M.P. details benefit cuts

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 2

M.P. details benefit cuts

The Minister of Social Welfare’s challenge to Labour that it identify those welfare programmes which it had claimed had been dropped by the Government, back-fired on him.

Mr Young told the Foster Care Federation that the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Lange, had been going up and down New Zealand deploring the welfare programmes dismantled by the Government. “Such statements are untrue,” Mr Young said, “you have the Labour spokesperson (on welfare) here this afternoon. Please ask her to identify the welfare programmes that are no longer there.” Labour’s spokesperson on welfare, Mrs Ann Hercus (Lyttelton), responded later at the conference, listing seven cuts the Government had made to social welfare programmes since assuming office in 1975:— She said that 12 cuts had been made to national superannuation levels and asociated benefits by a variety of techniques, including alterations to the formulae.

The unemployed had received cuts through an increased stand-down period when the benefit was not available. There had been cuts in lump sum benefits on death, and in sickness benefits, now not available for the first seven days, except in very rare circumstances, she said. Massive cuts were made to benefits when some people were long-term hospitalised, even though their mortgages and other commitments went on.

The range of supplementary benefits available to all beneficiaries had been cut. Similar cuts were affected with the tax on some unemployed benefits. “Everyone of the sectors least able to speak out in their own defence — the sick, the unemployed, the bereaved, the elderly — have faced substantial (for them) cuts in their benefits under this Government, and through those cuts children must have been affected,” Mrs Hercus said. These cuts had, over the years, totalled well in excess of $2OO million.