Welfare Fraud Bullshit

One of the benefits of studying law is that you get to learn exactly what the law is in a number of areas so you can tell when politicians spout absolute bullshit. I would highly recommend taking law for anyone who seeks to understand politics. In this case the welfare law paper I took comes in incredibly useful because it makes it very easy to see through National's commitment to crack down on welfare fraud as really being quite minor policy change. The full press release is here.

Mass Fraud

This year alone, Work and Income’s data matching found around six to 12 per cent of people were receiving benefit payments they weren’t entitled to. This shows we have to do better by the taxpayer to safeguard their money and protect the integrity of the welfare system

This is designed to create the impression of massive fraud. They don't use the actual numbers of fraud which WINZ has because less than 1% of owed money is due to fraud. The large problem we have is with people not understanding forms or filling in the wrong one or WINZ just granting people completely the wrong benefit. The actual stats are in the full policy document: $22 million of fraud each year, $183 million filling in forms wrong and it does not give the even larger number of where WINZ just fails at paying people the right benefit and they have to pay it back.

Drug Use

Jobseekers whose recreational drug use affects their ability to apply for or secure a job will also be sanctioned, and through the investment approach those with drug addictions will be supported to overcome their illness.

So where this is likely to be an issue with sickness beneficiaries who often have mental illness issues and thus resort to drugs. Under National's new category these people will be 'Jobseekers' rather than sick. Essentially this policy is meaningless because how would the Government know? The Police are supposed to prosecute for illegal drug use so how it would be possible for WINZ to decide there was drug use and the Police to not is difficult to see. The second problem with it is that only a third of drug users who seek help have adequate services to assist them in their area. Unless National is planning to put hundreds of millions into this area they cannot possibly provide enough support to get all beneficiaries off drugs and I suspect they are not promising this as good as it would be. This policy would likely be to expensive to implement and not happen or rather not happen significantly.

Drug Test

Jobseekers who don’t apply for a job because they are asked to take a drug test, or who fail a pre-employment drug test, face having their benefit cancelled.

Adding that the "because they are asked to take a drug test" is actually a less strict requirement that previously. You can get your benefit scrapped for refusing to accept any job. A girl I knew had her benefit cancelled because she didn't go and work in a fish gutting factory when she was a vegetarian. This is not a change in policy.

Would be very surprised if removing benefits from those who lose a job due to failing a drug test doesn't already regularly happen. This presumably just formalises existing practice and makes it mandatory. It is also possible this is the only change National was planning to make in its crackdown on drug use.

Data Sharing

National will make it easier to match information in benefit applications with information held by other agencies to catch fraudsters sooner

There is not really any problem other than perhaps some minor privacy concerns around doing this and it would be done by whoever got in. This sort of change is public service driven usually because Government's can't actually know what the additional information departments need is because they don't work with them in that level of detail. The full policy document reveals this isn't actually a change and the departments already share millions of documents they just intend to spend $700,000 on doing it next year.

Advanced SWAT Team

We will beef up authorities’ investigative power, funding a new team of fraud specialists to hone in on reducing abuse across the welfare system.

Again no issue with this but it is important this doesn't cost more than the welfare fraud does. We don't have a great deal of welfare fraud in New Zealand and "fraud specialists" presumably have quite a large salary. This could have a negative effect on the number of beneficiaries caught. Case workers have a better knowledge of the beneficiaries they deal with. If case workers stop dealing with fraud and instead a special fraud unit takes over they may not have the requisite knowledge of the cases to effectively spot fraud.

Relationship Status

In particular, we will review the rules around relationship fraud, and make clearer the rules around when benefit recipients need to let Work and Income know about any relationships they are in

This is an attempt to change a recent Court decision (Ruka) around relationship status. This is not to do with marriages but de facto relationships. The current rule is reasonably strict that you must show financial independence and lack of emotional commitment. So if you for example have an informal system of paying child support after a relationship ends and good visiting relationship this is likely to make both partners ineligible to receive any benefits. However the test used to be easier to find people to be in a relationship because there was just a series of factors to apply to determine how close they were which could catch people who for example shared a property or kept in regular contact after ending a sexual relationship. National is presumably proposing to change it back via legislation. This is bad because it was a very difficult test to apply and had very inconsistent application (not that Ruka has not also had difficulties). This is the most significant change but it is nothing to do with fraud it is about how the Government views relationships.

Evading Warrant

Those beneficiaries evading a Police warrant will also have their benefit cancelled.

It seems fairly obvious that those who are on the run from Police should not receive a benefit but not sure this policy could actually be applied in more than 1-2 cases a year. It is likely that lots of people who have warrants issued on them are not actually running from the Police they just have been out when the Police called around or they have poor contact details so they probably wouldn't request benefit cancellation.