In yet another bad week of benefit-related headlines, Emma Clifton explains her own personal experience with trying to apply for the benefit – and discovering the vicious little loophole that so many Kiwis have to endure.
Opinion piece
It was early on in 2020 when I first investigated going on a benefit, after being made redundant. The company we all worked for, Bauer NZ, shut during the first rush of Covid-19 related redundancies and shortly after the government introduced the Income Relief Payment to help those who had lost their jobs during the pandemic. I was thrilled it was a possibility – there was mortgage relief for people who owned houses, but nothing for us renters, and $490 a week would make a giant difference to my suddenly non-existent income.
Until, about two questions in, it became clear that I wasn’t eligible, because I had a boyfriend. My then boyfriend, now husband had moved in with me, the day before that first Level Four had started, but our living together wasn’t the reason I couldn’t get the benefit.
No, even if we had still been dating but living separately, our relationship still could have blocked me from being eligible. Having a ‘de-facto partner’ affected my ability to get the benefit, because it meant this partner was supposed to be financially responsible for me.
Companionship AND rent? In this economy? You gotta pick one, sorry.
This is the case for so many different beneficiaries in NZ: having a de-facto partner can drastically affect how eligible you are for the benefit. And it is a reality that just isn’t talked about enough.
When I tell people who have never navigated the benefit system, they can’t believe this. They truly cannot believe it. Even as I am typing this, I am worried that maybe I am wrong, so then I double check by trying to apply for the benefit and the same road block appears. Because the very first question asked if I say, try to apply for the unemployment benefit, is about my relationship status.
Here are some of the factors that, according to the WINZ website, might mean you are in a relationship worthy of not getting the benefit:
- you socialise and holiday together
- you have a sexual relationship
- people think of you as a couple
When I first read those factors, I had a movie montage of the handful of men I had dated during my Tinder years and I wondered how many of those situations would have blocked me from getting the benefit if I had lost my job earlier. And what that would have done to a) my ability to rent, b) my ability to buy groceries, c) my options to maintain a career, d) my options to start a family.
Whenever someone plays the national (National?) tune of ‘Let’s blame the beneficiaries’ in front of me (which thankfully doesn’t happen that often, because I emit a socialist vibe), I will drag this ‘de-facto’ fact out faster than you can goddamn imagine. And I usually find that even your staunchest ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ person is stopped in their tracks that in this country, still under this government, thousands of people on the benefit are possibly required to forgo having a relationship if they want to receive money to live.
Because that is what it comes down to, right? The conversation of ‘who deserves benefits’ is an easier way to word the actual question, which is ‘who deserves food/shelter/warmth.’ There is a vocal minority, who start squawking on the regular, who believe that these elements of basic survival should somehow be ‘earned’. That not everyone is deserving.
Imagine thinking that people don’t deserve shelter. Or food. Or, you know, nice things? The kind of everyday luxuries that make life worth living.
How utterly degrading it must be when politicians like Christopher Luxon drag out the whole ‘you can’t get rich on the benefit’ line or use the term ‘bottom feeders’. Or, when every headline is about the cost of living crisis, but you’re ineligible for the $350 payment, because you’re on the benefit. To be used as a pawn, or a punching bag, depending on which way the political wind is blowing.
And how absolutely appalling it is to make some people choose. How isolating it must be for people who have to choose the money, and how terrifying it must be for people who are fully, financially reliant on an unreliable partner. How fragile daily life must be. How limited the good options are, and how deeply those headlines must cut.
This story has been updated and is reflective of the author’s personal experience. For our follow-up story where we speak to a lawyer who specialises in the benefit system, click here
