Heatley Phil: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHeatley Phil: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12099. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei):I would just like to reiterate that one of the approaches that the public appreciated the most when we were going through that difficult recession in 2008 which started under the previous Labour Government you will recall was our management of it from a social welfare point of view. Rather than take the knife to welfare during that difficult 2 to 3-year period like some Governments did we maintained payments to welfare recipients and of course superannuation was untouched. We brought about a number of grants that saw some social services retained and maintained where otherwise they were struggling. We said at the time that that was all about taking the sharpest edges off the recession. So on the one hand across the world we had those who were slashing welfare and on the other hand we had other countries that were actually writing cheques and in some cases increasing welfare during that time. I do know that the Labour Party wanted to take thatpath and had it been in Government that is what it said it would have done. Labour would have written cheques from an income that the country simply did not have.That responsible management of the economy during that period where we made sure that we still protected the most vulnerable—that whole concept—remains today although I must say that we are concentrating much more on resolving some important issues. Two examples of that are where on one side of the ledger we are making sure that things are much easier for those on welfare in order to get them back into work and we are also putting up certain standards of responsibility for welfare recipients.Two examples where we are making things work sensibly and better for them include the microfinance support for people on low incomes. That is where we work in partnership with non-governmental organisations to look at alternative finance for those on low incomes. That provides low or no interest to people with unsustainably high debt who cannot access affordable credit. It will of course require them to build financial literacy. This leads to the second approach which is extra funding for budgeting services. The Government has put in an extra $1.5 million to support budgeting services. That is in addition to the $8.9 million to be provided this year and it is intended to relieve pressure on those essential budgeting services that help those on low incomes. But as I say that is one side of the ledger.The other is of course bringing in that whole personal responsibility that New Zealanders for over a decade have been looking for. They are saying: “Look welfare’s great. It’s there for a hand up during difficult times. We’re concerned that under the Labour Government though welfare ran away and that cheques earned by the taxpayer were too easily written out.” That is why we have got to focus now on people having to be work-ready. They cannot be on drugs. They cannot be the sort of Nandor Tanczos of the Green Party reflected in the general public where you can promote drug use support drug use be involved in those sorts of Green Party policies and still expect to get your benefit and where you cannot actually say you are available to work because your veins are so filled with drugs. So there will be no more of the drugs. If you are work-ready you cannot have drugs in your system. If you have got drugs in your system you cannot receive a benefit under those circumstances.Again we decided that if you are running away from the law and on a benefit well that is not on. We are not going to pay you to run. We are not going to pay for the petrol of the stolen car so you can run away from the coppers. We think that is sensible and of course New Zealanders support that. They are not so interested in some of the mad policies that the Labour Party is putting up to sort of out-green the Greens and out-loony the Greens. What we are doing is putting up sensible policies that Kiwis say to us are sensible. They are saying: “Hey someone on a benefit shouldn’t be full of drugs should they?”. We are saying: “Well no I suppose not.” They are saying: “Well they shouldn’t be running away from the coppers and we shouldn’t be funding them either.” We are saying: “Well no that’s quite right.” So we are doing what middle New Zealand expects us to do.There is that quid pro quo going on. But the major point here is that during—