Justifying discriminatory policies
Welfare benefits are not analogous to contributory pensions.
Interights - the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights - specifies that social welfare benefits in the form of state pensions provided as safety nets are not analogous to state pensions which result from either enforced or voluntary individual contributions assessed according to salary.
The former government depicted itself as generous and fair.
In order to deflect the force of the human rights stance and foster the impression that
Eligibility for NZ Super on fulfilling a minimum of just 10 years’ residency is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the former government was fond of pointing to its generosity in paying full NZ Super to individuals who have lived in
The government carefully avoided mentioning that the number of people receiving NZ Super in full after just 10 years’ residency is extremely low. It also avoided mentioning that in most cases NZ Super is being substantially reduced or denied to people who have been resident thirty to forty years and who have paid a significant amount in taxation.
The most commonly used line of reasoning was as follows:
“Migrants and New Zealanders who have worked in other countries should not be permitted to receive both a partial overseas benefit and NZ Super as this would put them at a financial advantage over New Zealanders who have not had the opportunity to work outside New Zealand. The direct deduction abatement applied to NZ Super of overseas retirement benefits ensures that every person eligible for superannuation in
The difference between a benefit and a pension was deliberately obscured.
The former government did its utmost to create the impression that overseas retirement income is a social welfare benefit or a form of “state-funded government support”.
With any foreign retirement payments that constitute a “hand-out”, a “benefit granted to those in need”, a form of “state-funded government support”, or a non-contributory pension based simply on fulfilling a minimal residency period (eg the first-tier Canada Pension Plan), the abatement of this type of income against NZ Super could be justified.
However, most overseas retirement incomes being subjected to the direct deduction policy are not forms of “government support”. They are not “state-funded”. Overseas employment-based pensions parallel KiwiSaver: they are, in fact, retirement savings and may be considered personal annuities.
In the majority of cases, individuals have put money aside for their retirement (either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis) in government-protected and -administered retirement programs. With rare exception, migrants receiving pension payments from another country are not receiving benefits or “full” pensions, but partial pensions reflecting, or strictly proportional to, the years they paid into a foreign retirement program. In applying the direct deduction policy, the
It is not the migrant or the New Zealander with overseas working experience who is advantaged.
On the contrary, it is the New Zealander who stays home who has all the advantages - being permitted any number of supplemental superannuation schemes (many of them tax-free) - including KiwiSaver - in addition to receiving NZ Super payments in full.
The former government insisted that no person should be advantaged in being able to claim a benefit from
In truth, the application of section 70 ensures that a great many people are receiving substantially less in the way of government support. Most people affected by section 70 are not trying to claim a benefit from any country other than
One Ministry letter exemplified thousands.
In a letter to Grey Power dated
“The direct deduction policy/legislation has been tested at various levels of the
Ms Fleming avoided mentioning the Sant Raj Rai Case; she also avoided saying anything about her Ministry warning the government that it is at serious risk of being challenged due to the discriminatory nature of the policy.
Ms Fleming was not being truthful when she claimed that
The United Nations Library at the
For full details visit: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/undocs/html/dec475.htm
Interights International Human Rights Law (www.worldlii.org/int/cases/IIHRL/1994/25.html), commenting on this case, states that if the migrant had been able to establish with the United Nations Human Rights Committee that his overseas pension was not a social welfare benefit, but employment-related - then he should have been treated differently.
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