Bennett Paula: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett Paula: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18202. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): Mr Speaker might I say just how honoured I am that you are in the Chair for my contribution to the debate on this fantastic Budget. I see that the gallery is full. That is great. We have got ex-MPs here in the House who have all come along to hear my speech. I hope they stay for Shane Jones. I hope they actually stick around because there is another show on the road shortly. That is lovely. Shane Jones I feel like I am I do not know the entrée before the main the soup before the steak and chips you know. Yes I am the little entrée that sort of warms the crowd up for you Shane Jones. I hope that you are getting ready for your valedictory statement. Can I just say because I do have the opportunityto speak just before you that actually you will genuinely be missed. It is a sad day for some of us who have enjoyed you. But I get to talk about the Budget.I am delighted that there might be a few more people who are listening in than normally would. They get to hear about the fantastic work that we are doing for families and for children in this Budget. The list is long. I get to go for a good few minutes here to talk about just how great it is and the extent to which we have gone. The one thing I think has not been picked up as much as it could have been is that more than $1 billion in savings if you like have been made thanks to a lower welfare spend than what was projected in 2010. Shall we run through that again? More than $1 billion—the forecast is lower than what it was in 2010 and that is certainly due to an economy that is picking up but equally due to our welfare reforms. One hundred million dollars has gone into the welfare reforms in this Budget. That will be $25 million a year over the next 4 years and you can already see the kinds of returns we get from that. In the last 12 months alone since we introduced the reforms the savings in the benefit spend have been about $530 million. So it is absolutely significant. That support and spending on people earlier are what make the biggest difference.I am proud of this Budget. I am absolutely proud of the work that Bill English has done and I can tell you that there has been many a night when we have debated very long into the night on what this Budget would look like and how we would respond to some of the needs of families and children. The reality is that I loved that we were debating the stuff that matters—the stuff that really counts. The reality is that with data analytics like those we have now not only do we hold more information on the most vulnerable children and young people in this country than we ever have before but we have access to it. That means we can target our funding to the children and families that need it most. Unlike Labour which would like to scatter the money across every child and the Greens who would like to throw a bit to everyone even those who do not need it and hope that it might actually hit those who are most vulnerable in this country we have gotten smarter better and far more sophisticated in how we target the most vulnerable New Zealanders and get support to them earlier. For me the significant amount of $33 million in this Budget is to do exactly that.One of the best examples I can give of data analytics and the difference it makes is the changes we have made for teen parents. We have had a reduction in the number of teen parents by 39 percent over the last 4 years. To give you the actual numbers in 2008 there were 5200 births to teen mums; last year there were 3300. We have 2300 young mums who are on a benefit at any one time. We know their names and we know where they live and what we can do is we can wrap support around them early. What we recognised was that the Government was not the right place to do that. In fact every bit of evidence on the investment approach told us that keeping them away from the Government for as long as we can will make the biggest difference. So every single one of those young teen mums has wraparound support from an adult. They now start by having their money managed for them. Their rent or board is paid up front. Their power bill is paid. They get some money on a card and some pocket money but they can work their way to independence—and can I say what an absolute difference that is making in their lives.If we were not targeting if we were not using data analytics like we do we would continue to scatter and spray money around hoping that it hits the very children and young people who need it most. The reality is that this Budget looks at us targeting it even more to those who need it more. If you look into the details of the Budget what you will see is the money that is going into that vulnerable children’s package. It lets us have another eight Children’s Teams and that is important. We have the predictive riskmodel which is actually controversial in itself. So whether you like it or not we know a lot.We know whether a child’s parents have been in jail and whether the parents have been in a State house for all of their lives. We know their benefit use. We know whether or not there have been domestic violence incidents and whether the police visited the week before. We know the vulnerability level. We know the risk factors. We know where to put support and how to get it in earlier. The difference that that can make to the harder and more complex end of what we do is significant. Children’s Teams will have that kind of information. They can then wrap one plan around a child with one lead professional who can then actually follow through and there is accountability the whole way through which makes the biggest difference.I say that Labour forgets what actually happened. The reality for these kids is that if we kept spending and if it was just about more money for every child then we actually would have seen a greater reduction in the number of abuse cases involving children in the 2000s when Labour was throwing money at it and scattering it around. We did not. What we have seen for more than 10 years is a steady increase in the number of notifications and the number of substantiated cases of abuse and neglect. Unless we target unless we get in earlier and wrap support around them and know exactly what is happening we will continue to get the same sorts of results. This Budget steps up for those very vulnerable young children who need us and I am very proud of it.The Budget also does more for Child Youth and Family for therapeutic one-on-one support. It ensures that for those very high-needs and complex-needs children we are actually able to put far more money into them. There are a few children who literally cost us millions. There are some incredibly sad cases of young people who need 24/7 one-on-one support—and even in extreme cases two-on-one support—to make sure that they are actually safe themselves and that society is safe. So there are examples where we have young people who literally have a guard with them and a therapeutic placement person with them the whole time and that is expensive. So we needed to step up and make sure that we continue that and that we are actually backing the young people who need it.What we hear a lot actually is that unemployment has gone up since National came in. I was hearing just today that there are more Pacific people who are unemployed than there were back when Labour was in. What the Labour members forget of course is that for three consecutive quarters before National came into Government in 2008 numbers had been going up under Labour and it had done nothing. What they choose to forget of course is that we had a global financial crisis which saw this Government step up and help and support those who needed it most at that very time. So yes welfare numbers went up. Actually in some respects I am proud of that. That means that we support those who need it most.This is an outstanding Budget by a Minister of Finance who is doing an outstanding job. I am incredibly proud to stand up today and support it.