Lobbying on the training incentive allowance

Trudy Basire is a frequenter of the TradeMe message boards frequented by Natasha Fuller, who gets $715 as a beneficiary. Basire is leading the campaign to reinstate full access to the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA). Although Fuller is one Basire's Facebook friends, Fuller has "removed herself from public discussion" in the campaign according to this media release on the campaign website.

However it is good to see that Jennifer Johnston - the other beneficiary mentioned on this blog - has been constructive in her suggestions in discussions with the Minister. Such an approach can only lead to better outcomes.

Listen to her here on checkpoint . She has some good suggestions.

I support an allowance as an incentive for training

In the past day or two I have written about people on benefits who want an allowance from the Government to undertake tertiary training. It may appear from those posts that I do not support assistance for training purposes.

This is not the case. I support the retention of the training incentive allowance (TIA) with some amendments. The Massey University Extramural Students' Society said this in a recent media release:

National’s cutting of the Training Incentive Allowance will hit those who are motivated to improve their lives. Midwives, nurses and teachers are among the professions that solo mothers will struggle to afford training in. The TIA paid for up to $3,862.00 of actual course costs per year. Without this support many once-eligible students will not be able to make ends meet. Childcare becomes unaffordable if all spare cash is spent on course fees so potential success stories become shattered dreams

The key thing is that students should undertake study to improve their lives, and the allowance should be an incentive to do that. The recent case where a dpb recipient was doing just three papers a year on the TIA is hardly going to improve her life in the short term. A three year degree would take eight years to complete, a four year one even longer.

The problem is that, for those studying part time - meaning fewer than five or six papers - the TIA is treated like a beefed up allowance for course - and books - and childcare costs, when it should be treated like a student allowance for course and book costs only, for dpb, invalids and widows beneficiaries. No students can get the taxed student allowance if they do fewer than six papers in the two semesters. Nearly all students who do not work do more than six papers a year and collect the allowance. Those with kids can get a small WINZ childcare subsidy if they are not entitled to 20 hours free. But under the non-taxed TIA, you can do fewer papers and get the full allowance as well as a benefit, and use the balance over course costs for whatever you want to, as it is paid into your bank account much the same way as the money for additional course costs is with a normal student allowance. Some keep the money and get friends to mind kids or study at night so they can afford to get CDs or other consumables. If costs are over the allowance, you can borrow to pay for the balance with an interest -free student loan.

Personally I can't see, instead of canning the TIA, why the allowance can't be for those who take perhaps a mandatory number of papers, with perhaps an abated rate for those who take fewer. This would encourage beneficiaries to complete their qualifications at a faster rate and discourage slackers, while taking account of the fact that, as a sole parent, a primary responsibility is the care of their children. Some courses require block training and field work so I'd support 20 hours free being available for students on the TIA - not just 3-4 year olds - for these block courses and field work. After all, if they were able to apply for a childcare subsidy from WINZ - [can they?] - they'd get roughly the same amount.

Thoughts?

Natasha Fuller admits she may have been getting WINZ payments she was not entitled to

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Natasha Fuller is the gift that keeps on giving. This is the latest in a series of five posts on the women who protested National's decision to can the training incentive allowance relating to degree courses.

Fuller gets $715 per week from WINZ to surf the Internet and buy consumables but can't afford to study,had access to her partners bank account, and apparently posts under three four different names on message boards. One, bee35, from a mates place, where she says on 5 Jan this year, just after she broke up with her partner and used his money - via a credit card to pay for a rented place without his knowledge.

ok used his credit card and got myself into a rental he is going to spit tacks....We have lived together for 4 years but in that house 3.i do have mail cause at the start i had to get a benifit for awhile as he would not support me and my children and i spent more time in hospital than home so could not work, i no its wrong but i didn't no what to do it was for 3 months.

Terrible spelling aside, this looks like an admission of wrongdoing - or a lie in an attempt to get 50% of his stuff after a break-up.

Work and Income should be interested in this. I'm not saying that she was defrauding WINZ, but they could raise a debt if it could be shown that he was supporting her to a degree while she received state support, given her other admissions that he paid the mortgage and main bills, and her apparent ability to access his money via a credit card. She would have got Working for Families for the kids if IRD was unaware of her partners apparent high income. Even if she was living with her partner for three years only it means that she appears to be working on her business thanks to a 10K WINZ grant during that time. Would she be entitled to that grant? Furthermore, it was the same time as Labour revealed her income in Parliament.

No wonder Fuller doesn't want to speak to the minister. Something stinks. Her story is hardly consistent. Perhaps she's got something to hide?

Why couldn't Jennifer Johnston go to SIT - they have no fees

Jennifer Johnston wants to be a nurse and is moaning she can't get a training incentive allowance. She lives in Invercargill and started training two year's ago.

Jennifer is passing with an A-average and was expecting to embark on the nursing degree next year. But with the allowance discontinued and childcare, course materials, uniforms, transport and other costs not covered by a student loan, Jennifer has no idea if she can continue.

Some may not know that the Southern Institute of Technology in Invercargill now has a zero fees scheme. Is there any reason, given that she lives in Invercargill, why Jennifer Johnston cannot go to SIT and study a batchelor of nursing there, and get a child care subsidy and an interest free loan for books and transport costs?

Claims that Fuller was getting WINZ assistance illegally

Natasha Fuller is the beneficiary who is getting $715.00 a week on the dpb to spend most of her day on message boards complaining she cant get the Training Incentive Allowance, despite boasting as being a fully trained private investigator..

She posts as the happy hocker – surely a spelling mistake – on message boards, as well as justyns.

There are claims on the message boards that Fuller was unlawfully collecting a benefit while living with her partner. If so, she should be taken to task for it because she would not have been entitled to it. Her high income partner didn’t give her much money. It is claimed that Fuller was on the benefit while living with her partner. I have not been able to verify that claim, as WINZ won't tell me (I didn't ask either). She got pregnant in June 2007, around about the time she was described as a sole mother who used a WINZ enterprise allowance to run a small business that failed. She also allegedly got a 10K WINZ grant to buy a car and have it signwritten for her business before crashing it and getting another one.

In addition she was given $200 a week to buy food when she lived with a partner. Her partner [ whom you can see here just before they split up ] paid for the mortgage because it was under his and his mums name. Now Fuller says she is “ over men so over being hurt and have decided that u just can’t beat a good vibrator:)”

One poster warned

You have stated on the forum board that you have been living with someone and collecting DPB, that is FRAUD. All of us that are paying taxes are paying for you to live the high life and boast about it.

She told the media she got $400 hair extensions around three months after her daughter was born. Apprently her daughter was born 3 February 2008. But on 4 February 2009, on a message board where she writes up to 10 messages a day, she said she had hair extensions for more than a year - if so, she may have been pregnant when she got the extensions.

Fuller says her partner left in December 2008 and that was when she said she applied for the dpb again. She says she doesn't want to work more than 20 hours. That’s because she may lose the benefit and the In Work Payment is less than the benefit, and you can't get both.

You can see Fuller on You Tube right here living the high life doing karaoke. She’s drunk. On her Facebook site she gloats that she spent more than $200 on CDs last month.

It is clear that on the dpb you can get up to $1000 a week: Domestic purposes benefit of $272,an accommodation supplement of $225 – ( Fuller gets $110 and a disability allowance of around $35 a week) , tax credits of $200, childcare assistance of up to $181 for one child, and out-of-school care and recreation assistance of $72 a week.

Fuller doesn’t deserve a training incentive allowance. But she should be able to lobby on government policies without ministerial meddling. However Labour shouldn't moan about it as it released Fuller's benefit details in Parliament in 2007. Hypocrites. **Further updates here**

I have no sympathy for rich beneficiaries who lose their Training Incentive Allowance

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I do have a problem with Social Development minister Paula Bennett releasing private details of beneficiaries to a newspaper purely because they criticised National’s policy to remove the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) for those who are taking graduate courses. Bennett said she looked at the Privacy Commissioners website for guidance on whether to release private information. Perhaps the first time she looked at that website was shortly after 11:24am yesterday. She obviously didn’t look at the Cabinet Manual.

Mind you I also have a problem with a beneficiary Natasha Fuller who has three kids and more weekly income than our entire family. She has enough to pay for hair extensions ( which she may or may not have got when getting state assistance) but moans about how she can’t afford to study without the TIA. I am also a student with three other mouths to feed and I can’t afford $400.00 for hair extensions. But unlike Fuller I probably get 5-6 hours sleep a night and spend more hours studying than she does because I do a lot of it when the kids are school or asleep.

Natasha Fuller criticised National for removing the Training Incentive Allowance from degree courses, adding that National wanted people like her to aspire to working in a supermarket. Except that she is a trained private investigator and has done a small business course. Perhaps people working in supermarkets would aspire to be in her situation. The never-married Fuller has three kids to two different men and has been on and off the dpb for about three years. She currently gets $715.00 per week – way more than those on the average wage - but that does not include child support or any money from IRD – or food grants. I was told by the NZ Herald that the income probably doesn’t include Working for Families, either. That's questionable. So if you are working for 40 hours a week and you get less than $17.88 an hour, you are worse off than Fuller, and she doesn't even work. Fuller should go and get a partner called Bill S*it and link up surnames – Fuller-s*it.

And this from Jennifer Johnston, whose details were also made public.

But with the allowance discontinued and childcare, course materials, uniforms, transport and other costs not covered by a student loan, Jennifer has no idea if she can continue.

She can do what other people do. Go off the benefit, onto a student allowance, study a full year instead of just three papers, get a student loan for course costs, borrow $1000 for course related expenses like books, transport, and computer gear, get a grant from WINZ for second hand school uniforms. And get a part time job, and a childcare subsidy from WINZ.

Why should student allowances be taxed, whereas TIA’s are not? The only reason a university student is on the dpb is to save up to $3620 on course costs every year - and study part time to ensure course costs aren't over the allowance amount each year - and to live in the manner to which they are accustomed to. Why should they when others get student allowances?