Bullies

I do wonder why it is that Right Wing Adherents always seem to find Downright Nastiness and Rudeness to be a fun way to interact. Nothing seems to amuse them more than to bash the vulnerable, especially beneficiaries.


Yes, this is going to be about Paula Bennett, but I need to vent some other stuff too.







That Private Christian School

Because, despite the fact that we are all supposedly in recession mode, our Flash New Government have now awarded further tax cuts to the richest segments in our society. They have also awarded $38million to the private schools.

It was a remarkable thing, therefore, that we were witness to a Principal of a Private Christian School, Rathkeale College in Masterton, hounding a solo mother, to the point of expecting her to mortgage her house, in order to pay to them the Voluntary Donations (note the word voluntary) that she has been unable to pay over the years. (She had paid all the compulsory stuff which was the largest amount by the way). But, beamed onto our Aotearoa/New Zealand telly screens, this unrelenting, white man, dressed in expensive suit and tie, accused this woman of free-loading and bludging on the rest of their school community. Even a partial payment was not good enough (she offered to pay what she could) for this avaricious man and his greedy school board. They wanted all of their potential pounds (NZ dollars even) of flesh to the last cent.

Adult & Special Education

I wrote already about the cuts that have been made to Adult Education throughout New Zealand. I must now report that a further $2.5million has now been cut from Special Education Units in state schools which offer support for kiddies with very severe physical disabilities.

but to get to the point here -

The Training Incentive Allowance & Ms Paula Bennett

The Training Incentive Allowance is now to be cut from sole parents. Enter Paula Bennett, the Minister for Social Development, the Minister who once herself was also a Solo Parent on a Domestic Purpose Benefit (DPB), the Minister who used Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) herself in order to gain qualifications and get herself out of poverty and into our Parliament no less! This Minister had this to say: "We have not cut the training incentive allowance; we have not cut the training level, we have merely changed the level." Gotta love the spin, not. Sole parents would still be helped, she said, "with a foundation course or other certificate", but at university level they would be treated as other students, she said.

In normal English language without the spin, that sole parents means getting a student loan and supporting their families via the student loan route rather than the DPB which the student loan was quite obviously never set up to do.

The Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) exists to enable solo parents to upskill by taking courses relevant to their needs. These might be more basic community-based courses, or polytech courses or university course. The TIA offsets the costs of the courses that solo parents are engaged in, for example, course fees, texts, stationery etc, travel (bus or train fares to an institution or petrol costs) and childcare costs. If the training allowance wasn't there, these costs would need to come out of grocery costs because most benefits have absolutely no room for manoeuvre anywhere else and few mothers would be prepared to take food from their children to enable their own study. There is no extra fat in a DPB, it covers rent, food, electricity - that's about it really. Solo parents must number amongst themselves the world's best economists. Some of them are straight out amazing.

So basically most solo parents are (from next year) going to be shut out of university study and any upskilling which could make a serious difference to their lives (and incomes).

Dissent

Two solo parents, Jennifer Johnston and Natasha Fuller, part way through their university degrees have publicly criticised the TIA cuts because only those sole parents who can find a way to complete their degrees via Student Loans will be able to do so, the rest will be left high and dry. Student loans are set up for young students who don't have parental responsibilities.

For example the student loan only offers an $18pw accommodation subsidy because it is assumed students will share houses (3, 4 or 5 students to a house maybe) to save costs. A solo mother (or sole father for that matter) with kiddies in tow usually needs at least a 3 bedroom house to her/himself and her/his family so that isn't going to work. And the student loan money is only available during semesters which means at the end of each semester there is a week standown (a week with no money at all) as the adult student moves off the loan onto some other income or benefit.

Most solo mums also study on a part time basis rather than full time purely because of their other responsibilities so they would be accruing an awful lot of student loan by the time they were done.

Now It Gets Ugly Because ...

Fighting for themselves and others, Jennifer Johnston and Natasha Fuller (and a heck of a lot of other people) were horrified when Queen of the Bullies, (Minister for Social UnDevelopment) Paula Bennett, released personal financial data about the two women after they publicly criticised cuts to a training incentive allowance.

Ms Bennett had her staff go through personal WINZ (Work & Income NZ) files, then gave the garnered information to the media as a weapon against the dissenters. She has tried to justify this complete abuse of power by saying she made the information public because (she reckons) the women were presenting a skewed picture to the public. Including all the TIA allowances the women received as though it was income (which it is not), Ms Paula Bennett has, in fact, presented an far more skewed picture, (allowances which are paid to providers are not income) and opened the door to the favoured sport of some people - beneficiary bashing.

Right Wing governments adore beneficiary bashing - it takes the heat from their real agendas.

Ms Johnson and Ms Fuller say there has been vicious reaction to them personally from some members of the public. Jennifer Johnston, said Ms Bennett was trying to intimidate her by releasing details of the welfare she receives.

"The ‘Right’," (from Bomber Bradbury's blog over at Tumeke) " – that includes Not PC – the corporate media – even David over at Kiwiblogh (who pretends to be enlightened) are all effectively arguing that the beneficiary is somehow inferior to the rest of us and as such don’t have the same rights to privacy and are open to this of type of abuse because it creates ‘better understanding of the debate’. What a load of absolute bullshit – complaining about a training allowance doesn’t ‘imply consent’ that you can now have all your personal details sent out to the media openly by the Minister you are complaining about! And that so many NZers are blind to this fact in their rush to bash a Bennie is about as ugly as our country gets."

As Paula Bennett is the Minister of Social Development, beneficiaries form a good part of her constituency and, in the view of Sue Bradford (Greens Party), Ms Bennett owes "a duty of care to this constituency." If so, Ms Bennett certainly doesn't see it that way.
Campbell Live Interview with Paula Bennett and Sue Bradford Here

She is also not averse (my opinion) to telling outright lies. On being asked to divulge her own spend on TIA, Ms Bennett says, oh it was so different then. It was much harder she reckons there was no child care subsidy, for example. Well, sorry Ms Bennett but that is just not true. The Child Care subsidy was available back in 1998 at least and I remember a friend using it back around 1990 at least while she was doing a typing course at the Polytech. So even though Ms Bennett might feel as though she is older than she looks (her opinion) she isn't so old that she could never have got a child care allowance. No way.

Meantime Prime Minister John Key (that wolf in sheeps' clothing) told reporters he was "comfortable" with the women's information being released and accepted Ms Bennett's justification.

The Labour Party intends to lay a complaint with the privacy commissioner against Social Development Minister Paula Bennett for releasing income details of two beneficiaries.

We are only about seven months into this political term, at this rate by the time we are done with it we may be believing even Rob Muldoon was benign.