National are boasting about the glowing new in-depth report on their welfare reforms. Ill save you 60 pages of reading human beings being referred to asliabilities and nonsensical numeric speculations: apparently, if you harass and intimidate beneficiaries enough, you can save some money in the imagined future. This report isnt even worth the paper it was written on. Wheres the analysis on how much of a real social cost and toll these punitive reforms have taken on families and individuals? Where are the calculations of how much these reforms have costed our increasingly-strained health, justice and education systems and community services? Where is the analysis that shows the clear link between homelessness and benefit sanctions? Paula Bennett needs to come and do her next media release about the virtues of her reforms live to air from the AAAP office, while the phones ring non-stop with tales of imminent eviction notices, homes with no hot water in winter, endless tales of injustice inflicted on cancer patients and mothers with sick bubbas all await on the end of the line. Does Bennett want to answer to the man who got let-go from his job four weeks ago but is facing an eviction notice and repossession of his car because hes still not on a jobseekers because of Work & Income intimidation? Does she want to look him in the face and tell him how much shes saved? These numbers do nothing but shamelessly deny and distract from the truly devastating human face of welfare reform. The cost of which, both economic and social, leaves our whole society at a deficit. This report is nothing but an indictment on the reforms and its an indictment on those who callously wish to operate our safety net like a business. https://national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/06/26/new-in-depth-report-on-welfare-released-today
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 06:02:55 +0000
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