Seems to me, you'd have to be a very special sort of a cretin to work for an outfit like this . . . IMHO

If I told you that walking amongst us, are employees and officials of a New Zealand government agency that is so heinous and unaccountable in its culture, that it celebrates its ability to push its "clients" (read: beneficiaries, including the disabled) to the point of - and to the execution of - suicide, would you believe me?

Well, you need to believe me. Because that is precisely the outwardly-unacknowledged culture of New Zealand's Ministry of Social Development - perhaps this country's most loathed, feared and unprincipled "public service" organisation.

This week, a reader emailed me a Radio New Zealand article from 2016, in which some errant Ministry bully had peppered a young woman (known to be already suffering from severe depression and anxiety) with letters containing (what the Ministry later confessed were false) accusations of fraud, followed by letters gloating that she had been "referred for prosecution" (letters which were also later found to have had no legal basis whatsoever).

The falsehood-ridden letters and the severe panic they threw the young woman into, exacerbated the stress of her existing situation to the point where she took her own life.

And did the Ministry give a shit? No. Not a tittle or a tot. How do I know? Because I have a good friend who has been acting in an unpaid support role for bullied beneficiaries (including disability beneficiaries) for now three decades. When I read the article my reader sent me, I was duly horrified. I called him: Did he know about this terrible situation from back in 2016, I asked, furious. Yes, he answered, but "you better sit down".

"Jordan, it happens frequently. It's their culture. It's considered a real achievement when they've been able to push someone that far." 

You're KIDDING me? was my response. Why don't we see these articles in the media every time, then?

Because the Coroner doesn't allow them to be reported on, was his answer. Our conversation ended there for the moment, but he's promised it will continue, in more detail, at a slightly later date. So readers:  stand by for that. I don't look forward to reporting such a "next instalment", but I think we all need to know exactly what really goes on behind closed doors in this patently wicked, patently unaccountable, and patently toxic culture-driven agency.

In the meantime, I'm going to list here just some of what I've been appraised of that bullied and targeted beneficiaries are experiencing at the hands of some of these twisted Ministry staffers. Especially heinously, there appears to be a particular and recent-times bent towards creating and maximising opportunities to bully, victimise and stress disability beneficiaries. 

Here are some experiences - in summary form - that I have been made aware of. As I receive more communications alerting me to this sort of Ministry behaviour, I'll continue to bring you further commentary and exposes.

Disability Beneficiary Humiliated by the 'Spraying Around' of Medical & Financial Information

A disability beneficiary had their most intensely personal and private medical situation and financial information emailed openly to multiple different parties, none of whom had any business receiving, or reason to receive, the beneficiary's information. One of these parties was a journalist.

Beneficiary's Competitor Paid to Represent Ministry Against Beneficiary At 'Benefit Review Hearing'

Despite the "very large pool of 'Community Representatives''' the Ministry's website lauds as available for appointment to the "Benefit Review Hearing" process (that a beneficiary must apply for, if they have not been in receipt of their full legal entitlements), a staffer sought out someone from the beneficiary's professional sphere (read: a direct competitor), for inclusion on the panel of four - i.e. from the Ministry's side and whom the beneficiary must represent themselves to / against.

On the note of these "Benefit Review Hearings", yet another reader has sent me a document discussing the principles of "natural justice", written by a barrister. I'd like to quote a paragraph from it here:

"It is simply unacceptable for a Government organisation, employee or other person charged with upholding the principles of natural justice, to attempt to walk away from making fair and proper decisions, and to instead rely on reviews or the courts to put things right."

Interestingly, the same staffer that pulled this particular stunt was the same one behind the previously outlined act i.e. the spraying around of a beneficiary's personal information - one Marama Stewart of a "Central Region Escalations" division.

Correspondence indicates that the distressed beneficiary several times emailed the Minister, Louise Upston, to complain and plead against this vindictive act by Stewart (whose template letter indicated that the beneficiary had the "right to object to the appointment of any panel member", but was told by Stewart, when in fact they did  object, that that right didn't apply to them - for some unstated reason).

Email trails demonstrate that the Minister's assistant - a Ceri Burke - conveniently "missed" the first several desperate emails pleading not to be openly humiliated in such a manner, before simply sending a response "from the Minister" that stated it was an "operational matter" and not of interest to the Minister. In a perfect display of the "5 D's" used by New Zealand government agencies to frustrate citizens, the staffer, Marama Stewart, in turn responded that she was operating in accordance with a Ministerial directive.

Maliciously Set Up to Have Benefit Cut Off

A disability beneficiary who was unable to complete quarterly paperwork due to neurological difficulties - and who lived alone with no support network - had the Ministry's previous assistance to do so, withdrawn after the beneficiary objected to the demeaning manner in which they had been spoken to by a staffer.

The beneficiary made three phone calls pleading for the continuation of the assistance previously given. Unbeknownst to those involved, the beneficiary recorded the calls - each with a different staffer, but each personally knowing the other members of staff involved in the matter. The recordings (of which I am in receipt) demonstrate the Ministry staffers intentionally tormenting the beneficiary by asking for the same justifications repeatedly (and I might say, in the most demeaning manner).

A "promise" was finally made that another staffer would call the beneficiary to complete the forms before the "cut-off" deadline. However, the call was never received and the benefit was cut off. A gloating letter was received from a Magnus O'Neill at "Ministerial Services" cruelly taunting that - when the beneficiary managed to work out for themselves how to get said forms filled in, the restoration of their benefit might be considered. Despicably, the "completely stuck" beneficiary was maliciously kept without a weekly benefit for a full six months, before the Human Rights Commission finally stepped in.

The beneficiary sent the recordings of the phone calls that demonstrated the malicious set-up by the group of staffers, to the Ministry, but they were returned "with a smart ass note saying they hadn't listened to them". The beneficiary went on to offer the phone call recordings to multiple other Ministry staffers, but without acknowledgement.

'Mercy-Seeking' Correspondence from Doctors & Medical Specialists Opportunistically Used Against Beneficiaries

Beneficiaries have been strongly advised by legal experts and experienced support persons not to - under any circumstances, have or allow their GPs or other medical service providers to produce correspondence asking the Ministry for consideration of their patients - including asking that staff not wilfully create undue and unnecessary stress for them.

In one particular instance, a beneficiary's GP was concerned that the extreme stress being created by Ministry staffers placed his patient at severe risk of experiencing further episodes of Atrial Fibrillation, which the beneficiary had recently been hospitalised for.

The beneficiary chose to communicate this to the Ministry and referenced the GP's willingness to produce correspondence (but that legal advice had been given to the beneficiary about the likely mischievous use of such correspondence by Ministry staff).

The Ministry staffer to whom this was communicated responded by "upping the ante" with an acceleration of the stress. (Readers:  What this staffer did requires a whole new definition for the word "heinous" - but I have been asked not to detail it here as it is "too personal".)

OIA 'Unreadability' Strategy

A beneficiary sought their information and records through an Official Information Act request.

The information was sent such that the orientation of a large percentage of its pages, and the tiny type size used, made it unreadable. Thus the beneficiary was unable to read, extract, or even ascertain whether all their information had even been provided.

Open-Office Ridicule of Beneficiaries for their Disabilities

I received a particularly shameful account of a beneficiary who was ridiculed openly by Ministry staffers for their disability, and had a cruel joke played on them, in front of an audience of people - which staff, including the security doorman, thought was hilarious.

The disabled beneficiary did not. They were deeply traumatised by it.

Intentional Prevention of Beneficiary's Efforts to Work

In another instance, an enterprising disability beneficiary with physical disabilities, had been given assistance by several start-up agencies, to produce a business concept that would allow them to counter their specific debilitations and gradually be able to return to income independence.

Each agency advised of a specific and directly relevant funding program offered by the Ministry of Social Development, and referred the beneficiary on to the Ministry to take the initiative to fruition. However, the beneficiary's communications were simply "wholesale ignored" by Ministry staffers "at all levels".

The tenacious beneficiary phoned the office of then-Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, who instructed "Ministerial Services" to move on the matter. The email chain shows the same Ministerial Services staffer, a Magnus O'Neill (also as referenced under the above subhead, 'Maliciously Set Up to Have Benefit Cut Off') wrote to the beneficiary to say that management staff from a regional office would be tasked with working with the beneficiary to achieve the outcome instructed by Minister Sepuloni.

The beneficiary was duly summoned to travel to present to two regional management personnel. The 2.5-hour presentation was "very well-received" - with the managers indicating funding would be forthcoming.

The elated beneficiary waited, waited, and waited some more, following up relentlessly for two years, before finally complaining - by this time to the new Minister i.e. Louise Upston - of the "cruel stonewalling" that had followed the presentation. They finally received an email, falsely claiming that a letter of declination had been sent by post, some months prior. The beneficiary is adamant that the letter was retrospectively produced and certainly had never been previously received. Ironically, there was a further association of the same Ministerial Services staffer as had been tasked by the previous Minister to see the application brought to fruition - Magnus O'Neill - in the correspondence regarding the now strange and inexplicable declination under the new Minister, Louise Upston.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO READERS: 

As you can see, the experiences above are too numerous for me to bring them all to you in one piece of coverage. Some of them are worse still than you have read here. I will bring these to you progressively in future articles.

In the meantime, for those of you who have asked me to create a "Comments" section under the articles, I apologise profusely that the very basic platform on which  The Customer & The Constituent  is built (i.e. a platform that isn't actually designed to be blog-driven in the front end) doesn't provide this functionality.

However, please, please, continue to use the feedback form at the bottom of each page of this site, to send me your experiences, your cases, your comments, or anything you wish. I receive these inputs with gratitude, and - maybe even better than just a Comments section - this mechanism allows me to correspond back with you, to bring your experiences to light through actual full-blown articles - which so many of them thoroughly deserve to be.