Boost for beneficiaries from next April
More than 300,000 beneficiaries will see up to $17 extra every week by 2023, with a boost to benefits announced today in Budget 2019. The announcement will be a welcome surprise for welfare advocacy groups, as it is an unexpected addition to the Government's response to the welfare expert advisory group's report announced earlier this month.
Benefit levels are currently indexed to inflation, but Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced that they will be indexed to the average wage - as NZ superannuation is - from April next year. That will see increases for 339,000 individuals and families. The policy is expected to cost $320.2 million over four years, and is forecast to see a $10 to $17 weekly increase by 2023. The welfare group's report also recommended increasing actual benefit rates by up to 47 per cent, and while the levels will not be increased at the moment, Sepuloni is expected to take a paper to Cabinet by the end of the year to further respond to the recommendations. It is part of a wider programme to reduce child poverty, which has been a central focus for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and one of the key focuses of Budget 2019. There is a 10-year target to roughly halve child poverty, and Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the Government was currently largely on track to meet that target. Today's welfare announcement follows a recommendation from Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft, who said it was the single best thing the Government could do to combat child poverty.
Sepuloni said the change was about fairness. "By taking this action, we are reversing a decades-long policy that has meant those on benefits have fallen further and further behind. "Pressures on low-income families were already being felt through cuts to housing, health and education support from the reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s. These cuts resulted in poverty traps for many low-income New Zealanders. Many have never really recovered. "It is time for change."
The Government's response to the welfare expert advisory group earlier this month was largely considered underwhelming. The biggest tangible announcement at the time was allowing people on a benefit to earn more before they get penalised, and getting rid of the penalty for mothers who did not name the father of their child. In total, $535m had been set aside to implement changes to the welfare system. Budget 2019 is the first since the Government passed the Child Poverty Reduction Act last year, which requires governments to set targets to reduce child poverty across several measures. Some of them estimate about 250,000 children living in poverty. Last year's Families Package was touted as a key way to reduce child poverty, and changes to benefit-indexing is this year's major announcement. The whole-of-government approach to improve outcomes for children also includes $266m to help parents from having to pay donations to schools, and $197m to boost the Housing First programme.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
Here's Thursday's thinker!
I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
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Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...
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