Maharey Miles Off The Mark

Labour's claims about the numbers of students with unprocessed Work and Income New Zealand applications are wildly exaggerated.

The Hon Roger Sowry, Minister of Social Services, Work and Income said he'd been assured that as of last night there were no applications waiting to be processed.

As of Friday there were 4491 applications which had been registered with Work and Income New Zealand, but were "on hold" for a variety of reasons.

"The most common reason is that students had made errors filling in the forms - which have to be checked and corrected," he said.

"Work and Income New Zealand expect virtually all of these applications will have been dealt with by the end of this week."

"It's interesting Mr Maharey continues to make ill-informed comment on student emergency benefits, when he's already forced Labour into an embarrassing backdown on this issue.".