rich families get pay rises through Working For Families

If you`re a backbench MP, with five kids, like, say, Heather Roy, you would be entitled to get a welfare payment through Working for Families (WFF) if your partner was not working.

If you have six kids, you are entitled to welfare if you are earning $143,000. In fact if a family is getting $100,000 a year and had six kids, they`d get about $215.00 a week through WFF.

Did you realise that, according to the IRD Calculator, this is more than a two child family on $38,000 is entitled to?

No. Didn't think you did.

A family with three kids on $30,000 gets approximately $11.00 a week more in WFF payments than the $100,000 family. That's all.

And the older your kids are, the more your family gets, apparently.

Michael Joseph Savage must be spinning in his grave, particularly as David Benson-Pope has implied that if you are entitled to the WFF payments, you can apply for it, if you don't feel like you are deserving of them, then you shouldn`t apply for it.

THat begs the questions: Why give people "entitlements" if they are not "deserving," only to tell the "non-deserving" not to bother applying for them if they feel they don't need them - but when a family with six kids applies and receives payments, they get more than another family on just over a third of their income purely because they have four more kids.

No wonder families who qualify for WFF can afford iPods, $4000 fridges and $700,000 homes in Epsom - and that's before next weeks increase.

Some people describe WFF as welfare, others as tax relief. If a one income family with six kids is getting a $30,000 annual salary, from next week they will be getting more through WFF than they do in salary.

Does that mean their income will be on a secondary tax rate? Who cares anyway - they won't be paying tax.