Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22013] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I like many people in the Chamber will miss Dr Muriel Newman when she goes because unlike the National Party members at least she consistently raises criticisms about the issues that matter most to ACT. I think the problem—as has occurred all the way through this debate—is that although Dr Newman has raised a lot of criticisms we have yet to hear a programme that New Zealanders really believe would be practical and useful in relation to the area of social welfare. That I guess is why ACT is polling at 1 percent—the criticisms may be there but the answers unfortunately are not. 
I want to go back to Moana Mackey’s comments before and to say that I am looking forward to the election campaign. I do not think that any of the candidates who are either in the Labour Party or in the parties that have supported the Government over the last 3 to 6 years will have any difficulty at all in any debate anywhere in the country when talking about the issue of welfare. Let me say why that is the case. If we look back to the 1990s we see that unemployment peaked at 11.9 percent across the whole of the population—11.9 percent. That was in 1992. The official Maori rate of unemployment was in the mid-20s under that Government. The Pacific Island rate was around 20 percent under that Government. Whole towns of people simply could not find a job. Whole towns of people lived in overcrowded conditions—people were unable to find a decent house. The list of things that were wrong went on and on. In 1995 one in three children in New Zealand lived in a household whose income was below the poverty line. That is the picture in a nutshell just using the headlines that the 1990s took us into. 
The 1990s were a time when the Government decided it should not invest in social issues should cut benefits and should demonise people who were on a benefit. If a person was on a benefit he or she was a bludger according to the previous National Government. It claimed beneficiaries were the problem not the fact that there were no jobs out there no decent housing and so on—it was the individual who was the problem. By the end of the 1990s not only was it possible to reel off figure after figure of what was essentially a social deficit but most people in the country who had any conscience at all had come to the belief that the Government’s policy was just unfair mean-spirited and bad and had decided that they would not tolerate having a Government that turned on the most vulnerable people in the country in that way. One of the major reasons National lost the election so comprehensively in 1999 was that it followed policies that made people feel that the Government was unfair when it came to the vulnerable people of this country. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Since then Mr Ardern may like to know the whole picture has changed. The experts at the  
New Zealand Herald 
 who write its editorials—and I do not know where they received their qualifications in social policy from—have told us that they do not want to hear measures of progress around social policy. Well I am really sorry to say that Labour does. We regard it as being essential to know that there is less poverty in the country. We regard it as being very important to be able to tell New Zealanders how well we are doing socially. In the 1990s the previous National Government could not and did not want to do that and the result was that those issues were ignored until they became hugely costly problems that had to be repaired over the last 6 years by this Government. We will have a social report. That report will tell us that New Zealand has improved on 16 of 22 measures which has made sure that we are now in the top half of the OECD and are improving on social well-being in this country. The OECD calls New Zealand a “jobs miracle”. 
If we take the benefit area having got that general picture of the hustings going we can say that 164000 New Zealanders were on the unemployment benefit when Labour came into power and that 50000 New Zealanders are on an unemployment benefit now. For the first time there has been a sustained drop in the number of people who receive the domestic purposes benefit. I want people on the domestic purposes benefit to go back to work and I say to members of the Committee that we have to do things that are practical if that is to happen. We have to provide childcare for example; otherwise people cannot go back to work. The Government has been putting childcare in place. For the first time we are seeing the number of people on the sickness benefit level off. We are now looking at the possibility of the number of people on the sickness benefit going down—but not by talking about it and not by saying that we should get tough on people who have serious illnesses and somehow make life hell for them. We can say that we now have good practical policies. In fact every single developed country in the world is looking at those policies because they can see that we unlike them are seeing a real difference in the number of people on the sickness benefit. We are also seeing for the first time ever a decline in the number of people who are coming on to the invalid’s benefit. We have policies that work in a humane and just way to get people off the benefit and into the mainstream of society again and earning a living which is where the Labour-Progressive Government wants them to be. That is what we want. 
When anybody in this House comes to a forum in his or her area that member will find candidates will stand up and say that the area was going backwards before this Government came into office. They will say it had a regional economy that was failing people were coming on to the benefit and people and businesses were leaving the area. The situation is exactly the opposite of that now. If anybody in the House wants to invite me I will welcome the opportunity to come and do an election forum in his or her electorate and I will talk about welfare with the people in that area. The National Party can put up its genius ideas about what it wants to do. We will talk about 6 years of practical humane just gains for the most vulnerable people in the communities of the MPs in this House. I look forward to that. Barbara Stewart can invite me to come to her area. I will be right there. Mr Craig McNair can ask me. I will be right there. I will come to Shane Ardern’s region in the King Country and we will have a good debate with the farmers there. We will talk about how everything is getting better. 
The last thing I want to say is that the ideas we have had from the National Party so far are things like the compulsory immunisation of children. I listened to Mrs Judith Collins the other day at a forum. Someone said that he or she understood National wanted to compulsorily immunise children and asked how it would do that. Mrs Collins said that National would just do it. The person asked how National would do that and what would happen if the parents said that they were not going to have their children immunised. Mrs Collins’ response was that compulsory immunisation had happened in America. The questioner asked what had been done in America so as to know how National would force parents to immunise their children. Mrs Collins’ response summarises the entire National Party campaign. She told the people at the forum not to worry that National would not do compulsory immunisation now and that it would figure that out when it got into power. I say to Mr Ardern that that is one of the other reasons why I am really looking forward to being in his electorate and debating his policies because the National Party cannot actually tell us how a single one of its policies will be implemented. The National Party is like Mrs Muriel Newman: it is full of complaints full of gripes and full of attacks on people who are vulnerable but it does not have a single workable idea to put before the people of this country. 
These estimates deserve the support of this Committee. In the social development area we have made a huge difference. I am enormously proud of the people in Work and Income and the Ministry of Social Development. I look forward to working with them again after the election.