National's stance on benefit payments hypocritical

27 May 2020

From Chris Leitch, Social Credit Leader

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For the party with a long established record of cutting benefits, aiming for balanced budgets and promoting strict fiscal responsibility, National’s bleating about unemployment benefit payments being unfair is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

National is crying crocodile tears over the payments, knowing full well that if it was the government any payment it made to those who have lost their jobs would be substantially less – likely just the standard job seeker rate.

It also knows that if it wins the treasury benches in September it will introduce an austerity regime to rival that imposed by former finance minister Ruth Richardson in her ‘mother of all budgets’ in 1991.

The car may have a new driver, but the make and model and what’s under the bonnet is still the same.

Promising to raise the age level for accessibility to superannuation is clear evidence of that.

Neither National nor Labour has yet grasped the fact that benefits are way below acceptable levels and that the financing of the Covid-19 economic response measures will only serve to ensure those benefits remain way too low for years to come.

Government borrowing from banks and private investors rather than channelling the $60 billion the Reserve Bank is creating direct to the government will see a massive amount of taxpayer money being siphoned off into the pockets of rich investors.

Beneficiaries will remain at the end of the queue yet again.

Social Credit’s just announced policy of $20 billion annually to be spent on things to benefit kiwis includes boosting benefits, a $20 maximum charge for visits to GP’s and dentists, free public transport, and no tax on the first $20,000 of income would deliver the dignity that beneficiaries deserve and that businesses will prosper from.