7. Question No. 7—Social DevelopmentHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social DevelopmentQuestion No. 7—Social Development7. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: What is the total amount spent on her Keep New Zealand Working package announced on 28 April?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. The Keep New Zealand Working package announced a number of initiatives including a Keep New Zealand Working online recruitment platform; 35 new employment centres across the country; a Keep New Zealand Working fast-tracking service for those benefit applicants who need to re-engage quickly with the job market and support for those not on benefit; and quick upskilling solutions—for example the new free online community health course with New Zealand Qualifications Authority unit standards. All costs associated with this have been met using the ministry's operational budget. The cost of developing the Work and Income online recruitment tool was $244000. The ministry has also entered into a partnership with the health sector training provider MySkill to deliver free online training modules for people who want to upskill or retrain. The ministry has committed $160000 to support this online training initiative. Hon Louise Upston: Does she think she should have committed more than $400000 to Keep New Zealand Working in light of the thousands of job losses seen in New Zealand since that announcement? Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have made significant announcements in the House in respect to support for employment and upskilling and training. We announced as part of the Budget an additional $150 million to go towards Ministry for Social Development (MSD) employment services as well as an additional $250 million that will support MSD with recruiting the front-line staff that we will need at this time in respect to not only work-focused case managers and work-focused staff but also general case managers to support with the demand that we are expecting because of this unprecedented event. Hon Louise Upston: Does she think unemployed New Zealanders were misled when she announced 35 new employment centres as part of her Keep New Zealand Working package that according to written question No. 6603 were actually current MSD staff working out of current existing offices?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Due to the restrictions with regards to COVID-19 at level 4 and even level 3 we haven't been able to operate the face-to-face service that we would usually operate. Much of what we have had to do was online and over the phone. So the smart thing for us to do was to consolidate all of the employment-focused staff that we have into centres across the country to make sure that they were focused working collaboratively. On top of this investment this year with regard to the additional staff that we will be getting to support New Zealanders during this time I do need to reflect back to last year's Budget where fortunately we were also given funding for 263 additional front-line work-focused case managers that are certainly going to be very useful now. And that was on the back of a decline under the previous Government of work-focused case management in MSD offices. Hon Louise Upston: The 35 new employment centres that were part of her announcement—are they new or not? Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: They were a new way of us working and we have been very clear about that. It was important that we be innovative and think differently about how we provide our support and that is exactly what we were able to do. More New Zealanders are going to find themselves unemployed because of COVID-19 and so we have moved swiftly as a Government to put our resource towards employment upskilling and training and to think innovatively about how we work differently to ensure that we're providing support to New Zealanders during these difficult times. Hon Louise Upston: Why did she announce an employment service for those directly impacted by COVID-19 who are not on a main benefit when her written question answer yesterday says the ministry is still looking into how to do this? Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As part of the rapid response programme that we undertook before we went into lockdown level 3 and level 4 what we did was we had rapid response teams across the country who were not just working with New Zealanders who were already out of employment but also New Zealanders who were at risk of becoming unemployed. So at that point they were getting in there proactively to provide support to look at their options for alternative employment before they finished in those positions and needed to find work elsewhere.