OMG CONSPIRACY

Ok, fine, some of it was. My mistake. But Bennett still released private information that she shouldn't have.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/__data/asse...tails-m048.asx

More than likely. Tell you what, why don't you wander off and ask them to back up their claims?

http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3606...6D746332A3A947
How did she ever make minister?

What's the incentive for a single mother to go back to work when she currently gets over $700 for DOING NOTHING? I guess when one kids reaches an age where she will lose a benefit she'll go pop another one out?

Ahh more than likely. Well played. How about you back yours? I'll stick to knowing you didn't give a rats on previous leaks, being a leftie apologist and all.

I could say the same thing about Sue Bradford.

You don't have kids do you :p

/thread

You know that's why she has people who filter the information and give her what she needs eh? Otherwise she would be spending all her time reading documents rather than her job.

Not yet. But I'm pretty sure I could feed them and live a pretty good life for $700 a week eh. What would incentive be to work if you got money for nothing?
The only real incentive would be to act as a role model for your children so they don't grow up to think that it's cool to be a bum. But then all you need to do is take a drive around any town centre in Mangere and see all the peasents spending tax payers money on McShit and cigarettes.

I'm a white male who got credit crunched so now I'm studing at uni. I receive $150 from the government. I even got declined an accomodation supplement. I am doing alright though, not $700 alright but I am aight.

So yeah, $700 is fucken insane for an unemployed person.

Some parents are really shit at being parents. I'm sure it's not very hard work for those kinds of people.

One word Draco, "Erin Leigh".

Yea, thats right. Then we get fun traditions where the youngest born's sole job is to look after the old people. Life? Education? wassat?

I've got no problems with welfare per se and if they're entitled to it, more power to them. I'd like to see it capped after a certain amount of years time though as it should never be a lifestyle.
Fucking annoying though that it's now a points scoring privacy story because she got her hands dirty on it rather than doing it backhanded as per usual. If the information is there on how much beneficiaries can get, what is the big deal if it's public knowledge on how much these two individuals do.
Get the whole story out there and let's see what we can do for these women, rather than have the impression they're getting jack on welfare and this TIA loss is going to break them.

Yep I agree.

IMO 700 (is this after tax?) would get sucked up pretty quick by a single parent family of 4 and also the 'good' single parents do a lot more than a 40hr week work (I read an article in one of the sunday papers a bit back which totaled the number of hours of work done over the week etc)

IMO the real problem here is that the if you are going to pay people to be parents then it needs to be made sure that they are doing a good job.

To a certain extent, yes.
The only example i can think of a Labour minister in the last government releasing the confidential information of a private individual to the media was Lianne Daziel over the Sri Lankan immigrant girl. She resigned as a Minister as a result of that incident.

Agreed, there needs to be some form of welfare safety net for legitimate temporary assistance. Not a generational dependence on tax payers, if you expect the tax payer to pay for your life and the lives of your children you are burdening society with then why shouldn't they have the right to know where their money is being spent?

loooooooooool
It turns out that the woman that's laying the complaint about her details being released was on fair go last year. She was complaining about some $400 hair extensions that she had done that weren't up to scratch. Oh yeah they interviewed her in her house where there was a lovely new living suite kitted out with a wide screen plasma tv.

THANKS WINZ!

Is that the one that now has a spokesperson and who's details were previously mentioned in parliament by Benson Pope?

Your tax dollars, hard at work!

Checkout the Radiolive audio when 5:15+ or so comes up. Maggie Barry interviewing one of the woman and the others new 'spokesperson', along with Annette King. 'More than likely' to blow up in Labours face again.

Got a link?

Except, LOL, she was living with her partner at the time so therefore was not eligible to claim the DPB.

Newstalk zb

I can understand being upset about welfare abuse (though not to the extent of a lot of people, that doesn't really make sense but anyhow), but how can you not be just as upset about the vastly more expensive tax avoidance/fraud of wealthy people who seriously don't need the money. Both of these things should infuriate you, especially since the second likely has a considerably larger impact on your life (you think if we cut welfare it will make ANY difference to your day to day life? Other than maybe you're more likely to be the victim of a crime and there'l be more poverty around? I don't understand).

Note: I do understand that people have reasons like 'at least the rich work for their money' which is pretty average reasoning, but ok. It's just, why does it seem to be so common that people are much more upset about welfare abuse, that probably costs the country shit fucking all and makes absolutely zero difference in your life, but not be upset about the widening income gap which is placing serious pressure on the middle class, and on top of that the massive amount of tax avoidance by the wealthy.

So some people abuse welfare? It's no different than writing off the cops because some are bad people. If you've got a better system backed by some solid support and reasoning, i'm seriously all ears and i'm sure a lot of people would be. It's better that we give some people money to eat than they steal it. It's gonna be one of those two for a lot of people, a lot of people are already fucked, they're not going to magically start acting how society wants them too.

If you're so concerned about welfare abuse, have a cry about wanting more intervention in problem areas. Just crying about the occasional person popping up who may or may not be getting 'too much' is fucking dense. There's no reason National can't be more effective at reducing poverty than Labour (well...), i'd happily eat all my words if they did. But instead the focus seems to be 'cry about shit' then 'don't really do anything to fix it'. Though to be honest, John Key hasn't struck me as someone who abhores the benefit.

*snort*

Haven't read the rest of the thread but surely somebody has called you out on this. Personally, 3 kids sounds like the worst job in the fucking world. With one kid you get the luxury of sometimes doing nothing, but 3? Fuck that. Goodbye any free time/personal life. Now, that woman is an idiot for having 3 kids in the first place, but give her at least some credit. "DOING NOTHING" she is not.

But wait, it gets better!:

*facepalm*

I used to think the same thing before I had a kid. You need mad Harry Potter skills to raise 3 kids on $700 p/w.

Of course I wouldn't put it in terms as blunt as these used by Adolf at No Minister:

I guess you didn't hear about how she was on fair go a year ago because her $400 hair extensions went wrong eh?
I know of plenty of families where the husband earns less than 50k and supports his wife and 3 kids.
And what? because of that you should get 56k for your efforts just because you're a single mum? If you can't live off 56k with 3 kids then you are living well beyond your means.

So you support cutting the benefit for those families too then? Cos they'll be getting one.

Obviously the government thinks you can't, because they give someone earning 56k with 3 kids an extra $7000 after tax per year :P

so do people on the DPB/Dole get WFF? if they do that would appear the fly in the face of the "working" portion of the scheme.

All for giving money back to people working who have kids, but not to the DPB'd, shit my parents raised 5 kids for 8~ years on the dole (in and out) without much trouble, we just didnt have anything new, ever, no biggie though.

I'm not sure if it's WFF or some other supplement, the site is too confusing. The DPB itself is fixed regardless of how many children you have at $260 per week.

I don't like benefit cheats any more than the next person does, but like JP put it, a system where some people cheat it is better than no system at all.

I believe that their benefit should be slashed, but not cut off.

And what do you think? Do you think it's realistic to give a single mother 56k a year?Do you think it's acceptable?

Say you rent a 3 bedroom house in Auckland. That'll be about $300 a week in Manurewa, Mangere area. Then power which will be about $220 a month, water say $200 a quarter? and cellphone $40 a month.

Per month:

Rent: $1200
Power:$220
Water:$66
Cell: $40

Total Utilities/Rent:1526
Money leftover:2860 - 1526 = 1334

So she'll have $1334 approx left over to spend per month on food, clothing, sky tv, cigarettes etc

Unless of course you want to say that she'll need to spend over $200 a week on food? then she'll be in a bit of trouble. But then of course she should be living within her means. And that means not eating the flash stuff.

My Maori Aunty can feed over 7 people a week under $150 au. She cooks a pretty mean boil up.

Not really, but it's the best solution we have at the moment; certainly better than giving her nothing and having her kids steal my bike :P As far as slashing it, I generally trust that people far smarter than us have worked through the cost of living and determined that that's the appropriate figure.

I actually prefer a more direct benefit system; i.e. you have 3 kids, so here's your 3 bags of rice, bulk pack of chicken thighs etc for the week, go nuts; but the administration/logistics costs probably make it a less efficient use of our tax dollars.

Yeah making things like government bread won't help at all tbh. It encourages people to eat their big 20kg sack of rice each week no matter what, wheras with cash they can at least trade with it in a more practical sense. Hardly encourages people to do something decent with their money.
Also each dollar that a person on the dole spends goes around the economy about 6/7 times so it's actually helping putting money back into the market creating jobs etc.
Ruth Richardson and Bill Birch found out the hard way during the mid 90's when they slashed and burnt benefits.

Ah the edit. You must have a low opinion of yourself then if you think that people in government must be smarter than you. I like to think I've got a good handle on different classes of society. So when I see a single mother on a benefit being interviewed because her $400 hair extensions sucked it makes me think 'this lady is being given too much money. Why is the taxpayer paying for her hair extensions? As well as dole day in Mangere on a Thursday. You should check out the queue's of people waiting for their food.
One example of the government making bad decisions is electing Christine Rankin as the head of the families commission despite her being divorced and remarried 4 times oooh yeah that's some real smart thunking there. Good example for the population! Good work, I wonder who's going to win American Gladiator tonight.

Mind you you'll be creating jobs for people that might otherwise be on the dole and you're ensuring they are eating better food than F&C and coke.

Yes comrade. The minister for bread distribution will be in the office shortly to determine how much this fair city needs!
The market dictates what people want. Not some low level government official. What a backward view

I generally have a low opinion of the people in government itself, but a higher opinion of those the they employ ;)

The case you keep referring to is someone likely to be cheating the system, by having a live in partner earning an income and not declaring it; that's what's enabling the hair extensions and the plasma TV; so the size of the benefit itself is not necessarily too large.

The point is she's entitled to a 56k salary. She has $1334 to spend on food and whatever else a month after she pays for her rent. That's too much imho. Especially when $400 hair extensions are involved

Ok food for a family of 4 per week $200.
Car insurance $40 p/m = $9.24 p/w
Petrol $20 p/w
Wof/rego $6 p/w
Contents insurance $5 p/w

So you said she had $1,334.00 p/m left over. x 12/52 = $261.69 p/w left over. Wow, she now has $21 left over per week! And I haven't even counted in school stuff for the kids. And what if the kids get sick? Or what if? What if?