welfare

Benefit reforms trigger surge in DPB births?

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:58 am, March 25th, 2013 - 120 comments

National, the party of beneficiary bashing that has lead a crusade against parents on the DBP, appears to have triggered a surge of new births to DPB parents.

ImperatorFish: Bennett announces drought relief get-tough measures

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:56 pm, March 7th, 2013 - 9 comments

Will farmers be required to take mandatory drug tests, show evidence of looking for alternate sources of income and have their drought relief money docked if they fail to answer phone calls from Work and Income?

Sick

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 4:21 pm, January 23rd, 2013 - 90 comments

Bill English’s priority in 2013 will be to “bed in” welfare reforms. Because that’s where the big fiscal savings lie. He’s hoping to cut 44,000 beneficiaries and save $1.6 billion by 2016-17.  Which would be fantastic if this was a jobs government focussed on employment growth and those 44,000 were going into decent paying jobs. […]

Killing our kids

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:42 am, December 10th, 2012 - 81 comments

Over at Stuff Ben Heather is reporting on the Children’s Social Health Monitor and the chilling fact that, in the last five years, 600 Kiwi children have died from poverty related causes.

Tax fraud, benefit fraud, proportional response

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:50 am, October 22nd, 2012 - 38 comments

A Victoria University study shows that tax evasion is costing the country at least 25 times what welfare fraud is costing, while welfare fraud is punished more harshly in court.

Local Bodies: Our Vulnerable Less Safe Under National

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 1:25 pm, October 16th, 2012 - 7 comments

Dave Kennedy (bsprout) at Local Bodies writes on crime statistics and the vulnerable in our society.

National Day of action against Bennett’s welfare reforms

Written By: karol - Date published: 7:00 am, October 5th, 2012 - 128 comments

Today there have been protests around NZ, against Paula Bennett’s punitive welfare reforms.

Updates: Include ODT article link and extract, photos of Henderson protest, and links to several news articles.

‘Children of the Poor’ 1934 – 2012: Social Security for the Future?

Written By: karol - Date published: 11:04 am, September 30th, 2012 - 176 comments

Split Enz once sang, “History Never Repeats”…  Or does it?  Destructive prejudices separating  ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor have been around a very long time. When the likes of Paula Bennett pander to such ill-informed vindictiveness with punitive social welfare reforms, they will damage large numbers of children – our future citizens.

Fight the ‘War on the Poor’: Opposing Bennett’s welfare reforms.

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:45 am, September 21st, 2012 - 52 comments

Grant Robertson, in the House yesterday speaking on Paula Bennett’s “Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill” – First Reading, gave an impassioned speech. He said many some great points about social obligations and a mutually beneficial social contract (between the state and beneficiaries. However, will the Labour Party’s policies match up to the rhetoric?

$1 million well spent?

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 12:16 pm, September 13th, 2012 - 22 comments

So the current people on benefits will cost $78 billion over the course of their lifetime. To get this useless $78 billion factoid, National have given an Australian company $1 million of our money – next year, they’ll do it again, to see if the number has changed any. What use is this number? It’s not good for budgeting and doesn’t seem to actually tell us anything useful – so why is the government wasting money while telling us times are tight?

On good and bad welfare

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:31 am, September 12th, 2012 - 248 comments

So the government is announcing the “lifetime cost” of social welfare payments today to soften the ground for cracking down on beneficiaries.

By coincidence they’re also in the process of rushing through changes to the emissions trading scheme that will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in corporate welfare.

Cone of Silence?

Written By: Bill - Date published: 1:09 pm, September 3rd, 2012 - 101 comments

A couple of weeks back I wrote a post offering Shearer, Robertson or Pagani an opportunity to justify their (more or less) blanket attack on beneficiaries. At the time, I didn’t realise Pagani had been banned from ‘the standard’ for (from memory) being an idiot . So, okay – he’s not able to respond via […]

To the Back Teeth. And Beyond

Written By: Bill - Date published: 9:44 am, August 17th, 2012 - 141 comments

Pagani wrote it. Robertson cleared it. And Shearer uttered it. To summarise; those living by sickness entitlements are probably dodgy b’stards. Nice. Before I go on, I should be clear that this post isn’t some insightful fiction. This is the reality of getting by with a sickness benefit.

NRT: Confirmed: Bennett made it up

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:48 am, July 13th, 2012 - 10 comments

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett caused outrage when she suggested somehow banning child abusers from having children. The suspicion at the time was that this was a desperate and cynical attempt to distract the public from the  deeply unpopular plans to increase class sizes.Now, thanks to FYI, the public OIA site, that interpretation looks to be the case.