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Social Security Act 2018

Other provisions - Regulations

432: Regulations: factors affecting benefits: pre-benefit activities

You could also call this:

“Rules about things you need to do before getting money help”

The Governor-General can make rules about pre-benefit activities. These are things you might need to do before you can get a benefit.

The Minister must think these activities will help you in one of these ways:

  1. Make you more aware of job opportunities
  2. Make you want to get a job more
  3. Help you move into a job

The rules can say:

  • Who needs to do these activities
  • What kinds of activities you might need to do
  • That MSD (Ministry of Social Development) can tell you to do these activities if you ask for money
  • How MSD will tell you about these activities
  • What happens if you don’t do the activities without a good reason

If you don’t do the activities, you might not get the benefit you asked for, or you might get less money.

These rules are very important and are called “secondary legislation”.

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This page was last updated on

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6784003.

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431: Regulations: specific obligations: work-test obligations, and deferrals of, or exemptions from, specified obligations, or

“Rules about work requirements and when you don't have to do them”

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433: Regulations: factors affecting benefits: insurance recovery, or

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Part 8 Other provisions
Regulations

432Regulations: factors affecting benefits: pre-benefit activities

  1. The Governor-General may, by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister, make regulations for the purposes of sections 184 and 185.

  2. The Minister must not recommend the making of regulations made under subsection (1) stating pre-benefit activities unless, in the Minister’s opinion, each pre-benefit activity concerned is likely to—

  3. increase the awareness of the people undertaking it of opportunities for employment; or
    1. strengthen incentives for the people undertaking it to move into employment; or
      1. facilitate the movement of the people undertaking it into employment.

        1. Regulations made under subsection (1) may (without limitation) do all or any of the following:

        2. specify the applicants, and applicants’ spouses or partners who can, for applications for benefits specified, be required to do pre-benefit activities:
          1. state kinds of pre-benefit activities that may be required under section 184:
            1. provide for MSD to require a person who contacts MSD requesting financial assistance under this Act or that person’s spouse or partner (if any) to undertake 1 or more stated pre-benefit activities that comply with any requirements specified in the regulations:
              1. provide for the form, and revocation, of requirements to undertake stated pre-benefit activities:
                1. specify the consequences MSD may impose for non-compliance, without a good and sufficient reason, with a requirement to undertake stated pre-benefit activities.

                  1. The consequences referred to in subsection (3)(e) may be or include lapse of an application for the benefit concerned, or a specified reduction of not more than half of the rate of the benefit concerned or of any other specified benefit to which the applicant and the applicant's spouse or partner would, apart from the regulations, be entitled.

                  2. Subsection (4) overrides any contrary provision of this Act.

                  3. Regulations under this section are secondary legislation (see Part 3 of the Legislation Act 2019 for publication requirements).

                  Compare
                  Notes
                  • Section 432(6): inserted, on , by section 3 of the Secondary Legislation Act 2021 (2021 No 7).