Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this

I stand in response to some of the rather emotive debate that has gone on around this bill so far. First, I say that 28,000 people on the benefit will be better off because of this bill, pretty much immediately, and that is because of the abatement increase from $80 to $100 per week that they can earn. This is a very good day for those people in that they will be recognised for the work they do and they are able to get more of that money in their own pocket and see it as the opportunity that it is.

This is a bill that recognises fairness, that brings equity back into the system, and that steps up in support of those people who, quite frankly, deserve our support and need it most. The bill injects a whole lot around them and gives them the opportunity to take up the training opportunities they need, and it provides support around them so that they have the opportunity to look for work. I think it will put the right incentives in place and, with that, the right sorts of obligations.

There are exemptions in relation to those things, and I heard through the Social Services Committee that there were concerns about those people who perhaps had recently left a relationship and were going through some of the emotional trauma that that can cause. There is an exemption to enable those people to take time and to recognise what that means. There is an exemption in recognition of those who have perhaps come from a violent background and need time to bed in with their children. There are exemptions for those who have children with special needs who perhaps need their parents a bit more. So there are exemptions there for them.

There is also a clear understanding of what suitable work means. The bill recognises that childcare is needed for those children and that what is needed is the opportunity for people to have work that fits in with the hours that they need, that they are able to get to the jobs as they come up, and that they have the sort of lines they need so that they can get to them. It is very important that they have that.

I heard members opposite asking what the definition of suitable work is. Let me give it to them to clear that up. It is that there is an availability of childcare; that it is not employment with excessive hours; that their case managers recognise family commitments and religious commitments, which are important for some of those people; and that they are not jobs that offend strongly held views. There are regulations around that, as well. The days of the week, the type of employment, and the skills and experience required are all important justifications to make sure that that job suits the individual. I suppose that is what I wanted to say.

The thing I will also add here is that there are no penalties for not getting work. I will repeat that one more time because it is really important: there are no penalties, whatsoever, for not getting work. The only penalties there are for people who are not actually trying. So we are asking people to get themselves work-ready—to be going out and looking for work, and to be actively looking to support themselves and their own. Among those on the sickness benefit, 9,000 currently have a box ticked by their doctors that says they could work part-time; we are asking them to look for work. We believe that it will help them with their wellness.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) Link to this

It is very difficult to have to endure the one-liners that come out of the mouth of the Minister for Social Development and Employment, when we hear them over and over again with regard to the need for sole parents to step up. I think that we on this side of the Chamber see single mothers on a daily basis who are out there stepping up and doing everything that they need to be doing—and all that they can do—for their children. But, unfortunately, members on the Government side of the Chamber, and the Minister for Social Development and Employment, would rather drag those sole parents through the mud and further stigmatise them, as well as put out a signal to society that those people are somehow ripping off the system. We on this side of the Chamber would not say all the people out there who have at any point in time accessed welfare have been above board. There have been a few occasions when they have not been. But we cannot assume that these women, who are barely able to survive on the amount of money that they receive from welfare, are in some way ripping off the system. Instead, we would hope that as a Parliament we would be supportive of them.

We listened to the Minister for Social Development and Employment talk about a few things, including the exemptions that can be applied in different circumstances to women who are accessing the domestic purposes benefit. I will talk about a couple of those exemptions, because some concerns were raised during the deliberation on this legislation in the Social Services Committee. We discussed them there, and I think it is important that we discuss them in this Committee. One of the exemptions is in respect of study. The concern that we on this side of the Chamber have is that the exemption is only for level 4 study and higher levels. Many of the people who access the domestic purposes benefit did not necessarily achieve secondary school qualifications, so to assume that they can go either straight out into the workforce or straight into level 4 study is a little negligent. Rather, we need to ensure that if they decide to study, they can have a pathway through the necessary stages rather than just being thrown into the deep end, at level 4. That is one of the concerns that have arisen.

It is strange to look back on the training incentive allowance and at the changes made there—the very heavy-handed cuts made there—because in the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill the exemption is only for study at levels 4 or above, but the training incentive allowance these days can be accessed only by those studying at levels 1, 2, or 3. It is absolutely pointless to have the training incentive allowance, at all. It makes no sense for it even to be in place, because I do not understand who will actually be eligible to access it, given what this bill proposes with regard to the study exemption.

The other exemption that has been given to us—which we have been advised on by the officials, and which we have discussed in detail—is around the circumstances of women who are exiting violent relationships. When we discussed that, we talked about whether case managers would necessarily be equipped to deal with the individual circumstances of these women—I will say women because they predominately are women—when they come into their offices. I asked a couple of women’s groups, when they came to the select committee, about how many women would actually walk in to see a case manager whom they did not know—and we should keep in mind that the whole case management load has changed as well, so they will not necessary have the same case manager as before—and feel comfortable enough to tell the case manager that they have come in to get the domestic purposes benefit because they are exiting a violent relationship. The case manager will not necessarily ask them that, and we can understand why he or she would not. But we also have to understand that many of those women would not feel comfortable, necessarily, about divulging that information straight away, nor would they even know that it will be a criterion for an exemption from work testing in the first place. It is not as though there is a sign up that instructs them about the exemptions.

So there are serious flaws in this bill, including those in the exemptions—the exemptions that the Minister for Social Development and Employment was talking about earlier. These things need to be looked at further, but unfortunately we have come out of a select committee process in which they were not paid enough attention at all, so we will have exemptions that will not achieve what they are meant to achieve.

I have talked about study and I have talked about violence, but the No. 1 concern that arose from this bill was about the fact that it discriminates based on gender, marital status, and family status. It is not we on this side of the Chamber who are making that claim; the Attorney-General came out from the get-go and wrote a report that said that in respect of this legislation. It is a sad, sad day when we allow through legislation that discriminates on the basis of those three things, as if there is nothing wrong with it. As my colleague from the Green Party Metiria Turei said earlier, she has come from a background where she accessed the domestic purposes benefit as a single mother. So has the Minister for Social Development and Employment; so have I. All of us know that a lot of challenges come with attempting to raise children by ourselves when we are single parents. To boot single parents while they are down, by allowing legislation to go through that discriminates against them and stigmatises them further in society, is completely unjust. We wonder what kind of Parliament we are part of when legislation like this is allowed to go through.

In the last few days two single parents from west Auckland have come through my office. One of them, in fact, had an article written about her in the New Zealand Herald this morning. The woman is studying at an Auckland tertiary institution; she is trying to raise her 12-year-old daughter by herself. The article discussed the fact that the woman has gone down from size 10 to size 6 because she has to sacrifice eating in order the pay the bills and raise her daughter. Hekia Parata is laughing about that, but I met that woman and this is a true story. I have seen her for myself and heard her story first-hand. Perhaps Hekia Parata should read that article in the New Zealand Herald, because it is sad—

DAVID GARRETT (ACT) Link to this

I will try to make a speech that agrees at least in part with all sides of the debate, which is no easy thing; I will see how long it takes before the shouting starts.

Firstly, it is certainly a myth that vast hordes of solo mothers—as the old term used to be; I do not really like the word “beneficiaries”—are out there rorting the system and having a wonderful old time. That is a myth. It is certainly a myth that the lifestyle enjoyed by beneficiaries on the domestic purposes benefit—or, indeed, on any other benefit—is luxurious. That is a myth. Equally, it is a myth that no one chooses—or, as Ms Sepuloni conceded, only a few choose—that lifestyle.

As the two previous speakers have used anecdotes in their speeches, I will use one in mine. In the last 3 weeks or so, I ran across an acquaintance whom I had not seen for more than 10 years. I wrote about this in a column that I write elsewhere. The woman was heavily pregnant and I remarked upon that, and we went off and had a coffee. I ascertained that this was a planned and welcomed pregnancy that had cost money because it was an in vitro job.

When I casually asked what the plans were for raising the child, my acquaintance, who is not an unintelligent woman and not a young woman, said that of course she would be applying for the domestic purposes benefit. I asked what she meant by “of course”. I asked whether she understood that that money comes from the rest of the taxpayers, and I quoted the late, great journalist Frank Haden. He said on many occasions that the “Gummint”, as he called it, has no money; the “Gummint” uses ours. My acquaintance purported not to understand what I meant. She said that it was her right to raise children on the domestic purposes benefit, paid for by the Government. I tried again and explained that the Government has no money; it uses mine, it uses Ms King’s, and it uses every other worker’s money. At that, unfortunately, the coffee turned rather frosty. In response to that column, I have received several emails from people whom I do not know who have cited similar cases, so to say that those kinds of cases are almost unknown or extremely rare is sadly not true.

The other thing, as I said at the beginning of my speech, is that it is not a luxurious lifestyle, but that is part of the problem. We have created a society where it is seen as acceptable and perhaps not too bad to be on the domestic purposes benefit. The result is impoverished children, impoverished mothers, and great difficulty with regard to the societal problems that have been addressed by members on the other side of the Chamber.

I agree with the Labour Party that the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill is almost laughable with regard to the loopholes that it has created. The Labour members would not call them loopholes, but whatever those members call them, those exemptions can be claimed so as to avoid the consequences of the bill. We need to create a society that reaffirms the old cliché that welfare is a hand up and not a handout. It is not to be considered a lifestyle option. It is not a good idea to plan for it.

One of the correspondents I have heard from over the past few days said that she was astounded that at the careers evening at her daughter’s school—an upper decile school—it was considered an acceptable career option to be a solo mother. That is appalling. It is appalling on a whole pile of levels. It is appalling for the taxpayer, but mostly it is appalling for the child. Imagine saying—

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairperson. Kia ora tātou katoa. I am really glad to take a call on the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. Last week in Whanganui I launched a leaflet in support of the rights of beneficiaries. I launched it with the Whanganui People’s Centre and the Whanganui Disability Resources Centre. The people there were very glad that, for once, somebody was getting up and saying something positive about their human rights and about the fact that they pay taxes, the fact that they contribute in their local economies, and the fact that many of them are doing a great job as volunteers, caring for elderly family members and children. They are very tired of being told that there is something very wrong with doing that. We never talk in this House about wealth dependency, which is another issue, but we talk a lot about what is wrong with the poor.

But I will be quite specific and talk about the bill today, because that is what we are here to do. I agree with David Garrett, the previous speaker, that the real debate is not being had. I would not agree with his conclusions or with his rhetoric, perhaps, but the real debate is whether we can get outside blame and look at the causes of poverty in a realistic way. If an economist like Gareth Morgan can talk about the need for a universal basic income as a possible idea, I ask whether we can talk about something like that and whether that would be the best way to deliver it, instead of insisting on finding out who is to blame for the fact that the welfare system costs me, as a taxpayer, money. I am happy to pay, because I want to live in a decent society, a civilised society, where the vulnerable and the people who are looking after kids are worth something. I ask why we do not put the benefit up if we think that people are too poor, instead of starting to attack beneficiaries.

After 4 years in Tai Rāwhiti dealing with Work and Income, I am afraid I must say that the Minister for Social Development and Employment’s description of what Work and Income might do with this bill is a fantasy. The reality is that on the ground we have overworked staff and many, many people coming through the door who suffer from beneficiary abuse—and that is not always the fault of the staff. We have to change the culture in our society if we want Work and Income to deliver fairness and justice.

But let us get on to the specifics of the bill. Sickness beneficiaries, in particular, are under the gun. In clause 31 the bill provides for reduction of a work-tested benefit by 50 percent if a beneficiary fails to comply with a work test. The Minister said that of course that will be the case if someone is not seen to be looking for work. How on earth will that be defined by a case manager? If people say they are looking for work, will the case manager disbelieve them? If there is no work to be found, as in places like the East Coast, what will they do? How will they decide whether a person is the deserving poor or the undeserving poor? We already have a punishing culture towards beneficiaries; anyone who has worked in the field knows that.

Other provisions of the bill will apply to sickness beneficiaries who are assessed as able to undertake part-time work. If those people fail to meet Work and Income’s requirements, they will be in trouble. If we take 50 percent away from sickness beneficiaries who are already struggling, especially when GST is about to go up, what are they left with? A young man came into our office when I was an advocate and asked whether we could help him get some kind of benefit, otherwise he would go out to do a burglary. That was how desperate he was. We can romanticise the Work and Income experience and say the staff are there to facilitate people getting appropriate work, but, I am sorry, that is not what happens on the ground. Now that we have 60 percent of the total unemployment figure coming from Māori unemployed on the East Coast, we know that that is not what happens to people.

We also know that doctors are being encouraged to see sickness beneficiaries as work-ready, and if they make one statement that they could do a few hours a day, do members know where those people can end up? I do, because I worked in this field before this bill was introduced. We end up with people who have epilepsy working in the fields picking capsicums, and having epileptic fits; and people who have morbid obesity being told they can stand all day on a cool-store floor. That is what part-time work-readiness means on the East Coast in Work and Income.

Let us be honest: if we cut the income of people who are sick, we will not make them better. If we do not find the right work, and do not invest in disability—as we do not—we will not be able to create the right environment for those people. Those people do want to work, because who wants to be called a lazy, bludger, loser, bottom of the heap beneficiary? No one does, because it has no status, even though some of us try to give respect to those people, and even though some of us work to gain that respect for those people. They would like to work, but not at the expense of their families and their health.

As we have seen with accident compensation, medical opinions about a person’s capacity for work can vary. They can vary from practitioner to practitioner, from day to day, and from week to week, meaning that people with chronic illnesses have good days and bad days, just as politicians do. We may wonder how many good days we have in this place, when we start talking about punishing the poor further. A designated doctor sees only a snapshot of a person’s health on the day of the consultation, and is more likely to get it wrong. That is the designated doctor, who has a bias towards saying it is great for people’s health to go out to work. That is not true if people are sick.

Suppose the designated doctor gets it wrong, because even a person’s regular general practitioner, especially when under pressure of suggestion from Work and Income’s regional health adviser as to the individual beneficiary’s capacity for work, can get it wrong. Who will pay for that? Everybody, in the end, will pay if we send unfit people into a workplace where there are no jobs, or if we say they are not working hard enough, and cut their benefit by 50 percent. If the medical assessor gets it wrong, the beneficiary is subject to the work test and will fail it, not because of any fault of his or her own, but because the assessment was wrong in the first place.

I say, “Track it back.” It is all very well for the Minister to say that the beneficiary has the right of appeal to a medical appeal board over the decision to work test, and a right of review to the subsequent decision, but the medical appeal board and benefits review committee hearings take a long time to organise. Frequently they do not happen within a month of the appeal. The beneficiary may also need to obtain a second opinion from a specialist to support his or her contention of being unfit to work. Sometimes it might take a month to see a specialist, so in the meantime, what are people living on? And what is happening to their state of confidence about their ability to pay their bills, not to mention to care for their children?

The appeals process is good for people who know how to appeal. Sometimes the most vulnerable beneficiaries are not literate, so what is their capacity to appeal? I know there are not advocates all over this country, because there are only a few of those people who can advocate for beneficiaries. Will an illiterate person fill out an appeal form and then wait to see a specialist? Hello! That is what will happen. In the meantime, under clause 31 of the bill, the person’s benefit will have been reduced to zero not because he or she did not comply with the work test but because the work test was wrongly imposed in the first place.

I ask the Minister what she will do to prevent that from happening. Will there be directions that sanctions are not to be imposed on sickness beneficiaries who are contesting the imposition of a work test? That would be really interesting to know, because otherwise we are penalising those people before they have had a chance to establish whether, in fact, they are ready for work. Or are we content to sit back and see beneficiaries lose their homes, sell off their possessions, or be forced into crime and prostitution? That is what clause 31 will do to sickness beneficiaries who are wrongly subjected to a work test.

We have to go into the minutiae here to look at what happens on the front line every day. We have to walk into Work and Income. Outside the Ruatōria office of Work and Income my organisation saw 50 people who were too scared to walk through the door, and that was before this bill was introduced. Those people were intimidated because of the risk that if they said the wrong thing, if they had not brought the right paperwork, or if they were not sufficiently literate, they could lose a benefit they needed to survive, because there were not thousands of jobs at Ruatōria.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) Link to this

It is interesting to note just how broken this place can be, if we look at it from the other side of the Chamber. All we hear in the debate on the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill from members opposite is that anyone who does not have a job needs to be completely mollycoddled, and should never be encouraged to stand on his or her own two feet. Members opposite say that to ask people to do anything at all to assist in their own situation is being harsh and mean, and that it is the only province of the political right.

Let us look, for instance, at the speeches from previous speakers, who have made the point that we on this side of the Chamber are apparently stigmatising those who are out of work. Let us have a little look at stigmatisation. We know that members on the other side of the Chamber need people to be poor and pissed off so that they will continue to vote Labour. Members opposite cannot afford to let poor people have aspirations to do better for themselves and their families, because they are afraid that when they do, those people will realise that the pattern of electoral history is to keep returning the party opposite to power. It was in Government for 9 long years and never increased the abatement rate at all. The previous Labour Government did nothing to encourage those people to go out and do what little they could in the time they had available to increase their household incomes—even just a little bit.

The other thing members opposite are really good at when it comes to stigmatisation is saying that anyone who works for the Ministry of Social Development is evil, does not care, does not listen, will not speak, and will never do anything for people they come across. Well, I go into my Ministry of Social Development offices on regular occasions, and my office staff and I speak and advocate for those people who need assistance. I find people who are willing to help, who care about their clients, and who work hard to encourage those clients to enhance their own situation. But not according to that side of the Chamber. Members opposite want to relegate those clients into believing that there is nothing they could or should do to enhance their situation.

We know that one thing that encourages a person’s self-esteem and the aspirations of those around them is a job. What do we hear from the other side of the Chamber? There are no jobs. It suits Labour to say there are no jobs, so people should not bother looking for a job. They should not present for an interview! If we listen to the previous speaker, Catherine Delahunty, we hear that apparently job seekers have no clothes to wear to a job interview, because life on the benefit is absolutely so poor and so terrible. Well, I do not aspire to be on a benefit. My children have aspired to be on a benefit at times, and they have done their darnedest not to go there.

The point is that those people care. They want to get out and get a job, and they find the wherewithal to do it. We should do everything we can to encourage them. Members opposite know that nothing in this legislation penalises somebody who tries to get a job and cannot get one. Absolutely nothing prevents that person from presenting for a job and getting it.

Members on the other side of the Chamber, we find, as much as they talk about work and jobs, undervalue the aspiration and the enhancement brought to people’s lifestyles by working. They do that constantly. The message that members opposite give out time and time again is that there is no work. Well, there is work. In some places it is difficult to find, but it is there. We have a history in this country of people needing work travelling to find it. They may need to move addresses, but members opposite say they could never do that. It would be the most terrible thing that anyone could ever do! Yet in all our family trees we see people who at one time or another have changed their situation so that they can find work. They have retrained, travelled, moved house, or done something to get work, and they have benefited from it.

It is very, very difficult to find current statistics, but we know that not too long ago the average income of a sole person household was $16,900. Anything we can do to encourage people in need of work to find work, to encourage young people who live within their care and in those communities, and to see those people better themselves is a very good thing. We have aspirations for those people; we want to see them do well. We will give them an incentive to do that; that side of the Chamber had 9 long years and did not give them one. This legislation is an enhancement of National’s policy and indictment on Labour’s.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) Link to this

It is funny—we are all trying to do the same thing, but we have different approaches. When I hear about this Government’s approach, I simply say that today is a sad day for the Government. The Minister in the chair, the Minister for Social Development and Employment, wants to be known, when she leaves this place, for what she has done to make New Zealand a better place. If this is the bill that will brand the Minister, I think she needs to hang her head in shame.

Chester Borrows talked about statistics, but I say to him that the statistics are starkly evident and worsening while this sort of trivial legislation comes before the Committee. I must say that I feel sorry for the policy advisers, all the workers in the ministry, and all the case managers out there who were working to change the culture of the ministry over the last 9 years and who will now have to enforce this punitive, unfair, and unjust legislation.

I will read out the statistics for Mr Borrows. Unemployment has risen to nearly 160,000 people. They are out of work. They do not want to be out of work. On the other hand, the Government has absolutely no plan and no milestones to find jobs and stimulate the economy. The Minister for Economic Development, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, said today in the House that he had no milestones other than an aspiration to close the gap with Australia by 2025. He said today that that is the only milestone. When the economy expands—it is quite simple, I say to the Minister—more jobs are available and benefit numbers fall. We saw it over the 9 years that Labour was in Government. I think it is stark that that is the issue that the National Government is focusing on.

I will tell the Committee what we heard from the Minister of Education today. She stood up and crowed about trades academies. There is no trades academy in Rotorua. Youth and Māori unemployment in Rotorua is an embarrassment, and the people who are trying to get work simply will not get work. They will not get training. They will not get skills. But the Government is smearing around a little bit of good news. The Minister said there were 12 trades academies, but that is not good enough. That focus on education should have been on taking the cap off tertiary placements and putting back the adult and community education that this Government cut—those are the things that this Government is showing it is not interested in.

I will mention another thing, because the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Pansy Wong, is in the Chamber today. I had one fabulous year as the Minister of Women’s Affairs, and I said that the health of a mother is paramount in terms of the health of her children. I tell the Minister of Women’s Affairs that we worked with the Ministry of Social Development, and the Ministry of Health, and we developed a youth pregnancy and parenting plan. What has Pansy Wong done in the 18 months since she became the Minister of Women’s Affairs to implement the targets in the youth pregnancy and parenting plan? That plan was about wrapping services around young people, instead of stigmatising them like the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill does.

Also, the Minister of Health has cut funding to youth health centres, where young people go to get advice about avoiding the risk of pregnancy. If that funding is cut around the country, where can those young people go?

The Government continues to keep its head in the sand, saying that young people want to get pregnant in order to get a benefit. Well, that is rubbish. I say to the Minister that I set up the Rotorua School for Young Parents—and the Minister now takes all the credit for the work that has been done for young parents. That school was about young women who got trapped by pregnancy, who saw that education was their only way out of that conundrum, and who found themselves alone, without the support of family and friends, and often without the support of the child’s father.

I tell the Minister that this bill does absolutely nothing for those mothers who are trying to better themselves through education, trying to get a break, trying to get a foot into work, and to step up, as that Minister says. This legislation stomps on beneficiaries, stigmatises them further, and implements nothing practical other than the increasing of the abatement.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) Link to this

It was amazing to hear the comments made by Chester Borrows a few minutes ago. He characterised the Labour Party as being interested in keeping all people “poor and pissed off”. It was a pathetic statement from that member. He ought to know full well that the work that has been done by this party over a long period of time has produced many of the leaders of New Zealand today, and captains of industry who have done exceptionally well. They have no interest in doing what he says we are interested in; they still support the very principles that this party stands for.

He is, however, right in the sense that people want to work, and want to work hard. I wonder why Mr Borrows and members opposite lose sight of that fact. A very, very short time ago—and many members will remember it very well—New Zealand had the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD. How did that happen? It happened because the climate was created for people to have jobs, and people worked. In fact, the unemployment numbers were so low that I do not think Work and Income could have done much better. It is still proven today that New Zealanders want to work. They want to get out there, get a job, and do well. In fact, the figures that Mr Phil Goff quoted this morning—about 2,700 people applying for 150 jobs—demonstrate that point.

What has changed is that the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill requires people who are on the unemployment benefit to reapply for it every year. Why is that necessary? Is it not simply to be absolutely punitive and to demonstrate the Government’s right-wing ideology that punishes those who somehow, for a short period, are supported by the State? Work and Income has all of the tools already, and it works exceptionally well in triaging people who are on the unemployment benefit by giving them plans to develop themselves, by putting them into training programmes, and by making sure they have all of the requirements to get into a job and to keep it. That is the approach to take, rather than the punitive one that this bill takes.

It is an observation that there is an amazing lack of appreciation of the life that many beneficiaries lead in New Zealand. This is despite the fact that the Minister in the chair herself, the Hon Paula Bennett, has been in that position in her early life. Oh, how quickly they forget. When the Minister was in that position—I knew her then, and I knew exactly the advantages that were available to her—she availed herself of all of those advantages, and so she should. I believe Labour promoted those policies. The Minister had every right to get a tertiary education, to have support to bring up her child, and to move to where she is at today. Why, then, do members such as the Minister—and others who have passed through this Chamber—adopt a conservative, punitive approach towards this group of mainly women, and towards their children, by putting them under the grill?

Nothing in this bill can be said to be developmental for the life of a solo mother who is bringing up a child; there is nothing in it. Yet, for some reason, people of a conservative ilk—and the Minister is one—forget the advantages they took from the State, and refuse to allow others to have them. It is all very clever. They disguise it in the frame that this will be good for beneficiaries, and it will help them to improve themselves.

Who supports this bill? The Minister ought to reflect on this also. Certainly, Government members of the Social Services Committee did not reflect on it. I would like those members to take a call and tell us who they recall supported the major aspects of the bill. They were not there.

The bill is branded as an exercise in fairness and as having an unrelenting focus on work. What is fair about this bill? It needs to be explained. Certainly the report from the Government’s own Attorney-General says that it is unfair. In terms of this unrelenting focus on work, the Government ought to realise something. We go through a life cycle, and at different points of the life cycle we have different needs and different experiences. We draw assistance differently and we contribute differently—that is how it is. From birth to death, we go through those phases.

It was amazing to see the people who did not support the bill. Maybe the Minister ought to take advice from the person who taught her social policy. Professor Michael O’Brien said that this bill has no redeeming features and ought to be withdrawn. That is excellent advice from the Minister’s own professor. If there is to be an unrelenting focus on work, then with the growth in unemployment, why is there no unrelenting focus on the creation of employment? If the Minister were serious about that, it would produce the same results that the last Government produced and reduce unemployment to negligible levels. People who can work would be able to. But that is not what this Government is interested in.

In the absence of all of that, in many of the policies that this Government is following, there is an underlying philosophy of being punitive, of picking off one sector of our society and advantaging another. That is amazing. Eventually it destroys the very thing this society tries to create. Why cannot we all let down the ladder that we climbed up, rather than when we get up to the top pulling it away from those who are trying to climb up the same ladder? That would be a generous gift. I know of women colleagues in the Labour Party and in the Green Party who have had this experience, and they talk passionately about it and about the many cases they know about. They do not forget that. They have done well. They are here, as members of Parliament, but they remember the struggle. They have made a promise to themselves that they will do everything in this Chamber to ensure that others have the same advantages.

The bill also demonstrates an amazing disregard for the life of a solo parent who is trying to bring up a child. I am a man, and I have only observed others doing this. I have worked with many in my professional life, and I have taught many as well. When one has worked with people who are in that particular situation, one goes home and simply marvels at how some of those women, particularly solo mothers, can manage two or three children, do a whole bunch of volunteer work, keep the family connections growing, and still do well on the smell of an oily rag. Members then come into this Chamber and are confronted with the policy that this bill reflects, which is simply saying that beneficiaries ought to do better. They have to get back into work, and the Government will command that that be so. It demonstrates an amazing disregard for what those women do.

I have a 13-month-old granddaughter. I see the efforts my daughter makes to bring up her child, and she has a husband and us as grandparents. Imagine what it is like for parents who are on their own and trying to do this. This bill says that after a parent’s youngest child goes to school, at age 6, that parent will be free to work from the time his or her child starts school until he or she returns home. This assumes that parents have nothing else to do to prepare for the life of one, two, or three children, and to do the amazing amount of voluntary work that these women in particular undertake. Labour has proposed an amendment to define voluntary work as work, so that when women are doing voluntary work they will not be caught by the provisions of this bill. Many submitters submitted on that particular point, and we will raise it again. Thank you.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) Link to this

I am sure it will not come as a surprise to the Committee that I stand, along with my colleagues, to oppose the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. I acknowledge all the earlier speakers, certainly those from this side of the Chamber, for the great contributions that they have made. I urge the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paula Bennett, to listen to what has been said, because common sense has to prevail on this issue. The one position that the Minister heralds as a wonderful, wonderful thing is the benefit abatement provision in terms of income thresholds, but we know that the increase in GST will wipe that out, for a start. Once again, people on benefits will be behind the eight ball.

The main objective of these changes astounds me, because the Government states that the main objective is to ensure a fairer system of social assistance with an “unrelenting focus on work”. Well, that has to be one of the funniest things that I have heard in this Chamber, apart from hearing Nick Smith answering questions about accident compensation in question time. It would be up there, would it not?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this

I will respond and put some of the facts on the table. Currently around 6,000 jobs are registered with Work and Income and around 1,200 come in every week. Last month alone we saw more than 4,000 people come off the unemployment benefit for the reason of finding work—more than 4,000 people just last month. We are triaging away. Of those who come into Work and Income to go on to a benefit, up to 40 percent currently are going away; they do not need a benefit, because they have found work.

I will put some perspective around sole parents and their capacity to work. Thirty-five percent of sole parents work full-time, 52 percent are employed, and 10,000 people who are currently on the domestic purposes benefit earn more than $80 a week. I will give those numbers again, because they give a little bit of perspective on where we are at and what we are dealing with.

To put some context around those numbers, I do not underestimate the size of what we are trying to do. I do not underestimate how people’s confidence can be low, how hard it is to go out and ask for someone to give them a job. I do not underestimate the courage it takes to get out there and put oneself forward when one has perhaps been unemployed for quite some time. That does not mean that I believe those people cannot do it. That does not mean that I will not believe in their capacity to have a better life than what such limited income and opportunities there are on the benefit provide. I believe in the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill, which we have put forward. I think it gives a level of fairness, the right sorts of obligations, and the right sorts of incentives.

I will put this issue in perspective with regard to the calls that I often get and what I have been hearing so far today. Thirty-five percent of sole parents are working full-time, 52 percent are currently employed, and 10,000 people on the domestic purposes benefit earn over $80 per week. What we are doing is—[Interruption] That member knows what this bill is doing. I know that the Committee recognises that the bill is raising those abatement thresholds. It is giving beneficiaries an opportunity to earn more and keep it in their pockets. I know that the Committee recognises that we are legislating for CPI increases—something that has never been done before. It locks that in and makes sure that people are recognised.

I also acknowledge out-of-school care and recreation. We are looking at after-school care. We recognise that we can put a bit more money in there, we can get rid of some of the bureaucracy, and we can make sure that they are getting that level of support. We are also addressing a whole lot of the issues of the independent youth benefit. I felt strongly about the independent youth benefit. I felt that there was an obligation on those who are aged below 18 to be in education or training, first of all—for some it may be a job. Education and training will now be compulsory for those under the age of 18 who receive State help. Whereas it has been optional before, we are moving towards making it compulsory. Those are parts of the bill that I think are fair and are moving in the right direction.

I also bring to the Committee’s attention some of the financial benefits that the changes to this bill can make, which are very real. For example, let us look at the financial benefit from work, as of 1 October when this is introduced, for a sole parent with two children over 6 perhaps living in South Auckland and earning the minimum wage. If that person was on a benefit and not working, they may get around $278 a week on the domestic purposes benefit, a family tax credit of around $149, an accommodation supplement of $165, temporary additional support of $14.73, and temporary GST assistance of $5.62. That is a total of $612.60. On a benefit working 15 hours a week on the minimum wage—I am not trying to dress it up to make it look any better than it is—they would still get the domestic purposes benefit of about $250 a week, and their wage or salary would be about $153. The others stay as they are, except that they lose the $14.73 temporary assistance. They are getting a total of $724 a week. We are talking about them being $110 a week better off. They also continue to have access to an accommodation supplement, which is included in that $110 figure. They will also get access to childcare assistance. There is often that discrepancy for people who may not understand that they can still keep assistance from Work and Income if they work; it is not just one or the other.

As I have already stated, we have more work coming into Work and Income on a weekly basis now than we had at this time last year. We now have 86 industry partnerships working directly with industry and with employers who want to help us employ people and get the right training involved. Seventeen have stepped up and said that they want to work exclusively with sole parents. They want to recognise them as a workforce of the future, they think that they have something to give and are of value, and they want to work alongside them.

We also recognise Job Ops and what it has brought. Around 7,200 people have taken up job opportunities with employers. Of them, at the moment anywhere between 75 and 80 percent come off, and do not go back on to, a benefit. That has made a significant difference. In the Budget we introduced another 6,000 places. A financial budget of about $24.7 million went into that initiative. As the Committee will be aware, we also recently reintroduced the Community Max programme. There are 1,500 places going into rural communities. We have just reintroduced another 1,500 places on that, which we know are making a difference. A whole lot of other programmes are also going along. Some of the members may have seen changes to the Training Opportunities Programme, which we recently introduced. We are moving some of those opportunities into more employment-focused training programmes.

We believe that we can work with those providers in a different way directly related to employers. We can get quite local in terms of what work is coming up and where it is likely to be, and get better at focusing and getting future work going. We can make sure that work is available for those who receive benefits and we can help them move towards it.

Once it is balanced, once people look at this bill for what it is actually giving and recognise exactly the volume of work that is coming in, but also recognise that these are not the easiest of times, I believe they will see that things will get better. There will be more opportunities for people. This bill will be part of that future focus and recognising the opportunities for those people.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) Link to this

I find it particularly telling that at no point in Minister Bennett’s contribution did she address any of the areas of this bill, the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill, where we have expressed our opposition. At no point did she talk about any of the additional testing that has been put in place. She simply addressed issues around the abatement, which we have said we do not contest; we are in absolute agreement. The fact that the Minister has chosen not to talk about those more controversial aspects of this bill is, I think, particularly telling—it does indeed say it all.

Before I go on to the substantive points of my initial address to the Chamber, I want to reflect on some statements that were made previously by Chester Borrows, a member of this House whom I frequently work with and whom I have a great deal of respect for. But I have to say that I do not believe for a second that Mr Borrows believed anything he said during his contribution. I do not think I need to remind the Chamber as to who brought down benefit numbers to the lowest level in decades. It was Labour. It was Labour that brought down benefit numbers in its last term of Government. I refuse to be lectured by the Government about aspiration in that context, because it was the previous Labour Government that brought down benefit numbers.

The Government can talk and chant about the pure rhetoric of aspiration. It may talk about aspiration; we were the ones who made it happen. It is the numbers that matter, and I have seen nothing on that side of the House to demonstrate that the rhetoric has been translated into anything tangible except words.

National constantly claims that it believes in the so-called aspiration of equal opportunity. Where is the equal opportunity in being one of 2,700 applicants for one job at Countdown? Where is the equal opportunity in that? There is no aspiration in this bill, there is no dignity in this bill, and there is no opportunity in this bill. If the Minister would like to refute that when it comes to the work-testing elements of this bill and when it comes to what we are doing to sickness beneficiaries, I would be interested in hearing from her, because we not disputing abatement rates on this side of the Chamber.

I have to say that, if nothing else, I do see some consistency in some of the policies that we see being put forward by the National Government. There are similar approaches in this bill to what we have seen in terms of national standards in our primary schools. We are spending significant amounts of money measuring an issue, categorising failure, and not doing much more. We are doing nothing to fix the heart of the problem, and, in doing so, we are compounding the issue. I welcome members on that side of the Chamber to contest that point, if they choose to.

I agree with the Minister that context matters, and that is why it is important that we do not just throw out numbers about how many jobs are being put on the books at Work and Income. We also need to talk about how many people are going on to the books at Work and Income. Context matters in this situation, particularly given that we are in a recession. I refuse to believe that the hardest times have hit us already. We are seeing it truly bite at this particular period, which is why context matters.

My interest is that if this bill really is about getting folks off the benefit, surely our test should be about the impact it would have on the groups that are currently without work and are seeking work. There are other elements to the argument, including, in particular, those on the invalids benefit and those on the sickness benefit, and I look forward to coming back to those. But in terms of those who wish to work but are out of work, what impact will this bill have? That should be our true test. If we are going to talk about that group of people, let us be honest and acknowledge that we are talking about Māori, Pasifika, women, and young people. They are the groups that have been impacted the most by this recession and they are manifesting most heavily in our unemployment figures at the moment. Those are the groups that we should be discussing.

In my view, this bill does absolutely nothing to change the situation that those groups find themselves in. That leads to questions as to the real motive for this bill—but I believe that other members on my side of the Chamber have discussed the fact that it was a manifesto statement and was not backed up by evidence or research, and we can go into more detail on that. But, clearly, it is not about jobs and has not been about jobs.

If we look at young people in particular, we see that they have experienced a rapid increase in unemployment. Although we see a rate of unemployment of about 6.8 percent across the board—in Auckland it is 8.7 percent—for young people specifically it is 13.7 percent. Although we have seen some fluctuation in the younger end of that spectrum, for the 20 to 24-year-olds it has gone up 2.6 percent since the last March quarter measurement. That is a total of 68,200 people. The Minister talks numbers, so I tell her that 68,200 is the number of unemployed young people that we are talking about at the moment.

All the initiatives the Government has put forward may have been noble attempts, but they are a flash in the pan when we look at those numbers. There are 60,000 young people who are not in employment, education, or training. The Government may add compulsion to its independent youth benefit—compulsion to be in training, work, and education—but that concerns about 1,500 young people. There are 60,000 in total and most of them are not receiving any form of Government support to get into work, training, or education.

We know the impact on young people of lingering on benefits for long periods of time. The 1990s showed us what happens when a young person stays on a benefit for 12 months or more. Really, that is the first point at which this bill will bite for that young person. According to this bill, which is meant to be assisting people into work, the first thing that will happen for young people who have been on the unemployment benefit for 12 months is that they will get an extra work assessment. That is not good enough in my book. Firstly, it is far too late to give genuine assistance, because if that young person is on an unemployment benefit, we would naturally assume that that young person is lacking the skills needed in our now progressively higher-skilled workplace. We are losing our unskilled jobs in New Zealand, and if young people lack the skills and the work experience, simply adding another work assessment after 12 months of floundering without anything will do very, very little.

Over a year ago now, when the Government undertook its Job Summit, members on this side of the House decided to look specifically at youth unemployment. One of the initiatives that we handed to the Government to assess was something that the UK is doing. Any young person who is out of work for 12 months or more is guaranteed, if he or she signs up to work alongside the equivalent of Work and Income, a placement in education, training, or work. The Government may claim that that is its Youth Guarantee, but it is far from it. There are 2,000 places, according to the Government, and 60,000 who are seeking work, and those 2,000 placements are often unsupported.

Young people who have not previously done well in education are being chucked into polytechs to tick a box for the Government, and they are failing, or not even filling the placements that exist. If we ask anyone who runs a polytech institution, that is the story we will get. Those young people are not being supported to succeed in those roles.

The second thing the Government did was say that if people are not coming in through a Youth Guarantee, they may not be getting in at all, because it has capped places in tertiary education and in our polytechs. We are turning young people away. This is a fundamental shift in what has otherwise been a universal policy in New Zealand—that is, if people make the bar for tertiary education in New Zealand, they will be accepted. The National Government has changed that by stealth. [Interruption] It has absolutely changed that. Grant Robertson has been campaigning on this fact.

GARETH HUGHES (Green) Link to this

I acknowledge Jacinda Ardern’s challenge to the Minister for Tertiary Education, and I hope he takes it up. What we are seeing in New Zealand for the first time ever is universities closing the door to students who want to study, who are prepared to take a loan, and who have the qualifications. But, no, the door is closed to them. I would like to ask the Minister what those students will do, because those jobs are just not out there. We know that there are 60,000 young people who are not in work. I ask what those young people will do. Will they go on the dole?

In this debate I would like to specifically address clause 16 of the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill, which will impose work testing on sickness beneficiaries who are assessed as being capable of undertaking part-time work. This proposal seems to be a knee-jerk response to increasing numbers of sickness beneficiaries. The increasing number of people on sickness or disability related welfare assistance is a trend that is occurring throughout the developed world. The reasons are complex and many, but this Government claims it has the magic bullet, through assessing beneficiaries’ capacity for work and forcing those who are assessed as being able to work to do so. The Social Services Committee saw no evidence for this proposal, and it is unlikely to be successful in stopping the growth of sickness beneficiary numbers. It is not an evidence-based approach; it is a faith-based approach, rooted in National’s neo-liberal ideology and the bigoted view that beneficiaries are lazy bludgers who deserve a “good kick in the pants”, to use the Minister for Social Development and Employment’s phrase.

As far as the evidence overseas goes, a number of submitters at the select committee referred to a similar approach taken in Australia in 2006. An evaluation of that policy revealed that it was spectacularly unsuccessful in reducing Australia’s disability support and pension numbers.

This bill will not do the job. It is not good legislation, and we are proud to be opposing it this evening.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) Link to this

I will go back to the very first submission that was made several months ago to the Social Services Committee on the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill, by the Legislation Advisory Committee of the Law Commission. Its job is to look at legislation and give advice to the Government. I have found, in my experience, that it gives extremely sound advice on legislation, and most Governments listen to it.

It said that the Social Security Act itself was the worst statute that it has ever seen and that this Parliament has seen. It said that it is a dog’s breakfast, it is incomprehensible, it has been amended close to 50 times, it is a disgrace, it needs to be repealed rather than revised, and it is incumbent on Parliament to produce good-quality laws. I say to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paula Bennett, that rather than put through the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill, which is yet another series of amendments to the original Act, she should take the opportunity to be the Minister that does a whole rewrite of the Social Security Act. It is a wonderful opportunity to work across Parliament to get agreement on what ought to be in a totally rewritten Act.

I had that opportunity with the rewrite of the Policing Act. Over a 2-year period we were able, with the help of the National Party in Opposition and the other political parties, to rewrite the legislation in a way that we got agreement on every issue except one, which was whether police officers could be local body candidates. With that one exception, the entire bill, which was 50 years old, was rewritten by this Parliament with wide buy-in on the approach that we would take.

I say to the Minister that this is a fantastic opportunity to rewrite the Social Security Act and for her to be the Minister that does that rather than bringing in more amendments to legislation that was described as a dog’s breakfast, incomprehensible, and a disgrace. There would be far more cooperation and agreement if such a process was put in place. We need to look at what ought to be part of modern legislation for the 21st century and ask what we are trying to achieve from social security legislation. I do not believe that any members of Parliament do not want us to have a good, sound social security system for those who need it. That has been in place for many years—a social security system to support people when they need it. It has lots of patches in it, lots of things that do not work well, and lots of contradictions. Why not rewrite it? All this bill does is add a few more patches to this very tatty coat. I think that through these amendments the Minister is losing sight of what we have social security for.

What is really sad about this legislation is that those who will suffer the most from it will be the children. I would like us to stop for a moment and think about where we put children in New Zealand in terms of legislation. I believe that the child of a beneficiary is just as important as any child I have had, as my grandchildren, as a child of a member of this Committee, or as a child of any New Zealander. Those children are just as valuable. Those children deserve the same investment in their lives as we would want to see put into the lives of our children and our grandchildren.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

I fully support what the Hon Annette King has been talking about in terms of children, in that children, regardless of the source of their parents’ income, deserve the same support. They deserve a warm, dry home, they deserve a good, high-quality public education, they deserve childcare and health care, and no children should be separated from their entitlements as citizens simply because of the source of their parents’ income. I have to say that even under the last Government the separation around treating children differently because of the income source of the family was a fact. One of the options mentioned earlier was that if work testing requires 20 hours instead of 15 hours, then it would be in line with a capacity to get access to the in-work tax credit.

The poorest families are the beneficiary families. Since the 1991 benefit cuts by the National Government came into force, benefits have not been restored to anything like a liveable provision for families. As a result, the in-work tax credit has worked for some families but it has not been extended to beneficiary families, and the Poverty Action Coalition estimates some billion dollars has been taken out of those families because the in-work tax credit was not available to the beneficiary families, who most desperately need it. So there has been a continuous series of treating the children of beneficiaries differently from other children, and now we see it with Peter Dunne’s ridiculous idea in relation to income splitting, which will simply exacerbate the gap in that somehow it is OK for the children of wealthy families to have access to a full-time parent, but beneficiary children will not. Because of the work-testing regime in this legislation, the children of beneficiaries are being discriminated against by this Government.

Part of the theory around the future focus bill and work testing has been supported, unsurprisingly, by the right-wing Welfare Working Group, which released its report early last week. One of the quotes from that report stated that the introduction of work testing in the late 1990s by, at the time, National, alongside the introduction of more generous childcare assistance, saw a reduction in numbers of people on the domestic purposes benefit. It said that the reduction had flattened out when the work test was replaced by a planning requirement. But, actually, if we look at the information provided in the report—at the facts—we can see something quite different. The graph that accompanied this report showed a very small reduction in domestic purposes benefit numbers from the introduction of the domestic purposes benefit work-test, but that reduction flattened out very quickly. The numbers remained flat, through to the replacement of the work test by the planning requirement in 2003, and through to the introduction of the enhanced Working for Families and the childcare assistance packages from October 2004.

Then numbers on the domestic purposes benefit plummeted because there was access to support for sole parents who were able to go into longer periods of part-time work that could provide them with a decent income, with support through childcare and Working for Families. We saw a dropping off in the gap between rich and poor as a result of Working for Families, too, which helped to provide that buffer. Because there has not been an extension and efforts put into those who are right at the very bottom, further from that, we have seen the gap between rich and poor stagnate now, so it is not decreasing. In fact, I suggest that it will get worse once we see the impact of this year’s Budget.

The Welfare Working Group has been spinning the idea that work testing will reduce benefit numbers, but, in fact, the evidence shows that that is just not true. Numbers on the domestic purposes benefit will drop when there is greater employment—that is, when people can move into jobs because jobs are available and pay well enough such that they can care for their families, and when there are financial incentives like an enhanced tax credit and childcare assistance. But this bill does not do any of that. This bill simply threatens sole parents with the loss of a meagre and desperately needed income.

We are often talking here about people who do not have savings and do not have huge amounts of assets—people for whom losing a benefit for a week is enough to drive them into extreme poverty. These are people who already have to scrimp and save. We have seen in the newspaper today a story about a woman who is not eating, because she cannot afford to if she wants to train—

TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) Link to this

There is absolutely no basis for the previous speaker, Metiria Turei, to come to that conclusion. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This Government certainly does care. This Minister does care, and it is because we do not want to condemn one more child in this country to the tyranny of low expectations, which for far too long characterised the previous Government and those who supported it, that we are determined to act. I wonder what Michael Joseph Savage and those who worked with him in the first Labour Government would think of the heirs to their legacy, because it is very depressing to see just how far Labour has slipped away from what the social security system was first set up to do. This bill and this debate show the very clear division between Labour’s view and the vision of the National-led Government, which says “Let’s help everyone we can out of that predicament. Let us do everything we can to encourage a much better outcome, greater aspiration, greater hope. Let us never, never descend to the level where we say we will put this group of people in the too-hard basket, we will not care about them, and we will patronise them with a meagre lifestyle on welfare.”

That, sadly, is what the Labour Opposition and those who support it are arguing for, by opposing the provisions of this bill. Opposition speakers have gone all over the place on this bill so far, in talking about what is not in it, and they have failed to focus on what we are trying to do—that is, getting young people particularly, but all those people who are trapped on welfare, into something that actually gives them the opportunity to take responsibility for themselves, that gives them hope, and that gives them a much brighter future.

National is delivering on its promise, upon which we were elected, to reform the welfare system. We are committed to a system that supports people when they need it most. There is no question about that. Not one member on this side of the Chamber would shy away from that obligation, but we also, equally, want to encourage people back into work as soon as they are able to work. That is exactly what Michael Joseph Savage and the first Labour Government instituted their social security system to do. That is what those members had in mind, and it is the current Labour members who have moved far away from that.

We have heard criticism of the Welfare Working Group, which is looking at ways to address long-term welfare dependency. Yet for some extraordinary reason Labour members oppose that objective. I ask myself whether Labour members recognise third-generation and fourth-generation welfare dependency as a problem. Why do not members opposite want to do something about that issue? Why are they willing to sit back and do nothing? There is nothing more hopeless and nothing more depressing than the thought of being trapped in that intergenerational welfare dependency and feeling that politicians do not care to want to do something about it? That is not good enough for the people of New Zealand, and it is certainly not good enough for those people this bill is designed to assist.

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) Link to this

That speaker quite clearly said—

Hon PHIL HEATLEY (Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just query whether Shane Jones should be occupying his leader’s seat so early in the coup. [ Interruption]

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) Link to this

Any member in this Chamber who says that the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill will provide hope for solo mothers and families is a fool. I would have to say that I agree with my elders, who say: “Ia ka le ulu o le vale ae fa‘asau le toto fa‘avalevalea”, which literally means, with regard to any fools who say that this bill will provide hope to families out in the community, that we need to club them on the head and allow the foolish blood to flow.

When I also hear members on that side of the Chamber say that this bill provides incentives and rewards, I am reminded of how people train dogs. They give them a bit of meat. They get them to do jumps or something, and then they provide a little bit of meat. When I hear those words coming from members on that side of the Chamber, I am disgusted at the way they promote this bill. This bill will not do any of the things that members opposite say it will do.

Government members claim that this bill is underpinned by principles of fairness and an unrelenting focus on work. Well, neither claim is true. It is unfair, and the Attorney-General, who is a member of that Government, has judged it to be discriminatory. He stated that this bill appears to limit the right to be free from discrimination, and that that limitation cannot be justified under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The commentary on the bill talks about an unrelenting focus on work, and there is an assumption that there are jobs for people to go into, but we know that that is not true. We know that the unemployment figure has risen to 6.8 percent, as of last month, and that 159,000 people are unemployed. That number is growing, certainly in my neighbourhood, where we continue to see that families are struggling and suffering because of the failure of this Government to come up with any viable, credible plan to ensure that people have work to go to and that the jobs created enable people to earn an income that will sustain them and their families.

I emphasise what the Hon Annette King has said, which is that if this Government was serious about doing something with our families, our solo parents, then it needs to focus on and value children. We need to focus on and value parenthood. This bill does not value kids. This bill does not value parenthood. Every submitter I listened to from an organisation that works in our community, such as the citizens advice bureaux, the community law centres, the budgeting services, and the Salvation Army, has opposed this bill. I will read something that Presbyterian Support New Zealand said. It stated that “we find it unconscionable that any government in New Zealand would propose measures that will inevitably increase poverty and hardship for some of the poorest children in this country, and further penalise those in the most unfortunate of life circumstances.”

When I hear members opposite say that this bill will encourage solo parents to get into work, I have to say that that is a lie. Those statements are false. This bill, if we are to read it properly, forces, coerces, and bullies single parents into trying to find jobs that just are not there.

When I asked some of the submitters on this bill whether there were jobs out there that would cater for single parents who had children at school, and whether those employers would be flexible enough to allow a parent to take time out to prepare their children for school and to be available to meet them when they returned home, the answer was no. They said that there are not employers out there who are willing to be flexible. The jobs are not available, and the kind of pay that parents need to be able to earn in order to sustain their families is just not available.

Earlier, my colleague referred to an article from today’s Herald that was written by Simon Collins and entitled: “When tightening the belt is not enough.” This article, which I show to members now, and which I recommend that all people read, sets out the budget of a solo parent who is attempting to better herself by going to school. After receiving what income is available to her from Work and Income as a solo parent, and after working out her costs, which include rent, petrol, repayments on debt, her child’s bus fare, phone costs, parking costs, medical costs, and water bills—and without taking into account food at this stage—that solo parent is at a deficit of $50. If she adds in $100 for food, she has a deficit of $150. The article suggests that that mother has had to sacrifice food and has lost a significant amount of weight simply to make ends meet.

That problem is not confined to that one person. She is one person, and there are many like her in my community, including one family who have approached my local citizens advice bureau. The bureau told me that people can manage the bills but they cannot then afford food or any minor luxuries, such as taking a trip to the zoo. That is the situation that many families now face. It is good that there is some focus in this bill on ensuring that benefits move in line with the rate of inflation.

We agree with all other submitters that a benefit is not something that people want to be on for the rest of their lives. In fact, we would be hard-pressed to find any individual, any mother or father, who wants to spend the rest of their life on a benefit. They want to work. They want to be able to provide for their children, but I have to ask what this Government is doing to enable those people to get jobs. Would it not have been better for this Government to invest in education; to put back the money it has removed from adult and community education, to ensure there is money for early childhood education, and to ensure that we give every child the opportunity to go to university or polytechnic and get a degree? That is what we should be focusing on if we want a stronger society and if we want strong families to be able to have a better future in this country.

I have to ask whether there is a conspiracy from this Government to keep the browns without education—to keep them locked in a situation where they do not have the opportunity to receive early childhood education and where they are cut off from the opportunity to have a tertiary education. Now the Government is saying we have to force every beneficiary to get into a job—when there are no jobs and when this Government is introducing legislation that will drive down wages.

If this Government continues to take away vital and important opportunities from people who are struggling, what will it mean for those who do not have an education and do not have the opportunity to better themselves? If this Government is serious about moving this country forward, and if it is serious about looking after families and children—our children—it should put away this bill. Let us go back to the drawing board and focus on investment in education: early childhood, tertiary, community education, and education in the workforce. That is not what the Government is doing, but we say it is what it ought to be doing. This bill will make things worse for ordinary families.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) Link to this

I absolutely agree with the member who has just resumed his seat, Su’a William Sio, that the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill will make things worse. If there is anything that can be done to ensure that people are not on the welfare system, it is getting them into work, finding them fair-paying jobs, and creating good employment conditions so that they can keep their jobs. The reality of the matter is that the Government does not have a plan to create jobs, so there are no jobs. That is why unemployment has gone up, why 68,000 young people are currently unemployed, and why Māori unemployment has gone up to 16 percent. The reality of the situation, as colleagues speaking before me have pointed out, is that the Government has done nothing to create employment where the people we are concerned about can be treated fairly in the workplace. That is not happening now. This bill will do nothing to give them a fair shot in the workplace.

I am concerned about the punitive aspects of the bill. If people’s benefits can be cut by 50 percent if they do not turn up to a work test, we have to ask ourselves whether they are being treated fairly. I went to the citizens advice bureau in Papakura, and it told me that many of the beneficiaries cannot ring the 0800 number for Work and Income because they only have cell phones. Instead, they come into the citizens advice bureau and use its phone to ring the 0800 number. We know that many of the people we are representing, talking about, and backing move homes, and when they move homes they change addresses. Often when they change addresses they cannot update their address details because it is a temporary placement.

What happens if a letter is sent to their old address, they do not get the letter, and they do not turn up to a work test? I ask whether those people will have 50 percent of their benefit cut off because they have not received that information. I suspect they are not being treated fairly. What if a mother, with her children in wintertime, who is saving the credit on her cell phone for emergency calls to the doctor, has only $20 on her top-up card? People like her are not able to make a call to Work and Income to say that they need to update their details.

I think there are aspects of this bill that are punitive and that do not take into account some of the real-life situations and challenges that many of those who are on the benefit face every day. Those people are struggling to pay rents. I will give members an example. In Ngāruawāhia, people are paying up to $360—

TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) Link to this

It gives me pleasure to rise and speak in the Committee stage of the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. I thank the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Social Development and Employment, for the hard work she has put in. I thank her on behalf of taxpayers in New Zealand, not only those who work hard in this country and who pay their taxes so that we can afford to pay benefits to those who are less fortunate, but also the beneficiaries who for far too long have believed that they have been trapped in an established system but who want to genuinely do better for themselves and their families. I thank the Minister for her hard work.

The previous speaker, Nanaia Mahuta, said that unemployment had increased in New Zealand because of things that this Government has done. I tell that member that slightly before 2008 a recession hit New Zealand. New Zealand went into recession before other countries in the world, but in 2008 a recession hit the whole world. The unemployment rates of the majority of countries that one would describe as having a modern economy went up. I know that the previous Labour Government over 9 years did everything it possibly could so that the New Zealand economy could no longer be defined or described as a modern economy, but we were left with quite some mess. This is the start of the direction towards helping New Zealanders to help themselves.

Before I get to a couple of points that I think are important to make at this stage of the debate, I recognise that Mr Sio made quite a good speech earlier. However, I was not convinced that he believed everything he said. He was probably asked to stand up and rattle out a few things that his research department had given him. He said that there are New Zealanders who are not educated, who have not been given chances, and who do not have experience; therefore, there are no jobs for them. It sounded to me like the Labour Opposition was saying that that is good enough. Well, it might be good enough for those members, but this Government is about helping New Zealanders and making sure that they have educational opportunities. In the Budget this year more money was put into education. Members opposite do not want to recognise that, but the public realise that more money was put into education. It is about helping people to help themselves.

The other very important point here is that this legislation is about an election promise to reform the welfare system, which we made in 2007 and 2008. If members opposite do not like that, perhaps they should have worked harder and campaigned harder in 2008. At the very least, when they were in Government they should have listened more to what New Zealanders wanted and to their ambitions. This legislation, like what we campaigned on, focuses on what people can do, not what they cannot do. I am proud, as are my colleagues on this side of the Chamber, that we in New Zealand have a system of social welfare that helps people when they need it the most. We also need a system that encourages and assists people to do better for themselves and for their families, and that does not create welfare dependency when it is not necessary.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) Link to this

I would like to respond to some of the comments and contributions made by the backbench members of the Government, such as they have been. I feel that the National backbench members are being very much treated like mushrooms. They have been kept in the dark and fed a lot of manure. When we listen to the contributions of some of those members, we realise that they know very little about this bill.

Let me start with Tim Macindoe, who made a very impassioned speech before dinner. He said that the Labour Party did not understand this bill and that this bill would give beneficiaries in New Zealand great hope and great aspirations. From this little bill they will get such great hope and great aspirations. But I want to know how. How will they get this great hope and great aspirations? How does this bill give a beneficiary a job? That is what Mr Macindoe said—that this bill will give them a job. What job, I ask Mr Macindoe, comes out of this bill?

If National backbench members believe that we create jobs by passing some amendments to legislation that has been described by the Legislation Advisory Committee as a disgrace because it has had over 50 amendments to it already, then they have strange beliefs about job creation. There has to be a plan for job creation, and there has to be a plan for the economy. I notice that National got a plan on Saturday. John Key put out his quick six-point plan. It was so recently written that the date on it was 1 August. This plan had nothing about how the Government was going to create jobs. So how will these poor beneficiaries get great hope and great aspirations out of this legislation?

The key to moving people off any benefit is to have jobs for them to go to. We have heard from all around New Zealand—from the provinces, from the far north to the south—that there are no jobs for people to walk into. Beneficiaries will not have this great hope and this great aspiration, because there are no jobs for them. So what is this bill all about? It is supposed to be about the principles of fairness, and an unrelenting focus on work. Well, as I have just told the Government, there is no good in having an unrelenting focus on work when, by the Minister’s own comments, we have a real shortage of jobs.

There are around 68,000 unemployed people, and young people—people under 25—cannot get a job. There are around 60,000 people on the unemployment benefit who cannot get a job. But we know they will work if there are jobs out there. We cannot believe the idea that there is an unrelenting focus on jobs, because there is no plan for jobs, there is nothing happening for jobs, and there is one silly little bill that talks about it.

The next issue is around fairness. I point out to the Minister the submission that came from the Law Society. I do not believe that the Law Society is an organisation that makes submissions to bills lightly, but it made a submission on this bill. The Law Society opposed this bill because it is not fair. It is not fair because it discriminates—that is what the society said.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

I would like to address a number of the provisions of the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill in the remaining period of the Committee stage. One of those is clause 13, which set out the income tests. A couple of Government MPs, and even the Minister for Social Development and Employment, reiterated that this is apparently the realisation of an election promise, but it is not. National made promises that it has not kept. I want to talk about one of those. The promises that National has not kept are those that would provide the greatest support for those who need it. In 2008 the National Party promised to increase the threshold at which benefits would be reduced when a beneficiary earns an income. The promise was to lift the abatement rate—the amount the person could earn—from $80 to $100. It was one of the very few National welfare policies that the Green Party agreed with. We did not think it went far enough, but it was a good start. In fact, if it had been CPI-indexed, that abatement threshold should be at least $150 a week. Still, it was a step in the right direction.

This bill raises that abatement threshold for some beneficiaries, but not all. The promise made at the election by National was for all beneficiaries to have that abatement lifted from $80 to at least $100. Unemployment and sickness beneficiaries who earn over $100 a week from the work test, or from any work they do, will now be $14 a week worse off, because National broke its promise. National broke its promise to the poorest people in this country—the ones that it is now forcing to work for at least 15 hours a week. By forcing them into work for 15 hours a week and by not raising the abatement threshold, the National Government is forcing people to work for actually nothing. Not only that, but National has not met its promise; it is forcing them to work for a significant disadvantage. To be frank, having been a beneficiary myself on unemployment benefit and on the domestic purposes benefit, $14 a week to lose is a significant amount when one is on the very bare bones.

Not only will the fact that National broke its promise impact negatively on the finances of beneficiaries, but also it will act as a disincentive for them to undertake additional work. Why would anyone work for nothing in a job that is demeaning and one that the person has been forced into on threat of losing his or her income? I see that the chair of the Social Services Committee shakes her head. Maybe she does not quite realise what it is like to be on a benefit and to be forced to take demeaning and degrading work at very low pay, then be under threat of losing the very meagre income that they have, knowing that they are working for zero or even less than zero. In fact, those people will not be making sufficient income, even by working those 15 hours, to be able to take care of themselves and their family. This policy impoverishes those people even more. It disenfranchises them even more. That is the “all stick and no carrot” approach to welfare in legislation and in the policy of the Government.

National said it was very serious about getting beneficiaries into work. First of all, it said it would have a plan for creating jobs, which it does not. Second, National said it would provide a financial incentive for people to go out and get work, should it be available, but there is none. There is no work for unemployment and sickness beneficiaries because the abatement rates are not going to be lifted for them. This Government has broken its promise to the poorest people in our country. It is obvious that there are no jobs, so, of course, this whole bill will fail anyway. The Minister has never produced any evidence to show that the provisions in this legislation will encourage beneficiaries off the benefit and into work, because there is none. In fact, all of the evidence suggests quite the opposite.

In the previous 12 months the Green Party has produced three separate economic packages designed to provide jobs in recessionary times that are both environmentally and socially useful. The Government has completely failed to deliver on any of its promises around job creation. It has refused to acknowledge any of the other good ideas around what could create jobs and could help to relieve the very severe poverty that thousands of New Zealanders and their children suffer every day. Instead, the Government has produced this legislation that punishes beneficiaries for needing State support. In addition, it has broken its promise by failing to make it viable for people to work.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) Link to this

I just want to respond to a few things that were discussed earlier by members on the other side of the Chamber. I go back to something Mr Borrows was saying, together with a few other MPs, about our basically not having aspirations for people who are on benefits and not caring about them and their progression in terms of moving beyond being on a benefit. I point out that that is absolute rubbish. There is one thing that very clearly highlights the contradiction between what that Government says and what it does, when we look back at the cutting of the training incentive allowance. I shall talk about that a little bit because it highlights the absolute lack of common sense that that Government has demonstrated in its cuts, in its “reprioritising” of funding, if one wants to call it that. I shall discuss the success of that training incentive allowance and the fact that the Government cut it, and then look at where we are now.

Just over a year ago the National Government moved to make its heavy-handed cuts to the training incentive allowance. A study of that scheme was done between 1996 and 2001 and it found that for recipients of the domestic purposes benefit, the training incentive allowance was successful in helping beneficiaries to gain greater self-confidence in removing financial barriers to education and in reducing the amount of time spent by recipients on the benefit. On average the amount of time spent on the benefit decreased, and the amount of time spent in paid employment increased over time for recipients of the training incentive allowance, suggesting that the scheme was effective in increasing workforce participation. An average of 26 fewer weeks were spent on the benefit over the 6 years following the receipt of the training incentive allowance, compared with beneficiaries who did not receive the allowance.

When we look at that evidence, at that report, it makes no sense for the Government to have cut that scheme, particularly when it is talking about long-term welfare dependency and saying that its actions are because it wishes to ensure there are not so many people dependent on welfare. Following that, when two women came out and spoke about the fact that the cuts were detrimental to them in their lives, the Minister for Social Development and Employment had no problem with dragging them through the mud, putting their details out there publicly, and basically just punishing them, using that same kind of punitive approach towards them that she is doing right now with the welfare reforms.

I think it is important to point out that, because it highlights the lack of compassion that that Government has shown towards single mothers, in particular, and also that the Government’s moves have made no sense at all. They have gone against the research with regard to things like the cuts to the training incentive allowance, despite the fact that we have reports that show that it was a successful initiative.

We have heard from across the Chamber tonight stories of different single parents, and I think most of us who are logical and rational would agree that single parents just want to get on with raising their kids. They do not enjoy being used as the Government’s scapegoat to divert attention away from the fact that the Government has done nothing to address unemployment and poverty in this country, yet those people find themselves in that situation.

In terms of this bill, there are some provisions that we support, and we have discussed that. We support the increasing of benefit abatement income thresholds and the annual CPI adjustment of certain benefits. What we are fundamentally opposed to are the provisions on work testing, and the discriminatory nature of the bill. When we look at what it means in terms of discrimination, the woman who was on a widows benefit—someone whose partner has passed away—will not be work tested but the woman whose partner is still alive but no longer with her will be work tested. It is fair to say—and members on this side, at least, would all agree—that it is an arbitrary separation and serves only to perpetuate the negative stigma of sole parenting.

Also of concern is the Minister’s inability to adequately define welfare dependency, and that came up during the Social Services Committee hearing when we questioned the Minister about a definition of “welfare dependency”, particularly long-term welfare dependency, to see whether it meant having been on a benefit for 5 years, or having been on a benefit for 7 years, or longer.

H V ROSS ROBERTSON (Labour—Manukau East) Link to this

I stand here and look at the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill on behalf of the senior citizens of this country. I am concerned more than anything else about the impact that this bill will have on senior citizens.

In the course of my role in Parliament I frequently visit Grey Power groups around the country. One of the things that they are concerned about in terms of the provisions of this bill is the impact on young families. If members talk to them, they will see that many of them, because of the state of the economy, and because there is huge, high unemployment, find that their own families are out of work. This is not about providing a safety net. This is not about providing a pathway. There is no plan from this Government to look after the most vulnerable in our society.

Although we support some provisions of this bill, such as increasing benefit abatement income thresholds and the annual CPI adjustment of certain benefits, we are fundamentally opposed to the provisions on work testing and the discriminatory nature of this bill. This bill is nothing more than an attack on beneficiaries. Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? If we talk to anybody over the age of 55 who does not have a job they will tell us just how difficult it is to get one. If one gets laid off at 55 one is on the dole—an unemployment benefit—for the rest of one’s life because it is just so difficult. Here we have a Government that is playing pure politics with the most vulnerable in our society: those who have families, and those who do not have work. It tries to pander to the electoral vote of the populace, and that is not good enough—it is not good enough, at all.

One of the things that concerned me greatly in reading the submissions to the Social Services Committee on the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill was something I saw from Presbyterian Support New Zealand. I will quote this because it goes right to the heart of the matter: “we find it unconscionable that any government in New Zealand would propose measures that will inevitably increase poverty and hardship for some of the poorest children in this country, and further penalise those in the most unfortunate of life circumstances.”

Our senior citizens struggle now with accident compensation cuts and increases in GST, and many of them today bring up their grandchildren. They bring up their grandchildren, and at the—

KATRINA SHANKS (National) Link to this

It is my pleasure to take a call tonight in the Committee stage of the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. I have sat here for a while now and listened to the debate around me. It has been interesting, because if one were to sit here and watch this debate on television tonight, or to listen to it on the radio, one would think that National does not have a heart, that National does not want to help the most vulnerable, that National does not care about the mums at home living on their own, that National does not care about those on the unemployment benefit, and that National does not care about those on the sickness benefit. Well, actually, we do. Being a little bit aspirational about giving people pathways to improve their lives is a good thing; it is not a bad thing.

I think that Labour members believe that if we can keep people in poverty, if we can keep them in welfare, then that is the best we can do for them. But keeping people in welfare is not the best we can do for them. In fact, if the previous Labour Government had not made such a mess of our economy 4 years ago, we would be in a much better state now; we would be seeing through the recession in a much better way, and there would be more jobs. That is the reality of it.

I want to respond to what Ross Robertson said about those who are 50 or 60, and about how hard it is for them to get jobs. It is. It is hard for everybody out there to get jobs at the moment; no one is denying that. But this legislation is saying that we believe there are jobs, and there will be more and more jobs as we get through the recession.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) Link to this

I would like to review a couple of specific factors. Firstly, I would be really happy if the Government could explain to me which one of the following—the lowest unemployment in the OECD, the wiping out of Crown debt, and the most consistent growth since World War II—constitutes poor economic management. All we have heard from Government members is a blame game. Quite frankly, people in the middle of a recession are sick of hearing the Government claiming that it was left with poor books, because it was quite the opposite. Had it not been for the sound economic management of Michael Cullen, we would be in dire straits right now. It is time for the Government to show some leadership and demonstrate to us that it has a plan. The blame game has to stop.

Secondly, I would like to hear one of the Government members explain to me at what point the Labour Opposition has said that we do not back people who are on benefits, who we naturally assume want to get off those benefits. The assumption seems to me to be all on that side of the Chamber. If someone could explain to me how we are not backing those people, I would be quite grateful. I am bemused. For me, it is not about rhetoric; it is about the fact that just today we saw 2,700 applicants for 150 jobs at Countdown. Members of the Government can talk all they like about aspiration, but unless they are providing the situation and the context in which people are able to aspire and achieve, all they are giving me is words. That is all we have heard from the opposite side today.

The Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill makes assumptions about people’s position, their status, and their context. Although I have already talked at some length about some of the assumptions and how badly wrong the Government has got all of this when it assumes that people do not wish to work, I would rather rely on some of the thoughtful words from groups like the Human Rights Commission. It said: “The most obvious flaw with this proposal was the assumption that work would be available when many of the measures in this Bill are due to take effect.” The example today demonstrates to us that although there may be a miniscule handful of jobs, it is not sufficient. I quote again: “For example, the proposed date for the commencement of the part time work test for sole parents on the Domestic Purposes Benefit whose youngest child is six years old is 4 October 2010 …”. If the Minister for Social Development and Employment is willing to stand up and tell me that by 4 October 2010 we are likely to see an incredible increase in the number of jobs coming through Work and Income’s door, one that outweighs the number of people being added to its books, that is an assurance I would welcome. At this point, I have grave, grave doubts.

We also heard from the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services that “The Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill fails to recognise the link between macro economic conditions and Unemployment Benefit trends. Changes to the benefit system that seek to address perceptions that beneficiaries are ‘unmotivated’ and ‘lack a work ethic’ will therefore fail because the premises are flawed. When the economy expands and more jobs are available benefit numbers fall.” We have already demonstrated that. We do not need to rely on rhetoric in that regard. In the 9 years of the previous Labour Government, we saw the greatest drop in benefit numbers when our unemployment rate was one of the lowest in the OECD. There is a natural, intuitive correlation between the two, and we already have the numbers to prove that that is the case.

I want to go on to some of the Government’s own statements via the regulatory impact statement that demonstrate that even the policy makers think the assumptions in this bill are flawed. But, in case I run out of time, I want to put a question directly to the Minister on an issue she raised earlier, around the independent youth benefit. The obligations set out in, I believe, clause 17 take out some of the discretion around the independent youth benefit and place greater requirements around the beneficiary being involved in education, training, or work. I welcome more of a discussion on that, but I want to try to understand where the Government’s priorities for criteria for the independent youth benefit now sit. Earlier in the year we heard the Prime Minister say that there would be a new threshold for the independent youth benefit, and it sat around a young person being psychologically tested and found to be in a circumstance that required them to be on the independent youth benefit. It is quite a high threshold; perhaps the young person has been abused or suffers from mental illness. But now we see that the Government has no longer explained—

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) Link to this

It was interesting to listen to the speech from Katrina Shanks a little earlier on in this debate on the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. I rather suspect that Government members make too much of aspiration. It seems to me that they use that word in a way that is designed to explain everything that is nice and good, and nothing else. It is like voting for motherhood and apple pie. There was an assumption in what Katrina said that there is no aspiration on this side of the Chamber. We do not need to talk about it on this side of the Chamber, but on that side of the Chamber that is all they talk about.

Katrina Shanks was saying what a mess Labour made when we were in Government. But we had the lowest unemployment in the OECD—take a bow, New Zealand—and why do those members not acknowledge that? We did not talk about aspiration; we simply did it. It was done in such a way that anybody who wanted a job was able to get one. We do not talk about aspiration; we do aspiration. How awful it is for members opposite that the previous Labour Government had to subsidise New Zealand’s low-wage system through Working for Families. Some members opposite may remember the $50,000-a-year Waihī family, consisting of two professionals and two children, who could not make ends meet. It was the prelude to all of the work that gave form to Working for Families. I do not hear that in the comments from the other side. The members there say that this side is not aspirational at all, but they have all the licence to use that term. The other side talks—

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) Link to this

In the mail yesterday I received the latest copy of the Presbyterian Support magazine, People Helping People. There will be many members in this House who have had dealings with Presbyterian Support, and I doubt there would be any hard-working member who has not called on Presbyterian Support at some time. There is a very good editorial in the magazine, written by Vaughan Milner, the chief executive, that I recommend the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Social Development and Employment, read. He said that he has had 36 years’ involvement in social services. He said: “What I have learnt is that living without adequate income and being blamed in the process is debilitating, demoralising and degrading—particularly when combined with some of the many challenges that life throws us, like poor mental or physical health, relationship problems, grief or trauma. I have seen that the overwhelming majority of parents who subsist on a benefit are capable budgeters and caring parents. They are contributing to the community through doing their best to raise their children to be functional adults. They and their children do not deserve to be pushed to the margins of the community”. But I say to the Minister in the chair that that is exactly what the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill is doing to those beneficiaries.

I will go through three main submissions that we heard at the Social Services Committee as I think they are pertinent to this debate. One of the submissions was from Presbyterian Support, which had real concerns about the signals that this bill sends to beneficiaries, saying that sole parents having to go out to work is more important than caring for children. I think that is quite a powerful message from this organisation. It is asking where the concern is for the children alongside the need to go out to work. Is caring for children a job, or not? Is it a worthwhile job, or not? It said there is a conflict in what is being said in other policies about the importance of children. Presbyterian Support went on to say that children will be disadvantaged by this bill.

The next submission I would like to mention came from the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services. Many of the people who work in these organisations have dedicated a lot of their lives to working with the most disadvantaged in our community. When we have a Government that says it listens to the community, I want to know why it is not listening to these voices. Are they not important? Does it not believe them? Do all the years of experience of working with people who are at the bottom of the heap not count for anything? The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services said that the Government should focus on what works, not on what does not work. No research has been provided to show that this approach will do what the Minister said, and I have to say that the council was not alone in this view.

As members know, when a bill is provided to this House a regulatory impact statement is also provided. What did that regulatory impact statement state? It stated “There is no research currently available which accurately quantifies the size of the behavioural response from these changes in policies”. In other words, we do not know whether it will change a single thing. That was from the regulatory impact statement, which was tabled in this House. So this bill has resulted very much from the Government’s approach of licking its finger and holding it up in the wind to see which way the wind is blowing—oh, the wind is blowing against beneficiaries, so let us bring in a bill that gives them a bit more of a bashing!

The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services went on to say that it does not see the appropriate aspects in this bill. It cannot see any appropriate aspects in this bill, particularly for children, and it urged us not to proceed with the bill. The council said that there is a wealth of evidence that the bill will not result in the outcomes wanted—a wealth of evidence. It provided us with research from 1998 on the widows benefit.

The next submission I would like to mention to the Minister is the one from the Salvation Army. Who in this House does not have admiration for the work of the Salvation Army? It works with people involved in drug addiction, right through to people who are homeless. If there is a group in New Zealand society that most of us have had contact with as members of Parliament, it is the Salvation Army. It said that this bill will mean the care of children will suffer when the pressure comes on sole parents to go out to work. If the Minister, it said, was to use the flexibility that already exists in policy, then this bill would not be needed. Have members opposite heard that? If the Government used the flexibility that exists in the current policy, then it would not need to have this legislation.

The Salvation Army went on to say that sanctions were not appropriate because what the bill was doing was making moral judgments, particularly moral judgments about widows versus sole parents. Widows equal good; sole parents equal bad. The sanctions apply to sole parents but there are no sanctions for widows. Most sole parents are women. So one group of women are good and one group of women are bad. The Salvation Army went on to say that populism is not an appropriate basis for making policy. It is populism that has led this policy to be brought in through legislation. The Salvation Army also asked what is needed. Better education is needed to help people get off those benefits, and in time, when they have had the education and the training, they can move into a job and take primary responsibility for their families. The Salvation Army said that early childhood education will not be available for many of these parents who are being forced back to work.

The last submission I want to mention came from the Child Advocacy Group. It said the benefit of parents staying at home with children should not be undermined. This is absolutely at the centre of what we ought to be advocating for in New Zealand—the importance of saying that caring for children is one of the most, if not the most, fundamental tasks we want parents to undertake. There should not be an unrelenting focus on work; there should be an unrelenting focus on being good parents and bringing up their children with the assistance that can be provided. That is what it ought to be about. It is the children who are being marginalised by this policy.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this

I want to clarify a few things because I think that anyone listening in just then might have quite a misconception about what this bill actually does. We are talking about part-time work-testing for those on the domestic purposes benefit when their youngest child turns 6. What we are asking those people to do is to be ready to look for work, and then to be actively looking for work when it is there. No benefits will be cut and no changes will be made if they are stepping up and looking for work. So I just clarify that. The likeness to the US was completely misleading. We are talking about part-time work-testing for those who can find a job when their youngest child is 6. I want to be clear about that sort of thing.

Another comment we have heard a bit tonight has been that when the jobs are there, the number of beneficiaries will go down, and it will be fine and everything else. Certainly, we saw that the number of people on the unemployment benefit was reduced in those best of times. We saw a very limited reduction in the number on the domestic purposes benefit, but that was more as a result of Working for Families, when we saw a few thousand people move off the domestic purposes benefit as that was more accessible for them.

But let us be quite clear about a couple of other things. In that same period there was an increase of 45 percent in the number of people on the sickness benefit. At a time when New Zealanders are not becoming more sick, when they are starting to live longer, and when we have better access to health care and more technology that helps us to keep well, we saw a 45 percent increase in the number of those on the sickness benefit. In that same period we saw the number of people on an invalids benefit increase by 53 percent. Although the number of people on the unemployment benefit went down, the number of people on the sickness benefit increased by 45 percent and the number on the invalids benefit increased by 53 percent. We need to look at the issues there and ask ourselves what we are doing for those people. We need to look at how we can get some of those people well. We need to look at what they can do instead of what they cannot do. We need to focus on the positive aspects instead of just putting them on a benefit, leaving them alone, and not looking at them again.

I will give the Committee some examples of what happened with the sickness benefit. In one Work and Income office that I visited, I talked to a case manager who was responsible for sickness benefits. She said that a few weeks earlier she had written to those whom a doctor had said could work part-time. She invited them to come in and see her to talk about making a plan of what her office might do to help them get into work longer term, about the sorts of help they might need, and about what her office could do. She sat down and individually wrote to all of those from that particular office who were on the sickness benefit who might be able to do some part-time work, but not a single one of them replied. Not a single one of those people asked for that assistance.

What we are saying to people is reasonable and it is fair. We are asking them to work closely with their case managers. We have put on another 303 case managers within Work and Income since we have been in Government. We are saying to those people: “Let us work with you to concentrate on what you can do. When those jobs are there, let us make sure that you are putting your best foot forward.” We have done work on CVs and on making sure that people are presenting themselves as well as they can, and we have worked with them to help them into jobs. That is reasonable. If people are looking for work and are not able to find it, then their benefits will not be changed. Their benefits will not be changed. That is reasonable and fair.

In the debate tonight we have heard a lot of stuff about me. That is all fine, I kind of like being talked about, but it interests me because I do not base policy decisions on personal experiences that I may or may not have had. I look at what I believe is best for New Zealanders and at what will move them forward, and I recognise what they can do. I do not sit here and try to throw stones at other members as to what their personal situations were. I have not done it in the past and I am not going to start now.

What I will say, though, in response to the comments thrown out by the Opposition members—comments like “lazy” and a whole lot of other derogatory comments—is that I just blank them out, because they are so nonsensical that I cannot believe that those members think they can throw those comments around and believe that the public would think that that is what we are saying. We constantly hear derogatory comments being thrown out towards those who are receiving State assistance and benefits, but, quite frankly, I do not buy into them at all. If that is what members opposite want to accuse other members of saying about people, then that is fine, but it is not actually true.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) Link to this

I seek leave to table a speech made by the Hon Judith Collins in which she sets out her views about beneficiaries sitting around watching Sky TV, living off the taxpayer, letting their children run riot, and getting stoned. Who was criticising beneficiaries?

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) Link to this

I will start at the very beginning by asking how the Minister dares to accuse Labour of stereotyping beneficiaries. Paula Bennett sat in the National caucus when Don Brash talked about beneficiaries breeding for business—solo mothers breeding for business. That was what a National member said, but what did Paula Bennett have to say about that? Absolutely nothing—so how dare she stand in this Chamber and accuse Labour of stereotyping beneficiaries.

The Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill is about National resorting to the type of thing it loves to do. There is nothing that National loves to do more than bash beneficiaries and kick people when they are down, and that is what this bill is all about. It is about kicking people when they are down. It is not about lifting them up, it is not about giving them a go, and it is not about finding them a real job, because if the jobs were there New Zealanders would take them.

New Zealanders want to work. Thousands of people have been lining up outside supermarkets, looking for work. If the jobs were there, they would take them. But this Government has not created jobs. It has not closed the wage gap with Australia. The only gap it has closed with Australia is the unemployment gap. We used to have an unemployment rate that was lower than Australia’s but, under this Government, it is higher and the gap is getting wider. The unemployment rate went from 6 percent to 6.8 percent in the last quarter alone. What is the National Government doing about that? It is not doing a heck of a lot. It would rather pick on beneficiaries and tell them they lack ambition because they are not out there applying for jobs that do not exist. If the jobs were there, people would be applying for them. But the jobs are not there.

What have we had from National? We had a Job Summit. But no jobs came out of the Job Summit. In fact, the Government did not even bother to measure whether any jobs came out of the Job Summit. There was the cycleway, but it was an absolute flop. How many jobs came out of the cycleway? There were not many, if any. Then the Government was going to mine national parks. But not many jobs were coming out of that. If the jobs were there, beneficiaries would be looking for them and applying for them.

Can anyone on the National benches explain the fact that thousands of people recently lined up outside a supermarket looking for work? There is not an answer from them, not a word. Those members have no explanation for the fact that thousands of people have been lining up looking for jobs and that the jobs are not there. Where is the plan to create jobs? But there is a plan to pick on people who cannot find jobs, kick them when they are down, say they lack ambition because they are unemployed, and say that they should stop breeding for business.

Paula Bennett said that this debate would get ugly. Well, most of the ugly comments about beneficiaries have come from members opposite—National members. As Annette King pointed out, Judith Collins was the one who talked about beneficiaries sitting around watching Sky television and getting stoned. That was when the debate got ugly. It was when the National members waded into it and started stereotyping beneficiaries and kicking people when they are down.

In the Labour Party we do not take that approach. We think we should actually enable people to find work. We should help them raise their skills. We should intervene early. Early childhood education is critical, but what has the National Government done? It has cut funding to early childhood education, and it has cut a whole raft of second-chance learning opportunities. Night classes used to provide a stepping stone for people on benefits to get back into work.

I would be interested in the Minister’s comments about night classes. They provided a stepping stone for people who might have been out of work for some time. Night classes helped people to lift their skills, and to catch up, in some instances. People need new computing skills as technology changes, and they could go to night classes and get those skills, but that rug has totally been pulled out from under them by the National Government. Night classes have gone altogether in the Hutt Valley. There is not a single night class for a beneficiary in my electorate who wants to raise his or her skills before going back into work. There is not a single night class that beneficiaries can go to.

The training incentive allowance has been cut by Paula Bennett. That was a second-chance opportunity for people to get back into work through developing skills so that they can get real jobs—real jobs, not some make-work scheme and not something that the Government is dreaming is there but simply does not exist.

Real jobs require some skill levels, but the Government is doing nothing to help people to get them. That is the case even at the higher end of the job market. People who have found themselves out of work and have thought they would take the opportunity to upskill and maybe go to university have found the doors closed. The doors to the universities have been closed.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) Link to this

I will put some questions to the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Social Development and Employment, and I would like to get a couple of answers.

One of the questions that I have regards the support the Government will be giving to sole parents or domestic purposes benefit recipients in order for them to study. I raised this question earlier in the night but I have not had a response yet from the Minister, and I would like a response. Why will the legislation allow for supporting domestic purposes benefit recipients for study at only level 4 or higher, and not at levels 1, 2, and 3? How do we allow them to prepare adequately for study at level 4 or higher if they do not have any secondary school qualifications and they are not supported to get levels 1, 2, and 3? That is one thing I put to the Minister.

I also ask how it makes sense, then, to maintain the training incentive allowance only for those studying at levels 1, 2, and 3, when they will no longer be supported to study at those levels if they are domestic purposes benefit recipients. Those are the No. 1 questions I put to the Minister, and I would like a response in respect of those questions.

Moving on, I will touch on a few other things. One of them is the fact that last night I was at a Pacific Women’s Watch meeting. I spoke to the women about the impact of the welfare reforms on single mothers, because they were quite interested in hearing about that. The thing that came up, not only in my speech but also from the audience attending last night, was the complete disregard this legislation shows for the valuable contribution to our society that is made by people for whom caring for children, the sick, or the elderly is, in fact, their primary yet unpaid work at this time in their lives.

We have talked a lot about the importance of work, and of supporting beneficiaries to go out there and take up work. We on this side of the Chamber support that. We are supportive of it, which is why we put Working for Families into place. But we do not believe that we should underestimate the importance of a mother staying home and looking after her children if that is what she feels she needs to do. I bring up again the fact that in the Minister’s own maiden speech she said that parents should have the right to choose—the right to choose to work full-time, the right to choose to work part-time, and the right to choose to stay home and raise their children if they wish. That is the issue we need to discuss here. We are not saying that we do not support women to get out into the workforce; we are saying that if they decide that what is best for them is being at home, because of their circumstances or the needs of their particular children, then we should support them in doing that.

It is not always going to be the case that getting out into the workforce is the best thing. I can think of some examples. I can think of one friend who has seven children and whose husband left her 2 years ago. She did not expect that to happen. For her to go out into the workforce and be expected still to run a household and run around after her seven children and look after them adequately is, I think, a bit unfair. If she wants to get out into the workforce, that is up to her. But if she decides that with seven children she needs to be at home, then I think that that is a fair call and we should be supporting her on that decision.

Earlier I heard Mr Woodhouse interjecting. He said that children go to school and that it is during those hours that parents should be able to go out and work. Well, unfortunately, we do not necessarily have jobs that fit around the schedules of children and their school hours, so we will not always have that choice. On top of that, when we look at the individual circumstances of rather large families—and we can go back to that woman with seven kids—we can never predict when children are going to be sick or when the mother will be called upon for support at school. How often can a mother—say, one with seven children—get away with saying to her boss that her children are sick? Even when a mother has only one child, or two or three, we know how often those things happen and how often we need to be at school for whatever reason. Can members imagine having seven children, and the expectations and demands that will be placed on a mother in that situation? I think it is a little naive of Mr Woodhouse to assume that every parent can get out there and work during school hours, because that is not always the case.

HEKIA PARATA (National) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairperson. Nā te mea koi nei te wā tuatahi i tū au i roto i te Whare i tēnei ahiahi, kei te tangi atu ki taku tipuna, ki a Tākuta Te Kapunga Dewes; kātahi noa nei ka mate i Te Tai Rāwhiti. Nā reira, he poroporoaki paku, he poroporoaki iti tēnei ki a ia. Haere, haere, haere atu rā. Ka hoki mai ki a tātou.

[Because this is the first time I have stood in the House this afternoon, I grieve for my ancestor, Doctor Te Kapunga Dewes, who has just passed away up in the East Coast. This is a small farewell from me to him. Depart, depart, and farewell. Now, back to us.]

I see that Luamanuvao Winnie Laban is in the Chamber. This is the first time I have had the opportunity to publicly congratulate her on her appointment at Victoria University and to wish her very well in that new appointment. Ngā mihi ki a koe.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) Link to this

If this debate was really about getting beneficiaries into work, then the Government should be showing us its plan to create growth and grow jobs. The reality is that it is all very well to talk about the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill, but the context in which the Government promotes beneficiaries into jobs has to have the other part of the equation, which is to ask where the jobs are.

People who are listening to the debate want to know what the Government’s plan is to create jobs in small communities, so that beneficiaries have real choices for real wages and real jobs, and a fair go. We on this side of the Chamber know that, yes, beneficiaries want to work but, no, the Government is not doing anything to create jobs. There is nothing simpler than that message, so I ask why the Government does not get it. Everyone else gets it, but the Government does not get it. This bill should not just talk about opportunities for beneficiaries without creating those opportunities, which are jobs and employment.

The Minister for Social Development and Employment was quick to get to her feet and talk about all the good things that are being done to support mums on the domestic purposes benefit into work. Like her, I too have visited a number of teen parent units throughout the country. I want to know why the Minister has cut the Young Parent Childcare Payment. Why did she cut it? Why did she take away an allowance that goes to young parents to enable them to get their children to a childcare centre and to study, as well? That is what she has done. That is the little glimmer of light that she has snuffed out for those young parents. Often the aspiration of those teen parents is to go into higher education, often to polytech or university.

I ask why the Minister cut out the entitlement for the training incentive allowance that funded courses at level 4 and above. Yes, teen parents want to work, but they know that they need to get a better and higher qualification to create a better opportunity for them and their little whānau—a better quality of life. There has been no answer to that from the Minister.

What is worse is that the Minister has failed to come up with a plan for teen parents to tell them where the jobs are. She is all one-sided in the debate. She says that the Government wants to get beneficiaries off the benefit and into work—we agree with that—but there has been no response about where the jobs are, and that is really important.

The member who spoke before me, Hekia Parata, talked about work testing sickness beneficiaries. A lot of people who know how the system works know that people who have come from full-time employment on to the sickness benefit will not stay on it for long. They want to get back into full-time employment. They are not who we are talking about.

I suspect that we are talking about a high proportion of sickness beneficiaries—and this is the feedback from many Work and Income offices—who have some form of mental illness. The difficulty is that even if those people are medically assessed to work for 15 hours, employers are not flexible enough to respond to their needs in the workplace. We are talking about highly functioning people who may at times have bouts of depression or some type of mental illness that prevents them from working a full part-time 15-hour shift. The question to the Minister is that although those people can be medically assessed as being able to work for 15 hours, the workplace may not be responsive enough to deal and to cope with the challenges that some people face in their everyday life to work a full 15-hour period. We have had no response whatsoever from the Minister on that simple point. They are real people who face challenges and who are medically assessed to work, but they cannot find a job or an employer that is responsive to their needs. They cannot find an employer who says he or she will accept that a person will work for 15 hours one week, because the person may ring up the next week to say that he or she is having a bad week and just cannot make it. Will the employer will be responsive? I suspect not.

We are treating some of the most vulnerable people in a way that I think is unfair and that could actually be detrimental to their ongoing quality of life and well-being. We are not talking about the proportion of people who are on the sickness benefit for a period of time who then go back into full-time employment. Most people who come from full-time employment will want to be on the sickness benefit for only a short time, because they know there is a full-time job there. I suspect we are talking about the greater proportion of people on the sickness benefit, those who are in the category that I have already spoken about.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I feel it is really important that we look at the context when we start debating the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. I heard a lot of rhetoric back in my room, listening to the TV, with everybody claiming to have been abused. But the people who are actually being abused are not the people in this House. The voices of the people who are being abused are not being heard. The people who are being abused are vulnerable people, as Nanaia Mahuta just said, and our responsibility as legislators is to look at the context and at the situation we face in this country in terms of employment, unemployment, sickness, and caring for children.

This bill should be contributing to positive change. I am sure there are people in National who believe that is what they are doing, but I say in all sincerity, as somebody who has spent 5 years working with beneficiaries, that it will not work. We can do what feels good and what is ideologically consistent with party policy, but if it will not work, then all we are really doing is compounding the issues.

A wider debate is going on that affects this bill, and that is the debate involving the Welfare Working Group and the Alternative Welfare Working Group. Those parties are debating the wider issues. The Alternative Welfare Working Group is coming up with recognition that the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill, as it used to be called—and I cannot remember what the bill is called now, but I know that it is a bill about sanctioning work testing—will not work. It simply will not improve conditions for people at the bottom of the heap.

We know that the bill will not work because we know that the disabled cannot get employment that is suitable for their disability. We have only to talk to the disability advocate groups. It is not rocket science. We have only to talk to the Disabled Persons Assembly, which is represented on the Alternative Welfare Working Group by Wendy Wicks. Members should ask Wendy why people with disabilities have so many challenges in finding appropriate work in the workplace, and why her position is not being heard by the other working party and is not reflected in this bill. Ask her that question. If we want to know about other vulnerable people, we should talk to the staff of Caritas, the Catholic social services organisation. They do not have a desire to attack the Government. They do not want to be seen to be supporting any political party. They do not have an axe to grind about poverty; they have a spiritual and moral commitment to look after the most vulnerable. So perhaps their voices, alongside beneficiaries’ voices, might be worth hearing, as well.

I stand here proudly to acknowledge my former colleague Sue Bradford, who has given most of her life to this issue, and who is on the Alternative Welfare Working Group. Her voice should be heard by the other working group, and be reflected in this bill. But we are not hearing the voice of experience; we are hearing the voice of ideology.

It is random to start talking about work testing people when work testing is a failed experiment that other countries such as Australia are moving away from not because of their moral and spiritual commitment to the poor but because it simply has not reduced the number of people on benefits. If we want to be pragmatic about this, we have to look at what actually works to reduce the number of beneficiaries. If we are about cutting costs, we should be pragmatic, look at what does not work, and not reintroduce it into Aotearoa New Zealand when Australia is walking away from it. It is not a logical process to be following. We should look at the people on the Alternative Welfare Working Group and ask for the views of its members, such as the Rev. Muru Walters, who is tangata whenua and is representing his Church. None of those people are speaking lightly, out of some sectarian desire to attack the Government’s position. They are doing it because they are very concerned that the most vulnerable people will be retraumatised.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) Link to this

Like many members I was listening to this debate in my office, and I felt compelled to come down and take a call after hearing National member after National member decry the fact that they have been misunderstood on the Social Assistance (New Work Tests, Incentives, and Obligations) Amendment Bill. Well, I understood what the Hon Paula Bennett and the Rt Hon John Key meant when they said this bill was meant to give beneficiaries “a kick in the pants”. I understood them very well, and what National members do not like is that we have called this bill what it is. We have called a dog whistle a dog whistle, because that is all that this legislation is. This legislation will not do anything to create jobs or help beneficiaries to get back into work.

The only reason that this legislation was introduced was that the Government was feeling the pressure and thought it would trot out the old favourite of beneficiary bashing. It has worked well for National in the past, it has deflected attention in the past, and the Government was sure it would work again, so Government members came out and said they would give beneficiaries a kick up the backside. But do members know what? New Zealanders did not respond in the way that the Government had hoped they would, because New Zealanders know that there are no jobs out there. They can see the unfairness of the Government’s saying to people who want to work and who are on a benefit that it will punish them for the fact that it has done nothing to stop the increasing trend in unemployment.

In fact, the issue goes further than that, because if we are really serious about getting people off a benefit and back into work, we would look at all the impediments that beneficiaries face. We all see those people coming through our offices all the time—people who desperately want to work, but who cannot. Sure, there will be a couple of bad apples; there have been a couple of bad apples in this place, as well. Not every situation is perfect, and not everyone will be perfect. But the overwhelming majority of people whom I see coming through my office are desperate, and they want to work. Interestingly enough, they cannot get in to see their own MP, so maybe the reason that the National Government is so detached from reality on this issue is that it is not speaking to the people who are most affected by unemployment and who want to get into work the most.

Instead of reducing the barriers to employment, the National Government has thrown up many, many more. It is hard for people to get back into work if they are solo parents and face childcare costs that they cannot afford. It is hard for them to get back into work if they cannot get their kids into early childhood education, yet what did this Government do? It cut the funding for early childhood education. How will that help beneficiaries to get back into work? The Government also cut the training incentive allowance, which was an allowance specifically designed to reduce the costs that stop beneficiaries from getting back into work. All the Government’s own reports told it that in terms of value for money, that policy was one of the best policies that existed—