No Plan, No Budget: Two Years on From WEAG, Government Continues to Drag Its Feet
Two years on since government-appointed experts recommended a complete overhaul of our welfare system, children, families, those with disabilities ...
Does the Tail Wag the Dog?
The major Working for Families review undertaken by IRD, Treasury and MSD is taking place behind closed doors. There are no published terms of ...
International Women’s Day? How Are the Worst Off Mothers and Their Kids Doing?
Meaningful reform to WFF is well over-due. There is much unconscious bias and implicit racism in the current WFF.
Fixing Unemployment: Social Insurance and a Job Guarantee
Michael Fletcher’s presentation on social insurance as an unemployment response for New Zealand post-Covid.
Let’s See All Mums Get a Fair Go
This crisis has taught us a lot about ourselves and our collective strength as a community.
Helping or Harming? Compulsory Income Management in Australia and New Zealand
Imagine that during the Covid-19 lockdown you had no means to buy online goods, because your EFTPOS-like card could only be used in person at a ...
New Zealand's Welfare System Fails to Recognise the Dignity of Our People - How Can We Fix It?
New Zealanders believe in justice. We care about protecting our right to a dignified and decent life. An effective welfare system is only serving its ...
Dear New Zealand Government, this Christmas Families Want a Light at the End of the Tunnel
Many of us are anxious about the tally of expenditure and what that will mean for the year to come.
Government Shouldn't Sit on $7.5b Surplus while Families Need Help
Tuesday's announcement from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Finance Minister Grant Robertson about a whopping $7.5 billion surplus came as a ...
Children are Taonga, Handle their Dreams with Aroha
My teammates and I recently spent time in a classroom of children at a decile 2 school, talking about hopes and dreams, and what’s needed to achieve ...
Act Urgently - Change Fundamentally. The Time is Now.
There’s a line in the Executive Summary of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) report that sums things up perfectly: “Urgent and fundamental ...
Working for Families Is Not a Trap, It’s a Run-Down House in Need of TLC
People should be wary of recent criticism of Working for Families (WFF) tax credits as being a poverty trap. The problem is not the system itself, ...
Severe Deprivation - The Harsh Reality for 140,000 Children
Why are we deducting money that is intended for children’s basic needs, from meagre incomes, just to claw back potential child support losses that ...
Fighting for a Fairer Welfare System
Vanessa Cole, Co-ordinator for Auckland Action Against Poverty spoke at CPAG’s launch of our new report “Further fraying of the welfare safety net”, ...
When Is MSD Going to Give Up Its Damaging and Arcane Views Towards Sole Mothers Who Repartner?
Should sole parents who are fighting just to get by, and to raise healthy children, really be considered fraudulent, if all that’s happened is they ...
When the State Turned Away: Sarah’s Story
With all the rhetoric around domestic violence and women and children it’s hard to believe that even today when women experience hardship and reach ...
The Smoke and Mirrors of Benefit Figures
The latest figures released by the Ministry of Social Development show numbers of Sole Parent Support recipients are dropping. But a lack of ...
The purpose and principles of the social security act: Getting it right