Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has defended the Government's "reset" of the job seeker welfare system with a stricter application of sanctions, hitting out at the "perverse and obscene situation" under the previous two Labour-led governments.
The Government yesterday announced an additional 2500 beneficiaries a month will receive "work check-ins" from June. Officials have also been urged to apply "obligations and sanctions" that already exist in beneficiary cases.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, the coalition leader acknowledged those existing sanctions.
"They've been used by previous governments incredibly effectively," he said — but there was a significant increase in job seeker beneficiaries under the last two Labour-led governments over the last six years, he added.
"All we're saying is, a message has gone out to the CEO of MSD and to the frontline staff to say, 'Hey, listen, we need you to apply sanctions if people aren't going to hold their obligations of looking for work, preparing for work, training for work'."
Luxon stressed the new measures only relate to job seeker beneficiaries.
"The vast majority of beneficiaries, as you well know, are compliant with their obligations.
"But for those that aren't, we're just making sure the existing set of sanctions are being applied.
"At a time when we've got relatively low unemployment, worker shortages, you cannot have the perverse and obscene situation we had under the previous government," he said.
Quizzed on the Government's apparent prioritisation of benefit fraud over tax fraud, Luxon responded that he wanted to "make sure people are doing the right thing there as well".
"We just want to make sure people are meeting their obligations — whether it's around taxation, whether it's around welfare, whether it's around a range of topics.
"With respect to tax fraud, that is something that we are very focused on and we're very interested in increasing the number of auditors we have in IRD, for example, to go after any fraud that's sitting out there in the system."
Luxon also responded to yesterday's 1News Verian poll results.
"I don't really put too much store on polls," he said. "We're now in government, we're here to govern."
When asked about Labour leader Chris Hipkins' result and whether Hipkins should resign, Luxon said he was focused on governing.
"Those are issues for Chris Hipkins and for the Labour Party, frankly."
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