by frog
No, that’s not my headline. The dubious honour for this beneficiary bashing excuse for journalism belongs to the Southland Times, which revealed (shock, horror):
Figures obtained under the Official Information Act show 100 people who claim sickness-related and invalids benefits in the Queenstown-Lakes and Southland regions cite drug or alcohol abuse as a reason for being unable to work.
Hang on a minute! It is not beneficiaries who cite alcohol or drug issues as being the reason they cannot work. It is medical practitioners, who have diagnosed them with an illness, in these cases substance dependency, and certified to Work and Income that they are unable to work because of it.
Put in the context of the total muster of sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries in Work and Income’s Southern Region, who numbered 10,286 in December last year, those on benefit because of alcohol or drug dependency are less that 1% of the total. Hardly an issue that warrants sensational banner headlines, I would have thought.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, who set the scene for stigmatising beneficiaries in this manner, was quick to wade in again by spinning the Government’s policy of work-testing sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries:
But the Government was determined to break the cycle of welfare dependency and “shifting the focus to what people can do, not what they can’t, is an important part of that”.
No amount of work-testing is going to get people who cannot work because of alcohol or drug dependency back into the workforce. All that will do is make them feel harassed and more likely to sink deeper into the faux refuge of their dependency.
What will help them get back into work is better and faster access to treatment and rehabilitation programmes. But in response to government health funding restraints, District Health Boards are cutting back on those.
Hat Tip: greenfly in the comments thread
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Health & Wellbeing by frog on Fri, March 19th, 2010
Tags: alcohol, alcohol and drug dependency, alcohol and drug rehabilitation, benefits, drugs, health funding, invalids benefit, Paula Bennett, sickness benefit, Southland Times
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Who does the government think would employ people who are dependent on drugs or alcohol? OSH rules alone would be enough to put most employers off.
Trevor.
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Isn’t there a shortage of truck drivers?
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Just like some schools are getting with by implementing National Standards (telling many of their five year olds that they are already failing) I have decided to get with the spirit of the beneficiary initiatives. I have put together a simple pack, to be given to all those on benefits, containing a device that will pull up their socks and a pile of job applications. It’s a wonder it hasn’t been thought of before.
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Please add the word “it” in the post above. I hate when I make mistakes, however minor.
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But certainly if she were medically able to drive, it seems extremely remiss and very poor in terms of cost-effectiveness for WINZ not to fund her to both get a licence and purchase a motor vehicle so she could get work.
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By far the best thing to do is allow these people to stay on the dole…
The Reserve Bank’s legislated goal is to keep inflation low and they do this by contracting the money supply whenever unemployment looks like it is heading below 3%, as full employment is a big inflationary pressure… So if 3% of the people are going to be unemployed all the time and well under 1% are the long term unemployed and/or substance dependent shouldn’t we give the jobs to the sober people who want them..?
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just casually…is one of their conditions of sickness benefit to stop taking these products…or at least go to a location where their intake is regulated?
I understand perfectly if they genuinely have addiction but, are they taking actual steps other than getting the little certificate form from their doctor to treat it?
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@stephensmikm 3:46 PM
No, it is not. And nor should it be. If conditions like that were attached to sickness and invalid’s benefits, people would be deprived of income, and therefore commit (more) crimes to obtain the income to sustain their dependency.
Your question, stephensmikm, makes a false presumption that people who are alcohol drug dependent respond to financial disincentives to their drug and alcohol abuse.
They don’t. They are totally controlled by their dependency. You have to address the dependency itself to achieve rehabilitation – depriving them of income will only push them further into their dependency, and risk the safety of others.
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thanks I was wondering about that but at least in my personal opinion they should be required to undertake forms of rehabilitate treatment in areas where such activity can be done if their illness is to an extent they can no longer work in a financial capacity otherwise they will not be able to overcome their addictions, it maybe a deprivation of civil liberty but at the worth of the person and accordingly on the tax payers dollar – afterall if they’ve been a functional member of society they should be entitled to a long term no fee stay to restore them to their proper health
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Yeah, stephensmikm, but if the sanction is cutting off their benefits, then they are just going to do thefts, burglaries, muggings (or worse crimes) to gain the financial support for their dependency.
And if they get charged and convicted for those activities, they get banged up in prison – again at the taxpayer’s expense. From a fiscal perspective, it is less cost to the state to have someone on benefit for 10 years than to have them in prison for one.
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toad,
Makes a big assumption that there is going to be enough tax payers to fund the state keeping all the people on benefits.
Who will pay the taxes when all are on a benefit?
Begs the question – Is being on a benefit addictive?
If so how many people can the state afford to have on a benefit at any one time before it runs out of tax payers?
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@Gerrit:
Makes an even bigger assumption that there is going to be enough tax payers to fund the state keeping all the people in prison who are denied benefits and consequentially resort to crime.
Following your reasoning, maybe we should just put them all before a firing squad. No fiscal problem anymore!
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Ha, that’s actually a pretty good point, as on a point raised by ex-MP Ron Mark in regards to universal student allowance ‘people sit at home playing xbox getting 300 a week’ lol
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toad,
Now you are talking!!
Seriously, I guess it does not enter into your thought that there may come a time when there is not enough fiscal reserves to pay the benefits.
There will come a time when the well runs dry (peak benefits 0 like peak oil!!).
Looking forward to that day of anarchy!!
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Fortunately no one is forecasting numbers on benefits to keep increasing – not even under National.
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Gerrit, peak oil is likely to greatly increase employment in developed countries…
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WHO WILL PAY THE TAXES?
I like Scarlets’ remark ‘Isn’t there a shortage of Truck drivers?’ Has he actually read the above post? Alcoholics, drunks, truck drivers? never mind.
Since the advent of the industrial revolution writers have often speculated on the amount of wealth and surplus value that mechanisation can produce (eg. pre revolution one potter took half an hour to spin one pot, the industrial slip method will produce up to 50+ in that time.)
Applying this principle across the board optimists have predicted that about 80% of the population would be out of work. (Aldous Huxley, Marx)
Woudd that 80% be enjoying the fruits of industrial & technological mass production?
As it stands today paradoxically NO!!! Why?
Becauce the 80% don’t own the means of production so ask yourself. Where does all this wealth go?
So when Garrit asks who is going to pay the Taxes, well I have to laugh!!!!!
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Drakula –
as long as Banks like ANZ get away with not paying $2billion in taxes, anything mere employees suck from the sytem when the wheels fall off the wagon is negligable….
IRD would do better to tighten up the corporate tax loopholes, and worry less about how individual taxpayers are handling their income tax – and beneficiaries are only a fraction of what is paid out in Superannuation, so just wait until Key gets his beady eyes on the payout to his parents’ generation, and decides that there’s savings to be made on healthy old people who could still be working & supporting themselves.
Beating up on people who are too incapacitated to look after themselves is just a short step away from the kind of eugenics practised by the National Socialist Party in Germany in the ’30′s (better known as the Nazi’s), who first put social policy limits on who could reasonably expect to live out their natural lifespan. (They began by targeting the intellectually disabled, before moving on to gypsys (Roma), homosexuals, jews and the physically disabled.)
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Gosh, interesting array of comments. I identify the need for harm-minimisatuion programmes for those with addiction issues. Criminalising or seeing them as undeserving of income is a recipe for stolen liquer or home-grown P..
I also identify the need for a Financial Transaction Tax so as to reduce the need for consumption and income taxes.
I also identify an opportunity for a Universal Baisc Income/Citizens Income as we enter the stage of 80% of folk not in paid-employment.
And on a further extention of themes; micro economic theory divides our time between paid employment and leisure, with home production hours caught in the later…thereby mimicing macro-economic GDP measures which ignore voluntary effort. Wierd. Is it the thoery that is wrong or those who act as if it is true.
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