I would like to respond in solidarity with sickness and invalid beneficiaries who I believe are being treated opportunistically and unfairly by a government bent on looking at humans and nature simply as dollar signs.

There are signs of a dangerous and insidious dehumanisation becoming increasingly apparent.

They’re now trying to “vigorously” and “rigorously” draw neat lines classifying invalid and sick Kiwis, some with long-term mental illness, many of whom have been ill for years. All this to bash those on the fringes of our society further down from $243 to $194 per week?

Why put all this energy into trying to make black and white areas of mental illness and sickness, when any mistake will end up costing so much more in terms of hardship, longer recovery, and damage to Human Dignity?

Wouldn’t efforts be better directed, (from the point of view of both social justice and cost-effectiveness) in improving systems to detect, prosecute and recover the tax-avoiding efforts of companies and individuals at the other end of the spectrum?

Wouldn’t this be a truer pursuit of the Common Good that Catholic Social Teaching implores us to seek as a basic tenet of our lives?

On Christmas Eve 2009, New Zealand’s big four banks and the Inland Revenue Department announced a settlement of their disputes over structured finance deals that involved the banks paying the government a gross $2.2 billion. And this was just 80% of the total tax owed plus interest. This ‘settlement’ left them still holding on to $550 million of ours, the taxpayers, money.

How many more of these sophisticated, complex transactions pass untaxed through the loopholes of our tax system? To say nothing of the vagaries of Trust Law and other tax mitigation measures which have legions of dedicated experts giving advice?

Do we accept this without batting an eyelid, then suddenly become morally outraged when it comes to $49 per week to a person either an invalid or ill?

Simply stating an increase in the number of invalids beneficiaries is a smoke screen.

• How is this affected by an ageing population?
• How many are genuine cases who for one reason or another were unfairly left out previously?
• And how many are those who simply did not know they could access this benefit before in the first place?

Many people are not told they are entitled to benefits, and miss out. In the case of Temporary Additional Support, for example, 4 out of every 10 beneficiaries entitled to this were missing out as at Dec 2009.

Also alarming is the way in which the current government is going about making these and other important and potentially life altering changes without any sort of consultation with those affected.

The Social Teaching of the Catholic Church clearly calls us to raise our voices against this modus operandi. The Principle of Subsidiarity emphasizes that people or groups most directly affected by a decision or policy should have a key decision making role. The total lack of consultation with beneficiaries and beneficiary groups is openly acknowledged in Ministry of Social Development papers analysing these welfare changes.

Faith calls us to be active in seeking justice for all, here and now, to stand up and raise our voices in solidarity for the Common Good, against the evidence of unjust structures.

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