What stopping benefits for those with arrest warrants will really do

There must be a crisis National need to distract the publics attention from, because here comes Paula with another eye-ball stabbing to beneficiaries dressed up as social policy.

Let's see, there's been so many lowlights hasn't there folks? Forcing mothers back to work when their second child turns 1 in a 6.9% unemployment environment; discussing birth control for beneficiaries with the Wanker of Whanganui, Michael Laws; releasing private information about beneficiaries protesting against her hypocrisy over training allowances and when told by the Human Rights Commission that she had breached privacy told everyone she would do it again; drug testing beneficiaries even though the cost of doing it is twice the amount it will save; refusing to measure child poverty and then claiming it couldn't be done because kids slipped in and out of poverty every day.

It's been a clusterfuck of bullshit lowest common denominator rhetoric that makes you cringe as much as fills you with intellectual contempt.

Am I being too mean? No. No I'm not am I? For someone who needed the help of the State to get ahead, Paula should be exhibiting empathy for the vulnerable rather than the zealotry of a reformed smoker.

As low as the bar has been set, I think Paula's managed to go down one kilometer deeper with her latest distraction from the fact National's main policy platform of asset sales has been stopped dead in its tracks by people power. She may have engineered the mother of all blowbacks by stopping benefits for those with arrest warrants.

It's a great raw meat issue isn't it? The only thing Joe Talkback hates more than beneficiaries, are Maori beneficiaries with arrest warrants. It plays to the same vein of redneckery as removing the right to vote for prisoners.

It's alienation society, the us and the none included them who are pushed to the far reaches. So far to the edges that this Government want to pass law making it illegal for patched gang members to enter Hospitals for medical treatment.

Throwing out the dirty gypsies from our Shire is supposed to distract the rest of us from how this Government are pouring millions into the pockets of the rich while our services and the costs of this counter productive poverty policy drain us dry.

So what will the unintended consequences of this latest knee jerk create?

Well if there are 8 200 beneficiaries with current outstanding arrest warrants, what will happen when Paula cuts all their benefits off 38 days after she starts this beneficiary pogrom?

Let's think about it.

1: A massive dip in welfare numbers as these 8200 are disqualified and thus become 'unpeople' - beneficiaries who have been disqualified from welfare rather than finding a job and moving off welfare. It allows for such a difference between the official 6.9% unemployment rate and the 9.1% put out last week by Roy Morgan. Do not be surprised if Bennett has the audacity to strut the peacock walk if this eventuates.

2: Expect a sudden jump in crime. If people with arrest warrants are suddenly cut off from their week to week ability to live, they will turn to crime won't they? Suddenly crime becomes fueled by need, with many living hand to mouth, expect the desperation to lift the violence level.

3: What happens if the 58% do come in on the first month, could our Court system suddenly deal with a deluge of people coming forward? How would our prison system cope? Our legal system? Our courts? Could over 4000 be processed without the entire thing seizing up?

4: What happens to those beneficiaries whose first inkling of any arrest warrant is having their benefit cut off? They arrive at their local welfare office to complain about it only to be arrested. Won't we alienate those communities even further? Won't those experiences create even more distrust of any State agency? Won't that drive these problems even deeper into our society rather than protect it?

5: Won't this now become the fishing net of choice by the Police? Want to question someone, put out an arrest warrant, wait till their benefit is cut off, force them to surface. Watch for the number of warrants to spike to see if Police are taking advantage of this.

My guess is that not one of those 5 points will have even been considered in the rush to get this foamy flecked spittle policy out to the public.

Add the highest inequality rates ever with 270 000 children in poverty with borrowed tax cuts for the richest NZers and I'm at about saturation point of this Government's general scumbaggery and they're not even a year into their second term.

2014 can't come fast enough.

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