Kerre Woodham: Charities don't need non-complying beneficiaries

Two new ‘non-financial’ sanctions have come into force today for beneficiaries, who, in the words of the MSD, do not meet their obligations or, as other people might put it, who do not get off their arses and go and look for a job.

Some people may have half their weekly benefits put onto a payment card for four weeks, that can only be spent on essential items at approved shops. Others may also have to find volunteer work for at least five hours each week, again for four weeks.

Remember though, as the Minister for Social Development confirmed, it's only a tiny proportion of job seekers who are having a laugh – 98% are complying with their obligations and are doing what they can to get off the benefit, so it's only really going to apply to 2% of those on the benefit.

But as former Welfare Expert Advisory Group member Phil O'Reilly told Ryan Bridge on Early Edition this morning, sanctions can and do work. 

Sanctions do work. Exactly how well they work is always open to debate. They work for two reasons. One is they encourage people to get off the benefit. But secondly, very importantly for people like you and me who are paying tax in order to give persons a benefit, they keep our faith in the system too. That if you're not going to play by the rules, there's going to be a bit of a sanction on you, so they do actually work in those two contexts.

And I think that's important to remember too, it's not just about those who are on the benefit, it's about those people who are paying, in effect, the benefit.

There has to be faith in the system to keep the system going. People won't suffer a financial loss per say, and since they'll be restricted as to what they can spend their benefit on if they are failing to meet their obligations.

I'm less enthusiastic about the volunteering requirements. The poor old charity sector is doing it tough enough as it is without some hapless souls turning up reluctantly, looking for things to do because they have to.

I don't see why voluntary organisations should be charged with the task of straightening out recalcitrant beneficiaries on top of everything else they do.

Compulsory training courses or upskilling by MSD should be the way to go as far as I'm concerned. If there are people who want to volunteer, who have something to offer, fine -  fill your boots. But I imagine they'd be doing that already if they felt they had something to offer.

What on Earth are you going to do with a couple of individuals who don't want to go and get a job?

We're talking the tiny proportion of beneficiaries there who don't want to go and get a job, who don't know how to go and get a job, who don't believe they have anything to offer anyone - they'll have had the stuffing knocked out of them after being on a benefit for years - turning up at your local Hospice shop or your SPCA or whatever, what on Earth are you supposed to do with them?

David Seymour, whose party campaigned on the policies, said sanctions should go further.

He said no country can succeed with one in six working age people on a benefit and ACT wants to see money in kind given as a benefit instead of cash. If you want the freedom, he says, to spend cash as your own, then earn it yourself.

Which is all very well and good when the jobs are there but it's widely acknowledged that we're seeing unemployment rise. Hopefully it will peak very shortly, but we are at a time of high unemployment relative to the circumstances of this country. 

I'm all for getting the sanctions out for the 2% putting restrictions on what they can spend the money on so that taxpayers will have faith in the system, but the volunteering, no.  

Also, some of you may have a different view now about being on a benefit. Prior to the Covid years, many people had never experienced the shock of losing a job. During the Covid years, people lost work almost overnight. And they were extraordinary times trying to find something to do in a in an industry that had disappeared for a time or in the recession that followed. 

You might have suddenly found yourself surplus to requirements because the company you had worked for years was in really straightened circumstances and had to ditch people overboard to survive, so you might have a different view about what it means to be unemployed and looking for work. 

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