Kerre Woodham: Blame system, not DBPers

In the jelly wrestling match that was Bennett versus the beneficiaries this week, I think Bennett gets the honours.

Initially, when the Minister for Social Development released details of the amounts Jennifer Johnston and Nicola Fuller were receiving on the DPB, the media cried foul.

Paula Bennett was accused of being a fascist; of invading the women's privacy; of resorting to old school Muldoonism to trample the little people who simply wanted to have their say.

Jennifer Johnston and Nicola Fuller had been protesting the removal of the tertiary training subsidy.

They claimed that although they were grateful to be receiving the DPB, they'd find it hard to continue their university study with the scrapping of the allowance and might even be forced to give up their dreams of becoming a nurse, in Johnston's case, and an early childhood educator, in Fuller's.

They appeared in this paper two weeks ago, were all over the internet and were quoted extensively in mainstream media, deploring the fact that Bennett had received assistance when she was a solo mother and was now depriving that same assistance to her own kind.

Balls, said Bennett - and I paraphrase. She released details of the two women's payments and claimed she was doing so simply in the interests of having a full and frank debate.

If the women were taking their cases public, she wanted the public to have all the facts at their disposal so they could decide whether the women were being hard done by.

In effect, it was a ministerial bitch-slap. Labour thundered about invasion of privacy; John Key backed his bolshie minister and Bennett remained resolute.

Jennifer Johnston didn't mind - she says the fact that the minister had told the world what she was getting paid - $554 - was no big deal.

Anyone could have found that out by checking the Work and Income website. She seems a jolly good sort. She had a telephone chat with the minister and invited her round for coffee and I have no doubt that Paula Bennett will take her up on that invitation.

Fuller on the hand is made of sterner stuff. She's getting $715 a week - not bad money for being fertile and abandoned.

She's going to the Privacy Commissioner, although given the fact that she was claiming to be paid all sorts of sums on the Trade Me message board, you have to wonder how a complaint could be sustained.

It was also revealed Fuller had been the poster girl for Labour's enterprise scheme when David Benson Pope named her as a recipient of an enterprise grant that would enable Fuller to get off the DPB and set up a cleaning business.

Sadly, that failed when the chemicals in the cleaning products exacerbated her asthma.

You have to wonder what she thought she'd be cleaning houses with - baking soda and ylang ylang oil?

It was then revealed that Fuller was the same Fuller who'd appeared on Fair Go after investing $450 in some hair extensions so she could, in her words, look like Jordan who is a British celeb.

When her hair ended up looking like the dags of Kurdish goats she went to Fair Go.

She certainly knows how to attract media attention. It's a bit like Lisa Lewis, but with her clothes on.

For the most part, the talkback callers on my show were reasonable. Seven hundred and fifteen dollars was a hell of a lot of money - much more than many of them were getting.

But it was the system that allowed that to happen and if the money was there to be had, who could blame her?

However, there may be more support for an overhaul of the welfare system than there was when the Business Roundtable called for the scrapping of the DPB a couple of weeks ago.

And although Paula Bennett got away with it this time, she should remember that a fight's fine - so long as it's a fair one.

* * www.kerrewoodham.com