For the last four years, the Ministry of Social Development, the main agency for the Wage Subsidy Scheme, has relentlessly reported on people who committed fraud during the Covid period. For example:
You can go here
to read names, court case details and outcomes dating back to
2022.
What's interesting is MSD does not report cases of beneficiary
fraud.
Yes, fraud is fraud, but it seems to me that people not on a
benefit, who submitted false applications for wage subsidies
during covid, get treated differently. They are all being made
public examples of, while nothing is reported by the Ministry
regarding beneficiary fraudsters.
So I was interested in the following recent court report from the
NZ Herald:
"An unemployed mother-of-four involved in a widespread benefit
scam will now pay back her ill-gotten gains by using her
benefit." [Editor's note: a number of the convicted and
sentenced covid frausters repaid their debt from their own
money.] "The irony of the situation was not lost on Judge
Tini Clark as she sentenced Kataraina Fay Matiu on a charge of
obtaining nearly $25,000 from the Ministry of Social Development
(MSD) by deception.
“It’s a bit of a money-go-round, as far as I’m concerned,” she
noted dryly, after handing down a sentence of four months’
community detention and 18 months’ intensive supervision for
that, and a separate assault on two court security guards."
This is a violent woman, an (ex?) methamphetamine user, with two
children in state care and two with her mother, and she got 4
months community detention.
Most of the covid fraudsters received longer community sentences.
Many will spend months, and even years, behind bars.
It's not as if there aren't any benefit fraud cases for MSD to
report. According to the ODT in 2024, "Mr van Ooyen [MSD group
general manager of client service support] said the number of
cases had spiked this year due to more staff returning to work
on benefit fraud since the end of the Covid-19 wage-subsidy
scheme."
But MSD doesn't report on them.
On the evidence, beneficiaries who commit fraud are treated less
harshly by both the courts and MSD.
Perhaps because beneficiaries are 'clients' of MSD privacy
constraints prevent their being named in the way the covid
fraudsters are. But I also believe that MSD has, over time,
developed its own moral code - beneficiaries are victims of the
capitalist system whereas covid fraudsters are part of it.
Officially this is how MSD approaches benefit fraud:
"MSD’s overall approach is to intervene early when concerns are
raised, to make it easy for clients to do the right thing and
avoid unnecessary overpayments and debt while still responding
appropriately to serious fraud."
Perhaps all fraud is equal, but some fraud is more equal than
others.
Why should you care? Because the ministry's worldview is such that
resistance to a reformist government - if one is ever elected - is
almost certain.
MSD's key message is "We help New Zealanders to be safe,
strong and independent."
Yet most working-age New Zealanders reliant on a benefit are
anything but.
MSD has somehow convinced itself that handing out benefits is
virtuous, enabling and liberating. Publicly acknowledging
recipients ripping them off isn't comfortable or conducive to
their kaupapa.
On the face of it, MSD has no empathy for covid fraudsters but no
end of empathy for beneficiary fraudsters.
So much for a neutral public service.
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