Sepuloni CarmelHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Thank you Madam Speaker and can I start by congratulating you on your appointment as Deputy Speaker of the House. I was just saying to colleagues over here how strange it feels to be standing up and saying this speech as you the Deputy Speaker are the former Minister of things I will be talking about. But anyway.Can I also acknowledge the former speaker Amy Adams for the work that she did in the previous Government as a Minister. I think she was a very hard-working Minister and I do want to acknowledge that. She did take up a large amount of her time in her speech talking about her concerns with regard to our ability to handle the financial responsibilities of being in Government. I do want to remind that member Amy Adams that actually when Labour were last in Government for nine years we ran nine surpluses; when her Government was in Government for nine years they got one. So Amy Adams please don't be concerned about our ability to be able to manage our financial obligations because I have every confidence that this side of the House is up for that Amy Adams member of Parliament.I do want to start by saying that I stand here both proud and humbled to be part of this 52nd New Zealand Government—proud because the New Zealand people have backed this team to deliver much needed overdue change in this country and humbled because my colleagues and I understand the responsibility that we are undertaking. We are clear on the job that needs doing and my colleagues and I have the energy the courage and the determination to make that happen. Tangible concrete change is what we will deliver particularly in the way we support the most vulnerable amongst us. I think the Prime Minister made it very clear with regards to her speech about that being an absolute priority for this Government.For too long Government has treated those asking for help as liabilities and a cost to the State. We saw that with the previous Government using tools like predictive risk modelling to determine the long-term potential cost to the State of individuals and their families. We saw their intention to shift away from the decile model in schools which I'm not saying is perfect towards a model that would determine the risk of the students that were at the school. My concern at the time was really that that Government had no understanding of the impact that that negative stigma would have on those students and those people that they were purporting to be wanting to help.As the Prime Minister has stressed today New Zealand needs to measure success in new ways. Reducing the money spent on benefits was considered the measure of success by the previous Government. They thought by just getting people off benefits that New Zealand would be better off but they had no regard for whether or not those people or their families were in fact better off. We believe that simply pursuing an off-benefit approach is not sufficient—that it is simply out of sight and out of mind particularly given the fact that that Government wasn't measuring the outcomes of what happened to people when they did go off benefits. Were they in fact employed? Well we didn't often know whether that was the case.As far as we're concerned the concept of social investment—the concept of social investment—is not bad but the way that that Government decided to roll out their social investment approach was incredibly problematic in our view. It ran in contrast to what we see social investment being in European countries that run it where it is successful. Real social investment as far as this Government is concerned is about investing in people and that was the very important factor that was missing from the previous National Government's approach. We see it as ensuring that when people leave the benefit they are better placed to go into secure work. We see the need to ensure that they are better placed to increase their earning capacity and that they are better placed to support their families.There was a very important component to that side of the House's social investment approach and that was the complete lack of investment in upskilling and training. It was all about pushing people out into the next minimum wage job and they weren't necessarily going to be better off.We want to look at the social investment approach. We want to look at whether or not our spending is making a positive difference to the lives of people on welfare and the children and others they care for. We want to know that Work and Income is helping to support people into sustainable employment and for many people that will mean the first step actually being to be placed or supported into meaningful upskilling and training. We want to know that the work they go into is secure is well-paid and is sustainable. We want to know that their mental health is being taken care of. We want to know that they're able to better look after their families. We want to know that the social and economic gains from our interventions are seen within the well-being of these individuals and their families. Measuring disadvantaged people's well-being rather than measuring them by the hurdles they face and how that well-being can be enhanced by Government interventions must become the central focus of a reoriented social investment approach. I had those concerns about the focus on risk factors and want to see more of a focus on resilience factors. What does enable people to get through those hard times? All of us are concerned that we are spending money in the right place. So there are of course fiscal concerns for any Government but we also want an overriding concern to be about the well-being of these families and how we measure that as well.Focusing on people's potential can have a long-lasting effect. We want to change the focus of the benefit system from being a punitive harsh system to navigate to one that concentrates on upskilling and training people and ensuring that they are better off. Currently we know that the number of people leaving the benefit to study to improve themselves has dropped every year for the past four years. Why is that? What in the system we've inherited has resulted in more and more people not believing that study and training is a viable option for them? This is just one of the questions that I'll be asking.The opportunity to train to study is a major issue for the future of the country as we cry out for skilled workers and we will turn this around. This came up in our Future of Work programme particularly the chapter that I worked on with Minister Lees-Galloway on the security of work and income. We need to focus on this particularly for people that find themselves in times of unemployment.We do need to get our priorities right. Fewer people have been leaving a benefit to take up training and study than those who go into prison. It's not good enough. And I have to say that it was concerning with the former Government that some of their initial actions showed how opposed they are or were to this approach. They cut the training incentive allowance as one of their first actions stopping sole parents from being able to access study support or financial support to be able to study and they cut access to adult community education.Now both of those things are so important not just for helping the individual to get ahead to be able to get into more meaningful employment and better-paid employment but also because all the research shows us about the importance of particularly the mother role-modelling educational achievement to her children. Why did that party when they were in Government make the decision to do that? It was a silly decision.I am concerned that we don't know where the majority of people leaving a benefit end up whether they are in a better position and whether they are thriving. I am concerned that some people are making dangerous choices placing themselves in hardship just to avoid having to deal with a benefit system that has been designed to make people battle for help. The feedback that I have been getting over the last year or two has been from social services that they too are concerned that there are a growing number of families who are not accessing any income from work and not accessing support from welfare.It was made difficult deliberately by the National Government and it meant that we ended up with an increased amount of poverty in this country and more and more children living in poverty. We will be looking to mend the welfare safety net. That is a commitment from this side of the House. We will be looking to repackage what was a good concept but was flawed in its roll-out and that was the social investment approach. We will be looking to make some major changes over the next three years and moving forward. We are excited about that prospect.