'No one wants to be sick forever' - ACT Party's new welfare policy slammed

The ACT Party's new welfare policy shows a lack of compassion for people who need help, says a beneficiary advocate.

ACT wants to tighten up the medical certification for health-related benefits, making it mandatory for them to be issued by MSD-approved designated doctors.

It also wants to reassess people on the benefits in a phased approach, starting with mental-health related grants issued after the pandemic.

Speaking yesterday at the party's conference, leader David Seymour said the number of health and disability beneficiaries had nearly doubled in the past 10 years to 96,852.

He said hundreds of thousands of people were using welfare to sleep their life away, while their neighbour went to work.

Kay Brereton told Checkpoint that ACT leader David Seymour was making huge assumptions about people he had never met.

"It [the policy] sends a message that ACT doesn't understand, or have any compassion for people on benefit - especially for people in mental distress.

"If people are on a health related benefit, actually what they are trying to do is get better, and that's what I see with the people that I'm assisting who are on health related benefits.

"They are spending that money on treatment, they don't want to be sick forever, no one wants to be sick forever."

Personal doctors knew their patients on their good days or bad days, but going to see a designated doctor - who thought it was their job to cut benefit numbers - for an hour would not provide sufficient quality of assessment, Brereton said.

Reassessing all health and disability beneficiaries to find the one percent rorting the system did not make sense, she said.

Brereton also took aim at ACT's policy of an electronic money management system for long-term jobseeker recipients.

The policy would mean these particular benefits would be delivered through an electronic payment card directed towards groceries, rent, power, transport, health and childcare.

The card would block spending on alcohol, gambling, tobacco, and cash withdrawals.

"These are adults - there are a whole lot of people in their fifties for example losing their jobs, being made redundant and unless the labour market improves, those people are probably stuck on benefit," Brereton said.

"It's once again a huge assumption, and a real moral judgement with no basis and no data to drive it."

In his announcement yesterday, Seymour said the electronic money management meant that taxpayer support would not fund purchases that made it harder to get their lives back on track.

New Zealanders wanted to help people through tough times, but the deal had to be fair, he said.

"If you can work, you should be taking real steps toward work, and taxpayer support should go to the essentials it was intended to fund."

He said the number of people on jobseeker benefits had increased by 73 percent in the past 10 years - and that this category of benefit cost more than spending on policing, and twice as much as the medicines budget.

"Behind those numbers are real people whose potential is being wasted."