1/19 I'm going to have a rant. You can either listen, or you can look away, and if you look away, then we're possibly not the right fit for your kind heart.
This makes me mad.
It makes me seethingly furious.
stuff.co.nz…/welfare-system-creating-criminals…
This makes me mad.
It makes me seethingly furious.
stuff.co.nz…/welfare-system-creating-criminals…
2/19 People in this country cannot afford to eat, and pay bills, and pay their rent. They cannot afford to eat.
This is what it comes down to. And I'm going to use real examples. No names, no pack drills.
This is what it comes down to. And I'm going to use real examples. No names, no pack drills.
3/19 People who are WINZ users are sent to budgeting courses. Do you know what budgeters do? They mostly help people to pay off their debts.
4/19 Debts often incurred because when you've got fuck all money, sometimes you may need something, like a car to get you to your course or take your sick kid to hospital, and to get the car, you have to go into debt, which you can't afford to service so the car is repossessed
5/19 and you're left with bad credit, and then nobody will give you a loan, which you have to take out because you can't afford to eat.
6/19 You may have to live way out of Auckland but you're studying really hard at a tertiary institution, so you really need a car, but you have bad credit, like I said, so you can't get one, so you get lifts from people and you give them your spare money for gas, bc it's polite
7/19 and because the person you're getting lifts from is struggling too.
People in this country cannot afford to eat.
No amount of "good budgeting" makes $20 a week stretch to enough food to feed a family or even just one person. Why is there $20 left over?
People in this country cannot afford to eat.
No amount of "good budgeting" makes $20 a week stretch to enough food to feed a family or even just one person. Why is there $20 left over?
8/19 Because often the debts are to WINZ. A washing machine when you move house. A fridge because the second hand one broke down. School uniforms. These are all paid by WINZ and then turn into debt which you're then paying off for the rest of your life.
9/19 Some of the women we walk alongside have in the amount of $10,000 to WINZ. How is that okay?
People in this country cannot afford to eat.
Foodbanks are over run. People are lining up to get food parcels, and most foodbanks don't just give food away.
People in this country cannot afford to eat.
Foodbanks are over run. People are lining up to get food parcels, and most foodbanks don't just give food away.
10/19 And sometimes what you get in a food parcel (it's a box filled with food) is completely inappropriate, but it's what the foodbank has at the time, what's been donated in bulk.
You have to have a WINZ refusal letter.
You have to have a WINZ refusal letter.
11/19 A refusal letter likely not actually legal, because it's likely that you're actually entitled to a food grant anyway, but they're just used to saying no, and giving out the letters, because this govt would rather charities feed people than actually pay people enough
12/19 so that they can afford to eat. We don't feed people. They send us a shopping list and we do an online shop for them, which they then pick up from the supermarket or we get it delivered to them. WINZ regard food as income. We are helping people to defraud WINZ.
13/19 People in this country cannot afford to eat.
And if this situation is okay with you, if you really think that people are lazing around living off your tax money, then you are more ignorant that I will tolerate. Do some research.
And if this situation is okay with you, if you really think that people are lazing around living off your tax money, then you are more ignorant that I will tolerate. Do some research.
14/19 Sign up for the AAAP newsletters - aaap.org.nz
Read this and tell me if YOU would be okay with someone else telling you that you get to eat this week or not.
Tell me this is okay.
Read this and tell me if YOU would be okay with someone else telling you that you get to eat this week or not.
Tell me this is okay.
15/19 Tell me you think it's perfectly normal for entire communities, in a country as food rich as ours, to be living on noodles and cheap white bread.
Tell me that's okay.
Tell me that's okay.
16/19 People in this country cannot afford to eat. And of all the basic rights that humans have - to be fed, to be housed, to be warm, to be loved - that you're okay that entire swathes of this nation of ours can't even afford to feed themselves
17/19 ....let alone be warm or housed, and let's not talk about loved because that's a whole other thing.
I am not okay with this.
I am not okay with any of this.
The Aunties job is to bring joy and dignity to people.
I am not okay with this.
I am not okay with any of this.
The Aunties job is to bring joy and dignity to people.
18/19 And I can think of nothing more undignified than having to go cap in hand to ANYONE in order to get enough food to eat.
It's dickensian, and it can get fucked.
It's dickensian, and it can get fucked.
19/19 So the next time you hear someone having a whinge about dole bludgers, and benefit fraud, if you can't explain why their whole premise is wrong, and how ignorant they are, you direct them to me. I'll set them straight.
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net…/Food_grants_brochur…
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net…/Food_grants_brochur…
