Not so special benefits
The next phase of the Government’s Working For Families assistance package kicks in tomorrow. Sue Bradford has praised a report (offline) by the Wellington People’s Centre showing the negative impact that some of its measures could ultimately have on up to 50,000 of the country’s poorest families and children.
While the Green Party supports the extension of WFF to families in paid work, Sue B has also slammed the way that some of its measures discriminate against beneficiaries. The People’s Centre report shows for instance, how the package will scrap the Special Benefit, confront new applicants with a meaner, less flexible alternative, and expose those already receiving the Special Benefit to the risk of being kicked down onto this less Temporary Assistance Support benefit if they happen - during any one week - to do a few hours work, or receive a dividend in the mail from their local energy company.
Sue has called on the Government to act urgently to either keep the Special Benefit for the meantime - or create a new backup benefit to make sure no one gets made worse off by the Working For Families package.
April 1st, 2006 at 11:53 am
I’m so angry at the way this government has joined in with some of the population who want to bash beneficiaries.
The family support increase for those on $50,000 is more than my benefit.
I’m a single woman living alone, paying a mortgage, (not living in a state house on cheap rent), my carpet is threadbare, my car is that old all I can so is patch it and hope, my house needs many major repairs but I can’t afford to do any of them, and now I see that powers that be are clamping down on us once more.
All I know is that when I was raising a family, the National government gave us nothing, now that I am a beneficiary, this present government wants life on a benefit to be even more difficult and humiliating than it already is.. I’m so angry over this working for families gambit when other have to pay for it. Its just like the benefit cuts Shipley made in the early nineties to bail out the BNZ
At least Sue Bradford is still there. I’ll be voting green forever. Once a Labour stalwart, now a Green convert.
Kathleen Himiona
April 1st, 2006 at 11:18 pm
More incentives for white and brown trash to have children to vote for our beloved Labour and Greens.
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:41 pm
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April 3rd, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Yes. Katiii, such a hard life. Own your own home, car, have access to the internet, all at the taxpayer’s expense. The reason you can’t get a job? The Government’s policies which stop individuals making contracts on their own terms, taxes which inhibit job growth.
Realise that when your cheque comes, that’s taken out of my salary. You say being a beneficiary is humiliating. Obviously not humiliating enough - in the last election people voted for a policy that made 350,000 more of us beneficiaries. The government loots the hardworkers, and the rest mooch off them.
April 4th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
This is what National has also been complaining about the extenstion of the welfare state to the middle class in New Zealand.
Labour with the extenstion of the WFF package and interest free student loans now means young single people (usually on lower wages) and beneficaries are losing out, while people who are middle class or upper middle class with families who don’t really need the support (you can earn up to $140,000 a year and still qualify) are getting all the benefits or interest free loans.
These were out and out bribes to get middle New Zealand espically women to vote Labour.
It worked - but what I couldn’t understand was all the other people who voted Labour.
Either they didn’t understand the impact of these policies were a transfer of money from them to middle class New Zealand or were duped by Labour lies during the election campaign.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Mark: people are stupid. Get with it.
April 4th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
hmm why did people vote Labour? Maybe they were scared of what Brash would do to NZ. Maybe they didn’t appreciate his racism. Or maybe, as like me, they found his climate change denial completely abhorant.
April 4th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
They may have found it abhorrent. Not sure about abhorant.
April 5th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Compare the two policies.
One, by extending WFF to SOMEWHAT reduce the confiscatory taxes and benefit reductions that hammer people as their earnings pass through $50-70 K, in particular families with one earner and 2 kids, makes the playing field a little more level, without shifting even more money to the folks on over $100K and even MORE money to those on half-a-mil$.
The other, by simply slapping a blanket reduction on taxes, benefits the wealthy most. It also would provide greater debt for my children and perhaps a more rapidly rising tide as the climate change deniers seemed to have a solid grip on that party.
The issue is, as always, more complex that bumper sticker boffins would like us to think.
respectfully
BJ
April 5th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
The false premise there is that egalitarianism is for some bizarre reason a good principle.