Prasad Rajen: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12098. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):I will make just a few comments about social development. I think having now seen the Government operate its social development programme for about 5 years one gets the sense of what this Government is trying to do. It does not make for very good reading. It does not really give any confidence that indeed over time the approach this Government is taking for many of the vulnerable through its social development programme is going to achieve the kinds of things that it could achieve. In fact it will be left to another Government with a very different perspective on social development to make the kinds of changes that will put those children those vulnerable families and those vulnerable communities back on the pathway to growth and development. The reflection on the Government’s social development programme is a sad reflection.My prediction is that in the end although the Government uses the language of the underclass over time it will produce a bigger underclass. It will produce more people who will lead lives of quiet desperation. The language that the Government has used to justify its programme or to anchor its programme is the so-called investment approach. What has happened here is that it has taken those on benefits today worked out through some process the lifelong cost of that and said that that $17 billion is too much so it must now start to cut back. Well the Government came with an agenda of cutting the welfare State right from the beginning not to use the processes of the welfare State toactually make life more productive for our most vulnerable and make our communities stronger.What the Government has produced through that kind of ideology is a punitive approach. It is amazing. Every welfare reform programme that we have seen from this Government over 5 years has led to a lot of sadness on this side of the House. There was a great deal of glee and even high-fiving on the last one—“Here we are. We have destroyed the system that was designed to care for the most vulnerable.” That approach is punitive. Do Government members think about what is going to happen to those families who now cannot have access to those resources that they need but were taken away because somebody has calculated that you were not supposed to have another child when you had one child just over 5 years of age anyway? When that happens the Government is going to apply a whole series of punitive actions to destroy the ability of parents to be parents. There is an alternative approach.John Hayes: Tax and spend.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The question that Government members ought to be asking and could well ask Mr Hayes is what do we need to do to ensure our citizens are socially included in our society and they are socially included in their communities? What is it that excludes people from participating in meaningful lives? The social inclusion approach I say to members opposite would actually produce a different set of results. It would ask a different set of questions. It would not bank the problems of today in a bank that produces no interest and in fact creates a bigger mortgage so to speak down the track because that is what will happen. The welfare programmes are really moribund of ideas of change and they have not managed to really come up with a set of ideas with a set of principles that could produce the kind of society we could be producing.If we look at Child Youth and Family we know that the outcomes for vulnerable children are horrible. We have had the green paper we have had the white paper and so we have got this thing on a slow burner to somehow in 10 to 15 years achieve change. Six months 1 year 2 years 3 years today is a lifetime for these young children and yet the social development programmes of this Government actually freeze them in that time frame. When their brain development is taking place at a rate of knots the very things that create those synaptic connections in their brains are not being provided. So Child Youth and Family has become this organisation that is so bogged down in its own processes that it is now unable to provide the kinds of services and programmes that are required.There is not much in the social development programme of this Government and the money it is spending that is going towards producing the kinds of results—what it does do is feed into the negative mind-set of those who do not like this area of work. Thank you.