Monday, July 15, 2013

Trevor Mallard: deluding himself or lying?

Talking to Tim Fookes on NewstalkZB about the welfare reforms this morning, local MP Trevor Mallard said,

"...the total number of beneficiaries dropped by about two thirds when we were in government."

He was stressing the total number to address Tim's suggestion that many people had simply moved off the dole and onto sickness or invalid's benefit (which has some truth to it).

Looking at the four main benefits, in 1999 there were 359,433. Thanks to plummeting numbers on the unemployment benefit, the total had dropped to 261,747 by 2008.

A drop of 27 percent.

So why would Trevor make such a gross exaggeration? Has he kidded himself into believing Labour really accomplished that or is he just a liar?

Listen here.


For the two commentors here's a relevant graph:

3 comments:

Adolf Fiinkensein said...

But you didn't count the tens of thousands they shifted over to ACC. That was the real rort.

S. Beast said...

ACC shifted them all right back and added more for good measure. No one does bureaucracy like ACC.

Allistar said...

Trevor doesn't consider those that benefit from WFF to be the welfare beneficiaries that they are.