New rules for beneficiaries – state coercion of parents?

If you’re receiving a benefit, the Government is saying you alone need to be told how to bring up your children.

22nd September, 2012

You can say one thing for Paula Bennett’s new regime of obligations for beneficiary parents: at least it has stopped the Left painting Labour leader David Shearer as a bene-basher for a few minutes. It should also help silence critics on the Right, who have moaned that National Isn’t Doing Anything. Like it or loathe it, this is a serious step towards permanently putting the word “temporary” in front of the word “beneficiary”. There’s no point arguing over whether the new rules put beneficiaries in a different category of citizenship from the rest of us. They do. Non-beneficiary ...

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