Shamubeel Eaqub

speaker

288 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 28 Jun

Shamubeel Eaqub’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Prosperity Project · Think means testing NZ Super is too hard? Shamubeel Eaqub says"bugger off" · 28 Jun 2026 podcast

One is around increasing the age and the other is to do means testing.

Increasing the age I feel uncomfortable about mainly because it would be very inequitable for those people who can't keep working physically.

And the reason why that's inequitable is because our welfare system treats anybody who's a beneficiary but not an old person very meanly.

The amount of money you get on, say, a disability benefit is very low.

So it would be essentially saying if you're poor,

you're going to be, you know, if you're of bad health, you're suddenly going to be very poor.

You don't deserve what somebody who's old deserves.

So that inequity is quite problematic.

But more pragmatically, the issue with the age is it doesn't actually solve much of the problem.

It's such a small amount because you're only delaying two years of payments, right?

It doesn't actually save you a lot of money.

What we want is means testing.

So to give you a contrast, in Australia, about 40% of people are...

independent in their retirement but 60 of people receive some form of government support that's what we mean by means testing we don't mean that 80 won't get it what we mean is about 40 of people won't get it so all of a sudden if you take for example our current bill which is 25 billion dollars if you take 40 off that suddenly our entire fiscal position becomes sustainable

And that's why means testing is the thing that we have to do.

And the reminder that I give people is people really hate hearing this.

New Zealand super is welfare.

It is welfare.

Oh, absolutely.

But, you know, when the same people go out and do the benefit bludgeoning, you know, all that kind of chat, I go, you are one.

Showing 81–100 of 288 · page 5 of 15