City councillor lashes out

4600 euros in social welfare: Hacker identifies “envy debates”

(Bild: krone.tv )

As usual, Vienna's Social and Health City Councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) doesn't mince his words in the krone.tv interview on the current topics of social welfare and the shortage of doctors. The starting point of the interview was the 4600 euros a month in social welfare that a Syrian refugee family of nine receives in Vienna, which has caused a stir.

Hacker sees it differently: "In Vienna, all children deserve to have the same opportunity. If you divide the total amount of social welfare by the number of family members, you get 500 euros per month per person. This amount is not hell, you probably won't be able to afford a roll in the Black Camel." (Note: this is a traditional restaurant in the 1st district with upmarket prices).

The Social Welfare Councillor rejects the idea of staggering the minimum income and reducing the payments for each additional child: "This idea is unconstitutional. The family allowance is not staggered either. Such proposals only fuel the envy debate, it's ridiculous." He sums up his own role in the social debate succinctly: "I am the bulwark for social security!"

Peter Hacker once again doesn't mince his words in an interview with krone.tv.

(Bild: krone.tv )

Hacker: Social security "not just a poster"
Hacker continues: "Vienna is a city where social security is taken seriously and not just put up posters. There are always suggestions from the ÖVP on how to do things better. Yet the ÖVP has no competence in how cities should be governed. People realize that too. Of the ten largest cities in Austria, only one has an ÖVP mayor. And that is the smallest of them."

It is also not right that social welfare is linked to the parents' employment. Hacker: "Every child deserves the same opportunity, even if the parents are not working. Every child is worth the same." Hacker does concede that it is possible to disagree and that the AMS is required to facilitate the rapid integration of employable people into the labor market. "But the AMS performance is not so great that I need to be given advice."

Nursing staff shortage stopped
In terms of Vienna's healthcare policy, he is pleased to have managed to stop the negative trend in the nursing staff shortage. Countless nursing training places are now being created: "We are building intensively and will more than double the number of training places."

In response to the recent admission by the Green Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) in the krone.tv studio that there is a two-tier system of medicine in Austria, the Vienna City Councillor for Health said: "Additional funding would have been needed for health insurance medicine too. But that didn't happen." The former ÖVP-FPÖ federal government also got its comeuppance from Councillor Hacker: "The social insurance reform at the time was a shot in the arm. The Court of Auditors calculated that it cost a billion euros."

Watch the entire interview in the video above!