Ministry of Social Development says 12 non-financial sanctions applied to beneficiaries in six months

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston, who the Greens have criticised for introducing non-financial sanctions for beneficiaries. Photo / Dean Purcell

Ministry of Social Development officials have revealed only 12 non-financial sanctions have been applied to beneficiaries in the six months since a new scheme was introduced.

This compares with more than 12,000 financial sanctions applied to beneficiaries over the three months to September 2025.

The Green Party said the minister in charge of the policy had “wasted everybody’s time” introducing a “less punitive” option that was barely used. The party wants the sanctions outlawed and said they had added “more layers of bureaucracy” that negatively affect some of the country’s most vulnerable people.

But the ministry (MSD) said it is early days and the pool of people the new non-financial sanctions applied to was limited.

Addressing a Parliamentary select committee, MSD chief executive Debbie Power said there were specific criteria for applying a non-financial sanction that “significantly reduces the size of people where those sort of sanctions will apply”.

“You have to be in case management, you have to have dependent children, you have to have a first obligation fail and attended an appointment with a case manager. It can [also] only be considered if it is within that five-day notice period,” she said.

Before non-financial sanctions, which include things such as money management and community work, the only penalty for breaching benefit obligations was a reduction of payments.

The Government launched non-financial sanctions on May 26, 2025. They include requirements to report on a minimum of three job-search activities every week for a month and participating in at least one employment-related training course for at least five hours a week over four weeks.

Power described the option as “another tool” for eligible people.

“If you think about the people that it applies to, a particular group or cohort, it is another tool, it is an alternative to a financial sanction and we’ve only just started.”

Green Party MP and committee member Ricardo Menéndez March said Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston had “wasted everybody’s time” by introducing the non-financial sanctions if they weren’t going to be used as a direct alternative to financial penalties.

“Louise Upston touted non-financial sanctions as a less punitive option compared to financial sanctions, but under her watch almost every single person facing a benefit sanction has been left without the means to survive.

“The minister has wasted everyone’s time by introducing new benefit sanctions that aren’t being used as an alternative to the status quo, while more people go without and her policies are failing to lift people out of hardship.”

Menéndez March said the Government had created more layers of bureaucracy with the non-financial sanction pathway “while punching down on unemployed people for an unemployment crisis they didn’t create”.

He said his party would repeal benefit sanctions if elected at the 2026 general election.

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.