Auckland Action Against Poverty occupied the offices of Manpower Services to demand the end of exploitative and illegal contracts used by the Company.

“Manpower is one of many recruitment agencies used by Work and Income to force beneficiaries into precarious work,” says Auckland Action Against Poverty spokesperson Vanessa Cole.

“Today’s Budget is pitiful in the face of the biggest housing crisis since the 1930s Depression.

 “With thousands of people homeless in Auckland alone, Bill English’s Budget is an insult to their desperate and immediate need,” says AAAP spokesperson Sue Bradford.

‘Paula Bennett’s latest surprise announcement on housing reeks of panicked desperation.

 ‘Offering grants of up to $5000 for 150 state house tenants and homeless people to move to provincial towns is like shifting deckchairs on the Titanic,’ says AAAP spokesperson Sue Bradford.

Last night Parliament voted by a vast majority to support new legislation which entrenches New Zealand’s vindictive and pauperising welfare system.

“While we have always supported a rewrite of the hopelessly fragmented 1964 Social Security Act, AAAP completely opposes the new bill,” says spokesperson Sue Bradford.

 “It embeds decades of National and Labour policies aimed at changing welfare from its original 1930s purpose as a safety net for those in need to a system geared to a culture of punishment and disentitlement.

The fourth AAAP beneficiary 'impact' in Mangere is now over.

On the third and final day of AAAP’s beneficiary impact at Mangere organisers were stunned by the size and desperation of the crowd waiting for our help this morning.

“Even our most seasoned advocates were surprised at the number of people waiting when they arrived to start work this morning,” says AAAP spokesperson Sue Bradford.

‘Impacts are one of the rare occasions when the realities of harsh welfare policies and ever deepening poverty bring many people into one physical location at the same time.'

The 2016 Mangere Impact is a significant logistical exercise from the perspectives of both MSD and AAAP. Impacts are also a time when the realities of the harm wrought by an inadequate and stressed welfare system are brought to the fore through the large numbers of people who come to seek our assistance.

“Auckland Action Against Poverty will be on the streets from 9.00am Thursday.  We refuse to passively sit back while another piece of our nation’s future is signed away.”