Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Welfare Working Group announced

Members of the Welfare Working Group include:

• Ms Paula Rebstock (Chair)
• Professor Des Gorman
• Professor Kathryn McPherson
• Associate Professor Ann Dupuis
• Ms Catherine Isaac (formerly Judd)
• Ms Sharon Wilson-Davis
• Mr Adrian Roberts
• Ms Enid Ratahi Pryor.


According to the Minister's press release;

Based on past trends and current policy settings, the proportion of New Zealanders receiving long-term benefits is expected to increase unabated. The fiscal, social and economic costs of that are unsustainable.

Somewhat similar to what the header of this blog says.

I notice a number in there.

Taxpayers currently spend $7.6 billion per annum on main benefits.

A couple of weeks back I posted about the total of $4.8 billion being bandied about all over the media and said it was too low and the real cost is likely to be over $7 billion.

The erroneous $4.8 billion came directly from the Ministry:

345,000 New Zealanders currently receive a benefit, costing taxpayers $4.8 billion a year.

Anyway, good luck to them. One can only hope that if they offer up anything useful the government will have a more constructive response than to the Taskforce 2025 (which already made recommendations about reducing welfare)

3 comments:

David said...

Do we really need another highly paid quango to repeat the numerous other studies that have been done. This is a government that is too scared to do anything that might upset the oppositions constituents but doesnt give a flying stuff about its own supporters.

baxter said...

David........No we don't need another quango and you are correct in your other comments...All we need is a quango of one......Lindsay Mitchell

Berry said...

I don't get most of the names in that working group. Some apparently eminent enough, but in completely unrelated fields. Some other apparently more based on WHO you know rather than WHAT you know.
I'd be very surprised if this is going to turn up some real answers rather than a couple of hundred pages of doorstop.