Fenton Darien: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8918. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I will not say it is a pleasure to follow that member Melissa Lee because her formula her solution to the lack of jobs in New Zealand seems to be to send them all down to the farm or perhaps even up the chimney. Perhaps that is what that member thinks we should be doing with this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. But this bill is not about you Melissa Lee. This bill is about the people I talk to—that we all talk to—on a regular basis. 
I want to talk about one woman in particular and what she goes through. She lost her job last March. She spends 3 or 4 days a week working at looking for work: filling in forms surfing the internet—and she is lucky that she has got a computer at home because so many people do not have computers at home; they cannot afford it—and going through pointless Work and Income seminars and training. They are pointless when as we have already heard many of the people applying for jobs looking for work are already trained and already have skills. She waits on the phone to talk to her work broker. Can you imagine anything less dignified than that? She is waiting on the phone to talk to someone a job broker who is apparently brokering a job for her and you would have to say has failed completely so far. 
Occasionally very occasionally she gets to go to a job interview. This woman has applied for something like 75 jobs and I think she has had three job interviews. She is absolutely devastated every time she applies for a job and gets a rejection slip. She is devastated every time she applies for a job and has to go back with her tail between her legs to Work and Income and say she did not get the job. She has to start over and over and over again. So I think that the members of the National Government have no idea about the realities of people looking for work in this country. They have no idea how absolutely undignified it is for people like this woman who is really committed to finding a job and would do anything to get a job and how humiliating it is for her. 
Then we heard from the Minister the other day that what happens in Work and Income now is that they have got this new tradition: they ring the bell every time someone gets a job. I know that this woman would be delighted if the bell were rung for her but it has not been since last March—March 2012. She is still looking for work and now there is this bill that threatens sanctions and other punitive measures as if life is not already difficult enough. 
 We know that there are no jobs. We know how difficult it is. We have heard the stories today about people lining up for minimum wage jobs. Sam Lotu-Iiga says there are 16000 jobs on SEEK. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: There are. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Has he had a look at any of them? 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: Yes. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Have you looked them up? 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: I have yes. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Ninety-day trial periods? Minimum wage jobs? Good jobs like that? 
The other thing that worries me about this bill is that the Government is looking to contract out work testing. This is a UK idea and we have seen the failure it has been. Just this week there was a story about a job centre that has been pinged for setting targets for benefit sanctions. So what we have in that job centre in the UK is league tables for staff not to prove that people are getting jobs so that they can ring the bell but to prove that they are sanctioning people. What the Government in the UK has had to do is launch an inquiry into this after it was forced to admit that job centres are setting targets and league tables to sanction benefit claimants. 
That is the path we go down with this bill with the contracting out of work testing. It is based on a false premise that there are jobs out there that unemployed people do not want to work and that there are enough jobs around if you really try. It is an ugly piece of legislation I have to say. It is an ugly piece of legislation. It is based on blaming those who have been unable to find work. It is putting pressure on those who are struggling. It is ignoring the problem that we have in this country of children growing up in poverty. Their parents want to work and want to do the right thing but are unable to. It says that—