Ardern Jacinda: Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill — Second Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13082] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I acknowledge up front that for as long as I can remember and even before I was a member of this House New Zealand has been very poor at having fair reasonable and rational discussions about our benefit system. Too quickly we tend to descend into stereotypes wedge politics and discussions that can be interpreted as being no more than categorising the worthy and unworthy poor. I feel that all those debates are to the detriment of all of us but in particular to the children whose families are dependent on the State in some form. I am saddened to say that in lots of ways I do not think we have improved if this debate has been anything to go by. 
I have heard a lot of generalisations and assumptions during this debate. But I want to start from a principle that was mentioned by one of my colleagues the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. It is the simple premise that Kiwis want to work. Stemming from that premise come a lot of the obligations we have both as Opposition members and as Government members. 
If this bill were genuinely about getting Kiwis into work—which members on this side of the House believe all Kiwis wish to do—then it is our job to do three things. Firstly we must make sure we do all we can to use the levers of the State to create real sustainable jobs. That means doing all that we can whether it be working with business or looking at our monetary policy. We must do absolutely everything we can to create jobs. I have not seen enough of that from the other side of the House. 
The second duty we have is to make sure Kiwis have the right skills for those jobs. That is why the previous Labour Government looked very closely at creating a comprehensive skills strategy to make sure that we were meeting the demands of the business sector and of the new emerging economy and to make sure we had invested in those areas that were providing skills training for Kiwis particularly those who were leaving school without the necessary education and background to get into work in the first place. That is our second duty. 
Our third duty—and this is one that I think probably only this side of the House takes especially seriously—is making sure that once people are in jobs they have some basic rights while they are there but I perhaps digress. Nothing in this bill that I have seen focuses on those three elements those three premises those three criteria that we should be focusing on if we all do believe that Kiwis want to work. 
I want to reflect on the context in which this bill now finds itself. We have of course new information before us that tells us where unemployment is at in New Zealand and I think it is indicative of the fact that we have the wrong focus with this bill. Unemployment is up to 6.8 percent and we have heard discussion around that but I want to focus in particular on the fact that youth unemployment continues to grow. 
We have seen a slight decline of half a percent in unemployment for 15 to 19-year-olds and I point that out in particular for Sir Roger Douglas who still seems hell-bent on believing that these young people are not getting into work because of how much they are paid. I do not believe that is true. The situation for 20 to 24-year-olds is much worse. Since the last quarterly survey unemployment numbers have gone up by 2.6 percent and now sit at 13.7 percent. That is a total of 68200 young people who are not in work and the number of young people not in educational training is higher. The Government claims it has a plan and apparently this bill forms some part of it. I will go on to have a little bit of a discussion as to why I do not feel that that is the case. 
The Government also claimed that the Job Ops package would assist with the escalating unemployment numbers. But there are three problems with that package as it stands and they relate to this bill to some degree. The initiatives in the Job Ops package tended to focus primarily on young people who are already on a benefit. We know that anyone who is under the age of 18— 
Hon Member 
: Not true. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: By and large it did. That was how it identified the young people it needed to work with. It is an easy criterion to use. That is how the Government has interaction with young people who are not in work. It is perfectly understandable. But there is very little opportunity to find the young people who are under 18 years of age are not in education or employment and are not accessing a benefit because they are not eligible. These initiatives were crafted primarily for the ones who are easy to find. That is an area we need to work harder on. 
Also unfortunately anecdotally I have heard evidence that young people are being turned away more and more from the unemployment benefit. Some are being told they will be unable to access it unless they go on a Limited Service Volunteers course which is often held far away from their home. Instead they are staying where they are not accessing any support and still struggling to find work. Recently I heard from the Auckland City Mission that it is seeing an increasing number of young men in the under-24 age bracket who are not on a benefit but do not have work and are seeking food parcels in the Auckland City area. 
We also need to keep in mind that the whole package the Government produced was meant to be targeted at those whom the Government considered to be unskilled. One challenge I wish to throw to the Government is this: if it identifies a young person who is unskilled what is it doing to upskill that young person instead of just putting him or her into work? We have seen some demonstration of that through the Job Ops initiative. I have heard of people who have been unable to stay in those jobs and have been released from them. There is not enough survey work to tell us why that is but I would wager that it is because they never had the skills for the job in the first place. We would be much better off if we were replacing this bill with something that focused on that issue. 
I want to go through the main provisions of the bill and just touch on some of the individual challenges that we have been posing against each of them but I want the House to keep in mind the premise that I outlined at the beginning—that is Kiwis want to work. 
The first provision in the bill requires unemployment beneficiaries to reapply for their benefit every 12 months and undertake a comprehensive work assessment at that time. Again I hark back to the fact that if people are unskilled when they go on to the unemployment benefit and if the Government’s sole focus is on continually work-testing them to see that they are trying to get into a job where is the focus on upskilling those individuals to get them into work? We have seen the Government cap numbers for tertiary education so rather than assisting the Government is in fact making it worse. A work assessment does nothing to upskill an individual. 
The second provision is the introduction of a part-time work test for solo parents on the domestic purposes benefit once their youngest child turns 6 years old. My colleague Rajen Prasad did a really good job of outlining some of the challenges in relation to that provision as have some of my other colleagues. I do not feel the need to traverse that one again. 
Thirdly the bill introduces a part-time test for people on the sickness benefit who are assessed as being able to work part-time. I have to say that this particular provision does not sit with the reality of what any MPs working in their electorates—whether they are list or constituency MPs—will be seeing coming through their front doors. Any MPs worth their salt who are listening to people will know the reality. Many members will be listening to those who are on the invalids benefit and are facing the consistent threat of being moved on to the sickness benefit. Members will also be listening to people on a sickness benefit who are being work tested. 
I am seeing some extraordinary recommendations coming out of Work and Income. I have seen a woman with a fused wrist unable to lift her hand without severe pain being told in a work assessment that she should stack shelves for a job. I have seen much worse than that as well. I have seen individuals with severe brain injuries—in some cases individuals who have had brain injuries for 6 to 10 years—who have suddenly been told that somehow their situation has changed dramatically and that they should be working an extraordinary number of hours. Some of the assessments I have seen go beyond what would be considered reasonable by any individual and now we are entering into a phase where we already are seeing this happening. 
I wager we will see much much worse as a result of this bill. Again it flies in the face of the premise that Kiwis who are able to work want to work. These provisions do nothing to assist them into work. If these provisions are going to create jobs then I challenge the Government to tell me how and how many. The fact remains that we cannot sanction someone into a job that does not exist. People are losing their jobs because factories are closing down and unskilled work is decreasing in this country and this bill will do nothing to assist those people into jobs that do not exist.