Prime Minister John Key says National will focus on welfare fraud if it wins the November 26 election, releasing a policy touted to save taxpayers NZ$200 million over four years.
Releasing National's final welfare policy in West Auckland with Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, Key said National would increase authorities' investigative powers by funding a new team of fraud specialists. See welfare policies from all parties in Parliament in our party policy section here.
"This year alone. Work and Income's data matching found around six to 12% of people were receiving benefit payments they weren't entitled to," Key said.
"This shows we have to do better by the taxpayer to safeguard their money and protect the integrity of the welfare system," he said.
National would review the Social Security Act, with a focus on making it easier for authorities to prosecute people who abused the welfare system.
"In particular we will review the rules around relationship fraud, and make clearer the rules around when benefit recipients need to let Work and Income know about any relationships they are in," Key said.
"Jobseekers who don't apply for a job because they are asked to take a drug test, or who fail a pre-employment drug test, face having their benefit cancelled," Key said.
Beneficiaries evading a police warrant would also have their benefits cancelled, if they did not make contact with police within seven days.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said that over the 2010/11 year there were 690 benefit fraud prosecutions involving more than NZ$22 million, with a further NZ$183 million counted as overpayment, because it fell below the prosecution threshold.
"So in the past year alone, new debt of NZ$200 million was established due to benefit fraud and that's unacceptable. This policy will save an estimated NZ$200 million over four years," Bennett said.
Chunky?
This announcement follows welfare policy released earlier in November, when National said it would change benefit categories and make more people make themselves available for work in an effort to get 46,000 people off welfare and into full-time work over four years, and another 11,000 into part-time work. See earlier article here.
Today's announcement was touted as "chunky" to press gallery journalists, and was the last of welfare policies announced by National before the election.
In February this year the government received a report from its Welfare Working Group, which said the government could be in line to save NZ$1.3 billion a year if it implemented the Group's recommendations for reform of New Zealand's welfare system.
Read the Welfare Working Group's final recommendations here.
The Welfare Working Group said the government should aim to reduce the number of people dependent on welfare currently by 100,000 by 2021 from around 360,000 now. At the time, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said the 100,000 target was "certainly a big call".
"This will take time and we’ll keep talking to New Zealanders about the kind of welfare system they want, that is fair and effective,” Bennett said in February.
“This Government certainly believes a radical shift is needed, to put the focus on what people can do, not what they can’t do. We have more than 350,000 New Zealanders on benefits and we can do much better by many of them, by backing them into work," Bennett said.
(Updates with video, background)
45 Comments
Hey now, as a SKY shareholder I welcome the substantial government income we get each year via thousands upon thousands of beneficiaries.... ours is a happy place. A very happy place.
As for KFC..... good point....... might have to review a possible investment in Restaurant Brands...
How about superannuitants? Shouldn't we be stopping super payments to all over 65s who smoke pot or enter a pokie bar?
Shouldn't the govt have spent the last 3 years chasing up beneficiaries receiving money they weren't entitled to? Why only now?
Yet more election tarbrushing branding beneficiaries as a bunch of pothead layabouts.
Excellent suggestion! Superannuitants are by far the demographic with the most substantial benefits, love their bush bud, yet they have the lowest Sky-subscription per age category.
...mainly because they don't know how to work the remote, of course, but I'll pass your ideas onto Marketing.
Now if we could just LOWER the retirement age..... that'd be gold...
EXCELLENT , its about bloody time . A few years ago a relative on mine was crashed into by someone who was on the sickness benefit and the idiot was arrested at the scene because his car had drugs in it . ( He was a dealer ).
In another instance someone living up our street was , also on a sickness handout, was playing rugby at the local club .
and get them to do what?
Any real jobs they could do would mean you put in heavily subsidised workers robbing jobs from real/actual workers and presumably private employers......or even the self -employed, ie say gardeners, I know a few with wee contracts making an OK living using the un-employed to do public gardening would cut them off at the knees. Then on top of that you have more Govn employees to supervise and organise them...one huge bureaucratic mess that will cost us far more....
and their skill set? these are un or at best semi-skilled workers....they have poor educaqtion and limited ability to learn....so really you are talking about trying to use the "dregs" in a useful way...
If you are going to spend money like this look at way to create real jobs....one off construction jobs wont feed into inflation...and have a limited time of handout....
regards
I think there have been comments in here on using Filopino's v locals / islanders...the former work hard.....so what private employer is going to want to take on the indolent? If I was an employer, know I would not.
So the Q comes back to, what do we do with them? stop the WINZ support? Ok so next we see crime waves.....so double the number of prisons, that makes sooo much sense....not....
Govn expenditure I see as 41.4%.....hardly clsoe to 50%....(by all means show me newer figures, URL?) and when private business output contracts so GDP falls of course the % of Govn expenditure increases.....
Then we should consider what is Govn spending and what is the way to have the minimal impact on GDP....so we could have public healthcare at 6~8% of GDP or private healthcare at 16~8% of GDP and if the USA is an indication its rising at 7%+ per annum.....so in ten years that will double.....
So say right now Im spending via taxes $150 a month on healthcare, "force" me to double if not triple that (best quote I got for familiy private care was $210NZ) but that of course allows for the public health care to be in place....take $210NZ out of my pocket and I will have no spare money at all....so no buying goods or services.....no holidays etc etc....that does not help the economy one bit......
This is just where the right wing mantra of "reduce Govn expenditure" fails.....
Logically then we need to look at whats left in ppls pockets or disposable/descretionary income.....because with less or none of this we will be in a recession for a long time....
regards
"what do we do with them? stop the WINZ support? Ok so next we see crime waves.....so double the number of prisons, that makes sooo much sense....not...."
We have the crime anyway steven....in all levels of society...and deep seated discrimination on punnishments...
So the prisons become the skills training centres...improve your skills or qualifications and expect a sentence reduction...repeat the crime and cop a worse sentence...some will go one way and other will remain locked up for life.
Meanwhile the bank bosses are already into their next years $$$$$five plus million dollar benefit grab...oops sorry salary grab.
Fair enough, I'm sick of the Government spraying money round like they do.
A friend of mine on a sickness benefit (genuine case) couldn't believe he was sent to a fancy optometrist for a new set of reading glasses, paid for by you and me, at a cost of hundreds, when the $10 jobbies from the Warehouse are just as good.
On the other side, why do the Government continually undermine local unemployed people by encouraging/allowing 3rd world labour in to undercut them? A large local fruit growing company has just employed 200 Tongans. These jobs were never advertised locally, are low skill manual jobs and this is an area with chronic unemployment levels. WTF is going on with that Paula?
Kiwidave: Down my way some growers won't have 'locals' on the job. A key reason is that a week or so after they have left the orchard they have vehicles/equipment stolen from sheds. Some of the entry and exit routes they use are quite sophisticated. The growers have noticed this doesn't happen with the imported workers. Also some of the locals are unreliable and won't work weekends. Unfortunately the locals that are good workers are tarred with the same brush so have to work twice as hard.
Absolutely correct as ever , Mr KW John ....... why didn't they rip into this shite after the 2008 election ? ....
...Mistress Paula has been sitting on her hands for the last 3 years ......
And there I was fantasizing that she was sitting on my hands ....
...... and the $ 200 million they save over 4 years is nearly as much as they're borrowing from China ....... every week ! ........ oooops !!!
There is no way Mistress Paula has sat on her hands GBH......the resulting contusions would have forced amputation to become the only option of saving anything from the wrists up.
Gangrene is no laughing matter... particularly when you the one expected to do the doling out.
As you well know , Count , ole Gummy ain't the crispest cracker in the Weet-Bix packet ........ but I didn't dole out welfare benefits to silly sods on the run from the police , over the last 3 years .....
.. nor did Gumbo happily tick off on unemployed beneficiaries who used being stoned on illegal drugs as an excuse for not turning up to job interviews ......
Have National as a government been any less slack than Labour , when it comes to welfare payments' accountability ?
[ sit on my sticky-gummy-pinkies Miss Pau;a , please please pelase me ....]
Haha, all smoke and mirrors.
I think there will be a few more serious issues on the plate before they get implement these plans. Barely worth the effort to even post.
So is this going to swing your vote towards National? Only an idiot would think they can fix the problems we face anyway.
Looks about 54% are idiots then......mind you I cant say the 30% voting for Labour show any more IQ. So I guess we will do a Greece in 5 to 10 years.....there will be some hard choices to be made and they are harder and bigger the longer its left......but I cante see any party willing to make those decisions.....or the voter let them.....
regards
This drug-testing for beneficiaries brainwave is a direct steal from Republican policies applied in several US states. The overall consensus on the policy as it's worked out in Florida and elsewhere is that it's a complete failure that costs far more to apply than it saves, apparently because the welfare=druggie stereotype doesn't correspond particularly well with reality. Only 2% of applicants tested positive in Florida. Nice one, guys, ripping off a failed and stupid idea. But it taps into ingrained prejudices about beneficiaries, so worth a crack for the pollies, even if it isn't supported by any evidence that it would work. Not like they'll be paying for it themselves.
Yet again National is hypocritically kicking benficiaries to get the red neck vote.
This is of course unless this applies to all beneficiaries -- be they on WFF, super, ETS subsidies, dole, student loans, MPs salary, AMi directors, and so on.
And extend drug testing to alcohol.
Wasn't this their policy in the last election anyway?
A good start, but you missed a few cases of fraud/corruption needing to be targetted (including those from the private sector and councils). Add judges, cabinet ministers, real estate agents, financial advisors, trustees, auditors, bank officers, accountants, senior bureaucrats, and many, many more.
I will restate someone else's comment made here a few months ago: 'A fish rots from the head'.
how many unemployed drug users have had to supplement their habit by stealing? If you take the benefit away they will just have to pull finger and knock off an extra house or two on the weekend. And if they get caught and sent to prison the cost to the taxpayer goes up to $50 000 pa. If you take the benefit off these guys, what are they going to do?
...or stay in NZ...change 'jobs' to identity fraud...and go into Paliament?...
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10673605
In fact there are so many people who actually fall into that category that Paula Bennett will be dealing with them personally. Does anybody actually believe this is going to have a visible impact on the government accounts?
No, obviously scapegoating, policies targeting 0.017% of the country, is the most constructive way to deal with a National economic problem.
May not be visible...however, the fact is that for many, the benefit is a lifestyle choice - even though they do not realise it at the time.
Ever been is a situation where you just had to make something work..even though it seemed impossible, ....but you were committed and had a family to feed? Try facing such a scenario when the benfit aint an option. You'll succeed.
Problem is, so many are surrounded by so many who have given up or never tried...and they never will while they have the benefit cop out avialable....
The minority out there who are either unemployable or unwilling to work should have a choice. They can be paid out the benefit for the rest of their working lives without any harassment- as long as they agree to voluntary sterilisation. Or is that politically incorrect to suggest?
If you lose your job and have to support your family on a benefit, that's what the safety net is for. If you have no self esteem, motivation or dedication then sitting on a benefit while spawining several kids you can't be motivated enough to care for is not going to help anyone. Least of all your poor kids.
WFF also needs to go, it is unaffordable and acts as a deterrent for the second parent to find part-time work. Better to support parents with longer parental leave and subsidised child care.
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