Sepuloni Carmel: Budget Debate 
Sepuloni Carmel: Budget Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19254] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 If the $300 million per week that the Government is borrowing for this country was going any way towards alleviating the struggles that New Zealanders are feeling then we could understand it but that money is doing absolutely nothing to do with that. The three things I want to focus on today with regard to the Budget announcements by the National side of the House are first the beneficiary-bashing that has begun under this Government second the impact that the Budget will have on Maori and Pacific young people and third the social implications of the high levels of unemployment that are being brought on by that side of the House. 
I really want to start with the beneficiary bashing. I see that the Government has set aside $40 million for welfare reform and the Minister for Social Development and Employment will be convening a group of seven Ministers to look at the Welfare Working Group’s recommendations. I wonder which Ministers will be on that group and what we as a country have to look forward to. Obviously the Minister for Social Development and Employment will be on that group. She is a solo mother herself who now looks down her nose at other solo mothers and says she got the training incentive allowance but other sole parents do not need it. She says times have changed now so sole parents do not need the same level of support that she had. 
We have a Prime Minister who likes to go around saying he grew up in a State house yet in his own electorate where Labour had planned affordable State housing to be part of the Hobsonville housing development that Government decided that it did not want that in the Prime Minister’s area—that type of housing there or those types of people to be living in that specific area. We also have a Minister of Education who when she first started increased the fines for truancy but who in her own electorate recently refused to fund a school bus that would get kids from a poor rural area to the nearest school. We see it does not make for a very good committee if we look at the Ministers who may possibly be on it. 
We are very concerned on the Labour side of the House about the beneficiary bashing that is taking place. It is a deliberate attempt to shift attention away from the fact that the National side of the House has done absolutely nothing to create jobs. It would rather put the boot into people who are already experiencing hard times and shift the attention away from the fact that this Government has done an abysmal job of leading this country. What we know about New Zealanders—and I think this is something that we need to remind that side of the House about—is that generally Kiwis band together when times are tough. We are compassionate as New Zealanders. We lend our neighbours a hand when they are experiencing difficulties. We do not put the boot in when they are down which is exactly what that side of the House is attempting to do in its beneficiary bashing. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Where’s this member standing? 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: I met a solo mother of two children on the weekend in west Auckland I tell Tau Henare. She is a solo mother whose husband left her last year. He left her last year with two kids and one on the way. When I met her on the weekend she told me that— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Whatever. 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: —I know Mr Henare does not care—things are so bad that she cannot afford to keep the third baby. She will be adopting that third child out because she cannot afford to look after another one. Yet members on that side of the House like to put a stigma on sole parents as if it is their fault and as if they are bludging off the system and deserve to have everything taken away from them. The woman I spoke to is struggling so much that she would put her third child up for adoption because she cannot afford to look after it. I blame members opposite for that I say to Mr Henare. 
When we look at the beneficiary bashing that is taking place we see people like a mother who came in the other day with her 18-year-old son a mother who is fearful that her son may commit suicide. He is on the unemployment benefit but has a sickness that I will not go into detail about. He has tried time and time again to get a job and cannot get one. His mother says she sees him becoming more and more depressed. She is fearful that he may actually kill himself because of depression over the fact that he cannot find employment. That side of the House has done nothing to create jobs for boys like that one. That side of the House continues to put the boot into people like that 18-year-old who is now considering suicide. 
Talking about the boot we may as well go on to boot camps. Earlier the Minister for Social Development and Employment said the $25 million that is going into these limited service training courses will be of benefit with regard to getting those young people motivated into employment and into training. She says they are not military-style courses yet they are run by our Defence Force. I cannot understand how they cannot be military-style when the Defence Force is running them. However $25 million is going into these military-style training courses which are prefaced on the idea that our young people have no motivation or discipline to work or to study when the reality is that they are not being given the opportunities to work or study. There is no lack of discipline or motivation; there is a lack of opportunities because that Government has failed to create them for those young people. 
I am fearful for the young Maori and Pacific people who are neither in employment nor in education because in 25 years’ time they will make up over 50 percent of the New Zealand population. They will make up over 50 percent of the workforce and we will be reliant on them to move our country forward. People like—hmm let me think—Brash Banks and all those people who continue to put down and pull down equity measures and who continue to attack our young Maori and Pacific women and men will be reliant on those very same young Maori and Pacific women and men to support this country yet that Government has done absolutely nothing to invest in them. 
We see cuts to early childhood education. I do not care what the Minister of Education says; this Government has cut the money provided for early childhood education. That as Professor Gluckman has said is where the investment needs to be made yet members opposite have no understanding of the evidence and of the importance of that investment for us and our future as a country. Instead we see Maori and Pacific young people continuing to be thrown on the scrap heap and then when they cannot find employment or get into training they are attacked by that side of the House as being bludgers on the State when that is simply not the case. 
I am concerned about the social implications of the high levels of unemployment that we face at the moment. Recently I was at a meeting with west Auckland lawyers—I think some of them showed up at a meeting that Tau Henare held recently and they were not impressed—and one of the senior lawyers said that during tough economic times a family lawyer will not go without work. Those family lawyers talked about the fact that because the Government is failing to address the needs of people we face such tough economic times that family lawyers are seeing increased cases of marital splits and domestic violence. All of those things are a result of what the Government has or has not been doing. 
I am concerned about the social implications of the high level of unemployment and the poverty that we face. I was a child and a teen during the 1990s. I had two parents who lost their jobs in the 1990s and I have been a single mother so I know how difficult that is. But I have never ever seen the situation as hard as it is now. I know of parents who cannot afford to put food on the table for their kids. I know of a mother who cannot even afford to keep her third child and who is adopting her child out because of that. Some people coming through our office are sleeping under bridges or in cars because on top of everything else there is a housing crisis that members opposite have failed to address. Those members are running our country into the mud. We need to make sure as a country that on 26 November they are not allowed to continue in Government because the situation will only get worse. We are looking at repercussions that will continue for decades if that Government is re-elected on 26 November. Thank goodness it will not be.