Minister of Social Development has attacked freedom of speech

UPDATED: see TV inter­view here

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand says that actions of Social Devel­op­ment Min­is­ter Paula Ben­nett and her office in releas­ing pri­vate infor­ma­tion of New Zealand cit­i­zens is an attack of free­dom of speech.

Mar­itime Union spokesper­son Vic­tor Bil­lot says the delib­er­ate release of the incomes of two solo moth­ers to the media was a sin­is­ter attempt to bul­ly peo­ple into sub­mis­sion.

The two women had crit­i­cized cuts to train­ing allowances that would make it more dif­fi­cult for them to study and improve their qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

“The actions of the Min­is­ter and her office are not about pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion for rea­soned debate, it is clear­ly a tac­tic to fright­en and bul­ly any­one who stands up and has an opin­ion.”

Mr Bil­lot says the Mar­itime Union was com­prised of the for­mer Water­front Work­ers Union and Sea­far­ers Union, both of which had stood along­side unem­ployed work­ers and ben­e­fi­cia­ries when they were attacked in the 1990s by the Nation­al Gov­ern­ment.

He says that it is unac­cept­able for politi­cians to use State agen­cies to gath­er spe­cif­ic per­son­al infor­ma­tion such as income of any cit­i­zens, whether they were pri­vate­ly employed, pub­licly employed, busi­ness own­ers or ben­e­fi­cia­ries, for use in cal­cu­lat­ed media attacks.

“This action shows the con­tempt in which the Nation­al Par­ty holds the work­ing peo­ple of New Zealand and the unfit­ness of the Min­is­ter to hold this job.”

Mr Bil­lot says the women involved were right to raise the issue of how cuts to train­ing allowances was a bad idea.

He says the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing it hard­er for work­ing class New Zealan­ders to get an edu­ca­tion or improve their lot.

“The Gov­ern­ment can’t defend its poli­cies by ratio­nal debate, so it uses the age old tac­tic of attack­ing indi­vid­u­als.”