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Social Security Act 2018

Enforcement: sanctions and offences - Sanctions for breach of obligations other than young person or young parent obligations - How number of failures is counted

242: Failures that cannot be counted

You could also call this:

"Failures that happened more than 2 years ago are not counted"

If you have a failure, it cannot be counted if it happened more than 24 months before the current failure. You need to know when a failure actually happened, which is the date the Ministry of Social Development decides you failed to do what you were supposed to do without a good reason. This rule does not change what happens after 24 months if you had failures before that were already calculated.

If a failure happened, it is counted from the date the Ministry of Social Development decided it happened. You can find more information about this by looking at s 119(1)(b)(ii), (2), (4). This helps you understand how failures are counted and what happens next.

When you have failures, they can affect what happens to you, but only if they happened within a certain time. The Ministry of Social Development decides if you have a good reason for not doing what you were supposed to do. If you want to know more about how this law was changed, you can look at the Social Security Amendment Act 2025.

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Part 5Enforcement: sanctions and offences
Sanctions for breach of obligations other than young person or young parent obligations: How number of failures is counted

242Failures that cannot be counted

  1. A failure cannot be counted if it occurred more than 24 months before the failure for which the calculation is made.

  2. For the purposes of subsection (1), a failure occurs on the date MSD decides that the beneficiary has failed, without a good and sufficient reason, to comply with the appropriate obligation.

  3. This section does not affect the implementation, after the 24-month period, of a sanction based on any prior calculation of the number of failures by a person to comply with the appropriate work-test obligation or other obligation imposed by this Act.

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Notes
  • Section 242(1): amended, on , by section 22(1) of the Social Security Amendment Act 2025 (2025 No 25).
  • Section 242(3): amended, on , by section 22(2) of the Social Security Amendment Act 2025 (2025 No 25).