Well if the Foreshore and Seabed Hikoi achieved but one thing then it is the tightening of the rules around certain dole payments- specifically the $200 'emergency travel' benefit.
Wellington: The Government has moved to tighten emergency travel grant rules after May's foreshore and seabed hikoi highlighted problems with the regulations.
Thirteen of the 15,000 people who converged on Parliament on May 5 to protest the Foreshore and Seabed Bill had to claim emergency travel grants to get home after their travel plans fell through.
A spokesman for acting Social Development Minister Ruth Dyson yesterday said those people had not had to repay their grants but that the rules had been changed so that they would in future.
"People did need to prove that they were stranded, which in the regulations means that the previous travel arrangements that they had to return to their normal place of residence had fallen through and they were literally stranded in Wellington," the spokesman said.
"We did discover an inconsistency because if people get grants, for instance, to attend funerals or tangi, which we can also provide, they are recoverable, so people are required to pay them back."
Emergency travel grants had always been capped at $200 and now all would have to be paid back through regular deductions from an individual's benefit.
The grant also applied to a beneficiary's spouse and dependent children, with $200 able to be claimed for each person.
"We looked at it at the time of the hikoi. It was an obvious inconsistency," the spokesman said.
National MP Katherine Rich welcomed the change but doubted it would have happened without opposition pressure.
Many New Zealanders had believed it was unfair that some people had chosen to march to Wellington but said when they got there "hey, we haven't got enough money to get home", Mrs Rich said.
"The travellers who made a choice to come down to Wellington for the hikoi and then found themselves in a situation where they couldn't get home annoyed a lot of people, because one of the things you've got to do when you are on a benefit is be available for and searching for work," Mrs Rich said.
"In my view, you're not doing either of those things if you're on a hikoi."
The change was effective from July 1.