King Annette: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
King Annette: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:13124] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill is being rushed through Parliament as a piece of political posturing. It is poll driven. It is populist. It is not based on policy that works. It is discriminatory it is judgmental and it is anti-children and anti-families. Those are the views of so many people up and down New Zealand. This Government has been told so over and over and over again at the Social Services Committee by social commentators by opinion leaders in opinion pieces in newspapers by researchers by academics and by Government agencies like the Human Rights Commission. They have said in one voice: “Dump this bill!”. They are telling the Government to dump this bill because it will not do what the Minister for Social Development and Employment said she wants it to do. It will not achieve what she set out to achieve. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: Who said that? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I can hear Dr Hutchison interjecting as I speak. He was not on the select committee so he did not hear the submissions most of which came from organisations that I know that Dr Hutchison would support and find very credible. They came to the select committee and said that this bill was wrong and that they opposed it. They said that it will not achieve what the Government said it will achieve. 
We ask why this bill is in the House now. What was the reason for the so-called Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill? What was the reason for it? The Minister has set up a very expensive—very expensive—working party to fund long-term solutions to what she calls dependency. When asked at the select committee what dependency was she could not give a definition. In fact she does not know what dependency is and she was unable to answer that question. 
Labour asks why there is a bill that sets out sanctions and a punitive approach to people on benefits when the Government also has a working party looking at how to solve long-term dependencies. It appears to us that many of the recommendations of the working party which is made up of a very narrow group of so-called experts on welfare will be very much in line with this bill. It is a bit like putting the cart before the horse. 
We think this bill is part of National’s propaganda machine. First of all National identifies the scapegoat. Who are the scapegoats out there to be beaten up on with special reports special reviews and special attention but beneficiaries? National is beating up on people who are invalids people who have been released from mental institutions and people who used to be in IHC homes. It is beating up on people who are sick or who are sole parents caring for children. Those people have become the scapegoats for the National Government in this bill. So first of all National identifies the scapegoats. 
Secondly it heaps lots of criticism on them. We need only to look at the comments from the Hon Judith Collins to know what National thinks of beneficiaries. She said National members are upset when they see people sit around all day watching Sky TV living off the taxpayers letting their children run riot and getting stoned. That was her view on beneficiaries; that was what she said about people who are trying to do their best to raise the most vulnerable children in New Zealand. She thinks beneficiaries sit around watching Sky TV and getting stoned. Well I do not agree with that this party does not agree with that and most New Zealanders do not believe that is what people who are on benefits do. So first of all National heaped criticism on them then it blamed them. 
The next thing National did was use bogus figures to stir up a bogey against beneficiaries. The biggest bogus figure we got was the $50 billion figure which was in the Minister’s working party group report. It said that beneficiaries will cost us $50 billion if they stay on benefits for their entire lives. Let me tell members that if Paula Rebstock was to have stayed in her Commerce Commission job for all her working life she would have cost the taxpayers $12 million! That is about as stupid as saying that beneficiaries will cost us $50 billion. John Armstrong said that in a very good column written by him. That figure is a bogus figure and it has been said to scare people who look at beneficiaries. 
This bill will not achieve what the Minister wants to achieve. First of all it was misnamed. It was not named correctly because one of the strongest early submissions we received was from the Legislation Advisory Committee which advises the Government on all matters to do with legislation. The committee said that this was not a good law and that naming a bill with a meaningless political title meant it meant nothing and that was a very bad track to go down. It said that the title should include the substance of the bill because people would have no idea what the bill was all about if it did not. Saying that the bill is future-focused does not describe what is in the bill. 
Members will note that I have lodged an amendment to clause 1 that gives much more realistic names for the bill. If members look at my amendment they will see that the bill could be called a number of things. It could also be called the “We’re Giving Them a Leg Up Bill” or the “We’re Backing Them Bill”. There are many things that we could call this bill that would go along with the slogans that the Minister constantly uses. The name of the bill was a misnomer. It was not the correct title for this bill. This bill is not about assisting people to get off benefits. It is punitive; it does not provide the tools to get people off benefits. 
We know and there was a very good example of it today that people will work given the opportunity. There were 150 jobs in a supermarket in Mount Roskill today. How many people applied for them? Over 2700 people. People do want to work. Look at the statistics. When we had full employment in New Zealand with unemployment at around 3.8 percent very few people were on benefits. We even had a drop in the number of people who were on the sole parent benefit because they want to work as well. They want to work in jobs that suit their child-caring arrangements and that suit their education. But what has this Government done? It has taken away the education assistance that made it possible for people to get ahead. It has taken away the very education assistance that the Minister herself had which gave her a university degree and which gave her a leg up the ladder. That assistance has been cut by this Government. This bill does not put back that sort of assistance. It does not provide help for beneficiaries to get ahead. We know they want to work given the right opportunities and the right environment. 
One of the most powerful submissions the Social Services Committee received came from the Human Rights Commission. It came from the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission who had done a focus on work project. This is evidence if the Minister would listen to it. She went out and surveyed 16 regions and 300 employers and she found that there was a total lack of jobs. Jobs are a critical component when one wants to get people off benefits and into work. She found that there were no jobs. She also found evidence of a lack of childcare. So people who are told by this bill that they are required to seek 15 hours of work when their last child is 6 will find that there are no jobs for them and that there is inadequate childcare and inadequate after-school care. Those children are the ones who will be at the bottom of the heap once again. They are the most vulnerable and the most in need of our help and their parents are the ones most in need of our assistance to get them into a position where they can return to the workforce. But this bill is about punishment punishment punishment! There is no pathway forward for unemployed people. 
I know that many of them do want to work and are struggling. They are struggling now and the Minister intends to make it tougher for them. Why would any Government want to do that? Its focus is wrong. This bill is not a future focus; this is a focus on political point-scoring and votes. A Government that really cared about beneficiaries and their children would be looking at providing support for them.