On Q&A on Sunday morning, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett claimed that the government's plans to work-test sickness beneficiaries would actually be good for sick people:
Bennett has a message for some on the sickness benefit: working can make you well.That may very well be the case in some cases. But it's a medical decision, and one which should therefore be made by patients and their clinicians. Imposing a bureaucratized, one-size-fits-all solution by slashing benefits is simply a recipe for disaster. And applying it to the clinically depressed means that we will be counting the cost in suicides."People with low level depression and low level mental illness are often better off in work and it's actually a road to recovery for them it actually helps them get better," she says.
