THIS WEEK, Minister for Social Development Louise Upston failed to turn up for the reading of her own Bill in Parliament. While admitting she had 'stuffed up', Upston will not be sanctioned by the Government for failing to keep her appointment. But that's not a tolerance that Upston herself is displaying toward welfare beneficiaries.
The number of sanctions issued in the June quarter this year were up more than 50 percent on the same time a year ago. There were 10,389 sanctions issued in the June quarter, up 3630 or 53.7 percent compared to June 2023. The main reason that beneficiaries were sanctioned was for...not keeping appointments. Apparently, there is one rule for government Ministers and another rule for beneficiaries.
Even more disturbing, there has also been an increase in sanctions applied to benefits, reducing further what people get paid and plunging them into deeper poverty and desperation.
Earlier this year, the Government passed legislation to align benefit increases with inflation, rather than wage growth. Another cost-cutting measure, the change will generate around $700 million for the Government. That money has effectively been pinched out of the pockets of the poor. Little wonder the Treasury warned the Minister of Social Development that the change was likely to plunge a further 7,000 children into poverty. Upston chose to ignore the warning.
Beneficiaries are caught in the pincers of increased harassment from Work and Income while, at the same time, being forced to navigate an ever more draconian bureaucratic system in order to access a benefit that denies people anything resembling even a modest standard of living.
This is coming at a time when unemployment continues to rise. Unemployment was officially 4.3 percent in the March quarter, up from 3.4 percent a year earlier. It's also worth noting that the underutilisation rate, people who cannot find enough paid work, rose from 9.1 to 11.2 percent.
According to most forecasts, a further 40,000 jobs are likely to have disappeared by this time next year.
The supreme irony is that while the Government claims its welfare 'reforms' are all about getting people into jobs, the Government itself is putting people out of work. Its cost-cutting measures have so far resulted in over 4,000 job losses in the public sector, with more to come.
This is what Prime Minister Christopher Luxon calls 'getting the country back on track'. That's the spin. The truth is that the coalition government, facing a cost-of-living crisis, is seeking to protect the interests of the wealthy, via its austerity policies. Its ordinary people who are being forced to carry the economic burden for a crisis that they are not responsible for.
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