General Debate 23 November 2024
39 minutes ago
Thursday, April 12, 2007
In Work payments to cost half a billion
It has taken me a while to find any accounting of the In Work payment and I am very glad to see it is still being classed as a benefit by Treasury despite it being paid by the IRD. Here is the crucial point, if you can bear me repeating it one more time. No politicians, including Judith Collins, who should have been screaming about this on breakfast TV this morning instead of making false claims like the sickness benefit pays more than the unemployment benefit, have picked up on this jiggery pokery. The sudden drop in beneficiary numbers is (to some as-yet-unknown degree - challenge the Minister, Judith) a transfer onto a different benefit now called an In Work payment. Where a beneficiary has moved from, for example, the DPB onto an In Work payment, with no change in working hours, they cease being a beneficiary. From a monetary point of view it will cost the country even more. I am not however knocking those people who are prepared to work even part-time. It is just so incredibly frustrating to watch the Minister and the opposition spokesman both so incompetent in their portfolio.
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2 comments:
Lindsay, the IWP is not a transfer payment in most cases, it is effectively tax relief. There is no evidence that the sudden drop in unemployment benefit has led to an equal increase of these former beneficaries to the IWP. Many of the beneficaries end up students or go overseas. Conversely Many of the uptake in the IWP are immigrants, former students, and also the result of divorce when both partners work and both get their full IWP entitlement.
What is concerning ( and THIS is what you may want to write about) is that lots of people are being subsidised for 1 year for $200 a week by WINZ to move into work and most of these people are also collecting the IWP - so the state subsidises the employers as well as the earners in an attempt to drive the Unemployment benefit figures down. The rest go on the sickness benefit.
Thanks for reminding me that govt also spends $200 (and plans to increase it to 250) million on employment initiatives which is not included here.
You say there is no evidence of what I suspect. I say there is. See my earlier post showing the large drop in beneficiaries who work part-time or part-year.
And the second part of your own comment confirms movement from benefit to IWP.
If IWP is not a transfer payment why have Treasury included it under benefits? For part-time low income workers they are getting back their tax and then some, plus family support and accommodation supplement in most cases.
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