Benson-Pope David: General Debate 
Benson-Pope David: General Debate 
[Volume:631;Page:3148] 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 Members will be interested to know that it is 8 months to the day since New Zealand went to the polls and elected this current Labour-led Government for its historic third term. Since then the community is not unsurprised that the achievements of the Government could not be more starkly defined than by comparison with the failings of the Opposition. National is certainly muddled and we are used to that. We hear some pretty befuddled comments in the House and we are now quietly finding out how much Mr Key and Dr Brash have been cuddling up to their strange religious Exclusive Brethren friends. 
What has the Government been doing in the meantime? Well it has been getting on with business. For example our active approach to social assistance with case managers increasingly focused on supporting people into sustainable work rather than simply processing benefits has yielded results that speak for themselves. There are now 2.1 million New Zealanders in work—the highest level of employment ever recorded. According to last week’s household labour force survey 313000 more New Zealanders are in jobs since this Government took office. That is approximately 135 additional New Zealanders in jobs each day every day since Labour came to office. That is 50000 extra New Zealanders in work each year under Labour. 
But wait there is more. Our labour force participation rate is at its highest ever at 68.5 percent. And we have the second-lowest unemployment rate in the OECD at 3.9 percent. The current OECD average is almost double ours at 6.3 percent. By comparison I mention those countries to which Dr Brash and his friends so often look for direction. The United States ranks 9th in the OECD with an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent; the UK is 10th with unemployment at 4.9 percent; and Australia is 11th with unemployment at 5 percent. I tell Dr Brash that maybe the grass is not so green over there after all. 
But wait there is even more. The number of New Zealanders receiving an unemployment benefit has fallen by 72.4 percent since we took office in 1999. The total number of beneficiaries has fallen by nearly 30 percent over the same period. The impact of these kinds of results on the lives of ordinary Kiwis should never be underestimated. When Labour took office in 1999 over 17 percent of the working-age population were on some kind of benefit. Today that figure is down to 11 percent. Likewise nearly 7 percent of our working-age population was receiving an unemployment benefit in 1999. Today the figure is 1.8 percent. All this means that the number of children living in benefit-dependent households has dropped by 20 percent. These are significant changes—significant for individuals for communities and for our country. 
I am really proud that these changes are being delivered by a Labour-led Government. Pride is something that Labour has. We are not ashamed to celebrate New Zealand’s sporting and cultural successes our creativity our unique heritage our cosmopolitan lifestyle our great outdoors or our ability to live largely at peace with each other in a multicultural society. That is why it grows so tiresome that all those people on the other side of the Chamber can do is criticise. But that seems to be the National Party way. To those members every initiative is flawed and every achievement is derisory. To them it is all downside. The grass is always greener somewhere else and almost always in Australia. I do not think many New Zealanders can recall in recent years or in their lifetime a political party or at least a political party’s leadership so willing to bag and put down their own country and their own countrymen and women. They take delight in every study that does not place New Zealand first and greater delight if they can paint New Zealand and New Zealanders as failures. 
Over the Christmas break we saw the unsavoury situation of the Leader of the Opposition slathering in hope of a recession. In truly bizarre style we saw Dr Brash standing in a hydro lake praying for a drought so that National might inflict power outages on our population this winter. In the last week alone that shrill crescendo of “life across the Tasman is better” has grown again. I say that if that is the way the National Party sees it and if Don Brash John Key Bill English and Gerry Brownlee would rather live in Australia then let us help them go. Several travel agents have sales on at the moment. I know that one-way tickets to Australia are going for $180 and I think that is a steal. I am happy to buy every member of the National Party caucus—every member—a one-way ticket to Oz. The only proviso is of course that they stay there.