KEY POINTS:
Beneficiaries say they have become "the forgotten people" after yet another Budget failed to give anything at all to people who are out of work without children.
Cerebral palsy sufferer Helen Capel, 57, who lives on an invalid's benefit of $230 a week plus a $12 disability allowance, said beneficiaries would be asking why they should keep voting Labour after seeing the invalid's benefit slide continuously from just over 50 per cent of the net average income in 1986 to about 35 per cent today.
"Most people on benefits and low incomes have always voted Labour," she said.
"We have been forgotten now for nine years and here we are again. And I can't see John Key giving us anything either, so we really don't have anywhere to go.
"To me that's a real indictment on the Government because it's just impossible to live on the benefit and still try to maintain a lifestyle, to participate in the community."
Ms Capel, who resigned last year as president of the Combined Beneficiaries Union after a staffing dispute, said beneficiaries faced the same price increases for food and petrol as everyone else, but were missing out on the tax cuts.
She said she had to use a car because she was not physically strong enough to climb on to buses, but she could no longer afford to use the car to visit people.
"I don't go out anywhere socially," she said.
"I don't go down the road to see my son or whatever, because I have to make sure I've got the gas to go there.
"You can't buy clothing and that, it's a no-no. You are making sure the lights are turned off because you don't want too high a power bill. So you are just aware of every bill that comes in."
Child Poverty Action Group economist Susan St John said the Budget made no effort to make it easier for beneficiaries to work by lifting the $80 a week limit on income they can earn before the benefit is reduced - a limit that had not changed for 22 years.
She said the tax cuts for people in the workforce had amplified the growing gap between the bulk of the population and those who could not do paid work because of disability or family responsibilities. "They are totally invisible. It's really amazing."
The Salvation Army's director of social services, Major Campbell Roberts, said the Budget was good for low-income working families, but not for beneficiaries.
"Yes, they are a relatively small group in terms of the total economy," he said. "But the reality is that there is a hard-end group of people who are really suffering and there really isn't anything that is going to substantially benefit them."
