CTU media release

14 April 2010

The Council of Trade Unions is disappointed that the Welfare Working Group announced yesterday hints strongly at a ‘blame the beneficiary’ approach to welfare reform.

“Where are the representatives of organisations with first-hand knowledge and understanding of the problems beneficiaries face, such as the Child Poverty Action Group?” asked CTU Secretary Peter Conway.”  “The whole tenor of a group focused on ‘welfare dependency’ but lacking anyone who really knows what it is like to be welfare dependent is biased towards blaming beneficiaries in some way for their situation.”

“The Government needs to clarify what it means by welfare dependency and represent the true scale of any problem. For example, over half of the total welfare bill is accounted for by NZ Superannuation, and only 6 percent is made up of through unemployment benefits.”

“The CTU has a major concern that this Group will end up criticising people who are ill, invalided, unemployed or caring for children as sole parents, instead of recommending active labour market policies that create real opportunities for decent work and respecting the important role that sole parents, for instance, have in caring for children.”

“The number of unemployment beneficiaries fell from 162,000 in 1999 to only 18,000 in 2008 thanks to economic growth and policies which supported people into work. The recent rise in beneficiaries is down to the recession and insufficient investment in employment programmes. The CTU has already called for action on the report of the Public Advisory Group on Restructuring and Redundancy, which made recommendations on helping the recently unemployed back into work or retraining. Without a serious look at this side of the equation the Welfare Working Group cannot properly address the task of helping people off benefits and back into productive employment.”

“The suggestion that some sort of unemployment insurance be introduced removes the social protection of beneficiaries by the Government and privatises it as an individual benefit entitlement based on prior payments. This would be an extremely worrying scenario.”