Thursday, January 14, 2021

"Clear consequences" aka sanctions

Below is an extract from a Government policy statement:


Given today's Labour varietal you may be surprised to know that statement came from PM Helen Clark and Social Developemnt Minister Maharey in 2001, from Pathways to Opportunity.

Subsequently reliance on the unemployment benefit did decrease markedly:


HOWEVER reliance on invalid and sickness benefits increased (with a good part of the growth in mental health incapacity)...


...and DPB dependence reduced only slightly:



Anyway, back to the "clear consequences" aka sanctions.

The Labour government elected in 2017 was an entirely different kettle of fish.

Here is Simon Bridges in 2018 basically singing from the old Labour hymn sheet:

On TVNZ1's Breakfast yesterday, Mr Bridges said sanctions on benefit payments gave expectations and incentivised people to work, and the loosening of the rules was "unfair".  

"It's unfair on taxpayers who work hard and expect to see their money well spent. But it's also not fair to the beneficiaries frankly."

....When asked if she agreed with Mr Bridges about using sanctions to incentivise people to get off the benefit, Ms Sepuloni said there was "a lot of evidence to show that actually in many cases they don't work".


The application of sanctions reduced substantially. So what hppened next?

To be fair to Sepuloni I've only extracted data to pre-covid:



On the evidence presented here I believe Clark and Maharey were correct; Simon Bridges was correct and Carmel Sepuloni is whistling dixie.


2 comments:

Max Ritchie said...

She said “they don’t work” and, inadvertently, she absolutely right - they do not work! The beneficiaries, that is. Sanctions, of course, do. If you give free stuff away you’ll always someone happy to take it.

captainofthegate said...

The sting in equality is you need to acknowledge inferiority to get your pimps approval, and get the power. Like Faust, you need to sell some of your soul to Mephistopheles. It’s a honey trap.