MEDIA RELEASE: Tuesday 18th September 2018 Social Security System Fit for the next 80 years – lift incomes and enable participation Eighty years after the introduction of the first comprehensive social security laws in New Zealand in 1938, our country is once again taking on the challenge of designing a welfare system that will meet…
Kia Pike Ake – Welfare Expert Advisory Group The Kia Pike Ake The Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) was established by the Minister for Social Development Hon Carmel Sepuloni in June 2018 to conduct a review of the social welfare system. The government describes its vision for welfare as: “A welfare system that ensures people…
Tax Working Group 2018 Paul Barber, NZCCSS Policy Advisor Tax is one of the ways that we as citizens of this country relate to each other. We seek to bring more justice and fairness to our communities, because we are all connected and interdependent. The wellbeing of all of us is bound up with the…
Take Action One simple change to reduce poverty and inequality would be to pay a Child Tax Credit to all the nearly 200,000 children living on homes where no-one is in paid work. Watch and share this video where Wellington GP Pauline Horrill talks about what it is like for one of her patients, a…
Communities are “under siege from predatory lenders” as they struggle on low incomes that are not sufficient to meet the needs of their families yet have little or no access to safe or fair sources of credit. This is a key message to emerge from a recent hui about poverty held at Auckland’s Te Puea…
NZCCSS views this 2017 Budget through the eyes of those at the margins of our communities and asks what is being done to lift up the disadvantaged. How well are we doing to share fairly the wealth of our prosperous country? Is this a budget that reduces poverty & inequality? Is this a budget that…
Book Review – “Pennies From Heaven – why cash works best to ensure all children thrive” by Jess Berenton-Shaw & Gareth Morgan “Money works. It works when it is given unconditionally and it works best for those on the lowest incomes…” (p.203) This new book published in March by the Morgan Foundation has done us…
There is a grim reality to the latest poverty figures that should be seen as an outrage in our wealthy country. There are 155,000 children in material hardship, or 14% of all children, an increase in 10,000 from previous year. This group of children regularly miss out on the things they need like having enough…
Social Security Act Rewrite Bill The Social Security Rewrite Bill has been reported back to Parliament by the Select Committee. The report is brief, just 11 pages long and makes few changes to the Bill. It includes minority reports from the Labour Party and Greens that point to the many issues raised by submitters that…
The Social Security Rewrite Bill has been reported back to Parliament by the Select Committee. The report is brief, just 11 pages long and makes few changes to the Bill. It includes minority reports from the Labour Party and Greens that point to the many issues raised by submitters that are not addressed in the…
Local body elections are one place where people can test candidates and influence councils about their position on Easter Sunday trading, now that those councils have been made responsible for making the decision. Despite a late flurry of lobbying from well-known figures like All Black great Michael Jones and boxing legend David Tua, National MPs…
High poverty and inequality is the not-so-new normal. That is the conclusion to take from the latest poverty and inequality data released on 8th September in the Ministry of Social Development’s Household Incomes in New Zealand 2015 report. It echoes the experience of NZCCSS agencies reported on in the Vulnerability Report in June. A small…
Victoria University student Alicia Sudden has surveyed and interviewed hundreds of people for her Masters Degree research to find out what happens in their lives when they leave welfare benefits. NZCCSS and others have noted that government is not monitoring what happens to people who are no longer on receiving welfare – is exiting the…
MEDIA RELEASE Thursday May 26 2016 “After the promising start in last year’s Budget of a $25 per week lift in benefit levels for families with children this 2016 Budget disappoints in not building this further”, says Trevor McGlinchey, Executive Officer, NZCCSS. “We were hoping for a courageous Budget which addressed the underpinning causes of…
Urgent update! Submissions close 22nd June – check our latest post with more analysis and ideas for a submission – Welfare Law: comment due 22 June. There are some significant policy changes coming to social welfare under the Social Security Act Rewrite Bill (all 454 pages of it!) that was introduced into Parliament on 17th…