exactly what they are doing.
Everyone needs to get wise to this.
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Salsy-
I’d like to think that an SJS model – supplying workers with skills approprite to the job advertised – could happen, but my experience of the labour/unemployed section of WINZ/MSD doesn’t give me a lot of hope.
Their main thrust is to get people into the lowest paid job that gives more than the benefit that can be found, in order to tick a box on their through-put charts. Only part of the public service where the efforts they make are in an inverse ratio to the actual purpose of their work. (ie: supporting citizens who are in need).
Actually, more low-paid public servants in MSD/Winz frontline positions than anywhere else in the public service, too, and under very punitive conditions of employment compared to other sectors.
SPC, Drak -
Totally agree with you there, the point of this thrust by the Nat’s is to rally the ‘mainstream’ around a common point, to stop them from seeing what is being done systemically throughout the new tax policies.
The last round of major beneficary bashing culminated in the ‘burn Shipley, burn’ riots in Queen St, Auckland and elsewhere, in the mid-90′s.
I wonder how Paula feels about having her face on a huge papier-mache puppet, to be paraded by unemployed workers, and then ritually destroyed in the middle of Westfield Mall in Henderson? Or maybe a nice big smiley John Key to parade through Remuera and St Heliers, flinging out counterfeit money and contradicting himself to journalists, before falling in the water at Mission Bay?
This, too, could come to pass…
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Or a Bill English mannequin, severed at the waist and taken, top half to Wellington, bottom half to Dipton.
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‘fly – you are on form today.
I’ve just been censored (not banned I hope) at Kiwiblog for a making a comment on comment # 666666 there. Seems that Satan is on their side.
For those who don’t go to KB (and I know it is hard to stomach) the author of comment 666666 there was a Sarah Palin groupie who calls himself “Redbaiter”. May his Devil be with him.
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Katie; The WP has a very good explaination as to how and why benificiary bashing occurs during economic downturns.
There is a critical point in which the tax dollars coming from tax on workers into the government coffers for social servises cannot meet the demand of rising unemployment so some of it then has to come out of tax from capital.
National would then have to break their promise giving their mates tax cuts, the employing class gets nasty and as a consequense people get pushed into very low paid work.
The Workers Party analysis of the capitalist system is very accurate and should not be ignored, however they have a Marxist agenda and I am just a bit skeptic about the grand Marxist solution.
I think that there are other alternatives. There has to be, capitalism is destroying the planet.
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Universal Basic Income or Citizens Income has a very strong following in Europe, and it a guaranteed ncome, with a flat tax on other income. Community involvement can be sustained, along with paid work, depending on the attitude of the citizen. Interstingly, Mr Easton was undertaking siginificant community activities, and not work shy, thus in some senses could be seen as regarding his UB as a CI. Obviously before his times from what the law permits.
I could go on and on about the failure of work for the dole schemes from the perspective of the conscript to the work, the “employer” and the receiver of the services being provided. It does not lift the conscript out of poverty, and often takes work from otherwise employed people, and it also slows down the creation of “real work: as the “employers” use the work for dole conscripts rather than employ. Tis why Treasury opposed Peter McCardle’s sugestion to Ruth and Juenny back in 1991. Check out the USA Dept General Accounting Office for a less politically biased set of reports.
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