State house waiting list more than doubles in three years

When people apply for social housing or to move to another social housing property they go on the Social Housing Register. June quarter 2018 statistics have just been released. Official reasons for the increase are listed below.

The waiting list has more than doubled in 3 years.

The increase in demand can be contributed to a number of factors:
• Public awareness of support available through increased media and stakeholder engagement activities,
• Increasing financial barrier and the impact of aging have meant that exit rates from public housing have been falling steadily,
• Tenancy Reviews have not yet resumed and the number of tenancies ending influences the number of available public houses

Translated as, renting a state house is much cheaper than renting a private sector property so more people are staying put and nobody is compelling them to move on.

Big jump in working-age welfare spending

"The grey columns show historical spending, and the dark blue columns show forecast spending. Since 2002 working-age welfare spending (including main benefits, Working for Families tax credits, and supplementary and hardship assistance) has increased in dollar terms. Part of the increases after 2005 can be attributed to the introduction of Working for Families, and from 2008 to 2010 the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (and domestic economic downturn) can be seen to have increased pending (as unemployment rose).
Between 2010 and 2016 overall welfare spending fell slightly, reflecting the economic recovery and potentially the impacts of welfare reforms, and changes to Working for Families that kept spending and recipient numbers relatively flat. The increased welfare spending forecast from 2018 onwards is largely the result of the Families Package changes (increases to the FTC, AS, OB/UCB and FCA and the introduction of WEP and BSTC)."

The above is from one of the background papers provided to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.

(WEP = Winter Energy Payment and BSTC = Best Start Tax Credit. Yes, you can receive a tax credit without actually ever paying any tax).

NB Hats off to whoever wrote that background paper. Simple, concise and thorough.

One in 12 doctors publicly say no to assisted suicide

A full page ad in today's DomPost (so possibly in other major dailies) features the names of 1,000 doctors who say no to assisted suicide. To be fair, here is their message.

For context there are 12,000 practising registered doctors in New Zealand.

50 years of fighting family violence

1970s Feminists started to pressure govt to recognise domestic violence as a public concern - not private. The first Women's refuges were established. Their collective body started to seek legislation, research and greater funding for the protection of women which the Social Welfare dept partially provided.
1981 Committee on Gangs - subsidies for rehab for a range of 'difficulties'
1982 Domestic Protection Act introduced non molestation orders. Emphasis still on private resolution and counselling. Low police priority
1983 subsidized emergency housing for street kids.
1985 new funding for those working with violent men on anger management and alcohol treatment; and to victims
1987 Ministerial Committee of Inquiry into Violence recommends domestic violence be treated as a crime. Police adopted a pro-arrest  Domestic Dispute Policy
1991 Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Programme places family violence in the 'power and control' context rather than isolated incidents of anger and frustration. Suspected abusers arrested without complaint and compulsory re-education to address abusive behaviours
1994 Prevention of family violence identified by MSD senior staff as highest priority
1995 Domestic Violence Act definition broadened to include psychological and sexual abuse
1996 Statement of Policy on Family Violence introduced safety and protection needs of young child. Growing awareness of inter-generational violence. Breaking cycles of violence needed early intervention. Welfare to Well-being to promote the strengthening of families
1999-2002 CYF funding increase by 50%
2002 'Te Rito' a five year action plan to address family violence
2003 Care and protection Blueprint
2005 Family and Community Services FACS saw 600 separate contracts funded including family violence education, early intervention and prevention providers
2005 Budget funded 45 full-time child advocates
2006 Taskforce for Action on Family Violence allocates $11 million for nationwide 'its not ok' campaign
2007 Pathway to Partnership injection of $20.4 million to child and family service providers
2008 $446 million (for 4 years) for essential services with an initial focus on family violence and early intervention
2017 Budget extra $37.2 million for family violence and  $434.1 funding the development of the Orangi Tamariki
2019 $320 million on a package of initiatives aimed preventing family and sexual violence and breaking the cycle of violence.

So is this latest initiative aimed at a "violence-free Aotearoa New Zealand" finally going to do it?

(Summary complied largely from Tim Garlicks history of Social Developments.)

Does Winston believe the PM?

RNZ reports:

Ms Ardern said 1,000,000 people - including 300,000 children - were victims of family and sexual violence each year in New Zealand.

I expect these eye-watering statistics come from the Victims of Crime Survey which estimates the level of reports NOT made to police. Otherwise, the usual stat we hear about is the 120,000 plus call-outs to family violence incidents police make annually.

Funnily enough just last week Winston Peters was rubbishing this survey. I wonder if Winston believes the PM?

"Political Correctness is Destroying Philadelphia"

Sometimes it feels as if I am living in a world where up is down and black is white...though I don't think I can say that last bit any more.

A brief but shocking reminder of the ideology infecting the developed world, not just America. For the record I believe in 'traditional values'. That doesn't mean that I didn't also spend much of my younger life questioning and rejecting them.I still don't 'respect' authority and see nationalism as just another form of collectivism. But in time it became apparent to me why family values and acquiring a work ethic are vital. In any case, if people disagree, and they are free to, I don't expect to be persecuted for saying what I think.

Equally nihilistic is a story out of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. On Aug. 9, 2017, tenured Penn Law professor Amy Wax and University of San Diego School of Law professor Larry Alexander co-authored an opinion piece titled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.”
Its thesis was that the rejection of American bourgeois middle-class culture is the primary reason for most social ills in America today:
[American] culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.
Within a few weeks, a petition was signed by 4,000 people calling for Wax’s dismissal, and the dean of Penn Law, Ted Ruger, wrote an op-ed in The Daily Pennsylvanian, ostensibly about Charlottesville but really about Wax, in which he implied her views were “divisive, even noxious.”
Most significantly, he wrote, “It is important that I state my own personal view that as a scholar and educator I reject emphatically any claim that a single cultural tradition is better than all others” (referring to Wax’s position that those bourgeois values are superior values).

More

Further on the Privacy Commissioner's inquiry into MSD practice

Further to yesterday's post I've done some more reading. The following (you will have to enlarge it to read or refer to p11 here) is the model that MSD uses to investigate reports of fraud.

The ministry investigates between 2300 and 5100 reports a year. When a report is categorised as 'high risk' (which is calculated from the amount of information the person alleging fraud can supply) it is referred to the investigation team.They assess whether informing the beneficiary of the investigation would prejudice the case eg parties start colluding. If the answer is 'yes' they issue  requests for information from third parties.

MSD began to do this more frequently in 2012. Historically in 95 percent of cases beneficiaries did not directly provide the information requested within a specified time-frame.

The Privacy Commissioner is unhappy with the frequency of the bypass of seeking information from the beneficiary first. He wants it stopped, or to be precise has recommended, "MSD immediately cease its blanket application of the ‘prejudice to the maintenance of the law’ exception when issuing section 11/schedule 6 notices."

I would question the use of the term 'blanket application'. His inquiry reads:

The Ministry categorises fraud allegations as low, medium or high risk using the DST. The Ministry has said that after the practice change in 2012, only high-risk cases were deemed to come within the prejudice to the maintenance of the law exception, even though policy documents from 2012 suggest that the exception could be applied to all fraud investigations. In either case, this meant that the Ministry authorised and encouraged investigators to go straight to third parties for information using their compulsion powers, rather than approach the beneficiary first.

In a nutshell the commissioner wants beneficiaries suspected of fraud accorded more privacy.

His note to editors reads:

The Privacy Act 1993 enables agencies to collect, use and disclose information that is necessary and proportionate to their lawful requirements. The Act provides that, in general, information should be collected from an individual directly.
Section 11 of the Social Security Act 1964 provides a mechanism by which the MSD can compel information from persons other than the individual. Before exercising this power, however, MSD is required in the first instance to seek the information required from the individual directly, unless there are reasonable grounds to believe that this would ‘prejudice the maintenance of the law’.

In my view discouraging  investigators from going directly to third parties (in high risk cases) will make benefit fraud easier. And that development will be consistent with the general approach this government wants to take. For example no longer requiring mothers to name the fathers of their children for the purposes of seeking child support (starting next year) and non-application of other sanctions (already happening).

This is a simplified reading and description of the situation. I stand to be corrected.

Privacy Commissioner sides with fraudsters

RNZ reports:

"[Privacy]Commissioner John Edwards has concluded that the ministry has been unjustifiably intruding on the lives of beneficiaries.
Since 2012, the ministry has been bypassing beneficiaries and going to third parties for information.
Mr Edwards said that's allowed fraud investigators to collect large amounts of highly sensitive information about beneficiaries without their knowledge."

When 5% of sole parent beneficiaries freely admit they have private child support arrangements with partners and 70% of sole parent beneficiaries in our largest longitudinal study ever say that they have partners, is third party investigation really "unjustified"?

MSD responds via new Deputy CE Viv Rickard:

"We take a prevention-first approach, using conversations with clients and data matching agreements to detect and stop anomalies early. We don't investigate lightly," Mr Rickard said.
"We will need to continue to go directly to outside parties for information without going to the client first, where we believe there is a risk of collusion, evidence tampering, witness intimidation, or we can't locate the client."
Mr Rickard said the practice introduced in 2012, in response to the then National Government's approach of taking a harder line on benefit fraud and speeding up investigations.
"Ninety-five percent of the time people didn't provide the necessary information when we asked them directly, meaning we had to go to third parties anyway, delaying investigations," he said.

I am the last person to encourage the state to snoop BUT if people want to live off other people's money that practice needs to be justified.

Children with no identified father much more likely to come to CYF attention

Of children born in 2010-2011 affected by Section 70A reductions, by age six 41% had a care and protection concern reported (P12).

The earlier 2000-01 cohort is depicted below. It's a horrible graph to comprehend hence I provided some context in my opening statistic

('Episide' is a typo - means episode)

(Right-click on image to enlarge)

Proof of the Section 70A rort

That's what Maharey called it back in 2004 when the Labour government increased the penalty rate to try and get more mothers to name the fathers of their children.

Here's proof that for some at least it is a rort.

MSD interviewed 4,000 sole parents who had a Section 70A penalty.

A small proportion (5 percent) said they did not report not applying for child support because they had a private arrangement with the other parent. 

I am surprised that many were honest about it.

MSD ignores own research

To justify removing the penalty for not naming fathers of benefit-dependent children MSD now says:

A developing evidence base suggests that outcomes for some of the children affected are likely to be being harmed by loss of family income associated with the reductions. Recent studies from overseas suggest a causal link between family incomes and care and protection service contact. More broadly, a developing body of international research shows that lower family incomes have a negative causal impact on child development.[my emphasis]

Why look for overseas research when their own and University of Auckland's shows the  care and protection link is not to lower family income but benefit income. At their site, Children in poor families: does the source of family income change the picture?

"...receipt of welfare income is negatively associated with children’s outcomes, even when level of income is controlled. This effect derives not so much from welfare receipt per se, but from parental characteristics that make some parents more prone than others to be on welfare (Mayer 2002).
Taken together, the findings suggest that children in families reliant on welfare may be particularly vulnerable to negative outcomes, being not only relatively poor but also more likely than children generally to have other disadvantages. The findings suggest substantially lower vulnerability among children supported by market incomes who are not poor, with an intermediate level of risk found among children supported by market income but who are relatively poor....To summarise, the findings show that poor children reliant on government transfers, when compared with poor children reliant on market incomes, have lower living standards and a number of compounding shortfalls that can be expected to place them at greater risk of negative outcomes. The findings suggest a need for policies that have a wider focus than just income support."

Yet MSD now argue for a policy based purely on the income support aspect.

But simply asserting the "greater risk of negative outcomes" doesn't prove a link to CYF involvement does it?

No.

So, staying at the MSD website, Vulnerable Children:
CAN ADMINISTRATIVE DATA BE USED TO IDENTIFY CHILDREN AT RISK
OF ADVERSE OUTCOMES?

 "Of all children having a finding of maltreatment by age 5, 83% are seen on a benefit before age two, translating in to a very high "capture" rate."

It isn't low income that puts children at risk of abuse or neglect. It is, to quote the former research, "parental characteristics that make some parents more prone than others to be on welfare."

Increasing abusive parents benefit payments won't make any difference. MSD's justification is hollow.

Labour's 180 degree turn on the responsibility of fathers

On Friday the government announced it will cease applying Section 70 A penalties from April 2020.

Background

"Section 70A of the Social Security Act 1964 requires that the rate of a sole parent’s benefit be reduced for each dependent child for whom the person does not seek Child Support, subject to some exemptions. The benefit is reduced by $22 for each dependent child for whom the client refuses or fails to meet their Child Support obligations. After 13 weeks a further $6 a week reduction may apply. Close to one in five sole parents receiving Job Seeker and Sole Parent Support have these benefit reductions. Reasons include being unaware of the penalties and how to comply and grounds for exemption, and a strong desire to have no contact with the other parent."

From the 1990s the Green Party started to agitate against this penalty. they would argue about women's reproductive rights, the penalising of children etc.

Labour however dug in. Their view was that fathers should provide financially for their children. It should not fall to the taxpayer. The numbers of mothers (and occasionally custodial fathers) who failed to name the father of a child dependent on a their benefit continued to grow. In the early 2000s Labour introduced legislation to increase the penalty. From the parliamentary debates:

Heather Roy: When will he admit that this is just a rort so that fathers can dodge child support, and why should taxpayers always have to pick up the bill?
Hon STEVE MAHAREY: It is a rort, and I have said time and time again in this Parliament that fathers must front up to their obligations, and we will make sure they do, as much as we can.
                                                                    Hansard, August 25, 2004

And later:

“It is not unreasonable to expect that single parents bringing up children on their own identify who in law is the other parent, or to expect that they seek financial support for the child from the other parent. It is not unreasonable to penalise financially those who do not. It is not a new philosophy.” Steve Maharey, Hansard, October 5, 2004

NZ First, represented by Bill Gudgeon also spoke in favour. The penalty was increased.

But 13 years on a new Minister said:

“The most common reason for not naming the parent was often family-violence related and so, keeping that mind, it’s almost like you’re doubly punishing these women and their children. So, we’re not going to allow that to continue.”
                        Carmel Sepuloni, RNZ, November 14, 2017

That is a red herring as the Work and Income Manual states:

“Your benefit payments may be reduced if you don’t legally identify the other parent or apply for Child Support. In some situations you may not need to do this, for example if you or your child would be at risk of violence. Work and Income can tell you more about this.”
                                         

Advice to cabinet said:

“Repealing Section 70a could provide an incentive for clients not to apply for Child Support and establish private arrangements with the other parent. This is because clients would retain their full benefit rate and receive the child support paid privately.”
                  MSD report to Carmel Sepuloni, November 10, 2017

And that has always been the problem.

Nevertheless Labour has been persuaded, along with NZ First (also traditionally of the view  that a father should be financially responsible) by the Greens to drop the penalty at a cost of $113.4 million over 4 years. But that is only estimated on the current number of mothers who aren't naming the father.

In the future, as there is no longer an incentive to name him (or disincentive not to) many more fathers will never pay child support for their children. 

Another Working Group:Another Waste of Time and Money

The Welfare Expert Advisory Group has delivered what the Green-driven government wanted - a recommendation to wildly increase wealth redistribution - an ideological affirmation. The group advises, "The fiscal cost of improving the adequacy and design of income support is estimated to be around $5.2 billion a year." That's an increase of around 50% on current costs.

The report overflows with conceptual phraseology, much of it drawn from Maori culture; words like equity, fairness, justice abound. It lacks however any concrete suggestion as to where an extra  $5.2 billion is to come from. The only justification for such a massive hike comes in the form of:

"It is important to recognise that the current system has costs of its own – those associated with the broader negative effects of poverty including lower educational attainment,imprisonment and poorer health." Which is exactly the approach National had taken under Bill English's actuarial analysis, but without front-loading savings.

Unsurprisingly then, only two policies were announced in direct response to the report and have been scheduled for introduction in April 2020. 1/Scrapping the penalty for not naming the father of a benefit-dependent child (a 180 degree turn from the last Labour-led government's stance), and 2/ an increase in what beneficiaries can earn before their benefit is affected (which National quickly approved without considering  more people getting trapped in a part work/part benefit regime) .

The Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, says, "The Government can’t deliver on every recommendation at once." Indeed. It can only deliver on two of forty two in a year's time,  just months before it stands to lose any ability to do more.

In that respect alone this working group has been another waste of time and money.

Many of its recommendations are pie in the sky. It wants core benefit levels raised by up to 47 percent. On top of higher abatement rates, paid work for the unskilled would become uneconomical. People respond to economic incentives. For sole parents benefit 'packages' already rival income from employment despite the report's claims about grossly inadequate levels of welfare.

Some recommendations are a straight reversal of the last National government's welfare reform measures. Single parents should only have to work part-time when their youngest is 6 - currently it is 3 in line with eligibility for free early childhood education. Removal of the 'subsequent child' policy, introduced to prevent sole mothers from adding children to their benefit to avoid work-testing, is urged. The compulsory 'money management' aspect of youth benefits should be scrapped with a return to  handing out unconditional cash to 16 and 17 year-olds

Especially cheered by the Greens no doubt, the panel calls for removal of obligations and sanctions for "... pre-benefit activities, warrants to arrest sanctions, social obligations, drug-testing sanctions, 52 week reapplication requirements, sanctions for not naming the other parent, the subsequent child work obligation, and the mandatory work ability assessment for people with health conditions or disability."

Under such a scenario New Zealand would have parallel worlds whereby one group of people - the producers and risk-takers - are constantly expected to meet work, tax, health and safety obligations - to name a few - while the other avoids any and gets paid for the privilege.

Increases to Working For Families tax credits and eligibility thresholds are advised. Child support payments to beneficiary parents, currently kept by Treasury to offset benefit payments, should be passed directly to the custodial parent.

With regard to Job Seekers, here's an odd one: "Establish an effective employment service of the Ministry of Social Development so it is better able to assist people to obtain and keep good, sustainable work." Surely the Ministry has an effective employment service already (though on currently increasing Job Seeker numbers, you may wonder). What constitutes "...good, sustainable work"? I am reminded of a previous Labour Minister Steve Maharey who protested against "dead-end jobs" for beneficiaries. Exactly who is going to do the unskilled yet vital work required by this country's economy? And why a downer on those who do the least desirable jobs? I am thankful for them everyday.

There are multiple vague wishy-washy recommendations like, "Improve the health and wellbeing of people with health conditions and disabilities, along with carers of people with health conditions and disabilities who interact with the welfare system by providing financial support that is adequate to live a life with dignity and is equitable across the social sector." Meaningless.

A call to "increase public housing on an industrial scale" conjures visions of future ghettos based on past experience.  And then of course demands for heavier regulation of landlords feature as if that will magically make rental property cheaper when evidence points to the opposite outcome.

One recommendation makes sense: to index benefits to the cost of living, as is Super. That would be fair inasmuch as beneficiary income would keep pace with inflation. That is the solitary saving grace amidst an utterly unworkable, utopian/dystopian manifesto (take your pick).

Instead of this charade the Green's 2017 welfare policy could've easily been printed and circulated saving over $2 million in the process.

Graph of the Day

Very informative piece in DomPost today by Justin Stevenson regarding the forthcoming Well-Being Budget argues we actually need to focus more on GDP and featured this graph:

Is it any wonder beneficiaries prioritise tobacco and alcohol

Stats NZ have provided interactive data that shows expenditures on 12 items in a variety of households.

Spending on alcohol and tobacco rates 4th highest in beneficiary households. No other household has a rating this high.

In absolute terms most other household types are spending more on alcohol and tobacco but it's lower down the list of items usually appearing 6th or 7th.

The other stand-out obviously is housing. All households bar the highest income/expenditure have housing as their number one cost - even Superannuitants, which is a worry. But the graph above has a pattern unlike any other in that all of the expenditures are close to the left (bar food) with housing hard to the right. Note the vast difference when compared to the highest income group:

Going back to the problem of housing making poor people poorer, look at the change for beneficiaries since 2008:

If I was on a benefit under this scenario I'd be prioritizing alcohol and tobacco too (notwithstanding rising accommodation supplement is meeting some of the increased housing cost).

The housing market is in a real mess. And it happened under a National government. After Labour set up the stifling regulations.

Silly Simon

Simon Bridges is making himself sound silly over the slushy 'scandal'. How much time (taxpayer money) did his staff spend digging up this dirt to throw at Corrections' Minister, Kelvin Davis, who sounds like a man with gravitas for a change?

It just makes me question Bridge's judgement even more. What goes on in his head?

For instance the prison population is on the rise again, despite Labour's pledge to reduce it; despite the Justice Summit which did cost a truckload and seems to have delivered little. Corrections says  a backlog of criminals due to be processed caused the rise. Why a backlog? Justice delayed is not justice. There are a myriad of serious questions the leader of the opposition could be asking but he picks the petty.

Youth Payments increase by 88.9%

That was sneaky. The March benefit statistics were due out last week. But they were never posted on the front page of the website. If you didn't know where to look, you would never find them.

I do and there they are.

All bad news.

Because the quarters fluctuate it is vitally important to compare year on year to get an accurate picture.

So amidst the glaring shortages of workers eg bus drivers, that are crippling services there has been an almost 11 percent increase in numbers of unemployed. Worse, those jobseekers classified as 'work ready' have risen by 14.5 percent.

While the base number is low Youth Payment has risen a staggering 88.9% from 126 to 238.

There are just 6 fewer sole parent beneficiaries putting the brakes on that downward trend. The same can be said for the ex invalid benefit, now SLP, where there has been a very small increase.

What this illustrates is how the benefit system had now evolved into a bona fide, state-sanctioned alternative to employment for too many. (Recall my earlier post that showed 75% of those in the Growing Up in New Zealand study receiving a sole parent benefit said they had partners.)

It isn't kind or compassionate to admit more young people into a system that traps them and saps any ambition they may otherwise have held. It's just a waste.

Ardern's no Lange

Currently reading David Lange's memoirs, I am reflecting on how different the two Prime Ministers

are. When Roger Douglas had almost unanimous caucus support for a flat tax (Lange: When it came to the crunch only Cullen and I opposed - "Dear God! What a terrible lot of people they were!") he unilaterally scuppered it by announcing an unscheduled press conference and telling the country there would be no flat tax. He'd said nothing beforehand to Douglas who was out of the country, or the rest of the caucus. He put his Prime Minister-ship on the line for his convictions.

If Ardern was as convinced about the CGT (another ideological economic device) she'd take it to the next election and set about right now trying to convince New Zealanders of its merits.

"Jacinda Ardern's economics of blindness": David Seymour

ACT MP David Seymour writes at Magic Talk:

Would you live in a country in which the average age at death is 45, few children attend secondary school, and most people don’t have access to a telephone or electricity?
Sounds awful, right? That was New Zealand in 1913. The difference between then and now is productivity.
Paul Krugman – a Nobel Prize-winning, left-wing economist – once wrote that “Productivity isn't everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.”
Most serious economists would agree. 

More 

Media Release: Widespread benefit fraud identified by Auckland University

Widespread benefit fraud identified by Auckland University

April 11, 2019

Lindsay Mitchell, Welfare commentator and researcher

Widespread benefit fraud has been identified by the Auckland University of Technology in research published yesterday by the Ministry of Social Development.

For a number of years, and on a number of occasions, I have questioned the longitudinal Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) data because the level of reported sole parenthood does not match the reported national level. In new research by AUT the authors have made similar observations:

"A weakness of the GUiNZ data is that it may not be population representative and is not linked to administrative data.... Overall, 95% of GUiNZ children are born to mothers who are partnered. The GUiNZ sample seems to have low sole-parent status compared to a 2009 study that found one-third of families with dependent children were headed by sole-parents (Ministry of Social
Development, 2010). This could be because being partnered in the GUiNZ data is not the same as their domestic-purposes benefit status, from which partnership status is inferred by other studies. We find that 70% of those who say they receive the domestic-purposes benefit also answer yes to the question of whether they have a partner – confirming that the sole-parent status derived from GUiNZ is essentially different to those studies which rely on benefit status to infer partnership status." (My emphasis)

Work and Income rules state:

You may get Sole Parent Support if you are:
-aged 20 or older
-a single parent or caregiver with one or more dependent children under 14
-not in a relationship
-without adequate financial support

Claiming a sole parent benefit while partnered is illegal. Based on these new findings the practice may be widespread. It appears however to be tolerated.

The government is currently sitting on the completed Expert Welfare Advisory Group report. It is to be hoped that benefit fraud and better policy to prevent it, will form part of the ensuing discussion.