‘Heartless’ benefit move

Press, 17 July 1982, Page 11

‘Heartless’ benefit move

Parliamentary reporter

"Cruel and heartless" is how the Labour spokesman on social welfare. Mr G. W. R. Palmer, has described the Government plan to consider lowering the age of a dependent child, now at 16 years, for which the parent is paid the domestic purposes benefit.

In an address at Wanganui, the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Young) said that the age might be lowered several years. Mr Palmer said that this and other suggestions were dangerous and would produce hardship for many New Zealand women if they were implemented. In another part .of his address, the Minister said that he would like to see widows and domestic purpose beneficiaries on the same benefit.

The implication was that both these groups of women would lose eligibility for the

benefit at an earlier stage, Mr Palmer said. To make such a change would be cruel and heartless.

There was a job crisis; women who had been out of the work-force for some time had little chance of finding a job. Part-time jobs were even harder to find, and in the Public Service such jobs could only be temporary.

After-school child care in New Zealand was almost non-existent, he said. While a 16-year-old could be left, could 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds be left to their own resources, he said. The Minister was also contradicting his own words. Mr Palmer said. On April 19, in an address to the Taranaki Aged People's Welfare Council he said: "They (people on

the domestic purposes benefit) are at a disadvantage, because of their child-care responsibilities, their choice of work is somewhat restricted ... and at the moment they face competition in a depressed job market with high unemployment."

Mr Palmer urged the Minister to think again before taking such a Draconian step in the existing job market. Labour's Deputy Leader (Mr Lange) said that it was extraordinary that the Minister .should pick on widows. "Yet another group of New Zealanders now has cause for fear,” he said. “They are not a powerful group. Any Government that bashes the widows and the fatherless forfeits respect."