The saga of the special benefit: a story of chronic social policy failure by the Department of Work and Income

Abstract

This thesis explores the impact and extent of what is perhaps the most significant and ongoing form of public policy failure in New Zealand. The policy failure is the failure to adequately implement the Ministerial Directive relating to the Special Benefit that is issued as a guide by the Minister of Social Welfare to the Department of Work and Income. This failure resulted in increased hardship for over 150,000 of New Zealand's poorest households. The Special Benefit is a key weapon in the Government's arsenal against hardship, yet, just as the government policy providing guidelines for its implementation were being relaxed; the economic circumstances underpinning the conditions which people faced suggested that more should be receiving it; and the High Court was directing the Department to be more pro-active in ensuring beneficiaries are asked to make applications for the Special Benefit when fewer were in fact granted. In fact fewer were assessed. By July 2000 Still Missing Out, a report for which this writer was the principal researcher, claimed that as many as 160,000 households were not even being assessed. It is argued that based on the Ministerial Directives and the findings of two High Court Justices that had these people been asked to make an application; and had the application been reasonably assessed on the basis of relevant information, then they would, or should have been granted a Special Benefit of, on average, $22 a week. $22 a week would have meant less poverty for these households. That is less need to visit foodbanks; less likelihood of not going to a doctor when sick; less need to live in over-crowded dwellings; being forced to shift less often and so on. That 160,000 households, containing nearly 250,000 children are forced more deeply into poverty is a shocking indictment of public administration and the corporate culture that was encouraged to develop by the Government of the day. This policy failure contributed to children suffering from preventable diseases, it meant they could not reach their full potential at school. That potentially one billion could be owed to the poorest New Zealand households is surely an 'unintended consequence'. This thesis explores the reasons why this policy failure occurred, a failure that the Ministry of Social Policy failed to detect despite it being warned of it during the 1990s. It discusses the purpose of public policy and social welfare. It presents a history of income support in New Zealand and a discussion on the public law concept of discretion. It then presents my findings about the degree of policy failure and the effects of the policy failure. It outlines the responses to the allegations made in Still Missing Out and a complementary report published by the Wellington People's Centre; Special Benefit Report: 1995-2000. The thesis concludes by presenting various suggestions, which if taken up, would hopefully mean such a failure would not re-occur. These suggestions are based around the concept of Civil Society, the need for a Social Responsibility Act, housing reform and a guaranteed minimum family income. Two undercurrents run through the thesis. The first is the conflict within public administration between administering the law and public servants responding to day to day pressures from management. The second undercurrent is citizenship, exclusion and the status of beneficiaries in New Zealand society. The policy area is the alleviation of poverty. The saga is how the government agencies most concerned with poverty alleviation failed.