Are Beneficiaries Above The Law?

New information on Labour's benefit debt write-offs highlights the Government's soft-on-welfare approach, and willingness to allow benefit fraudsters to break the law with impunity, ACT New Zealand Social Welfare Spokesman Dr Muriel Newman said today.

"Answers to my written Parliamentary Questions have revealed that, from 2000-2003, the Labour Government wrote off $32,950,634 in benefit debt," Dr Newman said.

"Labour has decided that this money is unrecoverable and given up trying to get it repaid. This reeks of double standard: minimal penalties for beneficiaries who commit fraud, compared with IRD's harsh and punitive approach toward taxpayers who have not paid enough -and who are virtually pursued to the grave.

"If benefit cheats were business fraudsters, they would surely be sent to jail. Instead large amounts of benefit debt are written off as a loss - and what is not written off is repaid at pittance of the total fraud.

"Benefit fraud in New Zealand is alive and kicking. Social Services and Employment Minister Steve Maharey's soft-on-benefit-fraud attitude has ensured that - for some beneficiaries - crime does pay.

"What is needed is a zero tolerance approach to benefit fraud, and a penalty system that ensures that benefit crime - which undermines the integrity of the entire benefit system - is treated with the seriousness it deserves," Dr Newman said.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>