PAYING THE PRICE FOR JACINDA ARDERN'S AUSTERITY POLICIES

The Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, has claimed that desperate folk lining up outside the offices of Manurewa Work and Income at two o'clock in the morning was a publicity stunt. The reality though is that this is not an isolated incident. The queues have been growing longer as the weeks and months have gone by. Meanwhile, the Labour-NZ First government sits on a $7 billion surplus and has refused to increase core benefits.

THE PHOTOS OF ONE HUNDRED beneficiaries lining up at the offices of Manurewa Work and Income at 2am on a cold and wet Thursday morning are not photos that will feature in any promotional material of this Labour-New Zealand First Government. There's little evidence here of Finance Minister Grant Robertson's 'shared prosperity' or even of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's society modelled on 'kindness'.

Standing in the pouring rain and hoping like hell to get an immediate hardship grant to, at least, alleviate their economic distress, these Auckland beneficiaries provide more stark evidence of a society where the depth of poverty continues to deepen and the chasm of inequality continues to widen. These beneficiaries make a mockery of Ardern's often-repeated election campaign declaration that tackling poverty would be a priority of any government she led.

But the brutal reality of desperate people lining up for help at two in the morning appears to have left this 'progressive' Labour-led government unmoved. Outrageously Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni has suggested that the queue was a publicity stunt, stage managed by Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP).

In a press statement Sepuloni has commented:

"..I am advised that the long queues seen at Manurewa are the result of benefit recipients being encouraged by their advocates to all congregate at the same time on Thursdays.

"The queues can be avoided if AAAP works with MSD to deal with these cases in an orderly way across the week, rather than creating a bottleneck that forces everyone to be there at once in the rain"

Ricardo Menendez of Auckland Action Against Poverty.

What Sepuloni ignores is that queues have been forming for some time now and have only been growing longer as the weeks and months have gone by. As AAAP's Ricardo Menedez says, the queues are the result of desperate economic hardship. AAAP are simply available to help beneficiaries any way they can.

It was only two months ago that the Labour-led government declined most of the recommendations of its own welfare working group, which included lifting the sanctions regime and increasing core benefits by 47 percent. The working group also said that its recommendations needed to be implemented urgently, such was the level of economic distress in the community.

At the time Ricardo Menendez commented : "“We are particularly disappointed to see no changes to baseline benefit levels, considering these could have had a larger impact on reducing the number of people needing to go to Work and Income for emergency assistance.'

We should also remind ourselves that while folk suffer, this 'progressive' Labour-NZ First Government, and loyally backed by the Green Party, is sitting on a $7 billion surplus. And, as business commentator Bernard Hickey has observed, it also "has net debt so low that even Moody's says we could almost double it and keep our AAA rating.'

Despite all Jacinda Ardern's boasting about 'change' and 'transformation' what we are witnessing outside the offices of Manurewa Work and Income is something that we have become all too familiar with - the working class paying the price for the government's austerity policies.