Future Focus a Big Step Backwards

Today the Governments Future Focus amendments to Welfare come into force.

"This punitive change to welfare law is an attack on the underlying principle that welfare is the provision of assistance to all New Zealanders in their time of need," said Kay Brereton the Advocacy Coordinator at the Wellington People's Centre.

"The changes add Sole parents with their youngest child older than 6, to the 60,000+ unemployed who face sanctions on their benefits if Work and Income doesn't think they are trying hard enough to find jobs.

There is no longer any negotiation about what steps someone will take to seek work, the decision about what is suitable will be put in the hands of the case managers, whom people often experience as disinterested bureaucratic and incompetent.

If people are unable to fed their families on an income which holds them below the poverty line, when they ask Work and Income for assistance they will be sent to budgeting activities which will reinforce that they are somehow at fault.

This disempowerment and victimisation is the kind of systemic abuse which will capture and trap people in a cycle of welfare dependence.

Later in the week we will all experience price rises of 2.22% or more as GST increases. While those in work and on NZ Superannuation will get a tax cut which may soften the blow, those on Benefits (also NZ Superannuation) will get a Temporary GST Adjustment of 2.02%. This increase of $3.92 on an Unemployment Benefit won't be received in full until the week of 11 October as benefits are paid a week in arrears.

While wage earners are struggling to pay the bills and having to cut discretionary spending, beneficiaries are struggling to pay the rent and buy food utilities have become luxuries. "

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