In An Environment In Which the Vulnerable Are Voiceless & Invisible, Inhumanity and Abuse of Power Run Rampant

Q.  How many Ministry of 'Social Development' senior executives, managers and taxpayer-funded spin doctors does it take to vindictively destroy a disabled individual and make them homeless (just 'because they can')?

A.  Stay until the end to learn the answer. It's a long read, but it's well worth it, to see exactly what sort of culture pervades this particular Government agency.

In a recent article, https://www.thecustomer.co.nz/iconic-far-go-is-going-but-the-customer-is-ready-to-stand-up-for-kiwis-rights, as Editor & Chief Reviewer of The Customer NZ, I undertook - in whatever small way I'm able - to 'stand in the gap' left by TV1's iconic 'Fair Go'.

I committed to playing my part, by using The Customer NZ as a platform to stand up for the little guy's rights against the Big & Powerful (and the unaccountable), and also against any general skullduggery out there.

To that end, I asked, in that earlier article, for suggestions from readers: Anything from "exposes" to outlines of "scope for improvement" that I should provide coverage on. I specifically highlighted my interest in Government agencies and departments, their being (in reality) the least accountable of all organisations in New Zealand. (NB: They'd say members of the public can always complain to the Ombudsman, but have you ever tried? That's a topic for another article, at a later date.)

Senior Ministry Staff & Officials Who Act With Vindictive Impunity to Destroy Those They Are Meant to Help

I am in possession of, appalled by, and at liberty to acquaint my readers with, the truly despicable set of circumstances of a long-running matter of serial (practical, emotional and psychological) abuses of a disabled individual by various Ministry of Social Development (MSD) personnel - including executives at the upper-most level of seniority.

Here is the matter brought to me, out of despair and desperation, by a disabled individual who has been the subject of a campaign of psychological bullying and vindictiveness by a group of MSD managerial personnel, whom the traumatised individual has come to refer to as the "Gang of Four".

(NB:  To protect the identity of "*the individual*'", that is how I will refer to this person throughout this article, and in any further coverage I may follow through with, in later updates on this matter.)

This in-depth interview-style article is an abbreviated account of some of the inhumane treatment and multiple, wilful emotional and psychological abuses, and humiliation, this individual has suffered at the hands not only of the "Gang of Four", but also very publicly at the hands of large groups of MSD employees, prior.

** For any reader who wants to go straight to the punchline (although you'll miss out on much of the meaningful detail), perhaps the most heinous part of the story is this:  As a result of the individual taking the complaint to the seemingly completely unconcerned Minister of Disability Issues and Social Development, the "Honorable" Louise Upston, the individual, who lives alone and is completely unsupported by any other source, has had their weekly disability benefit completely cut off.  NB: The disingenuous correspondence - that, finally, resulted after the individual's multiple approaches to the Minister's office - would claim otherwise, of course, but a full account of the circumstances makes the vindictive and retaliatory treatment of the individual, abundantly clear.) **

The case beggars belief.

It's the story of an individual who - out of a desire to avoid "adding themselves to the welfare system" - exhausted their previously substantial savings and then allowed themselves to go into serious debt before finally resorting to claiming the disability benefit, despite doctors' insistence that they should reach out for the help they were entitled to.

And it's the story of an individual who - for the entire three years they've had to resort to the disability benefit - has done everything in their creative and persistent power to find a way around their multiple disabilities to return to earning an income and say goodbye to "the benefit".

And it's also the story of how every move that individual made to do so over the course of two tortuous years, was intentionally blocked and cut off at the pass by MSD staffers who appeared to entertain themselves by toying mercilessly, in a manner that could only be described as sheer, drawn-out psychological cruelty.

Shame on those MSD personnel . . . who included one of the Ministry's most senior executives, who "green-lighted" and then covered for the middle management personnel's despicable antics . . . including the retaliatory axing of the individual's benefit - that, very "coincidentally" occurred immediately following the individual having finally taken a complaint to the new Minister of Disabilities and Minister of Social Development, Louise Upston (who didn’t do anything, anyway).

It's All Documented & Provable

After a full five months of trying to attract the attention of the new Minister “or anyone who might care”, in desperation the individual finally laid out the escalating position-power abuse, in a 40-page electronic dossier of email trails, records, and commentaries of phone calls.

The dossier is comprehensive, and while highly readable, it is at the same time, hard to read, for the sheer incompetence (which could be argued was intentional) and the multi-faceted cruelty brought to bear on this individual. This is, ironically, clearly an individual who could be seen to be pulling out all stops to reinvent a means to return to earnings self-sufficiency and get themselves off the benefit . . . with, all the while, the powers that be at MSD more intent on keeping them on, the benefit - until, in a cruel and calculated twist, the same powers suddenly and completely axed that benefit, leaving the individual now in a situation where homelessness could be an imminent possibility.

The following is a combination of (a) quoted tracts from the dossier, and (b) a personal interview with the individual, who brought their story to The Customer NZ, firstly for the exposure that would never otherwise be given to this particularly heinous Government agency conduct, and also out of concern for others who are likely suffering this torment and unethical treatment by MSD personnel, but can’t find a way to be heard.

How It All Began  (This should make your blood boil.)

The individual first approached MSD's / WINZ's Palmerston North operation some three years ago. Although the staff were advised in advance by a third party that the individual had physical support requirements related to their specific and very challenging disability, when the individual arrived, they were refused the provision, they were subject to open, public, group ridicule by MSD staffers, and they were refused the assistance essential to the filling in of a considerable amount of paperwork.

Instead, the individual was sent down the road, on their own, to a non-existent address, for the form-filling assistance the MSD refused them. Realising the joke, the individual had returned to the MSD office, and found that the receptionist had even summoned the security doorman to join in the "joke". The individual left in tears, to the overt laughter of the staff.

The individual reports that a variety of miscellaneous abuses by other Palmerston North MSD personnel followed, some of which – although serious - didn't even make it into the 40-page account, and that had added yet another layer of "toying", intentionally ignored undertakings, and psychological abuse, to the growing pile.

The individual reported these abuses both verbally and in writing, but was either ignored, denied, or the issue was undertaken to be rectified and ultimately was not.

Eventually, the individual (who was initially errantly put on an unemployment benefit when it was clear they should have been granted a disability benefit), was assigned to the Masterton office, at the directive of the then-Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, who was, to her credit, unimpressed at what she had learned of the individual's treatment at the hands of the Palmerston North MSD office. To be clear, the individual did not live anywhere near Masterton, but had asked to allowed to deal with an office as far from the Palmerston North office as possible. They were, quite understandably, traumatised.

Desperate to Work, But MSD Staffers Prevented It  (Only to later cut off the person's disability benefit i.e. after actively preventing them from earning an income!)

Following the treatment by the Palmerston North MSD operation, the individual was determined - despite their multiple disabilities - to get back off the disability benefit "ASAP".

A meticulous, detailed reproduction of two years of emails and phone calls demonstrated how the individual had consulted with numerous relevant agencies and organisations such as the Regional Business Network, government-funded mentoring agencies, The Factory in Palmerston North, and others, to develop plans for the individual to utilise their skills, with special technical support, to enable them to return to financial self-sufficiency.

According to the individual, "every single agency, every single one of them" advised that MSD had specific funding and other forms of assistance available to put the individual's "detailed and minutely costed" return-to-earning, financial self-sufficiency - "get off the benefit" - plan into action.

In the individual's own words: 

"But they absolutely played with me. At one point, they had some supposed in-house guru call me, who was meant to be a wizard at helping people with disabilities, and was 'the best they had'.

"This woman was a complete joke - both in terms of her intellect and her interest level. I spent 45 solid minutes laying out the detail of the business plan and all the costings to her. At the end, she just said she had another appointment waiting. I asked her, ‘What's the next step?’

“She said, ‘I don't know. Go and get survey work for councils or something.’ I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was like she'd been flicking through her Facebook feed or doing her nails or something while I was talking. She was off on another planet and completely uninterested. She hadn't heard a thing."

Back to the individual's two-year, 40-page dossier of correspondence and communications:

Managing to attract the attention of a compassionate staffer in then-Minister Sepuloni's office, an instruction was passed down the food chain from the Minister's office, to the Ministry, to address the matter, and without creating further unnecessary delay and angst for the individual.

"Even though that had resulted in a letter from this 'Magnus O'Neill' character, 'General Manager of Ministerial & Executive Services', and an undertaking from him to move things along, they only went as far as they needed to, to show the Minister's office, supposedly, that they were following her instruction. However, as soon as the focus was off again, they reverted to the same games thereafter, that then went on for another two years," the individual says.

To supposedly demonstrate to the Minister's office that the directive of fair and respectful treatment was being heeded, two senior management figures from the Masterton MSD office, Alice Percival and Shannon Meynell, summoned the individual to give the pair a detailed, two-hour, in-person presentation at a location geographically halfway between Masterton and the individual's home.

'Quite Brilliant" . . . So Why the Stonewalling?

The communication trails laid out in the individual's 40-page dossier, demonstrate that the individual's presentation was extremely well-received, with one of the MSD managers stating that they thought the individual's concept and planning were "quite brilliant". 

Meynell's communications with the individual appear to have undertaken that - although she'd possibly have to be creative about the sources of the funding since the individual wasn't technically required to work - she'd do all in her power to make it happen.

"As you read clearly from the emails, and even more so from our early phone conversations (before she just faded out) Shannon was optimistic and keen. At the presentation, she'd said she'd help me back into earning, however she had to do it.

"Later, she said it might take a bit longer than the norm since she'd have to ‘reach out to different managers around the office to pull bits of funding from the different buckets’.

“Those were her exact words during one of the early follow-up phone calls I made. I was stoked. I was on a high to think I’d be off the benefit and back earning a living again sometime soon in a way that was actually possible for me."

IMPORTANT NOTE:  What the powers that be within the Ministry of Social Development have (conveniently for themselves) chosen to leave out of any correspondence at any time, is the following:  This individual was not only trying desperately to get themselves off the benefit and back into earning capacity, they had also - in the interim - made the offer of writing resumes and related materials (within a pace and in a manner that accommodated their disabilities) for the Masterton MSD's job-seeking client base - completely free of any charge. The individual simply wanted to "keep (their) brain operational"  and "contribute".

Also an issue that was received warmly at the presentation, it was one that - as you'll read regarding the work-related proposal - was never again corresponded about, by Meynell or Percival, despite the individual's polite reminders. This "strategic" omission by the powers that be in MSD in all future communications, will help readers make their own interpretation of the nature of MSD's intent towards this individual and the way in which its associated managerial figures have endeavoured to portray them.)

Subsiding Into Two Years of Mind Games

But . . . back to Groundhog Day for our persistent disability beneficiary: Follow-up emails and phone calls (always initiated by the individual, as far as the dossier shows) then continued throughout the second half of 2022, and all through 2023.

The individual said they (the individual) would wait a few weeks or months between each follow-up email or phone call ("just so I didn't appear to be hounding them too hard"), but the result was either no response or "a meaningless fob-off". However, after many months - and drowning in debt and at risk of losing their home, as well as simply desperate to work for the sake of working - the individual's emails and voicemails became more desperate. Still, they continued to be ignored (in the case of Meynell) or fobbed off (in the case of Percival).

"It eventually became clear that all the tearful voicemails and desperate emails in the world weren't even going to get a response, let alone the fulfilment of any undertakings.

"I was pleading with them, all this time, to help me get back to work, but Alice would say she'd 'ask Shannon what was happening' and then nothing would come of that, either. It was cruel. Pure psychological abuse, and they knew it.

"Eventually, it came to what I'd been pleading with them not to let happen. I'd have to sell my property to pay down the debit I'd incurred trying to find a cure for my medical condition and leaving it way too long to claim a benefit at the start. It had taken me five years of hard hunting to find that place, with its suitability for my specific medical condition and related disabilities."

Challenges on Too Many Fronts

(Reader: Stay with this next part of the story. It sounds like a diversion, but it loops directly back into the core issue soon enough.)

According to the individual, the eventual sale of their property had also been forced, in the end, by the relentless, serious bullying of a large group of men next door . . . bullying that had culminated in the individual finding a large set of severed stag testicles in the letter box one morning.

"So, I'd been being badly bullied by all these men and their teenage sons for a long time, and the MSD knew about it - not that it had anything to do with them, but it was severe and everybody around, knew what I was being subjected to. That's actually another reason I wanted to get back earning again, because I could have afforded to relocate more quickly and get the heck out of there, if I was back earning my own income. It was pretty terrifying and it was relentless over the five years I'd been there. The police had visited the neighbours on several occasions and issued warnings to them and their associates.

"But finding a set of severed testicles in my letter box was the last straw. I was beginning to feel like I might not make it out alive if I didn't get out ASAP. The officer who came and removed the testicles from my letter box had been monitoring the situation for quite some time, and was seriously concerned for my safety and - along with my doctor - had urged me to relocate away from the property urgently.

"The officer said that, when you find a severed animal body part in your mailbox, you can't risk what might be coming next when you're dealing with that sort of mentality."

From Severed Stag Testicles in One Letter Box to Distressing, Falsely Accusatory Notices  from Vindictive MSD Staffers in the Next Letterbox

The individual found another, appropriate house to buy, but there was a catch: 

If the individual wanted it right away, several very large and very expensive items of work (new foundations, electrical re-wiring and major underground plumbing restoration, by way of example), all relevant to insurability, had to be left for the individual to undertake, albeit the costs would be suitably deducted from the purchase price.

Upon moving into the new home, the individual contacted Alice Percival. Indeed, the email threads in the correspondence dossier showed that the individual had kept MSD more than closely posted of developments in their circumstances throughout the duration and throughout the house hunt, the sale, and the new purchase. 

An email arrived to say that Alice would be phoning and would be discussing the fact that the price differential would, in fact, be considered a cash asset. 

The individual recounts their panic:  "I suddenly realised that the urgency with which I'd had to buy the property and the state I'd had to take it in, might now see me with an unsafe, unworkable property, if the MSD wasn't going to let me do the repairs. Even so, by the time I got through with all the moving expenses and paying out the debt that had been the other reason I'd had to sell my previous property, there actually wasn't anywhere near enough left to tackle the bulk of the essential repairs, anyway.

"Suddenly, with the past two, or now, the nearly three years of me begging and pleading and turning somersaults for Shannon and Alice to do such a relatively small thing to see me get back into an earning capacity . . . and still never having had any response to all my communications, I saw red.

“There was every probability that, if they had done what was absolutely in their power to do (and way back as far as the letter from Magnus O’Neill in June 2022, that Minister Sepuloni had prompted) and what they'd given me to believe they would do, I wouldn't now be finding myself in this incredibly perilous situation. And, by the way, a situation that Alice sounded like she was more than happy to see me in.

"So I emailed her, and for the first time in two years, I stopped sending groveling, pleading, sugary-polite emails and I demanded an explanation as to the real reason she and Shannon had played such a psychologically cruel and pointless game with me for such a long time. A game that had actively prevented me from getting off the benefit and stopped me from getting earning my own living again."

MSD Lies & Dishonesty Come Out in Force from Top to Bottom

If you, the reader, didn't think it could get any worse . . . yes, it could. And it did.

That's the point at which the especially despicable dishonesty, disingenuousness, and sheer cover-up antics of the MSD and its Masterton management, and later on, its senior Ministry executive, kick squarely in. 

It's also the point at which the individual's 40-page dossier had come into being. It had been seen that no amount of emails to the Ministry, or to the Minister's office, were going to be acknowledged, much less addressed with any sincerity or honesty, so - the individual felt - a compilation of the events (although still, not all) and an example of the email trails, would surely draw the Minister's attention and the conscience of "someone who might have one".

Not so. It was further multiple weeks of continued ignorance and lack of any acknowledgement (even of receipt of the dossier, which had, by then, been sent to multiple recipients) and for said dossier to be sent three times, in two different forms, including being witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, before the Prime Minister’s office finally instructed Upston's office to require the Ministry to provide a response.

The dossier's email trails show that, when the individual finally challenged Percival over the persistent "psychological torment" in the form of the dragged-out-and-never-concluded self-employment assistance discussions, Percival - who had supposedly been the individual's designated "safe", go-to person ever since the Palmerston North ridiculing fiasco - simply cut off the individual cold.

'Nasty Little Man'

Worse still, Percival put a "nasty little man" by the name of Kawana Gaunt on the case, who immediately advised the individual that "Alice is not your case manager".

"He delighted in making that declaration. And it was cruel, gutless and vindictive of Alice. She had absolutely been the equivalent of a 'case manager' for the entire time since I'd left those frightful, ridiculing women behind me at the Palmerston office.

"Worse still, it was painfully clear that this young bloke was on a mission to make a hero of himself and score big brownie points with Alice and Shannon, by ‘putting me in my place'. The way he spoke to me on the phone call (that was meant to be with Alice) was despicable. You'd have thought I was some low-life, low-IQ person on parole from jail or something. He was delighting in how demeaning he was being to me.

"I'd been in unbearable pain that week, which I'd also advised Alice of in my email to her, and after a while it became too much for me. I couldn't take any more demeaning from this horrid little man trying to hero-ise himself to Alice and Shannon at my expense. At one point, it felt like he was about to ask me how much money I spent on toilet paper that week, and finally, in no uncertain terms. I told him I'd had enough."

Overt, Unbridled Vindictiveness:  'Just Because They Could'

The subsequent email trail in the individual's dossier shows that, on the phone call, Gaunt had condescended to allow the individual a certain period of time (something like a week) to get the works on their house, completed. (Readers:  Has anyone ever managed to get a house re-wired, a full external re-plumb of a house, and the re-construction of the foundations of the entire back end of a house, contracted out, works completed, and invoices settled, inside a week, while you’re still in the process of moving into it?)

The email trails show that the individual had immediately emailed Percival following the phone call, expressing their feelings about what had just taken place and their concern that this Kawana Gaunt - based on the phone call just had - had not only "set up" the individual for failure (including financial), but also that it appeared likely that Gaunt's intentions would be to make the individual's life as difficult as possible from that point onwards.

In a move of "what could only reasonably be seen as outright vindictiveness" by Gaunt (with the almost certain involvement of Percival and Meynell), the time stamps show that within minutes of the individual expressing that concern in their email, a reply had resulted, not from Percival, but from Gaunt, now retracting his "gracious" one-week period for the individual to get the above works completed, and stating that, actually, he was slashing the individual's benefit by a third, effective from the prior day.

Within a couple of weeks, the benefit had been slashed by a further third.

Why Would You 'Trespass' Someone Who Is Disabled & Doesn't Come to Your Premises, Anyway?

Then Gaunt delivered the king hit in his power play, apparently timed strategically to drop on Christmas Eve:

The individual found a nasty official notice in their letter box from Gaunt himself, accusing the individual of "threatening behaviour" at the MSD premises, and that if they weren't careful, they would be "formally trespassed".

The problem with that - apart from everything - is that the individual was never in, on, or anywhere near, the MSD premises! The individual's medical condition and associated disabilities, as reinforced by Alice Percival's own email, clearly noted that the individual was, in fact, unable to, at any time, attend the premises in person, for clear disability-related reasons! 

I'll let the individual describe how they felt in their own words:

"I thought that was the most despicable example of someone abusing their job role. But even more so, I think I was just plain dismayed that Shannon and Alice - who had to have authorised him to pull his little bully boy stunt - would themselves stoop so very low. 

"The whole thing was orchestrated to cause me the maximum distress possible. It was flagrantly and provably untrue. It was ridiculous. And I had no right of reply. It had been designed to be as intrusive into my world as possible by putting it in my letter box, too, when all previous communications had been by email. And it was timed to arrive weeks after my last conversation with them, and right on Christmas Eve, just to deliver a further serving of fear and distress at the nastiest possible time.

"But worst of all, their biggest motive was clear: It was to get something serious like that, as feigned as it was in reality, to sit on my records at the MSD for the rest of my interaction duration with them. That is absolute abuse of power."             

But They Hadn't Finished Yet . . .

Then came a slew of paperwork in the mail.

The individual points out that this was paperwork that would involve the individual in considerable amounts of hard copy-based paperwork and form-filling, all of which it was well-known to Alice Percival, Shannon Meynell, and other key staff members at the Masterton operation, that the individual's neurological symptoms prevented them from being able to do – especially those tasks that involved dealing with large volumes of figures and numerically-based detail.

Indeed, assistance with far lesser amounts of administrative requirements had always, until that point, been given readily by Percival, Meynell, or their fully-briefed appointees.

The individual - newly arrived in a completely unfamiliar region, and knowing that that assistance would clearly now be withdrawn by "Percival, Meynell, Gaunt and co.", had no option but to wait the two hours on the 0800 line, to ask the MSD call centre for help to obtain that same assistance from another part of the MSD organisation.

"It was demoralising to the core. This young call centre operator kept asking me repeatedly, the exact same question, ‘Haven't you got any family or friends that can fill it in for you?’ And I kept giving him the same answer. Over and over again."

That answer is incredibly personal; I've read it; and it's in the individual's dossier account. Suffice to say, they have no family, and they are in a new and strange region without the ability or opportunity to socialise or with any suitable party to whom to reach out.

"Eventually, after a lot of pleading, I got given a time when someone would phone me and help me.

"But when that next MSD staffer called, a couple of weeks later, they wouldn't help. They not only put me through the same humiliating questions again, they kept repeating the exact same question over again, just like the first chap. They wouldn't accept my answer.

"And then they wouldn't help anyway. It was a young woman. Very officious. She said, ‘It's not our job.'

''I told her that I actually would only need very basic help if they could help me do it electronically. I told her my difficulty was most especially with hard copy, and with figures and the like, and my vision and neurological issues related to my condition. 

"But she just said, 'We don't do things that way.'

"Eventually, with a lot of wheedling from me, she said she'd go and ask her manager what could be done. She came back to the phone and - I couldn't believe it - just launched into the same humiliating questions again, 'Why haven't you got any family that can do it for you?' etc. I told her I didn't know what else to say to make her believe me when I'd already answered her exact same question multiple times . . . as I'd already done with the young guy at the call centre a week earlier, when he'd arranged for her to call and help me out.

"How the call concluded was that she said she had arranged for her manager to call me, and that, in the meantime, in her words, 'I know Kawana; he has all the contacts and resources he needs to be able to give you the assistance you need'.

"I told her that this Kawana (Gaunt) has a persecution campaign going on me, and her asking him to help me wouldn't work out too well for me. However, I also told her that, 'I'm desperate and I need help with this from somewhere', so just whatever you can do, please, and thank you for your compassion and your understanding'.

'I asked her when her manager would call me and gave her the date on which the forms had to be submitted or the benefit would apparently be discontinued. She told me I'd get the call from her manager, 'before the end of next week'. I asked for her reassurance of that time frame, again, based on my need to avoid the benefit being cut off if the paperwork wasn't produced in time. She gave me her word."

NB: The individual advises they have full voice recordings of:

(a) the phone call to the MSD 0800 call centre, as well as

(b) the phone call with the MSD staffer who was assigned to help the individual but never did and who, further, re-neged on her promise to organise for the required assistance for the individual, to be forthcoming from another party.

MSD Manager Breaks Promise . . . and the Beneficiary Pays the Penalty!

The call never arrived . . . leaving the individual to wonder if the manager in question was just tardy and uncaring, or whether - more likely, the individual felt - the matter had been handed back to Gaunt for handling, and whether the matter was then intentionally left to rot so that the individual's disability benefit could be cancelled.

And it keeps getting worse.

The individual - with nothing left to lose - wrote again to the Minister of Social Development (who, it should be noted, is also the Minister of Disability Issues) – Louise Upston – with a formal complaint.

The key issues to be addressed were:

1)  First and foremost, why - in the face of the obvious withdrawal of the assistance given over the previous 2+ years by Alice Percival - the MSD staffer that the call centre had assigned to assist, had not kept the commitment made to do so, and had willfully allowed the individual's benefit to be cut off. (NB: This particularly and unnecessarily cruel and egregious aspect of the matter is now the subject of a formal case with the Human Rights Commission.)

2) Why the individual had been cruelly toyed for a full two years, over the self-employment assistance, which had been the subject of an undertaking as far back as a letter from the Ministry's Magnus O'Neill, at the behest of the previous Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, on June 20, 2022.

3) Why this "Magnus O'Neill" had, in a cursorily brief letter to an earlier complaint by the individual about the various aspects of this matter, seemingly accused the individual of planning to "divest" themselves of funds . . . an accusation which made no sense and had no grounds whatsoever, and that the individual rightly considered an unfounded slight on their character.

4) The individual demanded an apology for the unfounded threatened "trespass" notice.

There were further as-yet unacknowledged components of the overall matter that the individual also asked finally be addressed - such as the individual's initially well-received offer to assist job seekers with free-of-charge resumes, and the subsequent stone-walling of the individual's associated communications regarding that offer of goodwill and contribution. These issues also continued to be ignored.

A Prompt by the Prime Minister's Office Resulted in A Response . . . But NOT the Truth

Prompted by the Prime Minister's office (Note from the Editor:  the Minister seems not to give a stuff how her Ministry operates on the ground, nor about the culture that pervades it), another "brief, evasive, smart alec, and cursory-by-design" response eventually arrived:

1)   With regard to the critical issue of the unexplained, withdrawn essential assistance by Alice Percival and Shannon Meynell, and the subsequent reneged-on commitments for someone else to assist the individual so that their weekly disability benefit would not be discontinued: 

The "response" by the same Magnus O'Neill (MSD’s “GM of Ministerial & Executive Services”), who - again - had been prompted way back in June of 2022 by the previous Minister to resolve these very issues, was nothing other than an instruction to the individual that they'd need to submit their forms or find an agent to do so, if they wanted their benefit resumed.

In what had by now become obvious to the individual as Mr O'Neill's trademark disingenuous modus operandi, no reference was made to the actual issue.

(NB:  Ethically, of course, the individual's benefit should not only be "resumed", it should be backdated to the date of cessation. But glaringly absent from O’Neill’s evasive and seemingly intentionally pointless letter, was any acknowledgement by O'Neill of the malicious sudden withdrawal of the prior assistance that the individual had been provided, regarding those processes.)

2)  On the issue of why the individual was asked to jump through multiple hoops with regard to assistance with self-employment, O'Neill claimed that a letter had been sent to the individual on September 19, 2022, advising that the self-employment assistance was declined.

The individual advises three overt and obvious problems with this: 

Firstly, no such letter was ever received by the individual, a claim demonstrably true by virtue of the personal tone of communications between the individual and Meynell / Percival both prior and subsequent to that date.

The individual points out that a brief and very stiltedly formal letter was not at all in keeping with the nature and tone of the email and voice communications that had been exchanged between they and Meynell and Percival following the two-hour presentation by the individual and the ensuing nearly two years.

Further, the fact that the individual was still actively seeking an answer from Meynell and Percival long after the date of the supposed letter and right up to and including the final email sent to Percival in December 2023, is testament to the fact that no such letter was ever received, nor referred to by, Meynell or Percival in the more than 12 months since the date upon which the supposed letter had been sent.

Secondly, the supposed letter (received only when attached to a February 2, 2024 email from O’Neill) had cited the individual being on a disability benefit and having no commitment to work, as being the primary reason for the declination. But - advises the individual - all parties, from the Minister, to Magnus O'Neill, to Meynell and Percival, were all acutely aware of that fact before they summoned the individual to present the two-hour, minutely-costed proposal for self-employment assistance.

Thirdly, the subsequent response on the matter by Magnus O'Neill, had cited an additional reason for the declination:  that he had been told by Meynell and Percival that the self-employment assistance was for "a business (the individual) operated previously".

This was provably, completely false. When challenged, O'Neill was forced to indirectly admit this falsehood, but wrote nothing about the fact that - the declination having been based on that falsehood - the matter should be revisited, this time based on the true information the individual had directed him to more accurately acquaint himself with

3)  On the matter of the “strange, inexplicable, completely groundless, left-field, and utterly offensive” implied accusation by O’Neill that the individual was intending to "divest" themselves of funds: 

In what appears to be an intentionally garbled and impossible-to-understand chunk of text, O'Neill seems to double down on his implication. He rolls out a long paragraph of internal MSD gobbledy-gook and yet another MSD website link, appearing to add some additional form of accusation to his first.

4)   But it is on the matter of the threatened trespass notice and the individual's demand for an apology, that O'Neill and his "officials" hit their most despicable stride: 

The individual had, he claimed, "sent several aggressive emails, some of which included objectionable images".

Let's hear the truth, though, shall we? The untwisted, unspun version.

'Toxic Distortion with Toxic Intent, by Individuals Delighting In their Own Toxic Culture'

In the words of the individual:

"That was an absolutely toxic distortion with toxic intent.

"It was a heinous and utterly mischievous re-framing of facts, and an intentional and complete omission of context, designed exclusively to cover their own backsides.

"Actually, not just to achieve covering their backsides . . . but also to take the opportunity to quite falsely character-assassinate me. They clearly feel completely at liberty to do that, in their unaccountable, toxic culture.

"I could hardly believe they could be that wicked when I read that. There are ‘spin doctors’ and then there's straight-out deceit. And that definitely went straight into the deceit category.

"Firstly, the 'aggressive emails' were, arguably, one email that I finally resorted to after two years of pleading for an answer as to why they had refused me the opportunity to get back on my feet and get off the benefit . . . an answer that I’d demanded only finally then, in a state of complete desperation . . . as I stared down the barrel of their obvious intention to make me homeless. 

"Secondly - and most heinously of all - the 'objectionable images' they've referred to was the SINGLE photo I had felt forced to send them of the police officer removing the dismembered stag's testicles from my letter box. And I'd felt forced to send it - as I'd said in the email to which the (single) photo was attached - to show them the extreme urgency with which I'd had to sell and leave my previous home . . . and why I'd thus had to buy a house that required major corrective works that I'd had to ask the owner to leave the funds in for me to do, in order to ensure its safeness and its insurability.

"But I know exactly why they've engineered that despicable re-framing act. It's firstly so that they can add that to the strategic, defamatory-style, no-right-of-reply correspondence they're vindictively adding to my 'file' at their end.

“And, in this case, because I've taken this all the way to the Prime Minister's office, they would be providing both the Minister’s and the PM’s office with a copy of their response to my complaint. Thus, the way their spin doctors have re-framed it covers their backsides neatly, and also makes me look entirely like something I am most certainly not . . . because, all the facts and context I'm imparting to you, have been strategically omitted from O'Neill's disingenuous 'response' letter that they'll be showing the Minister and the PM's office.

"How disingenuous and cunning can they be?"

And So . . . Approaching The Customer NZ, to Help with the Mission for Truth and Justice

The individual has sought exposure of the antics of O'Neill, Meynell, Percival, Gaunt and their "behind-the-scenes spin doctor chronies", because:

"Sure, I could write another indignant letter of reply and demand the multiple necessary corrections (and the apologies they not only won't give, but instead keep finding additional ways to intentionally insult me), but at their end, it's all a big game (that, by the way, they're getting paid their fat salaries to play).

"It would go to the Minister's office, who wouldn't do anything until I'd taken it back up the chain to the Prime Minister's office. Then, maybe, maybe, O'Neill would be instructed to respond . . . and it would be just this ongoing game of chess between me and their taxpayer-funded spin doctors.

“And this is all making me SO much sicker with all the stress . . . and, I might mention, of course, that I have NO INCOME, and no means to correct that. And every ounce of energy I put into this, is taking me further and further down into stress and debilitation and further and further away from being able to return, in some form, to financial self-sufficiency."

‘The Peak of Irony’

"Isn’t that the peak of irony?

"You’ve got what must, by now, be a dozen or more fat cat senior public servants, all sitting around on their bloated taxpayer-funded salary packages, scheming about how they can bring this one, lone, very debilitated disability beneficiary to their knees by depriving them of their meager weekly benefit entitlement and trying to force them into a state of homelessness.

"And, for good measure, reveling in their too-smart-for-their-own-good, malfeasant, character-assassination attempts (of someone who has pulled out all stops for assistance to return to work, and who has also made valiant, and similarly stymied, attempts to offer voluntary service to others, through MSD).

“Is that good value for public money? What a farce . . . and the new Government is all about righting the wrongs of the previous government . . . How about starting with addressing the sort of departmental culture that would allow a situation like this to even occur?

“Rather than delighting in keeping very genuine beneficiaries in a state of stress, despair, and disempowerment, why not help them in a real and meaningful way?

“How about some accountability for these characters and the culture they are perpetuating? Goodness knows what other situations they’re entertaining themselves with, where others might have even less capacity to stand up for themselves than I have, which even then, is very little.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: 

If you, or anyone you know, has been the target of anything even approaching this sort of completely unacceptable experience at the hands of this or any other government agency, please submit the details in brief, along with a phone number, through the contact form at the bottom of this site.