Twelve anti-poverty organisations have signed an open letter calling on the incoming government to end all sanctions and lift benefits to liveable levels.
“Our communities are deeply concerned about the tired and harmful narratives about people accessing income support that have surfaced this election,” says Vanessa Cole, ActionStation campaigner, and spokesperson for the open letter’s signatories.
“Political parties are choosing to attack people who are just trying their best to look after themselves and their families during a cost of living crisis,” adds Cole.
The open letter follows National’s proposal to decouple income support from wages and introduce a ‘traffic light’ sanction system for people on income support, as well as ACT’s proposal of electronic monitoring of the spending of those on income support.
“Sanctions do not work, and instead they cause more harm to people and their children,” says Cole. “Benefit levels are currently placing people and their families into deficit each week and must be lifted up to $350 more per week to be liveable.”
The letter notes that the conversation on welfare has “progressed” in recent years, and calls for all sanctions to be scrapped, as well as for benefits to be indexed to the higher of wage growth or inflation. The letter also says current benefit levels must be lifted “significantly”.
The letter is signed by a range of groups, including disability advocacy group NZ Disability Advisory Trust, faith-based group the Methodist Alliance, the service provider Lifewise, trade union FIRST, and youth environmental group Generation Zero.
Notes
The full text of the open letter is below:
No Benefit Cuts, No Sanctions! [Open Letter to Next New Zealand Government]
To the next New Zealand Government,
We are writing this open letter as the many organisations, advocacy groups, frontline workers, and people who access income support who have been fighting for far too long for a fairer future. We want a welfare system that upholds people’s dignity and creates the space for people and families to thrive.
We are deeply concerned that our communities – our parents, our grandparents, our volunteers, our healers, the people who hold our homes and communities together – are being targeted by political parties who are choosing to benefit bash to garner votes.
While we have not seen the transformation of our welfare system as was promised by the Labour government, it has felt like we progressed the conversation away from punishing people accessing income support and started to think about the welfare system as taking care of all of us. A 2021 poll showed 7 out of 10 people in Aotearoa supported lifting income support, and after the slight benefit increases in Budget 2021 60 percent of people thought benefits should have been lifted further.
However, the announcement of the National Party that it would sanction Jobseekers through a new traffic light system, and their coalition partner ACT’s proposal to electronically monitor sole parents, push the tired narrative that blame people on income support for poverty created by our economic system.
Aotearoa has relatively low unemployment rates, so much so that economists have been driving a message that we need higher unemployment. Our economic system relies on a certain level of unemployment as a tool to drive down wages. Particularly in a context where wage increases are being blamed for inflation when the evidence shows corporate profits are the biggest drivers of inflation. So unemployed people and beneficiaries are expected to be a sacrifice for the economy to function, but then also be punished and disciplined for this.
The sanction system is a coercive tool used by Work and Income to force people into insecure, low paid work. It involves taking away the income of people and families already struggling surviving week to week. The evidence is very clear in Aotearoa and internationally – forcing people accessing income support into low-wage work through sanctions compounds social harm, leads to more hardship and does not work.
The other policy being proposed by the National Party is to reverse the decision to link benefits to wage increases and instead index it to inflation to save $2 billion. The consequences of this means that people on Jobseeker will have $50 less per week and those on disability allowance and their carer $60 less per week. While tax cuts are being spoken about as putting money back in the pockets of people, this indexation policy will make communities and families poorer.
We support benefits being indexed to the higher of wage growth or inflation, but we also believe that main benefit levels must be lifted significantly to liveable levels to make them adequate. CPAG’s latest figures show that benefits levels are currently up to $359 in deficit. We cannot just index benefits – they must be lifted if we are to address the entrenched poverty and crushing cost of living crisis facing our poorest people and families in Aotearoa.
We call on the next government to:
Urgently lift main benefit levels to a rate that is liveable, alongside indexation to wages or inflation, whichever is higher.
Remove all sanctions from the Social Security Act.
We’re asking the next government to implement Fairer Future’s Seven Steps for a Fairer Future, and we’re also asking voters to go to the polling booth with the considerations raised above in mind.
Ngā mihi nui,
ActionStation
NZ Disability Advisory Trust
Auckland Action Against Poverty
Methodist Alliance
New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services
Project Gender
FIRST Union
Auckland Women’s Centre
United Community Action Network Aotearoa NZ (UCAN)
Poverty Free Aotearoa
Generation Zero
Lifewise
