Check out Alf’s previous post. It featured a set of balls.
Pretty balls they are too.
Today Alf wonders if they belong to Paula Bennett, because it seems she has lost hers.
Alf so surmises after spotting a Sunday Star-Times item about Work and Income’s practice of bailing out disqualified beneficiary drivers by paying their legal fees to get them back on road and in to work.
Although it is unclear how much taxpayers’ money has been spent getting black-listed drivers returned to the wheel with limited licences – a court order which allows driving for the purpose of employment – the scheme appears to have been operating under the radar and without official sanction.
More fascinating is that Crusher Collins and Bruiser Bennett are at odds over this carry-on with good public money.
Police Minister Collins describes the initiative as “PC nonsense”, which it clearly is.
Alas, Bennett has gone soft and wimpy on this one.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said she saw merit in the scheme – particularly because “it is only a loan which they pay back” – but officials had not informed her of details.
But Collins did not appear to share Bennett’s enthusiasm for the loans, telling the Star-Times “there is a new government now and we are getting rid of PC nonsense like this”.
She was concerned that “anyone who has lost their licence would be getting money from Work and Income to effectively get back on the road”.
She added: “If they have money for alcohol then they have money for a limited licence.”
This sounds eminently reasonable to Alf.
Oh, and let’s not forget that in 2008 Collins attacked Labour for allowing Work and Income to pay the impoundment fees of motorists whose cars had been confiscated.
Yep. She was Ballsy Bennett in those days.
She said it was “outrageous” taxpayers’ money “is being used to basically subvert a legal process to allow people who have committed driving offences to get off scot-free”.
The procedure for securing limited licences looks like a lucrative lark for lawyers.
The Star-Times has been told of lawyers charging up to $5000 for limited licences.
Karen Harding, the self-described “Queen of Traffic”, said most of her clients were “upper-class” and not in need of government assistance. However, she supported the idea. “If it meant the person was in work and not being propped up by me, the taxpayer, then good.”
Lawyer Patrick Winkler, who charges around $1250 for a limited licence, said some Work and Income staff were “industrious” and helped their clients by finding a lawyer to get them back on the road and in to work.
Between July 2009 and June 30, 2010, district courts granted 3964 limited licences.
The newspaper seems to have been alerted to WINZ’s role by a cut-price law firm which noticed a spike in clients applying for work licences, then having their legal fees paid directly by Work and Income.
The drivers had been banned from the roads because of drink-driving and demerit point accrual.
The Auckland-based firm, 0800ok2drive, charges $600 for limited licences and its owner said it had dealt with around eight clients recently whose fees were paid by Work and Income.
Work and Income told the Sunday Star-Times that loans for legal fees to get drink-drivers mobile had been in place “for a number of years”.
The aim is to keep the applicants in work, says Work and Income head Mike Smith. “People have to repay the money.”
He also says the payments are under review in the light of recent changes to sentencing laws – “it is timely to review whether this is the right thing to do for people facing driver disqualification for serious offences.”
But hey. A departmental spin doctor has already made up her mind on the matter.
And Alf suspects this probably is the departmental position on the matter.
A Work and Income spokeswoman said it was a “sensible idea” if it meant taxpayers were not having to foot ongoing dole payments.
Oh, and yes, we can count on a touchy-feely expression of support for the scheme from academia.
The director of Otago University’s national addiction centre, Professor Doug Sellman, agreed, saying “the most important thing for drink-driving is treatment” and having people in work can be “therapeutic”.
He said placing beneficiaries into jobs and helping get the limited licence that would get them there was a good concept. “The role of the government is to help the less fortunate and dysfunctional,” he said.
But Alf is with those who say the less fortunate and dysfunctional people who nevertheless pay taxes should not be helping out the less fortunate and dysfunctional people who get pissed and are picked up by the cops for motoring offences.
If the buggers can’t afford to pay their fines, they shouldn’t have cars or the wherewithal to drink.
Alf Grumble 
[…] has moved promptly on learning that some disqualified drivers have been given loans by Work and Income to apply to the courts for a temporary driving […]