Speech: Turei - Mending the Safety Net 16 Jul 2017
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Mending the Safety Net – Metiria Turei’s speech to the Green Party 2017 AGM
Taku kuru
pounamu e! Tihei mauriora!
I te tuatahi ka mihi au ki te
mana whenua o te rohe nei; Ngati Whatua ki Orakei, tena
koutou.
Kei aku nui, kei aku rahi, e te ti, e te ta,
tena koutou katoa.
Tena koutou kua ikapahi nei ki te
hapai ake ki te kaupapa o tenei hui.
Kia ora koutou
katoa.
To our party members and our supporters –
welcome, thank you for being here.
I am thrilled to be
standing here before you on what is the last day of our last
AGM before we change the government!
This is my ninth
time speaking at a Green Party AGM as Co-leader and I
couldn’t be more grateful for the support and the love
you’ve shown me over the years.
Today, I want to talk
about an issue that I believe is the true test of us as a
Party, and of who we are as a country.
Our response to
this challenge will define us in government.
It is also
an issue that is very personal to me, it is why I have
persisted, to be in a position to fix it – so that we, as
a Party, can fix it.
I have talked to you before about my
time on the DPB. I was a single mum, raising my beautiful
girl Piupiu while doing my law degree, and I was on the
benefit.
I had a great case worker at what we now call
WINZ, who treated me with respect.
I had the training
incentive allowance as a grant to help me pay my fees and
childcare. I had great support from my family and my
baby’s dad, and his family too.
Like most people who
receive a benefit, I was so careful about managing my
money.
I’d go to the bank every fortnight on dole day.
I’d withdraw all my money, in cash, then split it up into
small amounts, wrapped up in rubber bands with little notes
about what it was for.
I knew exactly how much I had for
our bills, our rent, our food. But whatever way I split it,
I still didn’t have enough to get by at the end of the
week.
What I have never told you before is the lie I had
to tell to keep my financial life under control.
I was
one of those women, who you hear people complain about on
talkback radio.
Because despite all the help I was
getting, I could not afford to live, study and keep my baby
well without keeping a secret from WINZ.
Like many
families who rely on a benefit, Piu and I moved around a lot
when she was little.
We lived in five different flats
with various people.
In three of those flats, I had extra
flatmates, who paid rent, but I didn’t tell WINZ. I
didn’t dare.
I knew that if I told the truth about how
many people were living in the house my benefit would be
cut.
And I knew that my baby and I could not get by on
what was left.
This is what being on the benefit did to
me – it made me poor and it made me lie.
It was a
stressful, terrifying experience.
At any moment, WINZ
could have caught me and cut off my benefit.
They could
have charged me with fraud and made me a criminal as
well.
I got through it, of course, as you can see.
Not
everyone does.
We know at least one woman committed
suicide after being accused of fraud and chased by WINZ for
a debt.
That fraud never happened, the debt was not owed.
But by then it was far too late.
In another public case,
a woman known only as Kathryn, was trying to recover from
the death of a child at the hands of her violent partner,
and was hounded, persecuted and eventually jailed by
WINZ.
She did everything she could to improve her life
and yet at every turn she was punished by the welfare system
set up to help her get by.
There is something deeply,
deeply wrong with our welfare system and how we treat the
families who depend on it.
It drives people to violence
against others and themselves. It keeps children in filthy
campground cabins until they sicken, it tortures and
harasses women grieving for their lost babies.
It makes
ordinary, good people, like myself, like Kathryn, suffer
because they do their best to survive.
I know that by
sharing my own story here today, I am opening myself up to
criticism. It may hurt me personally and may hurt us as a
party.
But I also know that if I don’t talk about what
life is really like for beneficiaries, if the Green Party
doesn’t, then who will?
The safety net is torn. More
and more people are falling through.
And we all see it,
in cold damp homes, in our schools, in our hospitals.
And
in our streets. Two people have died in this city in the
last two weeks, homeless and cold, dying on the
streets.
Over 200,000 children live in poverty just
because their parents don't have enough money for the
basics.
Child poverty costs NZ billions of dollars a year
in health, education and life course costs, mental illness,
chronic lung infections, and especially in winter, child
deaths.
We are going to mend the broken safety net and
put the money where it is needed most and used best - in the
hands of poor families.
Today I am announcing what will
be the most fundamental changes to our welfare system in
more than 30 years.
We will not be a government that uses
poverty as a weapon against its own people.
No working
person will struggle to pay the rent.
No beneficiary will
live below the poverty line.
This is how we are going to
do it.
First, every single beneficiary will have their
benefit increased by 20%, the first universal increase in
benefits in over 30 years.
Everyone who receives a
benefit, Jobseekers, Sole Parent Support, Supported living
or a Student Allowance, is going to have more money in their
back pocket.
More money to pay the rent, more money to
put food on the table, more money to pay the power bill for
350,000 New Zealanders and their children.
And it’s
going to get us that much closer to becoming the decent,
compassionate country we can be.
Secondly, if you are on
a benefit and working, we will make it pay.
We will
create one abatement rate for all benefits so beneficiaries
can work longer and for better money.
Right now, if
you’re on a benefit but you can work a few hours a week,
you’re actually punished financially for it.
That’s
just cruel. We’re going to change that. Working is good
and no one should be punished for it.
We know that many
families bounce between welfare and work. They are harassed
while on a benefit to get a job but end up in insecure
poorly paid work. If they can't go back to a benefit, they
end up living in cars – and still going to work every
day.
So thirdly, we will raise the minimum wage to $17.75
an hour next year and increase it to 66% of the average wage
by 2020.
New Zealanders deserve decent pay for a decent
days work.
Working for Families is also part of the
social safety net.
Nine years of National has ripped the
guts out of it.
We’re going to put the heart back into
it.
We will create a real Childrens Payment out of the in
work tax credit for all low income families with kids. We
will fix the abatement rates and tie increases to
inflation.
With these four solutions 350,000 families
with 179,000 kids will be lifted out of poverty.
These
kids will wake up in a bed, not the backseat of a car,
they’ll go to school with bellies full of breakfast and a
lunchbox full of lunch, they will spend their weekends
playing sports not in hospital with bronchitis.
And to
make sure everyone gets and gives their fair share, we are
going to help pay for this with a new top tax rate of 40%
for all of us who earn over $150,000.
Those of us on high
incomes benefit from a fair, equitable country. If we earn
more we should pay more.
We know that the first solution
to poverty is more money. And that’s why better benefits,
fair WFF and a decent minimum wage are our first
priorities.
But we need more change than that.
We also
need a cultural shift, from the ninth floor of the Beehive,
all the way to the door of your local WINZ
office.
There’s no way you can know how intrusive, how
denigrating it is, to apply and receive a benefit, unless
you’ve had to do it.
How fearful you are that you might
do or say something wrong and have your benefit cut.
The
sanctions that New Zealanders on benefits face are
discriminatory at best. At their worst, they can be
lethal.
No beneficiary should have to live with the
threat of losing the money the need for the rent.
So, the
Green Party in government will immediately remove all
financial sanctions and obligations that treat beneficiaries
as criminals and second-class citizens.
That includes the
sexist, punitive section 70A, which cuts women’s benefits
if they can’t or won’t name the father of their
child.
But also, the constant demands to prove you still
have a disability, piles of job application rejections,
having to get budget advice over and over because your
winter power bill is too high, risking half your benefit if
you miss your appointment because your child is sick.
And
it includes the intrusive interrogation of a sole parent
trying to find a life partner.
Under this government,
sole parents, mostly women, are forced to reveal the most
intimate details of their lives – who she’s sleeping
with and how many times a week, under the threat of losing
the money her and her kids rely on to pay the rent.
In my
books, that’s discrimination. It’s persecution. And
it’s wrong.
Women will no longer be threatened by WINZ
simply because they are trying to form a loving relationship
that benefits them and their children.
A good government,
a decent government, does not use the threat of poverty as a
weapon against the poor. Not now, not ever – and under a
Green Government, never again!
As I said to you earlier,
today’s announcement is very personal to me. I’ve
thought a lot about what I was going to say.
Nobody wants
to be defined by a lie. Nobody – whether you’re a
politician or a solo mum.
We want to be defined by our
truths. And the truth is, everyone needs enough to get by
on. For themselves and for their kids.
We are a
respectful country. We all value dignity, and
decency.
Yes! So let's mend the holes that have been torn
open in the social safety net.
The time for excuses is
over. Together, we’re going to do it.
The only
political party that can be trusted to do it in government
is the Green Party.
And that is why I am here. We will
not be deterred.
Sixty-eight days until Election
Day.
It is time to get the Greens into the
Government.
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