Lindsay Mitchell: Who Moves from Welfare to Super?

The National government is presiding over significant growth in benefit dependency, in both numbers and the length of duration people remain dependent. When they took office in late November 2023 there were 369,000 work-age people on benefits. By the end of September 2025, that number had grown to 410,328 - or by just over eleven percent.

Given New Zealand's rapidly ageing population, I wondered how much the apparent growth is being suppressed by people moving off a benefit and onto Super. So I asked for data from MSD under the Official Information Act.

Ele Ludemann: The benefit burden

The superannuation burden as the aging population grows gets far more attention than the benefit burden.

The alternative to aging is death and some people receive benefits because of disability or illness which prevent them from working.

Lindsay Mitchell: RNZ showcases why nobody trusts mainstream media

A brief post to set the record straight.

Today RNZ is running an article entitled, Do you know what people on benefits actually get?

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 31/10/24

Sorry, Dr Brash – not this time, but there are sure to be other opportunities for you to land a government appointment

The Government played it safe in deciding who should sit on the Te Māori Manaaki Taonga Trust Board. There was nothing quite like the naming of former ACT leader and Labour government minister Richard Prebble to sit on the Waitangi Tribunal – such as a job for Don Brash, perhaps.

Prebble’s appointment was announced by Minister of Māori Development Tama Potaka, who said it would uphold the work done between the Crown and Māori.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 17/10/24

Dig deeper into these benefit numbers (as Louise Upston did) and you will find something cheering about job seeking

The tables [below] come from a report just published, titled…

Benefit Fact Sheets

Snapshot

September 2024 Quarter

The Benefit Fact Sheets, which “provide a highlevel view of trends in benefit receipt”, are published quarterly to provide information on income support provided by the Ministry of Social Development.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 13/8/24

Govt brings an end to the ban on gene technologies – and Greenpeace responds by calling for a culling of cows

An announcement from Social Development Minister Louise Upston yesterday quickly generated a storm of critical comment.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 20/2/24

Govt prescribes stiff medicine for some beneficiaries while easing access to drugs containing pseudoephedrine

One of two new announcements on the government’s official website – given plenty of publicity by the mainstream media over the past 24 hours – has been pitched as the first steps in a “reset” of the welfare system. Stiff medicine for beneficiaries, in effect.

The second announcement, released today, is loftily portrayed by Associate Health Minister David Seymour as the deliverance of greater freedom and choice for sick New Zealanders.

Kerre Woodham: Act's welfare policy is the kind of hardline stuff many of us want

According to Act, drug addicts will face the prospect of losing their benefit if they refuse treatment or don't make more effort to find work. Act also wants to reduce the current number of 4000 people who receive the supported living payment because of stress.

70 percent of them have been receiving that payment for more than five years. ACT argues stress is a condition that can be treated over time, not a permanent incapacity.

Lindsay Mitchell: Children on Welfare - Highest in Labour's Term

The number of children reliant on a benefit is at its highest point since Labour became government in 2017.

The number - 211,617 - even surpasses the total at the end of 2020 after the chaos of Covid. The number is 26% higher than in March 2018, the end of labour’s first full quarter. Over 43,000 more children are now dependent on welfare. Was that the price former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was willing to pay in her naive pursuit of poverty reduction? It was a massive risk to keep increasing benefit rates and tax credits for children. This is the result.

Lindsay Mitchell: Gloomy outlook for young people on benefits

Yesterday MSD issued some insights into how young people (16-24 years-old) are faring in the benefit system. Searching for some good news, their first key finding described how young people "have recovered much faster from the economic effects of the pandemic compared to the Global Financial Crisis."

The government response to covid drove a very steep increase in young people going on a benefit so naturally enough you would expect a fairly steep corresponding decrease. By contrast the GFC presented a gradual increase and decrease in numbers.

Point of Order: More policies are stopped or slowed to help save $1bn for bread-and-butter spending.....

...but RMA “reforms” escape the cull

It was a big day for the stopping or slowing of a second tranche of government programmes, an exercise which Beehive publicists are pitching as measures to allow the Government to focus more time, energy and resources on “the bread and butter issues” facing New Zealanders.

This affirms, of course, that since the 2020 general election, the bread- and-butter issues facing New Zealanders had been lowered (or forgotten?) in the Government’s priorities.

Hence the Government’s popularity had wilted, its poll support had shrunk and Jacinda Ardern – remember her ? – had bailed out as Prime Minister when it looked like the Nats and ACT were on course to win the election this year.

Michael Bassett: Jacinda's twaddle about holding parents to account

When I was young, kids appeared before a magistrate (a District Court Judge before 1978) sufficiently rarely that questions were raised about the young person’s family, and inadequate parental supervision. Sometimes the magistrate would rebuke the parents if a child had been wagging school, or had been out late and was unsupervised. Remedial action was usually fairly swift: parents took steps to look after their children lest there was further police action.

Lindsay Mitchell: Average future years on a benefit increases again

MSD's Annual Report was released yesterday.

From the CEO's forward: