David Seymour clearly doesn't know how hard it is to get a disability allowance

Act has announced a policy to cut disability spending by $653 million over four years.

Until she died in her late 80s, every year my grandmother visited her GP to confirm she was still blind. Despite losing one eye to a freak accident at 17 years old and the other due to infection just weeks later, for 70 years my grandmother had to prove she couldn’t see.

For the majority of her adult life, she waded through this bureaucratic, almost comical, process without complaint just to continue to get her disability allowance. She often joked that maybe at one of these appointments she’d find out she could magically see. As absurd as the appointments were, she went through the rigmarole every year to comply with the rules.

Thousands of New Zealanders go through this exact process, paying to see their GP and, for many, sitting through long, often exhausting, appointments with an assessor to prove they are disabled enough to get a government benefit. 

I’ve watched this process first-hand, not just with my grandmother, but also with my brother who is mentally and physically disabled. I’ve witnessed countless assessors and GPs meticulously go through the required paperwork with my family and seen how incredibly difficult it is to get a disability allowance. 

That's not what the Act Party wants voters to think, though. In a recently proposed policy, the party says if re-elected it will cut disability spending by $653 million over the next four years. Unless the Act Party can suddenly conjure miracles and heal the sick, tens of thousands of Kiwis with disabilities will have their benefits cut.

Act Party leader David Seymour has assured voters these cuts aren’t about taking money away from disabled people with genuine, enduring conditions – they’ll keep their support – it’s just those who aren’t "genuinely’ disabled", I suppose, who will be cut off. 

Sounds good, right? One might argue it's perfectly reasonable, even morally responsible. Those who are actually disabled and can’t work will still get help, while the rest will be supported back into work, “reducing avoidable dependency” on the benefit. Specifically, Act's costing is "based on bringing the number of mental health claimants back to its pre-pandemic level." We, the public, save an easy $600m over four years, and the country will be back on track. It’s a win-win, job done.

As much as Act would like New Zealanders to believe disability benefits are handed out too generously, the process to receive one is actually incredibly thorough and precise. In recent years, the coalition government has further tightened eligibility for receiving disability benefits.

You can read about the changes and how the process works here in this article written by far more qualified and intelligent people than me. 

This means Seymour has had to think carefully about how he convinces voters that this is a good policy. The language used in and around it is deliberate. The word "genuine" is used so voters feel less squeamish about slashing benefits for one of our society’s most vulnerable groups.

If Act can give the impression that millions are being misspent on people who aren’t "really" in need, then cutting disability funding makes logical sense. 

The use of language is also important in getting around one of the proposal's biggest holes: the doctors signing off patients to receive disability allowances. 

Act says doctors have been "under pressure" to sign people – erroneously, Seymour thinks – off work and onto benefits, which is why MSD-approved doctors, not your local GP, would be the ones taking over this process. The president of the Royal College of GPs president Luke Bradford disagrees with Act's "political rhetoric, it's a soundbite". He told RNZ that doctors form treatment plans for patients based off real symptoms and illnesses. And when there is uncertainty (commonly with mental health patients) a designated group of MSD-approved referral doctors already exists. He said with the very real rise in anxiety and agoraphobia since the pandemic began, what isn't there is "underlying support systems".

The narrative Act is spinning is that the current system is flawed because doctors are prone to caving under this pressure and are unable to think logically when signing patients off work. 

That’s an understandable argument for the voter to swallow, because why would intelligent and highly trained doctors be signing off the wrong patients for disability allowances unless it was due to some sort of external stress?

The Act Party is banking on voters seeing these arguments as logical and reasonable. It doesn’t want to be seen as a party that, while in coalition, failed to stimulate the economy, so now it's raiding disability funding for cash.

But the reality is, it’s never been easy to get disability benefits; there’s a stringent process that involves doctors and an assessor – incredibly smart and professional people – who know what they’re doing. And, importantly, many people who qualify for the benefit don’t actually get it. The money being spent is going to those who need it and can prove that they do.

And yet, in a close election with every party looking for a scapegoat, even proving every single year that you have a disability in order to receive a tiny bit of support is considered too easy.