Winz and Benefits

Click here to return to the policy homepage.

• ACT supports the current government’s initiatives to shift welfare from a paradigm of open-ended provision and resulting dependence to one of mutual obligation. 
• ACT would reduce effective marginal tax rates for those shifting from welfare to work.
• ACT would outsourcing rehabilitation functions to private providers, put lifetime limits on all welfare eligibility including Sole Parent Support, crack down on benefit fraud, and scrap the minimum wage. (more here)

• The Green Party supports a full and wide-ranging public debate on the nature of UBI and the details of a UBI system, and government funding for detailed studies of the impacts of UBI. The Green Party will investigate the implementation of a Universal Basic Income for every New Zealander.
• Protect welfare benefit levels by indexing rates to a basket of food, energy and housing price indices and legislating for a benefit level floor to ensure main benefits cannot fall below a fixed percentage of the average wage.
• Reforming the work test for work-tested beneficiaries to take into account the valuable contribution to society made by people doing voluntary work and parenting.
• Support the abolition of discriminatory tax credit regimes such as the In Work Tax Credit component of Working for Families.
• Oppose the introduction of any provision that financially or materially penalises single parents who give birth while in receipt of benefit. (more here)

• Not available on their website yet.

• Work towards implementing a Universal Tax Credit/Universal Basic Income where everyone in Aotearoa aged 18 and over would receive a minimum, liveable, tax free income after which progressive tax would kick in. 
• Lift benefits to at least pre 1991 equivalent levels – National slashed benefits in 1991, and these cuts have never been restored. Index benefits to a fixed, adequate percentage of the average wage, as currently happens with superannuation.
• Extend the In Work tax credit to the children of beneficiary parents.  This would immediately lift incomes for beneficiary families.
• Reinstate the Training Incentive Allowance for people on the DPB (Domestic Purposes Benefit) so they can access all levels of tertiary education.
• Implement a social marketing campaign to begin to undo the negative stereotyping of beneficiaries. (more here)

• Promote collaborative arrangements between WINZ, iwi and education providers for training opportunities.
• Work and Income will be required to publish all benefit registers each and every month. The benefit registers will be available by age, ethnicity, gender and location with targets negotiated with the Responsible Minister. Wherever possible WINZ will contract with iwi and whānau to assist with reducing unemployment; and to provide opportunities to devolve functions for whānau cooperatives to tender for contracts. (more here)

• Set a target to reduce the number of people on welfare by 25 per cent – 75,000 – by 2017.
• Reduce the number of young people on a benefit by 40 per cent by 2017.
• Provide more intensive management of 18- and 19-year-olds on a benefit by extending the Youth Service Approach. Helping young beneficiaries into work reduces their risk of long-term welfare dependency.
• Provide more individualised support to people on welfare
• Trial alternative welfare-to-work-approaches. (more here)

• Not available on their website yet.

• Not available on their website yet.