Restoring Dignity

In May 2018, the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) was established to advise the Government on the future of New Zealand’s social security system. The then-Coalition Government had committed to overhauling the welfare system as part of the 2017 Confidence and Supply Agreement between the Labour Party and the Green Party.  

The Welfare Expert Advisory Group - made up of 11 members with a range of expertise - consulted with over 3,000 New Zealanders and delivered its consensus report Whakamana Tāngata: Restoring Dignity to Social Security in New Zealand in February 2019. Their recommendations provide a roadmap for welfare reform that puts dignity and compassion at the heart of the welfare system, many of which align with existing policy recommendations of CPAG. 

CPAG has produced various resources that engage withWhakamana Tāngata. In doing so, we seek to continue to highlight the ongoing need for fundamental welfare overhaul, and hold the Government to account in reforming the welfare system. 

September 2019: The experts can all agree: Whakamana Tāngata response from Child Poverty Action Group 

In September 2019, CPAG published a response to Whakamana Tāngata. It highlighted some of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s main recommendations and compared them to what a range of organisations (including CPAG, LifeWise, New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services and FinCap) have consistently called for. It shows there is a wide consensus for meaningful reform of the welfare system.

Read CPAG’s full response ‘The experts can all agree’ (PDF) here 

November 2019: What the Government needs to do now to lift children out of poverty 

In November 2019, CPAG published a response to Whakamana Tāngata, this time highlighting CPAG’s immediate priorities for implementation of the WEAG’s recommendations, as well as our points of difference from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.  

Read CPAG’s full response ‘What the Government needs to do now to lift children out of poverty’ (PDF) here 

September 2020: Kia Piki Ake Te Mana Tangata: Kōrero with Matua Fred 

The Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommends six kaupapa Māori values as touchstones and guides for the process of welfare reform in Aotearoa New Zealand, and as legal foundations embedded in the welfare system itself. The group recognised their approach – Kia Piki Ake Te Mana Tangata – “is valuable only to the extent that it materially improves outcomes for Māori in a practical and tangible way.”  

This series of five 2-minute videos offers an introduction to such principles and their power in practice, from the point of view of someone who has expertise both in te reo me ōna tikanga and in dealing with the welfare system on behalf of tamariki and their whānau and families. 

Fred Andrews (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Rangimahora) kindly shares his wealth of knowledge and wisdom for this kōrero. Matua Fred sits on the paepae as whaikōrero (speaker) at both his mother’s and his father’s marae. He is also a welfare advocate with Auckland Action Against Poverty and has lived experience of receiving a benefit himself. 

Matua Fred discusses four of the WEAG's recommendations – manaakitanga, whanaungatanga, kotahitanga, rangangatiratanga – and on request, adds a fifth, māhakitanga.  

The aim of these videos is to offer a small glimpse of how these concepts are lived and practiced in te ao Māori; and to generate discussion about what a new welfare system founded on such concepts might look like. The commentary is entirely Fred’s – and he has some advice as to how to improve on the WEAG’s recommendations! 

Kia Piki Ake Te Mana Tangata - welfare reform based on Māori-led principles, as recommended by WEAG - is one of CPAG's 2020 election priorities.

November 2020: What happened to 'welfare overhaul’? A stocktake of implementation of the WEAG’s 2019 recommendations 

In November 2020, CPAG released a stocktake of progress in implementing WEAG’s 2019 recommendations for welfare overhaul. The report found that none of WEAG’s 42 key recommendations had been fully implemented, and of the 126 detailed recommendations, only 4 had been fully implemented.  

“The government says it wants welfare reform to enable people to live in dignity with adequate incomes, and it asked WEAG for a plan to achieve this,” says stocktake co-author Professor Innes Asher, who also served on the Advisory Group. “But so far the government has delivered remarkably little of that plan.” 

“Given WEAG found that people receiving benefits are living ‘desperate lives’ on ‘seriously inadequate incomes’, the progress on implementation appears unjustifiably slow,” says co-author Caitlin Neuwelt-Kearns. 

The researchers note that while preparations for further action may be happening behind closed doors, at the time of publishing, the government had not publicly committed to many further specific WEAG responses, apart from a 2020 election promise to let people earn more in paid work before their benefit starts reducing. 

“Children cannot wait – their minds, emotions, bodies are constantly developing and this development can be affected by chronic stress and lack of essentials,” says Prof Asher. “Fixing welfare is long overdue, and the government has now been sitting on the blueprint for essential work for nearly two years. We need to turn the vision into reality with urgency.” 

Read CPAG’s full report ‘What happened to welfare overhaul?’ (PDF) here 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern responds to CPAG’s stock-take of the WEAG recommendations implementation

Watch Emeritus Professor Innes Asher talk to John Campbell about the government’s lack of action, and see Minister for Child Poverty Reduction, Jacinda Ardern, respond to CPAG’s report on Breakfast television.