Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14337] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I was just waiting to see whether any other member wanted to speak on employment. I really do appreciate members giving the Government an opportunity to speak on this topic. 
I remember when I first came into Parliament which was some time ago back in the 1990s. Soon after that we were entertained—or whatever the National Government thought it was doing at the time; it treated it almost like entertainment—by cuts in the benefits of people throughout this country by up to— 
Judith Collins 
: Did you put them back? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Yes we have actually. Incomes of people were cut by up to 30 percent. 
I tell people who are new in the House and maybe were not around politics at that time that that is where the food bank industry came from. It came from those cuts. I can remember the Christmas after the cuts had taken place. I had asked Mrs Shipley in the House what the impact would be of those cuts in people’s incomes—whether we would see poverty and what kinds of problems might emerge. She had said that she did not know and that the Government would wait and see. About 12 months later we saw that households no longer could put food on the table. I remember ringing Peter Gresham who was the Minister of Social Welfare at that time and a member for an area not far away from my Palmerston North constituency and saying to him that I had queues outside every church in my city that people were queuing all over the place because in the post-Christmas period they simply could not feed their kids. I remember he came home from his holiday and introduced changes to the benefit system because people simply could not live on the benefits that had been cut by the Shipley-led National Government at that time. 
One other thing that happened in 1992 was that unemployment hit 11.9 percent under a National Government. That meant that there were unemployment rates of 30 percent amongst Pacific Island people and we had unemployment rates of plus 30 percent amongst Maori people. We had entire communities of people around this country where no one had paid employment under the National Government. So when we look at employment and unemployment today I want to say thank you to the National Opposition for giving this Government’s members an opportunity to say that we are very pleased that in 1999 the people of this country put us into Government; that we now have the fourth-lowest rate of unemployment in the developed world at 4.3 percent; and that more people are gainfully employed in this country as we sit here today than ever in the history of this country. More people are going out every day earning an income and taking it home and being able to put food on the table. They have a future for themselves because we now have more people in gainful employment than ever in the history of this country. 
 National members say we need to do something about the number of sickness and invalids benefits and I know that they want us to do that because they could not do anything. There was an 84 percent increase in the number of invalids benefits during the 1990s—84 percent—and from memory an around 65 percent increase in the number of sickness benefits during that time. But they point to the one little window when there was a change. That one little window was when Mr Sowry and Mr McCardle decided they would abolish the sickness benefit—there was to be no sickness any more; people could not get sick under the National Government—and put all those people on the community wage. In other words they blurred the figures for those 2 years because they amalgamated a range of benefits under the umbrella of the community wage. 
National members now come into the Chamber and say: “Let’s compare the period when we abolished the sickness benefit with the sickness benefit situation now.” Nobody except Dr Newman would accept that kind of shell game because good public policy is about comparing an apple with an apple so that one can make the difference and say one is improving things. The National Government abolished the sickness benefit for a couple of years before we changed it back to being a sickness benefit because we do acknowledge that people get conditions or diseases that mean they cannot go to work that mean they are out of work for a short period of time. That is what a sickness benefit is for so we have put it back in place. But to compare the period now with the period when there was no sickness benefit is an extraordinary piece of charlatanism in terms of trying to say: “Well we did one thing and you’re doing another.” Let us compare apples with apples. 
Under that Government the number of sickness and invalids benefits went through the roof and it had not one single policy that would change it. Do we? Yes we do. We have a change that means that in April this year against the backdrop of a very positive employment and unemployment situation we introduced radical new policies around the sickness benefit and the invalids benefit. They are the kinds of policies that people right throughout the OECD are following closely because we do better than they do. We have better policies than they do so they are following us. New Zealand is once again getting back into a position thankfully of being a leader in social policy rather than having no social policy which is what we had under the National Government. Once again we are leaders in this policy and we will try to address these problems. 
The last point I want to make is this. If people around this country are listening to this debate—and I am sure there are many thousands riveted to what we have been saying here this afternoon—they can compare these two policies. We are interested in ensuring that people are treated fairly when they are sick or have a disability. We will treat them fairly. We will ensure that where it is possible they will get an operation they will get treatment for their condition we will train them we will support them in the workplace we will fund the transition to work and we will be extraordinarily positive in opening security and opportunity for those people. That is what we will do. What would a National Government do? It might abolish the sickness benefit again it might introduce time-limited benefits and it might tell people that it will introduce work-capacity testing again of the kind that was a disaster for people with mental health problems in the late 1990s. We have not heard one single idea from these people that they had not already tried in the 1990s and those ideas caused them to lose heavily the election in 1999. People were sick of the mean-spirited hopeless misguided policies that the National Government introduced in the 1990s. People are now looking at more people being employed than ever the lowest unemployment rate we have had in 20 years optimistic communities all over the country looking for more and a fair and just Government that is now beginning to do things about the sickness benefit and the invalids benefit. 
I have one last point to make. Dr Newman said on the radio today that she would provide me with individual cases of doctors who have been browbeaten by a Work and Income person. I have the senior people from Work and Income and the Ministry of Social Development sitting behind me now and they are anxious to hear about such a case. We have not heard of one single case yet. Dr Newman promised me today on National Radio on  
Morning Report 
 to provide individual cases. We are eager to hear of those cases. I say to Katherine Rich and Mrs Collins over there that we are eager to hear from them too. If we have individual cases of doctors who are being browbeaten to the extent that they break their ethical position and give medical judgments that do not have a sound basis because they feel threatened by one of our clients at their clinics—if that sort of scenario is playing out if there are individual cases of doctors around this country having to do unethical things or to make judgments that are not soundly medically based because they feel threatened—we want to know about them. 
I make this invitation now and I extend it to tomorrow. If we can hear of those cases we will support those doctors to make ethically and medically sound judgments on the people who are in front of them because what do we want in terms of Work and Income? We want one thing. We want those doctors to tell us whether that person is sick within the terms of that benefit disabled within the terms of that benefit or fit to be a job seeker under the terms of the unemployment benefit. That is what we want. We have no policy for anything else other than that. If there are individual circumstances that Ms Rich or Dr Newman knows about we are eager and waiting to hear of them. We want to support those doctors to be able to do the right thing. We look forward to hearing of those cases because we have not heard of them yet. 
Vote agreed to.