Hutchison Paul: Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:10856] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I rise to take this opportunity to speak on this Social Assistance (Debt Prevention Minimisation) Amendment Bill and it does seem a little bit premature for Mr Russell Fairbrother to be saying that it is a very elegant bill that does not need much work done on it and that the infrastructure is tight and resilient. The member is predicting that everything will go well. I am suggesting that under this Labour Government this bill and the administration of it is very unlikely to go as well as he suggests. 
The general policy statement in the explanatory note of the bill states: “This bill is intended to enable the Ministry of Social Development to prevent and recover debts and to detect more readily misuse of the social security student allowance and student loan systems by broadening data matching provisions.” That is the reason the National Party is supporting the bill. But as my colleague Judith Collins said the question must be asked as to why it has taken 7 to 8 years to the dying days of a Labour Government before this Government is finally getting around to reducing waste and overspending. Why has it taken so long and taken until its dying days before it is putting in some legislation to reduce wasteful spending? 
We have to look at student allowances and loans—which are substantial; they are worth about $5 billion—to recognise that over the last 7 years Labour has wasted a huge amount of money. It has not necessarily been in the area of loans and allowances but certainly in the area of the incessant reforms that the Government has carried out in the tertiary education system. We have estimated that Steve Maharey has spent something like $419 million on reforms that have got nowhere and now we are seeing Dr Cullen about to start on another set of reforms that will probably cost a huge amount of money and will also bring us nowhere. 
But that is only one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is the huge amount of money that the Government has wasted on soft courses—homeopathy for pets twilight golf and all the rest. It was hundreds of millions of dollars. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Come back to the bill. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: The member is asking me to get back to the bill and that is exactly what I will do. The regulatory impact statement in the explanatory note states: “The most significant change proposed is an amendment to the Social Security Act 1964 to override section 103(1) of the Privacy Act 1993 which will allow MSD to suspend benefit payments immediately in circumstances where the match has detected that a recipient of a benefit is in prison thereby significantly reducing overpayments. This proposal carries some risks including the low risk of a beneficiary being incorrectly identified as being in prison however strategies will be put in place to minimise and mitigate such impacts.” 
This is one area where we have to make sure we can trust this Labour Government to ensure this does happen because I note an article published in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 when the Government announced that this bill would come before Parliament on 18 July. It stated that it will be harder for people with benefit debts to evade repayment: “However the provisions mean people may be wrongly identified and have their benefits cut off without warning.” The article points out that there has been a low percentage of cases where that happens but we all know the dreadful consequences for beneficiaries when that happens. The article stated: “A spokeswoman for the Minister of Social Development David Benson-Pope”—he is not about any more; I think it is Minister Maharey who has taken over but we will not go into that—“said work was underway to improve the accuracy of the matching.” I ask why Minister Maharey did not say something during his tenure that could then have been taken over by Mr Benson-Pope. It is almost certainly because Minister Maharey was off preparing his curriculum vitae for Massey University but he did not concentrate on getting rid of waste. 
The spokesperson for the Minister of Social Development stated: “… benefits mistakenly cut off could be reconnected immediately and paid overnight. Work and Income could also pay for emergency costs such as food or charges for unpaid rent.” That is where I am very concerned about whether the Labour Government can indeed live up to what it is saying. 
 We have heard Russell Fairbrother go on to say how wonderful this computer system will be and that the infrastructure will be resilient and excellent—and we all know that computer systems fail. We also know that human failure—and human failure of the Labour Government—is one aspect that has been particularly prevalent over the last 7 years. 
Just today I was talking to one of my constituents who wrote me a letter only in June saying that back in January of this year she decided that because of certain incentives she would come off the domestic purposes benefit. Indeed she had been running a small website design business and she decided that she would try to make a go of it. She had calculated that with a $60-a-week in-work payment etc. she would build up the business and start to move ahead. Then she said this was when things started to go drastically wrong. Time and time again she contacted the Labour Government’s social agencies and time and time again she was let down. In her final sentence she says that she is now asking me to tell her who will look after her rights and the rights of her children because this Labour Government certainly is not. That is why we have just got to be so careful. The aims of this bill are fine but we have to ensure that the details are adhered to.