Posts by Hilary Stace
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Maybe because she started the Needs Assessment and Service Coordination system that brought it an eligibility-based ring fenced system of disability supports, based on a market of providers who competed for contracts, whereas before it had been needs,community and rights-based?
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Sacha - I think the DPB might even rate lower than the In-Valid one if you take into account the judgmental moral undertone of our benefit system. It was OK to get a widow's benefit with little children, as I did, because you were pitiable. But mothers applying for the DPB have transgressed some moral code. People who are disabled or sick are in-valid humans but they are not immoral.
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TracyMac, that elderflower recipe must be similar to the delicately flavoured drink my mother used to make and she left it to those lovely old pottery flagons for the flavours to infuse for a bit.
There is one major problem - you need to have a handy elderflower tree and they seem pretty rare around here.
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I'm trying to recall if the beneficiary-bashing was as prevalent or as vehement in the early 1990s.
David, you obviously weren't on the DPB then. There has always been beneficiary bashing, particularly of DPB recipients.Some of us remember Bert Walker, the ungenerous and sexist Minister of Social Welfare in the Muldoon government. Made denigration of single mothers into an sport.
Anybody who has been on a benefit knows that the whole system is set up to make you feel guilty and unworthy as a human being. There is a hierarchy of benefits with the DPB at the bottom. In the early 1990s I went on the widow's benefit. To apply for it you even went to a different floor, to separate you from those DPB and dole bludgers, because you were slightly worthy. But by the time of Christine Rankin's reign all beneficiaries were treated the same. You hardly set foot in the place without being whisked off to a side room and being interrogated for benefit fraud. The public loved it.
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If Paula Bennett has a computer terminal in her office that gives her access to all beneficiaries' details, does that mean she can check names of people commenting in blogs like this, see whether we are beneficiaries or get any other welfare assistance, and release our details if she feels like it?
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This government is getting pretty skilled at encouraging that seething resentment you mention, Andin. It's not always as blatant as group against different group, its also within groups. So the parent of the disabled child is encouraged to resent the imagined extra support her neighbour's child gets.
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Another little dagger in the Budget (like the TIA) that hasn't really been picked up till now are the cuts to some special education services. Campbell Live featured two mothers upset at the cutbacks to the educational support their disabled children receive. Then the Minister came on to say that as some other children weren't getting the help it had to be cut from everyone.
The item didn't mention whether the women were solo mothers but as having a disabled child is a huge risk factor for marriage breakdown, it is possible.
So will these mothers now have their financial status revealed with the ministerial expectation they pay for the educational support themselves?
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I would like to see some of those beneficiary bashers try to do nursing or teacher training while having sole responsibility for dependent children. Apart from several thousand dollars of course fees, there are also expensive texts books and IT equipment to buy, transport and childcare to organise to go on section (and nursing shifts do not coordinate with public transport or school days), uniforms etc. All while being solely responsible for the family - sick children, school relationships, whatever happens.
Of course this helps makes people who have been on the DPB particularly good nurses and teachers etc because they know about family stresses. As fully qualified professionals and a potential work life or several decades, and having raised the next generation, they will be paying back way more than a few years of DPB payments.
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One good thing to come out of this is the focus of the cutting of the TIA for tertiary study in the Budget. This is an incredibly sad and shortsighted policy as anyone who has lived on a benefit and tried to access tertiary education would know. Student loans are very restrictive and are not possible for people who are also doing that very hard job of also feeding and housing children. Beneficiaries have not been able to access WWF etc and the TIA was specifically designed for beneficiaries to access education and eventually get off the benefit.
There is some speculation that Paula Bennett just misread or misunderstood the budget paper suggestion cutting it just for post graduate study and instead cut it from all tertiary study.
If there is a real intention to keep beneficiaries from retraining then that is giving serious political messages about the low citizenship status of those who do single parenting, or who live with disability etc, and all they can ever expect is the unskilled work that no one else wants.
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This whole episode and the recent budget just reinforce for me the contempt this government is showing for public education.
Apparently in reply to a question in parliament today the Minister of Education opened up the whole education system to potential privatisation.