Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 17 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3598. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koutou e te Whare nui. I am going to take a very brief call. I have got just a couple of strands that I want to think about. One is the Welfare Working Group and the other is my own practical experience as a youth worker in the town of Thames and also as a beneficiary advocate in the town of Gisborne. In fact if you think about reality and experience we have all got different experiences to bring to this debate but one of my experiences was of working with young people who had been expelled from school because the school was culturally inappropriate for them. There were no jobs in the town for them. What is more the more beneficiary bashing there was in the town the less likely they were to get employed. So it is kind of interesting to think about the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill not just as a narrow set of clauses but in the context in which it operates. It is so hard for our young people to get respect when there is so much stigma associated with needing to be on a benefit at any time. 
The myth of welfare dependency needs to be put alongside the issue of wealth dependency. It is much harder to change people’s dependency on wealth than their dependency on welfare. Try to clean up the mess of the bankers on this planet who are actually dependent on having so much more money than everyone else try to get them away from their money and try to help them with their addiction to wealth—that indeed would be a wonderful challenge. The reality is that for many young people in this country where there are no jobs they need our support. So the debate becomes about how we give them support. Wraparound can be either a boa constrictor or a liberating experience. I do not think any of us are disputing that we need to be supporting our rangatahi because that is what is important but actually wraparound is just another slogan. The reality is that this is about relationships. The previous speaker Alfred Ngaro talked about a community development approach. As somebody who has worked in community development too—and I do not claim to know it all—what I do know is that if there is private profit driving it then it may distort the outcome for the most vulnerable people in it. 
What the Welfare Working Group did was adopt an English model around private training providers and it did not present the evidence to those of us who went to its presentations. There was one that I tried to go to but the group would not let me in because its members did not want to consult with people who disagreed with them. But what has happened in England with these private service providers is that they get paid bonuses for meeting targets. They have benefited and guess what? The statistics around youth unemployment have not changed. So if anyone is interested in evidence have a look at the private service provider model. Who benefits? Someone definitely does—those private contractors benefit. It is a model about the privatisation of welfare. 
You can use all these fabulous descriptions of wraparounds and responsiveness and all the other jargon but as somebody who has worked with rangatahi I know that they do not want our jargon and they do not want to be put on a card. They want to see us role model respect and human dignity for them and their human rights and provide them with real work. That does not come from controlling them nor does it come from creating a welfare dependency industry which those private contract providers will benefit from. Of course they love it because they are going to see the big NGO the big opportunity and the big money. But the genuine community development models are about quality relationships that have nothing to do with making a profit. 
What I fear for in taking some of the power away from the State is the accountability when things go wrong. Because how do you go back to a private contractor and demand a hearing? You cannot. A young person cannot go back to a private training provider as they currently can to Work and Income and say “Hey I need a review of decision.” How are they going to get a review of decision? These are people who do not have a lot of power. Talking about the independent youth benefit it has always been like getting through the eye of a needle to even get that benefit. Now we are talking about making it even more prescriptive. Well who is going to benefit? I can see who is going to benefit; it is the private training providers. But I do not see a benefit to young people in that approach. 
We need to look at what works and if you are going to talk about Otorohanga it is not about transporting models. It is about recognising that that community bought into the responsibility for the relationships with young people on a personal level. They did not privatise it. They did not say that welfare is a commodity that can be privatised so that people can meet targets and make money out of it. They said it is about our young people at the heart of our community. They made it real. Every community whether it is South Auckland or others—