5. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) Link to this
to the Prime Minister
In light of his statement “I have spoken previously of my concerns about a growing underclass, and vulnerable children are at the heart of that issue”, what specific improvements has his Government made to address both the underclass and vulnerable children in New Zealand?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) Link to this
This Government has supported lower-income families and vulnerable children through a difficult economic time by maintaining benefits and income support payments, including Working for Families, and through additional assistance, such as the ReStart package and the 9-day fortnight job support scheme. The Government is also soon to increase the minimum wage from $12.75 an hour to $13 an hour. It has invested $125 million in the upgrade of State housing. It has seen 47,000 homes retrofitted for low-income New Zealanders. It has increased the number of under-sixes who are getting free access to doctors. It has increased significantly the number of infants who are being immunised. We have undertaken a range of other initiatives.
Is he aware that 30,000 more children are now living in severe hardship since he became the Prime Minister; and if his policies are so successful, why are more children worse off now than when he visited McGehan Close before the last election to highlight what he called the underclass in New Zealand?
It depends on how we define that; a lot of different measures are used. But what is true is that more people are on a benefit in the last couple of years, and that reflects the fact that we have been in a global recession. Those who have the lowest levels of skills are likely to be laid off first, and we have seen that being consistently applied around the world.
When he said he had the concerns of the underclass at heart, did he imagine that the number of people on all benefits would go up by almost 100,000 since 2008—as released in official statistics just a few moments ago—despite his so-called improvements?
What I did have concern about was the fact that so many New Zealanders find themselves in a position where they are living on a low income, and it is quite clear that we need to make significant changes to help those people. One of the ways to do that, of course, is to allow people to transition off welfare and into work, and the Government will be addressing that issue in the next few months.
Hon Jim AndertonWhen the Prime Minister said in his speech to the House yesterday that a society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, how would he judge the actions of his own Government in cutting by 30 percent this year the funding for conductive education programmes and the removal of all funding by 2014, when by any measurement the seriously disabled and fragile children who are so badly affected by that are clearly amongst New Zealand’s most vulnerable citizens?
I am advised, in terms of that programme, that only a group of children got that funding. But overall, we have increased significantly the amount of money spent on education in that area.
When he said he had done “as good a job as we can” for low-income families, did he at any time consider giving up his or his mates’ $1,000 a week tax cut, to ensure that the children from the so-called underclass that he mentioned in his speech could have just a little bit more?
I am struggling with where the member gets a $1,000 a week tax cut from, because, without going into too fine a point, the last time I looked at the figure from the Remuneration Authority, I saw the Prime Minister of New Zealand earns $400,000 a year. The difference between the top personal tax rate, which was 38c in the dollar, and the new rate of 33c in the dollar is 5 percent, and 5 percent of $330,000 is about 15 grand.
What responsibility does the Prime Minister take for the ever-widening gap between those at the top of the income scales in New Zealand and those at the bottom, with all the associated health, education, housing, employment, and social problems that are attendant on those situations, given that he said he believes that our society should be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable citizens?
There is always a debatable issue about that gap, and it is quite subjective. But I would say that one can go and look at the range of things that the Government has been doing, and I listed before a whole range of them that are helping lower-income New Zealanders. I also make the point that if we look at the advice from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research about the 90-day trial period, which is something that I know members opposite are vehemently opposed to, we see that measure is likely to have created 13,000 jobs.