Doocey Matt: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDoocey Matt: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11578. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is an honour and a pleasure to rise in support of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. Can I just start off by pointing out some of the facts about some young people in New Zealand. We know when we look at the future liability of welfare dependency in New Zealand that 70 percent of those people on the benefit went on it before the age of 20. For those 18 and 19-year-olds who go on the jobseeker allowance the average time they will spend on that benefit is 13 years. So we know that this bill is much needed. We need to extend the entitlement and the provision to more young vulnerable people in New Zealand.It is not all that bad. We know that if those young people can get into jobs employment and training they will go on to be productive members of New Zealand. We know that in the jobseeker allowance space around 70 percent of young people are able to go on to employment education or training within 6 months. We need to capture what works well for some young people and support what is not working well for a smaller amount of young people.When we link this to the Budget last week—there was quite a big announcement around social investment. The Minister of Finance announced $652 million into the social investment package. Of that $61 million was specifically for this Youth Service package to get vulnerable young people into employment or into training giving them skills to go on and get employment and be productive members of New Zealand. This Government takes this very seriously with our Better Public Services target of reducing dependency on welfare by 25 percent and a future liability of over $13 billion to New Zealand taxpayers.Can I just take some time to not only talk about what this new service will look like but also touch on some of the value and impact of the submissions to the Social Services Committee and the amendments that the select committee made to this bill which I think make it a better bill. It is coming back from the first reading through the select committee process to its second reading a lot better for having been through that process. We know that this Youth Service will have very definable outcomes of reducing young people’s risk of long-term dependency. They will need to gain National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and go on to have better social outcomes—not only for themselves; a lot of these young people have children themselves.When we talk about these young people I think we have got to take a step back and appreciate how vulnerable these young people are and why it is that these wraparound youth services are required. They are intensive and they are active wraparound services because a lot of these young people are dealing with very complex and challenging issues. When the select committee looked at the cohort of young people in the Youth Service 38 percent of them had been victims of domestic violence 76 percent of them had been victims of emotional neglect 5 percent had been either homeless or victims of sexual abuse and most of them had disengaged from mainstream education. That is why we need to expand these services through this bill and give further entitlement for a greater population of young people to be able to access these intensive and active wraparound services because we know it works.When the Youth Service was reviewed four out of five had gone on to get into education training or full-time or part-time employment and research on the Youth Service showed that every dollar put in was returned through reducing future liability by $2.53. That is a great social investment: a dollar put in and future liability reduced by $2.53. Really what it did was it gave this group of vulnerable young New Zealanders hope that they were engaging in a framework of services in which people were listening to them understanding their needs and providing effective services that would allow them to go on and get the training and the education and they would be productive members of New Zealand society.I just want to touch on some of the amendments through the select committee process. We had 10 submissions; three of them were heard orally. One of the main themes that came out was the lack of transparency about talking to young people when they had been picked up on this risk assessment matrix and also about their referral into young people’s services. I think most of the committee felt it was not right to be referring young people without their knowledge. When you look at the great work the Hon Anne Tolley is doing around the Child Youth and Family review it is going to be children-centred young people - centred and that is exactly what this amendment to this bill will do. Now young people will have more involvement in their care which will lead to better outcomes. Ultimately these will be wraparound services and they will be young people - friendly.I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.