﻿Metiria Turei's admission she lied to WINZ 24 years ago didn't meet with a lot of understanding. Reporter John Edens looks back at recent changes in attitudes and asks: Why is welfare such a dirty word?

A lot of people seem to be on the attack, howling outrage (mostly online) at Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei's admission she lied to WINZ to receive more money when she was a solo mum on a benefit a generation ago.

One study describes the modern welfare system in New Zealand as "often cruel and judgmental".

And attitudes to state support and benefit fraud have shifted considerably.

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Ours was at one time held up as a model of state humanitarianism but a large body of research paints New Zealand's welfare system as a dehumanising failure responsible for perpetuating poverty.

It's not just New Zealand, though. Other countries where the welfare state was a grand experiment responsible for universal health care and free education have run aground.

"The welfare system drives people to make terrible choices," Turei said earlier this week.

"We must not have a welfare system that requires mothers to choose between lying to WINZ and putting food on the table for their kids."

CRAIG SIMCOX Susan St John said Turei's experience of welfare was a typical one.

University of Auckland honorary associate professor Susan St John said the change in attitudes corresponded with the budget and welfare cuts of the early 1990s and the so-called "mother of all budgets" in 1991.

"The poor families and the sick and students had to swallow it. Now a generation has been brought up with the ideology of standing on their own two feet. The family unit is supposed to be where you go for help - that has been a very powerful narrative.

"Hers [Turei's] is a typical experience. The fact that she may not have conformed to the law, or the law as it was 24 years ago, is reasonably irrelevant," she told Stuff.

123rf Around 300,000 Kiwi children live in poverty or low-income households.

On Wednesday, Turei said she had not met one person this week with anything negative to say to her face.

"I knew going in to this was a risk. I hadn't taken any legal advice or anything.

"I was expecting the blowback and I think it's right for that blowback to be directed at me because I can take it.

"They [beneficiaries] get this every day from the agencies. They're now directing it at me in public and I can take it. I am fully aware there may be consequences and can take those too. All of that vitriol and denigration has been made clear to everybody."

The hashtag #IAmMetiria picked up supportive momentum and comments from people who have been on welfare while, on the other hand, there was also a lot of criticism, "stealing is stealing" commentary, and speculation about the legal ramifications of the benefit fraud admission.

Turei said she was overwhelmed by the reaction and said finally there were stories available from people in receipt of welfare to "say what it's like".

MARK TAYLOR/STUFF Professor Darrin Hodgetts said there was little sympathy for Turei in the media but there was an outpouring of support online.

She hoped the silence from welfare recipients was broken.

"It's worth it if this is the result. I've been travelling down the country and people have been stopping me in dairies and all over the place and saying they support me."

Kanoa Lloyd on The Project voiced support for beneficiaries and said there was a section of the population who liked to shame welfare recipients as cheaters or liars but "that shame and that judgment is built into that system just fine".

Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett, someone with firsthand experience of the welfare system, said she was never deliberately in a position to lie to WINZ. Finance minister Steven Joyce said Turei's admission was disappointing.

The Taxpayers' Union said it was not good enough for Turei to offer to repay and if she didn't repay now "it suggests a serious entitlement complex".

University of Waikato senior psychology lecturer Dr Ottilie Stolte​ said research demonstrated beneficiaries routinely work under the table for cash or find some means of supplementing benefits, legal or otherwise.

"Throughout the research I don't know of a single case where I have heard of somebody relying on welfare who has been able to survive just on that.

"It's pretty much the norm now that they are either doing under the table work or illegal activities, lying or not quite telling the truth. The grey economy. Or they are eating $1 loaves of bread. Or they are relying on charities for food.

"In the past the solution for poverty was work but now, globally, half of the people who are in poverty are in work."

Changes to the welfare state can be traced to the 1980s and early 1990s, when a raft of cuts were introduced, she said.

There were changes to employment laws, unions were weakened, and lower wages were painted as a way to promote economic competition.

Now, high food prices, rent increases, house price inflation, consumer debt, finance deals, low-wage service jobs, part-time work, split shifts, casual contracts, and job insecurity are all part and parcel of the modern economy.

"Definitely it was difficult [in the 90s] but nowhere near as difficult is it is today. It's got a lot harder since she [Turei] was a solo mum. Social mobility is more problematic today," Stolte said.

She believed there was "very good spin for the last 20 or so years" to scaremonger people into the idea welfare was unaffordable.

"In so many ways we are getting more and more divisions in society. People have less to do with people who aren't like them. People who have lots of money don't mix with people who are poor.

"When I was at school the surgeon's child was in the class with the rubbish collector's child."

Massey University Professor Darrin Hodgetts has researched the welfare system, poverty, and the rise of neoliberalism for a forthcoming book he co-authored with Stolte.

There was little sympathy for Turei in the media but there was an outpouring of support online, he said.

He added that New Zealand's welfare system was no longer a functioning system.

"It's a chaotic set of provisions. People have to find a way into the system and I also think neoliberal reforms were never going to work. That's a charity system.

"The welfare state came about because charity doesn't work to alleviate poverty. It was never meant to resolve poverty; it was meant to stabilise them."

Benefit fraud has been aggressively prosecuted by successive governments for years - more aggressively than white collar tax fraud.

Government agencies are more likely to go after benefit fraudsters than tax cheats and they're also more likely to keep benefit debt on the books.

This environment is simply incompatible with the concept of welfare, the Child Poverty Action Group says.

A CPAG spokeswoman tried to explain the line that's been drawn between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving'. When markets were deregulated in the 80s and early 90s, this combined with a rise in the free market neoliberal mindset, and a reduction in the jobs available in staple Kiwi industries like freezing works.

"We seemed to be doing well for a while.

"Once those changes came in to the benefits system coupled with the losses of those jobs there was never really a system good enough to help people recover from that.

"The system has made it so hard for people. You can see that people want to protect themselves.

"The effect of the punishment of the worst off people is just appalling. All we are seeing is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff."

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