The Recession Buster Impact

• The Government claims that the recession is over and so now its time to start getting tough on sole parents receiving the domestic purposes benefit and on invalids beneficiaries and sickness beneficiaries.


• Paula Bennett, Minister of Social Development, is about to start bullying domestic purposes beneficiaries, into actively seeking employment under pain of having their income cut or terminated. It seems politicians love putting the boot into the people bringing up children on their own as sole parents even though they are often effectively locked out of the employment market by the demands of child care and maintaining family cohesion.


• As part of a fight back campaign the Rotorua Peoples Union is hosting the “Recession Buster” IMPACT outside Work & Income in Pukuatua St Rotorua next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, November 23rd to 25th.


• There will be a team of skilled beneficiary advocates and lawyers from the Rotorua District Community Law Centre assisting all comers to obtain food grants, advances on benefit for essential household items and to ensure everyone is receiving their full and correct entitlements under the law.


• The Rotorua Peoples Union (RPU) asserts that the only way out of a recession, and keeping out of a recession, is to spend and to share. As Mr English himself admits, “unemployment is the last indicator to come right” after a recession. “Jobs growth” lags behind stock market gains and other indices that are relied upon and quoted to support the assertion that the “recession is over”!


• Shutting down on food grants and other legitimate benefits would be to ignore, and abuse, the important contribution that social security spending makes to the economy and to economic recovery in times of recession.


• The RPU is calling on the low-waged, the unemployed, sole parent and other social security recipients in Rotorua and Murupara to rally to the Recession Buster Impact this month, to test all their entitlements and to take advantage of the increased non-recoverable food grant entitlements available to them.


• There are 1 million New Zealanders that in some way or another directly rely on social security benefits for survival. To demonise 25% of our population makes no sense whatsoever. We are all in this together.


• The RPU hopes to utilise the IMPACT as a rallying call to all domestic purposes and unemployment beneficiaries in Rotorua to unite as a political force, to organise street demonstrations and show opposition to the planned attacks on domestic purposes beneficiaries and unemployed rights.

ENDS