The Green Party is calling on officials at the Ministry of Social Development to be upfront with the public about when they are choosing to punish low-income New Zealanders.
At the Ministry of Social Development's annual review at Parliament this week, MSD's deputy chief executive Viv Rickard repeatedly denied that beneficiaries were having their benefits cut for not attending work expos and training seminars.
Work expos were where beneficiaries could meet with multiple local employers and discuss work opportunities in the region.
When asked by the Greens' social development spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March why beneficiaries were being punished for not attending the events, Rickard pushed back.
"They do not get punished, that’s unfair — they do not get sanctions. They do not get sanctioned, they do not get sanctions for not coming to our seminars." Rickard told politicians in the select committee.
Rickard said if a beneficiary repeatedly missed work expos, they could eventually be required to attend "but at the moment, these are invites".
"We should be excited about these things, because it's a choice for them to come, the people who come want to be there."
However, the ministry does regularly sanction beneficiaries — by cutting their benefits — for not attending work expos; effectively forcing them to attend.
Sanctions doubled
In early 2023, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said the number of beneficiaries being sanctioned in the Wellington region had nearly doubled after work expos and training seminars had recently been held in the city.
"From the clients who were invited to the employment workshops, of those who did not attend the first workshop were re-invited to engage in a second workshop. For those who did not attend the second workshop, those clients had an obligation failure [sanction] imposed," Sepuloni said.
When asked about his misleading statement to MPs at Parliament, Rickard refused to directly address it but said "we would have no wish to ever mislead any MP".
Rickard said the select committee had been adjourned due to the death of Green MP Fa'anānā Efeso Collins while work expos were still being discussed.
"As the hearing was adjourned prematurely, we are happy to provide any further information to the select committee if that would be helpful."
Ricardo Menéndez March told 1News that people struggling to make ends meet deserved people in charge of the agencies designed to support them to be upfront about when they chose to punish people.
"The Ministry of Social Development and Government need to be honest about the outcomes of work seminars."
While MSD has a system in place for monitoring beneficiaries' attendance at work expos — and for punishing non-attendance — it has no reporting system in place to track whether work expos were actually getting beneficiaries into jobs.
"Can we put in a formal reporting process? Possibly, but it will take time and we'll have to invent it and design it, etc," MSD chief executive Debbie Power told the select committee.
In 2018, Rickard told 1News that MSD was not sanctioning the tiny number of beneficiaries who failed drug tests.
"For normal New Zealanders, they will think we can stop their benefit," Rickard said at the time, "of course we can, but that's not our mode of approach, that's not our operating model because doing that doesn't help people become employed and independent."
However, that was also not the case — MSD was continuing to stop their benefits.
SHARE ME