Kiwiblog

Colin James writes:

Paula Bennett says “most people” will see last week’s welfare changes as “fair and reasonable”. She is almost certainly right. But is that the limit of her ambition?

A majority doesn’t make something right. Attorney-General Chris Finlayson, a lawyer’s lawyer, ruled that, under the Bill of Rights, Ms Bennett’s changes are not fair: they discriminate on grounds of sex, marital status and family status in applying the work requirement to those on a domestic purposes benefit whose youngest child is six but not to those on a widow’s benefit or a woman alone on the DPB. Her new law does not qualify for exemption from the Bill of Rights either on the ground that it “serves an important and significant objective” or that it is “proportionate to that objective”.

I’ve been meaning to blog on this issue. It is important to understand that what the Attorney0General has said is not that work-testing beneficiaries is against the bill of rights, He has said, that applying the work test to the DPB but not the Widows Benefit is unjustified discrimination.

He’s right. But the solution is not to not implement work testing. It is to indeed apply it to the widow’s benefit and woman alone benefit also.

In fact I would go further. I would abolish those benefits. They were well intentioned benefits from the days when most women did not work, and relied on their husband’s income. Those days are gone.

I would grandfather in existing recipients, and have some sort of temporary allowance(say six to 12 months) for any non working person who relies on their partner’s income, and the partner dies. It should apply to both genders, and after a period of time, then they should be in employment or go onto one of the mainstream benefits.

The widow’s benefit and woman alone benefits are sexist relics of our past. They were necessary when we lived in a society where women were not encouraged to work, but as 50% more women are now going to university than men, those days are long ago.

The Press reports:

Christchurch woman Cassey Quy, 29, quit her job in a flood of tears after three months.

As a single parent looking after her four-year-old son Riley, she gets $357 a week on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB), with some bills being paid by Work and Income.

Struggling to make ends meet, she took a part-time job as a laboratory assistant at Canterbury University in January.

After advice from a Work and Income case worker, Quy believed she would be better off by $100 per week.

However, her part-benefit, part-wage income left her $10 a week worse off.

After the Government changes were announced yesterday, Quy said she was scared she would fall back into debt.

“It doesn’t make sense, working but not earning money,” she said.

“It’s like the Government is punishing us.

I feel very sorry for Ms Quy, as no one should end up worse off by going into work. One of the changes announced yesterday will help a bit, by increasing the threshold before your benefit rebates from $80 a week to$100 a week.

In theory it should be near impossible to be worse off, by taking up work. There are high abatement rates on the main benefit and sometimes the accommodation supplement, but income from Working for Families should not decrease if you replace benefit income with work income – in fact the in work payment should make you better off.

It would have been useful if The Press had asked for and/or printed the details of how much the job she moved to was paying, because this would have allowed verification of the figures. By this I don’t mean that Ms Quy is misrepresenting them – more that she may be missing out on something she is eligible for – such as WFF.

Its frustrating that the story doesn’t detail why the combined income is $100 a week less than what WINZ estimated. Were WINZ wrong, or is some benefit not being fully claimed?

The Herald reports:

A sickness beneficiary with a taxpayer-subsidised state house was instead living in an upmarket Auckland suburb and driving luxury cars worth $250,000.

So was he renting out his state house?

Paul Yu Szeto, also known as Yu Hong Ho, is facing money laundering and methamphetamine charges and is due to appear in the High Court at Auckland this month. …

However, the police have also seized three valuable vehicles from Szeto, including a Porsche Cayenne and two late-model Mercedes Benz, worth a combined total of $250,000.

A sickness beneficiary for nearly a decade, Szeto was living at a Housing New Zealand property in the North Shore suburb of Belmont. When drug detectives searched the state house last July, they found it unoccupied.

Hmmn, he has been on the benefit for a decade yet has managed to “earn” enough money to acquire $250,000 of cars.

I wonder how often WINZ had him tested for eligibility to be on the sickness benefit.

An inflated sense of entitlement is the polite description for Graham Foster. The SST reports:

A beneficiary who was refused a Work and Income grant to pay for a $50 pullover and a $140 pair of shoes has spent two years fighting the government through the courts, costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Now get this. They offered him the money as a loan, but Mr Foster believes it is the duty of hard working taxpayers to buy him clothes on top of his benefit. And this noble man, is willing to spend our money fighting for his entitlement.

Foster, who has been on a sickness benefit since 2004, and an invalid’s benefit since 2007, applied for assistance to buy a pair of shoes and the pullover in August 2007. He submitted a quote of $139.95 for the shoes and $49.95 for the pullover, saying he needed them because of normal wear and tear, and because of the cold weather.

Here is where I get frustrated with the newspaper for not asking and reporting on pertinent questions – namely what is the nature of the disability that has prevented Mr Foster from working for the last six years?

Normally none of our business, but if he is going to take the Govt to court for what he sees as his entitlement, and parade his story in the newspaper, then the question should be asked. Why wasn’t it?

Work and Income agreed to an advance on his $374-a-week benefits, to be repaid at $3 a week.

A less than 1% drop in his disposable income. Incidentally his benefit is equivalent to a before tax salary of $23,684.

Work and Income’s decision was then reviewed twice internally and then by the Social Security Appeal Authority in 2008, which agreed Foster should pay the money back. The authority said a grant could only be given if the clothes were destroyed in a “fire, flood or other disaster or stolen”, or if going without the grant would cause “serious hardship”.

Foster then appealed to the high court in February last year, where Justice Patrick Keane upheld the authority’s decision. Foster made one more unsuccessful application to the high court before going to the Appeal Court, whose decision was released last month.

I wouldn’t begrudge anyone asking for an internal review of a WINZ decision. But Foster has effectively had his refusal to pay back $3 a week reviewed and appealed six times.

Foster told the Star-Times the various judges displayed a lack of understanding of how difficult it is to live on a benefit. That attitude, he said, is reflected by society.

“Beneficiaries are generally considered proliferating bludgers, feeding off the genuine hard-working taxpayer. We get a lot of bad publicity and bad press.”

What a moron – he is himself responsible for exactly the bad publicity and press he complains about. Many people do have it tough on a benefit and they must hate being grouped in with the bludgers. But Foster is as bad a bludger as the Harrises, with what he has cost the taxpayer.

He said legal experts had estimated the cost to the Ministry of Social Development of defending his persistent court action could be anything from $30,000 to $250,000.

He seems proud to have costed us so much money.

Because he had been representing himself, the cases had cost him nothing except “the odd $11 train fare”.

Again I am intrigued by the disability that has left him unable to work for the last six years.  Because it seems he is capable of representing himself in court.

As part of the earlier appeal, the Social Security Appeal Authority questioned items listed in Foster’s domestic budget, including $30 for cellphone, internet and phone line at his shared accommodation. It said: “It is surprising that the appellant can afford to buy the Listener and pay for an internet connection but cannot budget for clothing.”

Now this really pisses me off. You know why? Because I gave up my Listener subscription a couple of years ago as I couldn’t justify the cost. It is not a breach of your human rights to have to prioritise and budget.

Foster has chosen to spend his money on the Listener, a cellphone and the Internet rather than pay for clothing for himself. And when the taxpayer generously offers to loan him the money, saying you only have to pay back $3 a week, he refuses and heads off to court costing up tens of thousands of dollars.

Act MP Dr Muriel Newman said Foster’s court actions had gone too far but were a product of “the system”. “The attitude is, if you do need a jumper and pair of shoes they [the taxpayer] can pay for it. It’s an indictment on the system. People can go to an op shop and get a pair of shoes for $5 and he’s definitely chosen not to take that path.”

Muriel has a decent point also. A $140 pair of shoes is expensive, if not needed for work purposes. Nothing wrong with second hand. It is the culture of entitlement.

Foster said while $3 a week might sound like “chicken feed”, for him to pay it would mean going without something else.

Isn’t the Listener $3 a week? Easy solution I would say!

“The fact is, that beneficiaries live in poverty. When you’re already in debt and you live below the poverty line, it’s exacerbated; $3 to you is trivial, but to me it means that I have to go without something else.”

Foster doesn’t live below the poverty line, unless he has dependants. The relative poverty line is normally 50% of median income. The median weekly income is $538 a week. Foster’s gross income is $454 a week, so he is at 85% of the median income – well above the poverty line.

He may of course has extra costs related to his disability – again it is a pity the newspaper did not ask him for details – then one can form a judgement as to the merits of his case on the full facts.

But well done to the SST for doing the article in the first place – it is a great exposure of the culture of entitlement.

Friday’s aren’t very special when you are on the benefit. I mean you don’t work during the week so for me every day is a Saturday. I’ve got no money spare so I can’t go out and even if I could I’d have to find someone to sit the kiddies. The best we get is watching Sky and grabbing some takeaway or looking on the internet.

I sit at my window glancing down the street watching over mortgaged, over financed people arrive home from work after 7pm and I ask myself, why?

If Fridays are a huge relief then what are they a relief from? Working. If working is so horrible then why do people do so much of it? To buy their over priced homes, to drive in their over priced car so they can send their children to over priced schools in the hope they won’t turn out to be like me.

Then we have low income workers always upset about low pay, but what do they do about it? Join a Union to pay for someone else to go and bargain a higher pay rate so they can afford more debt on more things.

I ask Kiwiblog readers, why? Why do you bother working say more than 9-5pm five days a week. Does it get you anywhere? Does it make you more money than standard hours. Does your employer value your extra contribution? Is your small business making you money and therefore worth the effort, or is it all just a giant waste of time and effort?

If it is and you are disciples to the Friday evening, then why do you do it?

And don’t just answer to pay for people like me. That’s a cop out.

If I wasn’t here you’d be contributing to some other taxpayer funded scheme or whim. Because you are all the same. You all like paying tax else you would vote for parties like ACT that would make me get off my backside, hand me a mentor such as Muriel Bloody Newman and monitor my life like Gestapo.

You feel guilt. You feel as though taxation paid gives you cleansing of that guilt.

It shouldn’t. I watch you arrive home at 7pm on a Friday straight from the office and I keep wondering.

Why?

I blogged last month, re Victoria Stevens:

She managed to wrestle with Police after barking like a dog and swearing in front of the widow of the man her son is accussed of murdering.

So I am forced to wonder, what is the actual nature of the condition that meks her unable to work? After all, it took four police officers to subdue her, and she still manage to kick the court room doors open as they removed her.

I hope someone from MSD/WINZ takes note, and perhaps refers her to an independent doctor for confirmation of this mystery condition that makes her permanently unable to work.

The Dom Post reports today:

Mrs Stevens, 43, confirmed yesterday that she had been contacted by the Social Development Ministry and asked to make an appointment with an accredited doctor to prove she was eligible for a benefit.

She had spent years in an abusive relationship and suffered from arthritis, weak bones and emotional difficulties, she said.

She saw a Hastings doctor yesterday. “I don’t care what people think. It’s emotional and physical. That’s all I’m going to say.”

She would not say how long she had been a beneficiary.

Very impressive that she managed to wrestle four police officers despite her arthritis and weak bones.

Good to see MSD doing the right thing and referring her to an accredited Doctor.

The Dominion Post reports that Victoria Stevens, above, is an Invalid’s Beneficiary.

She managed to wrestle with Police after barking like a dog and swearing in front of the widow of the man her son is accussed of murdering.

So I am forced to wonder, what is the actual nature of the condition that meks her unable to work? After all, it took four police officers to subdue her, and she still manage to kick the court room doors open as they removed her.

I hope someone from MSD/WINZ takes note, and perhaps refers her to an independent doctor for confirmation of this mystery condition that makes her permanently unable to work.

The Press says National’s Benefits Policy is a good start.

It is widely accepted now that long-term dependency on welfare benefits should be avoided where possible, writes The Press in an editorial.

Numberless studies have shown that while any benefit system worth the name must provide a safety net for those in genuine need, staying on a benefit for a long time is not good, by many measures, for society or individuals.

Indeed those who move from welfare to work gain the most from it, yet of course some call it beneficiary bashing.

The policy proposed by National this week, which would alter some of the incentives currently in place, has been, perhaps predictably, denounced by Labour as a return to the policies of the 1990s and an attack on beneficiaries. It is hardly either of those things, although how effective some of the proposals would be and how they would work in practice may be open to question.

Labour would label a ham sandwich as a return to the policies of the 1990s, if National made it. It is their focus group tested slogan to be applied to everything.

The proposal that single parents on a benefit should at some point have an obligation to begin to look for work, if implemented, would not be extreme. Indeed, it would put New Zealand more in the mainstream of welfare thinking around the world.

It is Labour who is at the extremes with their policy.

A later OECD study, addressing the notion that allowing single parents to stay out of paid work benefited their children, reiterated the organisation’s belief that it was in the best interests of all, including single-parent families, to engage in paid work as this was the most effective way to reduce the risk of family poverty, enhance child development and give children the best possible start in life.

So why is Labour against reducing the risk of family poverty, enhancing child development and giving children the best possible start in life?

The test of any policy is, of course, how it would work in practice and this policy still needs to be fleshed out. As with the work tests that Labour has introduced for the unemployment benefit, there would be increased administrative costs with National’s proposals and it is unlikely that any large savings would be made. If, however, it is likely the long-term social results would be beneficial, as the OECD suggests they would, then the proposals deserve consideration rather than kneejerk dismissal.

Indeed.

MacDoctor has an interesting post on sickness benefits. He observes:

It is my experience when I do GP locums, that sickness beneficiaries fall into the same categories. There are genuinely ill people, many of whom will eventually gravitate to invalid benefits. There are genuinely sore people who have long-term recovery problems from old injuries. But about a quarter of beneficiaries are undoubtably “swinging the lead”. They are the lower back pains that flounce into your office and flop into a chair without a single grimace. They are the asthmatics who apparently can go to gym or karate, but wheeze whenever they are near work. They are the depressives who laugh and joke with you as you fill in their form.

The 25% estimate would equate to around 10,000 people.

Now people might ask why doctors give out certificates. MacDoctor explains in full, but the summary is:

The real reason that all GPs blithely sign sickness benefit forms, even though we know they may not be genuine, is that we don’t know that they are not genuine, we only suspect. For most of the suspicious cases, you would need a number of investigations, or a specialist opinion to confirm your suspicion. Your patient will either refuse to go, or make appointments with the specialist and then simply not attend. And there is no way you can force them.

His solution:

The only way this can stop is if you compel sickness beneficiaries to have an annual (or six monthly) medical with an independent doctor, preferably a specialist. This is not only good politics, it is actually good medicine, as specialist review of long-term illness is good clinical practice. Frankly, I don’t see this as being unpopular with sickness beneficiaries, apart from the ones milking the system. The majority of them would love to get better and go back to work, if they could.

National’s policy is that after 12 months on teh sickness benefit you see a designated independent doctor.

A wide range of reactions to National’s Benefits Policy. Taking them in no particular order.

Bll Ralston displys his outraged liberal roots and agrees with Helen Clark that it is beating up on single parents:

Frankly, less than 4000 adhering to the government breast on a more or less permanent basis is extremely few. In an effort to eradicate these last few bludgers, as it sees them, National will spend many millions of dollars in bureaucratic terms policing its new “back to work” system, counselling the DPB recipients and ensuring they really are making a buck for themselves.

Colin Espiner blogged yesterday and calls it Don-lite – watered down from Don Brash, but still different from Labour. He concludes:

There will be the usual objections from beneficiary advocates but National’s welfare policy won’t lose it any votes and may even pick up a few. It will be interesting to see how Labour responds. My pick is it won’t have too much to say.

Simon Collins has a useful look at the party differences:

It [Labour] believes the welfare state exists to empower those who would be powerless without it. For sole parents, the domestic purposes benefit gives them the power to leave unhappy or abusive relationships, and to balance paid work and unpaid parenting in the ratio that suits them and their children.

In contrast National, as John Key put it yesterday, believes in “a genuine safety net in times of need”. It thinks people should be moved on as quickly as possible.

I don’t think National in beliefs or policy encourages people to stay in abusive relationships. The DPB still exists. The difference is, having once moved out, whether or not one is forced to seek work at some stage, or can you stay on it for a decade without ever seeking a part-time job? But Collins is right the views are seen as “empowerment” vs “safety net”.

As his [Key's] policy pointed out, New Zealand’s refusal to work-test sole parents is now out of line with all Western countries except Australia, Britain and Ireland, all of which have signalled moves to start work-testing.

Yes, as with the 90 day trial period policy, this is standard practice in the developed world.

Collins also has quotes from various advocacy groups:

Family First director Bob McCoskrie, an invited guest at the policy launch, said making parents work part-time made sense, but only if implemented with discretion.

“We’d want to make sure that the work requirements are within school hours and not within the school holidays. Otherwise we are going to have a lot of unsupervised kids.”

Case Managers will need some discretion.

Another guest, Mercy Mission founder Barbara Stone, said she agreed with the work requirement “as long as it’s in school time and there is someone at home for the children for the rest of the time”. She said it was hard to get jobs for sole parents, who often had low self-esteem.

The focus should be on work during school hours only. But a part-time initial job may boost the self-esteem and confidence so that a full or near full-time job is easier to obtain once the kid or kids are older. Having a total break from the workforce for 10 years makes it much harder.

Housing Lobby spokeswoman Sue Henry said she was upset that John Key had “regurgitated” the work requirement policy that National implemented in the 1990s. “Quite frankly, latch-key kids and youth gangs and transience are a direct byproduct of taking the stick to beneficiary families [in the 1990s],” she said.

Yes there were no gangs before the 1990s. What a sensible contribution.

But Parenting Council chairwoman Lesley Max said the requirement for sole parents to work 15 hours a week was “consistent with the norm that exists across society as a whole”.

And who would argue with Lesley?

John Armstrong looks at the policy also:

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue – a much paler blue in the case of National’s bits-and-pieces patchwork welfare policy.

Heh that could apply to many National policies!

The latest policy is archetypal John Key. It promises things Labour would happily do itself – such as making the annual inflation-related adjustment of benefit rates a legal obligation on governments, rather than just convention.

Yet in forcing part-time work obligations on some sickness beneficiaries the policy has enough to be identifiably National in origin. But not so much that it frightens centre-ground voters.

Labour and the Greens ritually slammed the policy as an attack on beneficiaries. Some in National’s ranks must think “if only”.

As I said, a sensible combination of carrot and stick.

The Herald editorial is reasonably negative on the policy:

It [solo mothers breeding to get the DPB] is probably as much a myth as the Labour Party’s idea of the average employer. That is to say, there are instances of benefit abuse just as there are rogue employers, but to treat the whole beneficiary class as though they are avoiding paid work would be as foolish as legislating labour arrangements for all. Nevertheless, that is what National proposes to do with sole parents, invalids and sickness beneficiaries.

It is an interesting analogy, but somewhat flawed. Not all sole parents, invalids or sickness beneficiaries are being work tested. Only those DPB recipients whose children are aged over six, and only that small minority of invalids or sickness beneficiaries who have been medically assessed as capable of part-time work. The editorial concedes this later down, so the rhetoric of “treat the whole beneficiary class as though they are avoiding paid work” is somewhat hyperbolic.

For sickness beneficiaries the policy seems fair enough. As the economy has strengthened and the unemployed have faced more stringent job-seeking requirements, the numbers on sickness and invalids benefits have risen suspiciously high. They have needed only a doctor’s note, and even if the doctor assesses them to be capable of part-time work, they have been under no obligation to seek it. National intends to change that.

Some praise amongst the grumpiness.

But there will be cases where the time and cost of taking a low-paid job put added stress on a sole-parent family for little if any financial gain. It is doubtful that society gains from that stress, or that it is worth the trouble the ministry might take to enforce it.

Single mothers with good earning capacity are normally anxious to return to paid work as soon as child care allows. National’s efforts will be felt mainly by those with few skills and poor earning capacity and, frankly, Mr Key ought to have more important things to do. This policy does more to stroke the shibboleths of party supporters than meet any pressing social need. He should return to topics that count.

The policy is pretty standard in the developed world. And having an extra 30,000 or so people in the workforce will help close the gap with Australia.

John Key has just delivered a speech, where he outlines National’s Benefits Policy. A summary is in this press release, and also they have released the full 11 page background paper. Very pleased to see the full papers released.

So the major aspects:

• Paid work is the best way to reduce child poverty
• A part-time work obligation on DPB recipients whose youngest child is six or older
• A part-time work obligation on those (5,600) sickness and invalids beneficiaries who have been assessed as capable of working part-time
• No work for the dole
• Any long-term unemployed (one year or more) will have to reapply for the benefit and undergo a comprehensive work assessment
• Case Managers to be given more options rather than just stopping benefit payments, such as a graduated reduction as an interim sanction
• Increase in the earnings threshold before abatement from $80 a week to $100 a week
• Anyone on the sickness benefit for more than a year will be sent to a designated doctor for an assessment
• CPI adjustments to benefits to be enshrined in law (as it is for Super) rather than merely being convention
• Those who frequently need benefit advances to attend (at taxpayer expense) a budget advisory service to help them manage

Looks to me a very good moderate policy, with the right mixture of carrots and sticks. The left all too often go all carrot and no stick, while the right do all stick and no carrot.

The Dom Post reports on the increasing number of drug and alcohol addicts who claim sickness and invalids benefits.

More than 5270 beneficiaries receive weekly sickness or invalid payments because of drug or alcohol problems. They are not compelled to receive treatment.

The escalating problem is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $1 million a week.

Data released under the Official Information Act show there are 2540 beneficiaries who have drug abuse listed as their primary reason for being unable to work – almost twice the 1297 listed in 2004.

There are also 2739 sickness and invalid beneficiaries who list alcoholism as the reason they cannot work.

And these are only the official numbers. I understand that in fact a much higher proportion are drug or alcohol addicts but they do not list this as their major cause of disability.

A single person on a sickness benefit aged 25 receives $219.25 a week gross. The invalid benefit pays $277.50 a week.

A lot better than being on the dole, and no having to turn up to job interviews.

Wouldn’t the truly compassionate thing to do, be to require drug and alcohol addicts to get treatment, in return for their benefit – rather than pay them to not get better?