BASH THE DIRTY FILTHY BENNIE!

She’s at it again, the little solo mum Westie Battler who loves to lie about where she got advice to release private information about beneficiaries to the media, Paula Bennett has warmed the hearts of talkhate radio rednecks with hot tales of dirty filthy bennies.

The privatization of Social Welfare is under way and as Gordon Campbell at scoop points out…

Campbell on the govt’s plans for welfare reform
Overseas, the language of ‘allowing community agencies to become more involved in the delivery of welfare’ has been a synonym for the wholesale privatization of welfare services. At a time when accountability for public monies is English’s catch-cry in every other realm of government spending, why is more flexibility – and less accountability for anything but ‘ results’ – being seen as appropriate when it comes to welfare ? Giving the experts more room to do what they do best is certainly not what the government is doing in education, over national standards.

With an unemployment rate that will skyrocket on the back of the W recession once the stimulus cash drys up and stops propping up the credit addicted global economy, moves to privatize social welfare has to be wrapped up in a camouflage that doesn’t look as threatening and totalitarian as it intends to be – cue the Maori Party. As the Standard points out Whanau Ora: privatisation by stealth.

The beauty for National in having the relationship with the Maori Party is that it gives the pretense that National are moderate, likewise the beauty of having the Maori Party front foot this privatization of social welfare is that it doesn’t look like the radical free market economic policy as social policy that it actually is.

A great way to attack the dirty bennie and stir up NZers negative egalitarianism to rubber stamp vicious right wing social policy is put out bullshit figures on supposed welfare abuse …

$1000-plus welfare grants for other people's children
Thirteen of the 20 highest-paid beneficiaries and almost one-third of those who get more than $1000 a week from the state are looking after the children of other people. The highest paid is a single person on the East Coast, who gets $1720 a week, mostly in orphans and unsupported children's benefits to care for nine children. The second is a married Northland person, getting $1700 a week to care for 10 children, most from other parents. A table listing details of the 323 beneficiaries being paid more than $1000, provided by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, shows on average they have five children.

Isn’t it great that the mainstream media do such a great job of unquestioningly publishing whatever press release the National Party release unedited as news? Why didn’t the Herald challenge Bennett on her numbers? Two Grandfathers raising 8 and 10 kids between them getting $1574 and $1702 per week – that’s $20 after tax per day per kid, that’s hardly living on the pigs back is it?

But the mainstream media DIDN’T point this out and the bennie bash to soften NZers up for the privatization of social welfare continues with the aid of the very media who should be holding the powerful to account.