Yes. The government is going to get rid of the DPB. From April 2009 it will simply be known as income support. As will the problematic incapacity benefits.
Ms Dyson announced plans to scrap "stereotyped" names such as the dpb, and invalid and sickness benefits when the Government moves to a single core benefit next year - a change that will require the ministry to drop the names from all its brochures, letters, websites and training material from April.
This move, originally Steve I-know-of-no-social-science-that-says-the-nuclear-family-is-more-successful-than-other-kinds Maharey's big idea, has been heralded for a long time. The government's plan to introduce one single core benefit is par for the course - if you can't solve a problem, bury it. Minister Ruth Dyson says she wants to get rid of stereotypical names. What that means is she wants to destroy any stigma attached to being on a benefit instead of self-supporting. This has always been Labour's aim. The more people that receive state support the more 'normal' it becomes. So they are equalising everyone on benefits and overlapping them with people working but receiving income support.
A report from 2004 said, The Cabinet papers suggest the move to a single benefit is designed to break down entrenched attitudes and stereotypes about benefits and their purpose. The Cabinet papers: "Too much of the system is still inherited from a past in which jobs were scarce and it was assumed categories of people, and particularly people with health conditions or disabilities, couldn't work and didn't want to work."
So there it is again. This change is primarily about altering non-beneficiary attitudes. More psycho-social engineering. The politically correct process of changing the language to change how people think.
In practice this move will reduce transparency. It will be far more difficult to identify trends and problems. Under the present system we are able to quickly and easily identify that while unemployment has dropped, more individuals are now on other benefits.
At the moment there are a quarter of a million working-age people on various benefits and we can identify where the problems remain; which groups have longer durations dependent on welfare; which groups have dependent children; which groups present the biggest challenge.
National and ACT should both be strongly opposing this move.
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8 comments:
This policy may have an unintended consequence. At present we respond differently to various beneficiaries depending on what type of benefit they are on. With the new one name fits all benefit we won't know why someone is on a benefit and will assume the worst. Everyone receiving government support will be a beneficiary and the country will be divided into two groups, beneficiaries and income earners.
There is already something of that. For instance we don't know if someone is on a sickness benefit because of an avoidable or unavoidable condition. But this will make it worse.
Maharey wanted the widow's benefit to be subsumed as well. I would suggest there is considerably more sympathy for a recipient of a widow's benefit than a long-term recipient of the DPB with numerous children to different fathers.
That is the thinking the government wants to eradicate. Thoust must not judge!
i also note from stuuf.co.nz this morning (http://www.stuff.co.nz/4606691a10.html) that a government commissioned report conveniently notes that fewer people are now living in poverty.
this sounds like a crock to me... have they just redefined 'poverty' so that more people are no longer poor?
This never flew last time because superannuitants did not want to be labelled "benficiaries". It was going to be called Universal Benefit last time.
Brian Smaller
That is the most telling statement Lindsay.
Thou Must Not Judge!
None of us are responsible for our actions, but all of us are responsible for the consequences.
Is there any part of Helen's regime that is not consistent with the above?
I think not.
Lawrence.
Grrrr.
Ms Dyson's argument is frightening in its stupidity and deviousness. By dropping the title 'incapacity benefit' the government will take away the stigma? Get real! By dropping the name 'incapacity benefit' and giving all welfare recipients the same label, you will further stigmatise the disabled who will be called 'work-shy thieving scroungers' even more often than at present - if that is possible.
Has she, do you think, personally talked to any of these people, or come to these ideas from behind a desk?
I don't feel stigmatised by being labelled disabled, because it is what I am. I would feel far more stigmatised if I was lumped in with everyone else who didn't have a job, and harassed and bullied from all sides, as if overcoming health problems, and finding and keeping work with a chronic condition, was just somehow a question of will-power.
I read an article recently entitled 'Labour plan to abolish sickness', and I think this is what they doing. Just re-name it and it will go away. After all, it is inconvenient and costly to our society to have people who cannot work, so just re-label them and suddenly everything is OK. And persuade the rest of society to turn on them, it's the easy way out.
Lucky land, here I come.
Murray
Maharey's is wrong when he says that I know of no social science that says the nuclear family is more successful than the single family.
From my observations:
1. Many single mothers have multiple partners. There partners are often little more than toy-boys They take little for no responsiblity for the woman or her children. Does Mahary think that is a good role model for the next generation?
2. Children of single parent woman often have to grow up more quickly as their insecure mothers burden them with their own personal problems in the absence of a supportive partner.
3. Young woman on the DPB are less likely to marry or be in a committed defacto relationship than their single counterparts, leaving them vunerable and possibly without support if they become sick. They frequently cannot provide for themselves if they become sick as they do not have the financial means of many couples and for the same reason cannot save for retirement.
4. Typically, in the absence of many fathers in solo woman's lives, boys miss out on a male role model and a father figure.
Gloria
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