Wheelers Corner 24, May 4th 2019Government makes a belated move to assist the poor...yeah right
"The welfare expert advisory group says too many people are leading desperate lives with seriously inadequate incomes - and that's causing toxic levels of stress. It’s made 42 recommendations, but the government says it can’t implement them all at once". Checkpoint RNZ. Tell me something new!!!
This from No Right Turn: Still the best blog in my neck of the woods:
If you've ever had to interact with New Zealand's welfare system,
then you'll know that its a punitive nightmare. Beneficiaries are kept
on benefits deliberately set at below starvation levels, with punitive
clawbacks preventing them from supplementing their income or moving into
the workforce via part-time work. Meanwhile, a Victorian definition of
relationships that is inconsistent with all other law on the topic (and
internally inconsistent in whatever way benefits WINZ) turns WINZ into a
Saudi-style morality police snooping on the sex lives of its victims.
All to satisfy the cruelty and viciousness of the rich, or those who
have a little and lack the imagination to consider that they or their
families might ever suffer misfortune (or simply be a student).
The Greens demand an inquiry into this punitive system as the price of
support for a Labour government, and they got it. Now it has reported
back, and there will be change:
The Government will remove a benefit sanction which
saw solo mothers who did not name their child's father penalised up to
$28 per week and increase the amount that beneficiaries can earn through
employment before their benefit is cut.
Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced the changes on
Friday in response to a report from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.
The report warned urgent and fundamental change was needed to redress a
level of financial support so low in New Zealand that too many were
living in desperate situations. It stated the current system no longer
met the needs of the more than 600,000 Kiwis it was supposed to support.
However, Sepuloni said the Government had decided against a recommended
move to increase benefit levels by up to 47 per cent immediately so
Kiwis could "live in dignity", and was instead "looking at a staged
implementation" of change.
This is going to make a difference, and a big one. And while the timing
of the report's delivery relative to the budget cycle basicly rules out
an immediate increase (the budget having been nailed down months ago), I
hope they'll be moving on that soon. Because while removing WINZ's boot
from people's necks is good, fundamentally what beneficiaries need is more money,
so they can meaningfully participate in society. And in Labour wants to
plead poverty on that, maybe they should have implemented a capital
gains tax (or one of its alternatives e.g. a land tax, or an outright
wealth tax) so we can afford the sort of society we want, rather than
being constrained by self-imposed austerity". [NRT blog comment ends].
Ian Ritchie had this to say about the RNZ Checkpoint statement:
My experience includes that of a Ministry whose staff ignored court decisions
against them.
It is not just the detail that needs changing but the culture and the
attitudes. We have been waiting a long time for this to happen. Ian
Thanks Ian, I too would love to see an attitude change in WINZ... the blame game is out dated and stupid if the real goal is to help those who need help. But it worries me that Labour appears to agree with the present state of affairs but are being held back by their neo-liberal history that was installed by Roger Douglas that great helper of the needy...yeah-right.
2. From the Pen of Richard Swainson: its well worth a read:
Any argument for New Zealand as a 'monoculture' is naive nonsense
Richard Swainson11:00, May 04 2019
JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF
Destiny
Church senior pastor Derek Tait reaches out to a member of the Muslim
community during the call to prayer and peace vigil outside the Masjid
Al Noor Mosque.
OPINION: There's
a lot of talk these days about the "monoculture". That sense of a truly
communal experience. The feeling of being part of a societal whole.
But at the same time, if you were a middle-class Pākehā, brought up to
observe religion in the breach, inclined toward Friday night drinks, not
pray sessions, you were just as aware of points of difference.
It's true that we are all immigrants in this country, but it's equally
certain we live in a time of heightened sensitivities, where one's
gender, one's ethnicity, one's sexuality, one's religion or lack
thereof, assumes an importance that threatens to overwhelm that which we
have in common.
A
community gathers at the clock tower in Feilding, Manawatū, to show
their support, love and unity for the people of Christchurch following
the mosque shootings.
The idea we are "one people" is politically charged, meaning one thing
out of Ardern's mouth and quite another when pronounced by Don Brash. In
the case of the latter, laws suits are apparently pending.
George Orwell said: "We are are all equal, but some are more equal than
others." The line resonates louder every day, a rallying cry for both
Left and Right, the perpetually offended signalling their virtue, the
entrenched old guard smarting at the new truths of the whippersnapper
generation.
The old adages we once thought defined us as a
nation today seem at best reductive, gross simplifications that covered
up a vast array of different cultural practices and allegiances.
"Rugby, racing and beer" has a strong, masculine ring to it, but I fear
the teetotalling strain has always run just as strongly through our
history, just as gambling was never everybody's cup of tea and plenty of
working-class folk have always had a greater affinity with league than
union.
Even wars and rugby tours, the type of experiences that supposedly bound the country together, excluded plenty.
Conscientious objectors, indigenous mindful of Treaty betrayal,
proto-feminists aghast at the injustices of the patriarchy, sensitive
artistic types indifferent to sport, outright Leftists who damn rugger
as "bread and circus" entertainment for the masses, all sat on the
outside.
Gallipoli and Monte Casino meant little to them. The Invincibles'
unbeaten run and the great triumph over the Boks in 1956 left them cold. Brian Tamaki's self-serving brand of Old Testament bollocks seems almost quaint in this context.
"The Apostle" insists New Zealand is "a Christian nation". He seeks to reclaim Christchurch "for Jesus". Given
the tragic history of the city in the last few years, does he assume
Jehovah's boy has been absent and that as a consequence Satan has run
amuck?
Or was it God Himself who sent the earthquakes, the inclement weather
and the Australian gun man, a Sodom and Gomorrah judgment upon the
wicked and the sinful?
Religious logic is well nigh impossible to fathom, but one aspect tends
to transcend denomination or faith – the deity is invariably praised
for the good stuff and gets let off the hook when it comes to the rest.
The gross insensitivity involved in Tamaki ramming his profit-driven
pronouncements down the throats of the recently bereaved is hard to
square with New Testament ideals of loving one's neighbour as one's
self. If Christianity means trumpeting the superiority of your belief
systems, of kicking the other guy when he's down, we are all much better
off without it. Moreover, I don't think New Zealand can be
defined by its past flirtation with faith, however much vestiges remain
in the likes of the national anthem and our court and legislative
system. That's not to say there were not once a great many New
Zealanders who believed, rigorous observation of the Sabbath and lip
service paid at weddings, funerals and school assemblies.
In the same manner that "rugby, racing and beer" falls short though
when it comes to describing our essence, so the presumption of
widespread Christianity is difficult to square with generations of
non-believers, not to be mention those who worshiped something else
entirely, be it the oval ball, Phar Lap, or Allah. I fear the monoculture has always been a myth. We are creatures of more localised community.
John Lennon once noted, accurately if sans modesty, that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus".
If the Fab Four's moment has now passed, I would say that the concluding episodes of Game of Thrones will attract more punters than Destiny Church, even in a city that bears Christ's name.
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