How large families benefit with a job

Paula Bennett has revealed that 307 beneficiaries receive more than $1000 a week. Photo / Richard Robinson

Very large families can easily get more than $1000 a week on benefits - but they can get even more family assistance if they get a job.

Politicians on both sides of the political divide were cautious yesterday over figures showing that 307 beneficiaries get more than $1000 a week in state assistance, including family tax credits and supplements for accommodation, disability costs, childcare and other extra costs.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has said she will seek an audit of the top 50, many of whom have eight children.

She cited one couple with 10 children getting $1200 a week where both parents have been on unemployment benefit for more than 15 years.

Prime Minister John Key told Newstalk ZB the Government needed to make sure the benefits were fair.

"Over $1000 a week, I suspect quite a lot of taxpayers will believe that's not fair," he said.

But Labour shadow welfare minister Annette King, who asked for the figures in a parliamentary written question, said the 307 families were only 0.1 per cent of the 310,000 people on benefits.

"If you take this one case, this payment and support for 10 children, what would those who criticise it say? They shouldn't have had the children?" she asked.

"But those children exist, and support for those children to ensure that they are fed and clothed and housed is what the welfare system is about."

Only a fraction of a per cent of all New Zealand families have eight or more children, but for this tiny minority the Labour Government's Working for Families policy has boosted incomes dramatically.

A family of 10 children spaced at two-year intervals between 18 years and a newborn baby would get $678 a week in family assistance on top of a basic benefit of $317, giving them a total income just $5 short of $1000 a week without any other top-ups.

They could get more than $1200 a week just by adding the maximum accommodation supplement of $225 in Auckland or North Shore cities.

Vai Harris of Mangere's Pacific Island Vaiola Budgeting Service said she had seen a family with eight children where the father chose to stop working because of family assistance.

"He used to work fulltime, then they reduced his hours. The wife was staying home looking after the kids," she said. "Three or four months later, after [increased] family assistance came in, he said, 'I'm not working any more'. Because with eight kids on the benefit it was nearly $1000 a week. I think it's not fair."

But a family with 10 children would actually get even more family assistance - $794 a week - if one parent could get a fulltime job paying the average wage of $950 a week, because they would then get an in-work tax credit of $165 on top of basic family tax credit.

Even though they would lose $501 a week in taxes and reduced accommodation supplement, and a slight reduction from the maximum family assistance, they would still end up $449 a week better off in the hand than they are on the dole.

The latest unemployment figures show that at least one partner still works in 94 per cent of the two-parent families with three or more children, exactly the same as before Working for Families started in 2004. Figures for larger families are not published.

Only 54 per cent of sole parents with dependent children are in paid work, but this is actually more than the 48 per cent who worked in 2004.

Pam Apera of Glenfield's Beneficiaries Advocacy and Information Service said the only beneficiary she had seen on more than $1000 a week was a sole mother with just one child who needed special food and frequent medical attention because of multiple allergies.

Dr Susan St John of the Child Poverty Action Group said the rare beneficiaries with eight or more children probably included foster children, step-children and other unusual circumstances.

"You just don't know," she said. "To be judgmental and fly into stereotypes of, 'She's on a benefit and pumping out all these kids', is just not accurate."

This year's Otago University survey on food costs found that a "basic" diet for two adults, two adolescent boys, one adolescent girl, four younger school-aged children and three preschoolers in Auckland cost $607 a week, with non-food groceries adding an extra $40.

If the family pays $455 rent for a five-bedroom house they would have $118 a week left over after rent and groceries to pay for clothing, power, phone, transport, school fees and all other costs."