LINDSAY MITCHELL: Bigger benefits won't help children
- Administrator
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Why are incompetents routinely called 'experts' these days? The election campaign brings them out in their droves. Today's Herald headline:
Child poverty experts urge politicians to adopt recommendations before election
Eleven of them are demanding a range of actions "including lifting the minimum wage to the living wage, increasing benefits and indexing them to average wage growth or inflation, and replacing “Working for Families” with a tax credit that is not connected to parents’ work or benefits status."
For context, two salient facts:
At April 1, 2025, a sole parent on a benefit with two or more children received on average $1,110 weekly; a couple with two or more children, $1,255 net.
In the year to the June 2025 quarter, median weekly income from wages and salaries was $1,380 gross or $1,111 after tax.
How high do the 'experts' want benefits for caregivers to go?
There are already a quarter million children living in benefit-dependent homes.
Many of these homes are in low-income neighbourhoods where, the 'experts' tell us, it's a struggle to provide essentials like food and clothing.
Neighbourhoods where alcohol outlets cluster, along with vape shops, and tattoo parlours. Where gangs deal meth. Let's pump some more cash their way, say the 'experts'.
More money is not the answer.
Yesterday I received a postcard from World Vision showing me where the money I send goes.
That is a malnourished child receiving therapeutic life-saving food. That is a child whose mother cannot feed it.
It isn't a child whose mother receives over a thousand dollars cash from the government every week and still manages to have the 'experts' tell us is living in material hardship.
My non-expert list for the next government contains one urgent and do-able action. Stop paying cash and start providing assistance-in-kind.
A government that wants better for children whose parents can't or won't care for them properly would ensure that the substantial resource going into these homes was practical and effective.
References
I am currently in Thailand with average internet hence the double post which I have deleted.
However, a week or so ago I made a tongue in cheek comment that NZ was already a third world country with a poorer set of stats than somewhere like Thailand. I produced some stats to show that indeed we are behind in many areas and now that I am here I can see why.
Yes, there is welfare and we walked past the welfare office yesterday. Surprisingly there were no queues and hangers on lingering outside and certainly no security guards unlike our WINZ offices. This is part of the criteria for welfare in Thailand
"To be eligible for Thailand's State Welfare Card,…
I think you are missing the point Lindsay which surprises me. The whole point of welfare to solve child poverty is to feed the industry that has grown up around it plus support the gangs who prostitute the mothers and supply meth tp the rest of the families, support the loan sharks that prey upon the beneficiaries, the $2 shops that thrive on benefit day and the political parties that tap the 400,000 plus voters by promising even more for even less effort.
Imagine what these poor advisors/experts would have to do if the government wasn't funding their pointless research leading to the same old requirement to spend more. How many NGOs would have to fold if we didn't have…
Do hope no one currently in work ever finds them selves out of work and having to rely on the state. The country is in dire straits of needing medical staff but they still havnt re-employed those that lost their jobs standing by their oath of 'first do no harm'. Then theres the nurse graduates who apply for over a 100 jobs but dont find one now having to think of going overseas and so many more like these. Part of receiving a benefit is 'applying for employment' do employers give these people a go or rather take on an immigrant. All systems get abused by those without a conscience if they are not robust systems. Before taking fr…
And Lindsay's comment coming two days after a "The Post" story of a FMA Court case against a car dealer involving a woman who bought a $48K car from them on finance. The woman, being a solo-mother with a one-year-old child and who was also 'caring' for two others (of a brother),, was living in a 'Work & Income' funded tent in a relative's backyard. She, by her own declaration, was receiving $1,500 a week in benefits! Of course, the car purchase ended in disaster and the FMA is rightfully pursuing the dealer for failing to meet its respo0nsible lending obligations. That aside, this kind of situation seems all too familiar in NZ where responsible parenting seems to have disappea…
How about taxing All experts telling us what to do at twice the going rate for everone else. I never cease to be amazed at the "experts' that news media, especially TV mange to find that give us their ideas on whats wrong and how it is to be fixed, they are out there by the thousand, it seems