Borrows Chester: Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill — First Reading 
Borrows Chester: Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9920] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 It is a terrible thing when a political party seeks to corral and maintain for itself a sector within society and refuses to let any other political party speak on that sector’s behalf. That is what the Labour Party has done with the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill. Labour members have decided that anyone who is unemployed or is receiving any benefit from the Government is theirs to speak for. The previous speaker Dr Rajen Prasad accused our Minister for Social Development and Employment of going feral which is absolutely ridiculous. He then accused her of bashing up on beneficiaries and corralling them. It is absolute rubbish. Nothing within the bill has anything whatsoever about being punitive. 
It reminds me very very strongly of what took me from being an ardent supporter of the Labour Party to becoming a paid-up member of the National Party. In 1987 the Labour Government’s Minister of Labour cut all those people off the Project Employment Programme scheme because it was too expensive to administrate. Many of the Labour members who were in Cabinet in those days occupy the front benches opposite today. They were there and they still have that dirt on their hands. They said that employment was just too good for those people. They paid them a benefit and got them to stay home. Those members did not want to see those people but they wanted their votes because they were theirs. Those people carried Labour’s brand but it did not actually give a stuff about them. That is what those members are saying today. They are saying exactly that. 
I remember my days as a sole-charge policeman in Patea after the closure of the Patea freezing works. The member who has just resumed his seat was talking about the young children involved and saying that this policy has nothing to do with them. It was those young people under the previous Labour administration who were relegated. They saw their parents in bed in the morning waking up having a cup of coffee and going back to bed. Because those parents did not have to tip out of bed in the morning and go to work those young children spent the next 10 years of their lives watching their parents do that. What did they aspire to? They aspired to get on to a benefit as quickly as they damn well could. 
For the Labour members sitting over there barrelling on the point is that it is fundamental to Labour Party policy to keep a large sector of the community poor and pissed off so that they never have to look at themselves for aspiration or growth within their communities. Other members ask where the jobs are. They forget that welfare policy in this country is about aspiration; it is not about relegation. Under the previous Government it was about relegation so that if a person was on a benefit that person should never ever be allowed to aspire to be anything other than low paid or on a benefit. Well National in Government has greater aspirations for those people who are the most vulnerable within our communities and are as the previous speaker said the least well educated and have the least prospects for the future. Let us give them something to aim for and let us encourage them. 
The Future Focus policy is a mixture of incentives and most of them are about encouragement. It is saying that if someone is on a benefit for 12 months he or she must reapply. If there are jobs people will be encouraged to make an application and we will take them there. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: They know that now. They can call them in any day they want to. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: The member says we have that now. Yes some of those provisions are there and under this legislation they are enhanced. That member’s party spent 9 years in Government and never took the massive leap of allowing someone on the domestic purposes benefit the chance to earn another measly $20 a week. Will the member vote against that? I look forward to hearing members opposite stand up and justify in their electorate offices week after week why they refused to allow people on those benefits to earn another $20 a week. Dr Prasad would withhold their benefits if they earned another $20 a week. 
Under National we are offering incentives; some of them are positive and some are negative. We remember for instance the huge growth in numbers of people moving from the unemployment benefit to the sickness benefit under the last Labour Government. If the 70000 people who went on to the sickness benefit under the last Labour Government were truly sick and truly incapable of work if every one of them had not been moved just because of a Government policy to remove people from the unemployment benefit and hide them on the sickness benefit we would have had an epidemic in this country so serious we would be on the international stage for having some malaise or sickness epidemic that was seeing thousands and thousands of people relegated into a situation where they could not work. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: The audit report disproves that and the member knows it. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: The member who has not shut up since I got on my feet protests that that is actually the case. I suggest that the malaise under the previous Government must have been verbal diarrhoea because it is leaking from every orifice. 
Paul Quinn 
: Ah! Peace at last. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: And we just love it. The fact is that this Government has been aspirational for New Zealand and it is putting in place a number of measures to make sure that we take this country somewhere. The previous member said it was dog-whistle politics. Well we hear dog-whistle politics when a Government is under pressure. I do not know how many papers those members opposite read but this Government is not under pressure. This Government is doing very nicely thank you. In fact the people who are under pressure in the political scene in New Zealand are those members opposite. That is where we hear the dog whistles coming from. That is where we hear for instance that the answer to our economic demise is to cut the salaries of the top 16 public servants. That is it. Dog-whistle politics is when the would-be Prime Minister puts his hand up and says a millionaire should be able to receive a welfare benefit. 
New Zealanders expect that there is a quid pro quo. New Zealanders accept that in a civilised society with a welfare system there is a quid pro quo. In other words they expect that there is a safety net. They expect that those who need assistance to better their circumstances will have that safety net. But New Zealanders have an expectation that people on a benefit will do certain things towards getting off that benefit. I wonder what those expectations might be. Well they are expected to look for work and make serious applications for the vacancies that exist. 
About now there should be a chorus from the Opposition asking where the jobs are. But I get back to the point that the Future Focus initiative is aspirational. The member who has just resumed his seat—actually it was quite a while ago—would say that people should never aspire to be in a better situation. He would say that we should have unemployment at a slightly inflated rate as it was a few months ago. He would say we should not have any initiative that will kick in until the job market is flooded with jobs and there is a labour shortage. Well National has a few ideas. National campaigned on those ideas and here is a party that is in Government because the country wants to realise the aspirations that National has for this great country. As long as those members sit on that side of the House screaming out that sort of diatribe they will always be there—and long may it be.