National Charges Ahead with Shameful Welfare Programme

'The formation of a ministerial group to implement the shameful Rebstock report on welfare is vicious and unnecessary,' says AAAP spokesperson Sue Bradford.

"John Key is dog whistling to the darkest part of the New Zealand psyche, inviting people to join him in a spot of blood sport with beneficiaries as the prey.

"National is clearly hoping to win votes this election with a punitive beneficiary bashing campaign.

"Mr Key says drastic measures are needed because welfare numbers have risen steeply since the early 1970s.

'He fails to acknowledge that it's the economic system that's at fault here, not beneficiaries and their children, who are the ones who will suffer if National goes ahead with the Rebstock reforms.

'The latest Household Labour Force Survey earlier this month showed there are now over 271,000 jobless in this country."

Ms Bradford says the answer to our welfare crisis is real jobs at decent wages, not increased harassment, surveillance, sanctions and the further partial privatisation of welfare and job services.

She says John Key and Paula Bennett act as if they're doing new mothers a favour by not endorsing the requirement that mothers on welfare be forced out to work when their baby is 14 weeks old.

"But this is just to make a cruel alternative suggestion of 1 year look reasonable.

"AAAP believes it is dangerous and disgraceful that any mother should be forced out to work when her baby is just one year old.

"Nor do we accept that the state should interfere in women's reproductive lives, or that beneficiaries should be forced to work for the dole.

AAAP was set up in late 2010 to bring together unemployed people, beneficiaries, students, unionists, church people and others working for a fairer society. Recent actions include a 'race to the bottom' after the 2011 budget, and an occupation of Paula Bennett's office following the release of the Rebstock report.

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