Collins Judith: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2458] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I will stick pretty much to the report itself because I think this is far too important a time to ignore—as the Hon Mark Burton did—the actual report and to talk instead about all sorts of extraneous matters. I want to draw the Committee’s attention to some of the issues raised by the Social Services Committee which is I must say a very happy committee. The members get along very well and we deal with the issues. 
The first issue is early intervention. Quite a lot has been said about early intervention programmes and I think most members in this House would agree that early intervention for children who are at risk is a very important concept that we all want to support. A problem with early intervention has always been getting any evidence as to what sort of early intervention works—evidence about when how and for which families; particularly for which children. The Social Services Committee has been very much concerning itself with the issue. We asked the Ministry of Social Development about the matter and we found that programmes such as Family Start Strengthening Families and Early Start have been funded. Of course Family Start was begun by National when it was last in Government and the Labour Government has since taken that programme over—and good on the Government for admitting that it is a good programme. But in addition to that it is very important that those programmes with large amounts of money flowing through them get to the people who need them. 
I have been very concerned to find out about a situation in Invercargill where a Family Start programme seems to have been hijacked and taken over by a small trust. The main people in the trust are all family members two of whom are very connected to and part of the Southland District Health Board. Why the Minister and the ministry should have been alerted to that situation was the fact that Barnardos lost the programme contract to that group. Most of us will have seen the work of Barnardos over the years and will have realised that that organisation has provided particularly good assistance in that area so that should have been a warning bell to the Minister and the ministry. Unfortunately that does not seem to have happened so we are asking questions about the $3.6 million of funding for that programme and what has happened to it. 
We are also interested in the debt management situation of beneficiaries. This Government—or any Government really—is not doing anyone any favours by allowing beneficiaries to run up huge amounts of debt that is owed to the very people who pay them the benefit. At the moment the debt owed to the Ministry of Social Development is $316.7 million. That money is owed by 186000 people or 49 percent of all beneficiaries. That is a shocking figure. It indicates to me and to other members of the committee that something is very wrong in the way that the debt situation is being administered because we are not getting a reduction in those figures despite all the programmes we have been told about. 
Another area of great concern is the numbers of people on the sickness benefit and invalids benefit and the fact that those numbers have continued to grow under this Government. In the last year 73813 working-age adults received an invalids benefit and 46067 received a sickness benefit. That is an awful lot of people who are too sick to work—and it is an awful lot of people who are too sick to work despite the large increases of funding that have gone into the health budget. Again that indicates something that is of real concern to me and to other members of the committee. 
I was very concerned to see that the ministry tried to excuse the increase simply by saying that the increase was not as much as it had been the year before. Frankly that answer is not good enough when there are jobs around and when large amounts of money are being spent on health. We expect that people are not necessarily getting sicker and that people are getting into work wherever it is available. There is a great deal of concern amongst some members of the committee myself included that the sickness benefit and invalids benefit have been used as a way of “parking” people who are not easily employed or who do not want to be employed. That is a real shame because some people are very genuinely on either the sickness benefit or the invalids benefit and it is very important that those people should not feel that their honesty is being compromised by the comments I am making. 
We also note that employment figures have certainly increased. That is a very good sign and we are very pleased about that. However we were somewhat concerned when the ministry assured those of us on the committee that as long as 2 percent growth is sustained in the economy the current system will remain viable. We were very concerned because we are not seeing much growth in the economy and we cannot go around congratulating ourselves on employment figures all the time if the unemployment rate suddenly starts to rise. Some of us are certainly concerned that this Government does not have adequate answers on that issue. 
What we have heard talked about as the great answer to beneficiary numbers is something called the single core benefit. Many of us on the committee have some grave doubts about just how that single core benefit will deliver a better system for beneficiaries—or in fact for the taxpayer because it is very much a mutual situation. We have said that we would like to know how the pilot programme has resulted in considerable reductions in the staff the resources and the time spent on the administration of the benefits system because that system was first wheeled out by the Hon Michael Cullen when he was Minister of Social Welfare back in 1989. It was to be the new cure-all and it was going to be wonderful—and I can see that some members of the Committee who were there at the time are nodding. Then it was wheeled out again I recall from memory in about 2000 by the Hon Steve Maharey and it was to be the wonderful new scheme. And it came out again last year after Don Brash’s Orewa speech on welfare. It popped up again but now it seems to be suddenly fading a weeny bit and some of us on the select committee feel that that may be because it is not quite the cure-all it was promoted to be. 
I will certainly ask more questions about the single core benefit and about what it is delivering because I think many of us would agree that it is great to get people who can work into work. But it is also very important that we do not just kid ourselves that if we shove together all the numbers of people on the unemployment benefit sickness benefit invalids benefit and domestic purposes benefit it will suddenly turn them all into one and hide growing increases in unemployment figures or in the number of those on the sickness benefit and invalids benefit. So we will be very interested to watch that situation. I see the select committee has in fact indicated that its members want to keep that system under very close review and I can promise the Committee of the whole House that we will be doing exactly that.