The New Zealand welfare system reinforces a cycle of poverty

Thursday, 1 August 2019

'After my rent and bills went out, I had only $15 to live on per week from Studylink.'

OPINION: In 2017, I was on the unemployment benefit for a while after I moved to Wellington to study.

I was receiving about $280 a week. This was liveable, but not with an adequate quality of life. My rent, power, appliances and internet cost $215 per week, which left me with $65 a week to feed myself, see the doctor, clothe myself, run and maintain my car, and pay for public transport when I couldn't afford petrol. I also had to pay for anything else that might have come up.

Suffice to say, whenever I had a GP visit coming up I would have to sacrifice something else (usually food). The worst part about being on the benefit was that when I did manage to find some paid employment, I could only earn up to $80 before my benefit would begin to be cut.

I had a casual job out in Lower Hutt at the time, but I would have to turn down shifts because, factoring the extra travel costs plus the benefit sanction, I would end up making less money by working.

* Auckland's high cost of living means there is little dignity for beneficiaries and low income residents

* Struggling to make ends meet**

Then I started studying. Despite my best efforts to find out, nobody at Work and Income told me that the student allowance was $50 less per week than the unemployment benefit. I only discovered this after my very first Studylink payment came through.

Nothing else had changed, except the fact that I was studying instead of working. (I should mention that I am 30 years old and not expecting to be supported by my parents.)

After my rent and bills went out, I had only $15 to live on per week from Studylink. That was $15 for food, medical, transport, cellphone, insurance, car stuff, everything.

I was very into health and fitness at the time, I enjoyed running and working out. But I had to give it up because I couldn't afford to feed my increased appetite.

I frequently went without food, and walked one hour to university every day because I could not afford to take the bus. I lost about 7kg of muscle mass. Needless to say, I became very depressed, many days suicidal, and my studies seemed to matter less and less.

Eventually one of the many job applications I made offered me a permanent position. It was the second half of the trimester, but I had already dropped out of one paper from being exhausted.

I ended up taking a full-time contract at that same job during the summer break (where I remain working to this day), and as much as I am desperate to finish my degree, I have been too scared to go back to university as I do not want to end up skinny, sick, and impoverished again.

The only solution I can see is to move back to my retired mother's house to study, however that comes with its own setbacks as we would both experience a sanction penalty to our respective student allowance/pension simply due to us living together. (Presumably we are expected to financially support each other, thus we each get paid less money thanks to the others' support? It is truly ridiculous!)

I have been on various benefits in my youth, and I could write pages and pages on my experiences of being treated like a mooching criminal by countless Work and Income staff in different offices - not to mention the abhorrent disregard from wider society. But it is a part of my past I prefer to forget.

I am just lucky that I do not have a permanent disability, and I am able to support myself through paid employment now (albeit low wage employment due to the fact I have not finished my degree through fear of poverty).

There is no welfare system in New Zealand; in its place is a cruel joke that reinforces the cycle of poverty.

How is anybody supposed to get themselves into a job when they can't afford a haircut or a good breakfast? How are any children raised in these situations supposed to thrive?

It's utterly absurd and truly heartbreaking, but it does explain why a quarter of New Zealand's population lives beneath the poverty line.

I have always believed that those conservative politicians who dream up harsh benefit regulations should spend a month or two living on the benefit, and then assess how easy it is to 'just get a job' when you are being trampled down at every opportunity, starving, and dying of a preventable illness.