the crackle mirror

Those who care about poverty and the people, especially children, who find themselves in this desperate situation, they know - they know the consequences of Paula Bennett the Minister of Social Welfare and her bill, they know the downstream effects of creating more desperation and more poverty. Yep Paula Bennett is really getting into her work now and that work is demonizing and making life impossible for the poor and beneficiaries in our society. The most vulnerable, the most in need, those that should be looked after are going to be dealt to by Paula, she doesn't care, 

as Hone says,

the reality is there’ll be huge downstream costs for the people and families involved and ultimately for us all. Saving a buck here to then spend mega bucks later on dealing with things like homelessness and ill health is more than pointless. It shows a lack of thought and care that is simply disgusting.

Sue Bradford says "I am really fearful of what is to come" and "The results of all this will be tragic and costly.." So true and everyone knows it. Our society is going to be sorely tested by this because it further widens the gap between the haves and have nots. It is deliberate too, that is an almost unbelievable epiphany to have. Paula Bennett is doing this to the most disadvantaged in our society deliberately, because she wants to and is ideal for the task for many reasons, as Sue Bradford states

Much better to have a Maori woman, a former solo mum, taking the lead, than a former school teacher from the white South Island heartlands.

And Bennett knows what she’s doing.

She knows it even more than someone like Shipley, which makes her leadership role in this even worse. Paula Bennett’s seeming naivety and smiling, bubbly front mask a long, deep commitment to National’s ideology – a belief in helping the already-rich get richer while the poor are forced into ever deeper poverty, no matter the downstream social and economic costs.

Our most disadvantaged are being tossed aside and many will be Māori. The recent UNICEF report on child poverty in NZ showed that this country ranks 21 out of 35 for levels of child poverty. We know it is beyond bad and that the government is pretending to ignore the issue while adding to it, as we see with the Bill above. Hone says

what the report clearly shows is that when governments are fully committed to and invest in reducing child poverty, it does reduce. And what the report clearly shows for New Zealand is that child poverty is not reducing.

No it is not reducing, not even slightly and the reason is clear - they don't even measure it - they can't because. as bennett states in the video,  "there is not a Government measure for poverty." You probably won't find that funny but Paula Bennett thought it was hilarious as The Standard and NRT  and the short version with  Mickey show. That was no nervous giggle - sure she was chased down, completely flustered the whole way, until Jacinda Ardern got her. She was caught with no where to go and so she just giggled. You work it out - to me it says that she just cannot be bothered with any of that stuff - you know the stuff about people and real lives. She is totally living in a bubble of aloof disconnection deliberately maintained against evidence, morality and a belief that people mean something, individually and collectively. 

I don't think Paula Bennett likes people.

paula bayonet

Paula Bennett the Minister of Social Welfare continues her attacks on the disadvantaged and vulnerable in our society. She wants Cabinet to consider “introducing court-ordered sanctions or legislative changes to stop some parents from having more children”. For ‘some parents’ just read ‘Māori’ because that is what she is alluding to. Does she really believe in sterilization of some parents or is it a line to generate outrage. Bennett is letting us all down by ignoring the reasons behind this abuse and murder. Those reason lead to the real solutions and Māori such as Rawiri Taonui articulate them well.

So the judges shall decide who has children and who is not allowed to – we have seen the judgements of some of these judges in recent times – pathetic.

Bennett knows that currently a child at risk is removed from their parents and she admits that, “in the past year, 148 children were removed from a parent within days of being born”. So she is really after the children not being born at all because those 148 children aren’t with their parent/s anymore, so it is not about protecting them, they have been removed.

I agree with Metiria Turei co-leader of the Greens, who says about Bennett that

RadioNZ

“She expressed great enthusiasm for the idea of forced sterilisation and did say that Cabinet had been considering just that option. Now, she has corrected herself - but I'm not so convinced that they haven't considered or won't consider it in the future.”

How bennett became a minister I just don’t get – oh that’s right she reflects our society and its beliefs. Bennett says that it is not about banning people from having children, but instead giving them the message that if they have another child it will be removed from them at birth. This is already done but bennett doesn’t want that to get in the way of the story. Don’t be mistaken it is fiscally based as well as ideologically driven.

Within our society we have people from all ethnicities and backgrounds who abuse and kill their children. The children have to be protected but sterilizing the parents is not the answer, that solution is disgusting. Māori figure highly in the statistics relating to abuse and murder of children. Rawiri Taonui wrote Mana Tamariki: Cultural Alienation. Māorichild homicide and abuse published in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Scholarship, Vol. 6 Issue 3, p187-202, (2011), on this subject and he found that the eye witness evidence from the first Europeans corroborate evidence from Māori knowledge including waiata and whakatauki showing children were treated with respect and tolerance traditionally by parents in Māori society. Yes, some children were abused or killed as isolated incidents, as is true within the histories of all peoples, but the prevalence of this abuse today, for Māori, has its genesis in colonisation and deprivation.

No one is trying to minimise the issue or pretend it doesn’t exist but to seriously deal with the issue means to understand what the real reasons are for it and that leads to where some of the solutions may lie. Re-enculturalization is one area of solutions, as Rawiri Taonui says,

“Promoting the rebuilding of culture within the perpetrator not only includes the beliefs and values of the ancestors, but also the history of the people, including colonization. At an individual level, this knowledge has the ability to dissipate anger by raising consciousness. Positive enculturalization enhances a sense of belonging, rebuilds identity and promotes self-worth. This facilitates the healing of relationships within families.” (p199).

Obviously there is still major work to be done and although current Māori child murder rates are decreasing at twice the rate as that for non-Māori, to achieve any momentum needs the government to support tangata whenua initiatives and ideas. Instead of sterilizing people, they need to be actually trying to fix the issues. There are considered views from Māori that need to be heard. Rawiri Taonui sums it up well,

“We rarely recognise that colonization and its concomitant intergenerational impacts constitute violence: colonization is the application of anger upon vulnerable peoples. This violence has a reciprocal reaction within the societies upon which it is inflicted: cultural alienation, forced assimilation and cumulative marginalization create anger in indigenous societies. Where this anger is not understood, it becomes internalized within the colonized society and inverts upon itself. The indigenous oppressed attack each other. Angry men fight each other, sometimes in gangs, the red fights the blue. Anger seeks the weak and vulnerable in the form of mothers and children, violence expresses itself by seeking innocence. Re-enculturalization can emancipate individuals, families and tribal groups” (p 199).

Now that is an analysis, not bennetts numbnuts approach. Sadly this whole angle from Bennett may just be a “go too far and then pull back to the actual position” approach – or maybe she really does believe it – I’m not sure which of those two scenarios scare me the most, they are both filthy.

as deep as a dollar

The prime minister has said that

"Plenty of women go back to work when their baby is a year old and it makes financial sense to do so"

 and that shows what a lowlife he is. Of course he never asks the obvious question of why. Yes a number of women go back to work and some of them may even want to, but many are also forced to because "it makes financial sense". If they didn't then there would not be enough money to pay the bills or create a life for themselves and their families and even for many that do work, the money isn't enough. Welcome to capitalism 101.

Of course the other implication of keys statement is that raising a child is not work which is utter bullshit. A good post on the standard shows the truth of keys lies. As that post shows, key is only looking at one side of the equation and mr moneybags never adds in the cost of working for any parent, let alone a single mum. That's just the monetary values not even getting into the social and moral values of having parent/s around raising young children. The comments on the post also mention - what happens when the child gets sick, or is disabled, or there are 2 or more children - why mention all of these factors when all he can focus on is money. 

The attitudes of key and bennett are the cause of most of the ills of our society.

they are us

The latest announcements regarding welfare reform are indeed beneficary bashing as Hone points out and Paula Bennett is an absolute bloody hypocrite as Hone has stated. The programs attack those who need support and they are not about any reform or improvement at all, they are all driven by a warped mentality that blames people for their situation. Only a very small percentage of the unemployed are recidivist most are there because of circumstance and it takes a very mean spirit indeed to attack those people but this attack is only the beginning of the program to drive people to desperation. No point building new prisons unless you have the bodies to put in them, is there.

NZH

From October, the 30,000 people on the domestic purposes, widow's or woman-alone benefits will have to be work-tested for part-time employment once their youngest child turns 5, and for full-time roles when their youngest child turns 14.

Having an extra child while on a benefit will bring only a 12-month reprieve from these obligations _ a disincentive to having more children. Private agencies will also be employed to manage the benefits of unemployed youth and teen parents.

Not just Mana and Hone are speaking out

Stuff

Child Poverty Action Group spokesman Mike O'Brien said children were invisible in the changes although they would be "profoundly affected". "At the very time the Government is consulting on vulnerable children, it is about to blow a huge hole in the safety net provided to thousands of children whose parents are on a benefit.

"The minister argues on the one hand that her first priority is the protection of vulnerable children so she needs to explain how the interests of children and so-called vulnerable children in particular are enhanced by these moves."

Auckland Action Against Poverty described the changes as a "nasty piece of work".

Spokeswoman Sue Bradford said the Government failed to understand two basic work concepts.

"The first is that there has to be jobs to go to before people can get paid work.

"The next is that bringing up children on your own is very important work in its own right."

Both key and bennett say, "there are jobs for beneficiaries" but Hone again slams them with this

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira said the Government wasn't creating jobs but taking them away.

He pointed to recent announcements of job losses at government departments including; 50 at the Maori Affairs Ministry Te Puni Kokiri, 305 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and 70 from Housing New Zealand.

So their lies are outed but only those affected or those who know someone affected will notice, the 'middle' who voted for the gnats will carry on with their head in the sand attitude, until they are forced to see by the inevitable downside of these changes - the increased desperation, the increased crime and the increased poverty. 

The people who need our help are our brothers and sisters, our family, our whānau - they are us and we are them. A pox on the instigators of these policy changes and their lackies.

the shame of blame

National have now said what they are going to do about welfare and as expected they will treat people on benefits poorly. Their belief is that it is the fault of those people, they haven't tried hard enough and the gnats will incentivise them to get out there and find the non-existant jobs. The gnats say


Stuff

National yesterday said it would scrap the benefit system and replace it with three new benefits. Under the policy, the majority of beneficiaries would go on to the Jobseeker benefit and be expected to work, at least part-time unless they are found to be temporarily exempt.

The Supported Living Payment would replace the invalid's benefit for those who are permanently and severely disabled, severely mentally ill or terminally ill, while those currently on a sickness benefit would be classed as jobseekers. Solo parents whose youngest child is under 14 would go on Sole Parent Support, while those whose youngest child is older than five would be expected to work part-time.

The catch comes for those beneficiaries who had a subsequent child while on a benefit. They would be required to look for work once their youngest child was 12 months old, if their previous children were over five.

Yes you read it right - look for work after 12 months! I totally oppose these ideas - they are nasty, idiotic and will be devestating for many Māori.

RadioNZ

The Maori Party is refusing to say whether the National's welfare policy would be a deal-breaker if the two parties were to form a coalition after the election.

That isn't good enough for me - that is weak and part of the reason The Mana Party has formed - and why I support them.


If you cannot support and protect the members of our society that need it most then you have no place in the people's hearts.

d-spinning

What's the time Mr Wolf, what's the time.



Good articles on the attack on our most vulnerable.

Gordon Campbell

If John Key is the face of moderation, there’s not much room left on the margins for the extremism of Don Brash. “Moderation” evidently means asset sales, tax breaks for the rich, cuts to government spending, a view that public services are “unsustainable” and unaffordable” plus – as Key indicated at yesterday’s post -Cabinet press conference - forced contraception for women on benefits as an idea worthy of further consideration. If you can get all that from the smiling face of “moderation” who needs the Act Party?

Sue Bradford

I sincerely hope that over the next few months the majority of New Zealanders won’t continue to be fooled by John Key’s crocodile smile.  Underneath, sadly, he has the soul and aspirations of an investment banker – a heart of darkness.

 In both of these articles the spin and bullshit from key is exposed. He is oblivious to the truth and is committed to this agenda. What's the time Mr Wolf? 

bite on this

The latest government initiative to deliver the Welfare Working Groups recommendations shows that we are being subjected to 101 shock doctrine. Michael has a great doco on it here. Felix has a posted a good link to a shorter version here. Please watch and learn about what is actually  happening and why. 

NZH

The Prime Minister says the Government will forge ahead with some of the Welfare Working Group's recommendations, aimed at pushing 100,000 beneficiaries into work within a decade.

I have posted about these recommendations  

here(Bennett lobs in some helter skelter)

paula bennett and the government have it all wrong. It is not the beneficiaries fault that there are not enough jobs. If you have to blame - blame the real culprits not the victims. 

and here(Gnats are little pricks)

But let's be clear - this idea is not about accountability, or saving money or creating efficiencies - it is a thinly veiled punch in the face to the less fortunate in our society and it just happens that maori are over represented in those groups.

and here (Kick them while they are down)

When I read this report it makes my skin crawl - it is all just about money and the people are just obstacles. The most vulnerable in society are at risk and maori are highly represented in those groups - this report is an attack upon maori because maori will suffer the most under these recommendations - and that is the way they want it - it suits their purposes.

and here(Scratching in the gutter)

Of course the obvious fact that there are few jobs is ignored because Rebstock dosen't care - it is all the fault of the beneficiaries, they need to get out there and she will provide the pointed stick to get them moving.

 Irishbill has a good post up on The Standard and I'll add other good links as they come through.

I am of the opinion that the brash longdrop into Act and Banks into Epsom shows that the long game is dismantling support for the disadvantaged. They are committed - smiley snake key and all who support him - I'm looking at you maori party.

scratching in the gutter

The welfare working group has come back with their recomendations and they have been predictable in their nastiness and destructiveness to our society. Their mindset is twisted - they blame the beneficiaries - I find their whole argument nonsensical and venal and i don't engage with anyone going down that line - no point - they are beyond.

Stuff

More than three quarters of all beneficiaries will be forced to seek work or face cuts to their payments - a single 'Jobseeker Support' benefit that would replace the dole, domestic purposes, sickness and other benefits and require all but the most seriously ill and disabled to look for work. Which would increase the proportion of beneficiaries presently subjected to work testing from 37 per cent to 77 per cent. That would more than double the numbers required to look for work from 133,200 of the 360,000 people presently on a benefit to 277,200.

Of course the obvious fact that there are few jobs is ignored because Rebstock dosen't care - it is all the fault of the beneficiaries, they need to get out there and she will provide the pointed stick to get them moving.

''There are currently few incentives and little active support for many people reliant on welfare to move into paid work. Long term benefit dependency can be avoided if investments are well targeted and timely. "Enabling people to move into paid work reduces poverty and improves outcomes for key at-risk groups, including young people, sole parents, disabled people and those who are sick.''

We knew this was coming and now we'll see how much more political capital brand-key will expend defending and implementing it.

Good post by Danyl at The Dim-post on another disgusting aspect of their recomendations

kick them while they are down

As expected Rebstock and co have come out with a range of ideas to destroy the welfare state and beneficiaries, in the guise of fixing it and them.

From NZH

The review by the Government's welfare working group chaired by economist Paula Rebstock suggests that as few as 20,000 of the 144,000 sickness and invalid beneficiaries might be exempted from job-search requirements.

Nice - 20,000 out of 144,000 - that'll learn them - get off your butts and find one of the non-existant jobs, after all you are only sick or invalided. How bad is this - at the stroke of a pen 124,000 people are able to go and work, in fact they must search for work - MUST.

Sole parents could be required to look for work when their youngest children turn 3, or even 1.

The children can look after themselves in rebstocks world. The effect of this draconian measure on society is massive and all negative. Meanwhile families and whanau are further seperated and people are more isolated and children are not valued. I am not going to live in rebstock's world.

the review also offers beneficiaries a long list of potential "carrots" to help them get and keep paid work.

What about if there is NO work? Carrots - just like donkeys - geddit?

The proposals range across other public services, suggesting a radical revamp of the school system to steer at-risk youngsters into apprenticeships or other practical training.

Yes let's create more factory schooling - that will fix everything.

When I read this report it makes my skin crawl - it is all just about money and the people are just obstacles. The most vulnerable in society are at risk and maori are highly represented in those groups - this report is an attack upon maori because maori will suffer the most under these recommendations - and that is the way they want it - it suits their purposes.

The Rebstock report does not explicitly recommend any of the options it has put forward. It called for submissions on its ideas by Christmas Eve and will publish final proposals in February.

It also proposes contracting out some Work and Income services to private companies and iwi. It says 31 per cent of all beneficiaries are Maori and calls for a "strategic memorandum of understanding" with iwi leaders to reduce Maori welfare dependency, partly by developing specific programmes "by Maori, for Maori".

Don't be under any illusions - this report is not about helping beneficiaries or maori - they will try to lay the reponsibility on maori without giving any resouces to help - then they will point the finger and blame maori.