Drastic change needed: Allow beneficiaries to live with dignity

Wednesday, 29 May 2019

I'm struggling to survive on the benefit and the hard part is I’m one of the lucky ones.

OPINION: Like over 854,000 New Zealanders, I’m on a Work and Income benefit. I’m currently too mentally unwell to work or study, even part time, and have been on a benefit for eighteen months. My main benefit is $182.47 (after tax) a week, plus the Winter Energy Payment of $20 a week until October 1, 2019.

Core benefits haven’t increased since the last National government. That said, the Ministry of Social Development adjusts benefit levels every year to match the consumer price index, which means my benefit went up 1.69 per cent since last year. Starting in April I get $10 more than I did last year, meaning I now get $182.47 a week, plus the Winter Energy Payment of $20.

The Government set up a Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) in mid-2018, to assess the state of welfare systems and processes in Aotearoa and make recommended changes. The WEAG report findings and 42 recommendations were released to the public on May 3.

Some of the main recommendations included urgently raising income support levels for beneficiaries and low paid work by between 12 per cent and 47 per cent to be indexed to the incomes of the community at large, raising the abatement rates and removing bureaucratic practices around disabilities.

* Welfare overhaul working group details emerge online

Until things change, the quality of life and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders will continue to be very low.

* Beneficiaries calling for changes to welfare system**

In response, the Government only committed to three minor changes.

- Ending sanctions on solo parents over four years

- Slightly shifting the abatement rates, starting April 2020

- Hiring 263 frontline staff over four years to support beneficiaries to get back into work

Subsequently, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced that there would be no raises to main benefits under the 2019 Budget and that the coalition government’s three proposed responses were just part of the “first phase” of welfare changes the Government plans to 'phase in over a three to five year period'.

This means that until the government of the day wants to make these much needed and recommended changes, that the quality of life and wellbeing outcomes for hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders will continue to be very low. We will also continue to live in poverty in relation to the median income of the rest of New Zealand. Our ability to participate in the wider community will also continue to be impaired.

What the Government's lack of welfare action means for me, is that after food, rent and public transport costs, I have $25 spending money a week. I would get more money a week if I could work part-time on minimum wage. I would get more government money if I was capable of studying. I would get more if I didn’t flat with my parents who are also beneficiaries.

People like me depend on WINZ for weekly income. I’m 20 and I have to live week to week. This means no savings. This means no going to movies or gigs, or to visit my friends in different cities. It means getting to Saturday and having $13 left in your bank account to last you until Wednesday (WINZ pay day). It means no regular dentist check ups or doctors appointments. That means if I do end up in an doctor's office or dentist chair out of pure undeniable pain, it will be very costly.

I also can’t make any extra money because of WINZ’s abatement rates. An abatement rate is how much will be deducted from your benefit payment if you earn wages while receiving a benefit. It’s different for each benefit, and basically equivalent to WINZ turning the tap off your benefit, if you’ve found “other wages” for the week. If I join a focus group for market research or political analysis and get paid $100, I get to keep the first $80. But for every $1 earned on top of that, WINZ will reduce my benefit by 70 cents per $1 earned. If I earned $200 for similar work WINZ will remove $84 from my benefit. This steep abatement rate sees my income only improved by $74 and/or $112 for the respective weeks. Even though I did the work, they reduce my main source of income, which means I can’t save for things like after hours visits, dental care or counselling and still leaves me in relative poverty

The WEAG recommended increase to my abatement level is $150 a week rather than the current $80. This would certainly leave me better off financially, be fairer, especially where my income support benefit meets my earning some further income when and where I can and provide me some relief until my main benefit level is also increased.

Because I’m on a 'jobseeker medical' benefit, every three months I have to provide WINZ with a medical certificate confirming that I still have severe and chronic depression and anxiety. Stories emerged from the community led ‘We are Beneficiaries’ project last year, of a woman without a leg, having to prove to WINZ every year that it had not grown back, and she was still in fact disabled. This process is demeaning and damaging.

I get letters every month from WINZ confirming that they will keep paying me my benefit, as long as my medical certificates come in, but nonetheless the non-personalised automatic system sends me messages saying I need to be “preparing for work' - obviously not meant for someone like me. A reminder of the thing I wish I could be doing but can’t. We hold working as the measure for success and contribution to society. But our systems of work are set up for those who are able-bodied and are living well mentally, there is very little room in that space for people like myself to find a place where we can thrive. If the welfare system doesn't recognise mentally ill and disabled people as worthy of dignified lives, simply for being themselves, then it is still failing them. Paid employment shouldn’t be the only way out of poverty, people can make all sorts of contributions to their communities in other ways.

Disabled beneficiaries are being punished, financially, for not being able to work. For not being able to earn our own money. Punished by a neo-capitalist economic model, by mental illness, disability and New Zealand's broken and outdated welfare system.

The really hard part? I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a good enough relationship with my parents, so I still flat with them. It’s warm most of the time, despite not being insulated, and we have food six out of seven days of the week. I have strong connections to my community through volunteering. I don’t have any children. People with more serious disabilities or families or single parents aren't so lucky.

I believe that the Government’s underwhelming response to the recommendations of the Welfare Advisory Group (WEAG) for immediate and significant reform of a failing welfare system that is not meeting the needs of beneficiaries, is indicative of a Government that has retreated from core welfare principles and is contributing to further damage to beneficiaries living in poverty and a poor quality of life.

I want to call on the Government to make immediate, transformative, and drastic change to the welfare system to allow beneficiaries to live with dignity. We need to modernise our welfare system so it is fair and accessible for all. It’s time to invest in our people for the betterment of all.

Kate Aschoff, 20, is community volunteer living in Wellington. @kate_aschoff