Tolley Anne: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTolley Anne: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10724. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I want to take another call because I think again we need to put some facts on the table. A number of my colleagues have said that this Government has not been afraid to face the hard issues and I concur with that. We have not been afraid to face the hard issues. We have not been afraid to invest early in prevention and rehabilitation. We have been a brave Government that has done things that other Governments have not been prepared to do. I would have to say that we have not been afraid to admit that some things are not working.In fairness in last year’s Budget we recognised that there were too many children living in this country who were experiencing hardship. Despite the emotive rhetoric of the previous speaker Metiria Turei this National Government was the first Government in 43 years to raise the benefit for families—the first Government in 43 years. That is amazing for any Government to do. When Labour went right through the 2000s with all the money that it had surplus after surplus which it told us about how much did it put into the very poorest in this country? Absolutely zip. This National Government last month started paying $25 a week after tax to those families dependent on a benefit. And what is more we did not stop there. We said: “Aha but there are also families who are working on the lowest of incomes who also have children who are not experiencing the sort of New Zealand life we want for all New Zealand children.” and we increased their Working for Families payments as well.That is what this Government has done and last month that money started being paid out to those families. I have to say—I do not know about my colleagues and I certainly do not know about the Opposition—that I have had people in my electorate offices saying: “This has made an enormous difference to us. We hadn’t realised how much difference that extra $25 a week will make to us and to our children.” I come back to the fact that you cannot escape the difference it makes in people’s lives when you help them into independence so they are not reliant on the State for a benefit. What is more it makes a difference for their children. This Government has not been afraid to tackle the appalling record of Child Youth and Family in looking after the children who need State care. We know that we are in for a complete overhaul of that system.This Government has not been afraid to tackle the issue of the harm caused to women to children and to their communities that gangs impose. The Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections the Hon Judith Collins and I have announced a whole range of issues not just from a law enforcement point of view but as a social development hand as well. I have announced two community pilots where we are trying some stuff to see whether we can make a difference in the lives of mainly the families of gang members who feature too highly in all the deprivation statistics in all the family violence statistics in all the notifications to Child Youth and Family statistics and I have to say in all the statistics around arrests prosecutions and criminal sentences.I come back to the fact that I say that this Government has not been afraid to tackle some of those hard issues and accept that some of the tried and true things in the past are not working. They are simply not making a difference in people’s lives and we should stop doing them. We should try to experiment and try to find better ways of changing people’s lives with the taxpayers’ money that we are investing. This Government will continue to do that because we are determined to make a difference in the lives of those New Zealanders who rely on the Government to help them when something untoward happens to them.