The Lobby League vs Bottom-Feeding Beneficiaries
Nothing screams "a government for the people" than benefit sanctions during a cost of living crisis!
let’s get straight into it. On Monday the government introduced its ‘benefit sanctions’ to punish those greedy beneficiaries living large on $307.87 a week (for those without children or a partner), a policy that’s cruel on its own, but even more fucking sinister during a COST OF LIVING CRISIS.
This policy also comes hot off the trail of nearly ten months of brutal job losses and budget slashes across the government sector, called for by the government, in a shitty attempt to lower inflation to make themselves look good, and find money to cover their landlord and tobacco tax cuts.
It’s fucking gut-wrenching to see this constant brutal kicking down of those who are struggling by this government, from cuts to healthcare, disability services, child welfare, and the very institute that is in charge of making sure these new sanctions are put in place.
And that doesn’t even cover all the fucking anti-Māori and removal of treaty principals that’s going to have a disastrous effect on Māori.
While these policies and cuts are put into place we constantly are seeing fast-tracked policies and tax cuts for fucking big oil, mining, tobacco, private hospitals/education, and this just week the goddamn firearm industry.
At this point, it’s time to call this government what they are, the Lobbied Leauge of Aotearoa, their priorities and pockets are so fucking aligned with those who helped get them into power, that they need to depend on and push the “scary bottom feeding poor” and “cultural division” narrative to distract from whats so clearly obvious.
Which brings us to today’s Cartoon:
Their whole case for pushing these sanctions is to crack down on “benefit fraud” which is estimated around $2.4 million a year (2021/2022 year) which is fuckin NOTHING compared to white-collar fraud which costs us well over a BILLION DOLLARS a year, but as I’ve covered in a comic before, white collar crime/fraud just isn’t as exciting as punishing the poor.
When confronted about this glaring discrepancy, David Seymour admitted that they really don’t have a plan in place to tackle white-collar fraud, despite it being a significantly bigger issue, almost as if they don’t want to go looking under the stones of those who funnel money their way…
Our poor and struggling are being used as political pawns to push the same tired narrative around those on the benefit, the real-world consequences are incredibly brutal, we will see people who will revert to crime seeing no other way to make ends meet, which means more people in prison. We will see more people starving, homeless and to put it bluntly, dead.
Danz