nACTional’s plan for the unemployed? A prison built from shipping containers

More people need top-up to survive on welfare cash
The number of people getting extra support from Work and Income has jumped by a third as New Zealanders struggle with recession and rising living costs. Figures obtained by the Council of Christian Social Services show that the numbers receiving either "temporary additional support" or "special benefit" jumped from 40,748 in the first quarter of last year to 54,389 in the same period this year. Both kinds of help are for people who can't meet ongoing commitments on their homes, cars and other specified items even after accessing all other entitlements such as main benefits and accommodation allowances. As a proportion of working-aged people on main benefits, those getting extra help rose from 15.9 per cent to 18.8 per cent. Wellington People's Centre benefit rights co-ordinator Kay Brereton said many of those seeking extra help could not keep up payments on loans and mortgages after losing their jobs. "Others are simply facing harder economic times - things like increases in power and petrol, most of which doesn't get covered in temporary additional support but some of the flow-on costs sometimes can," she said. The Council of Christian Social Services, which requested the figures under the Official Information Act for the first of what it says will be quarterly "vulnerability reports" on social indicators, said it expected even more dramatic increases in extra benefits in its next report.

It’s getting a lot colder out there isn’t it? Despite all the claims of ‘green shoots’ the reality for many is that life is becoming increasingly more difficult and those hitting the welfare lines are finding out for the first time that the myth of the bludger gaining massive amounts of free money from the state is exactly that, a myth. The means testing of the newly middle class unemployed is creating a real wake up call at how little assistance the state actually provides for those on the bottom of the heap. If this is how tight it is at 5% unemployment, how bad do you think it will get when we hit Treasury’s worst case scenario of 10% unemployment, because the only actual solution nACTional have come up with for the unemployed, is to build new prisons out of shipping containers.

Imagine how all those new prisoners who are committing crime for the first time out of need not greed will get treated inside? We are building the blocks of a terrible empire of suffering, the poisoned wound of which will gag society as a whole.

I hope John Key on his taxpayer funded pacific hip hop tour starts to think about solutions needed back in NZ soon, because his country needs it.