Monday, 16 November 2009, 4:21 pm Press Release: Rotorua Impact
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.