Sepuloni CarmelDEBATE ON PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENTDebate resumed from 4 March.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Mr Speaker can I say that it's an honour to be able to speak on the Prime Minister's statement. And can I start by acknowledging our Prime Minister and the leadership that she has demonstrated over the last two and a bit years. She started out her statement laying out what the context was when we came into Government—what we inherited from the previous Government. Then she launched into what we have done since we've been in Government what we are doing now and she talked about the fact—very openly—that there is much more that we want to do and that we're committed to doing that. So I want to acknowledge the great leadership that we have in our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Also I want to acknowledge our wonderful coalition partner New Zealand First and our wonderful confidence and supply partner the Green Party because together we have been able to make a difference over the last two years and together we will be able to do a lot more over the course of this year. When we came into Government we inherited a mess; let's be honest. We had had nine years of a National Government who had ignored the fact that we had a housing crisis. We'd had nine years of a National Government who had ignored multiple social issues which had led us to quite a dark place—as our Prime Minister said. We'd had nine years of a National Government who had not invested in infrastructure. And what we were seeing when we got in were rundown hospitals rundown schools and roads that hadn't been built.We were left to pick up the pieces. I'm very proud of the job that we have done to date. We've made investments in mental health so people can get the help that they need at their local GP. We invested $1.9 billion into mental health; and can I say that I was at the University of Auckland the other day at their orientation talking to students about what they think matters to them and the vast majority of them were pointing to mental health. They appreciate the investment that we on this side of the House have put into mental health. And they recognise just like many New Zealanders across the country that for far too long mental health is an area that's been neglected and it has put us in a very dangerous place as a country. We've provided more addiction treatment beds and services. We've funded new cancer treatment equipment like radiation machines and new cancer drugs. We've started to clean up our rivers by supporting farmers to fence their waterways and plant trees. We've increased school funding so that many parents don't have to pay school donations or NCEA fees. And can I say that's made a difference to low-decile schools—low-decile schools who weren't able to collect donations from parents anyway because those parents were not able to afford to pay those fees. So those low-decile schools now have money that they wouldn't otherwise have had access to and the feedback I get from mine is incredibly positive. We've supported businesses to invest in innovation and diversification. We've invested in trade training—another area that was neglected by the previous Government. We've banned offshore speculators and stopped the sell-off of State homes which was one of our biggest issues. We had a housing crisis when we came into Government. They irresponsibly rather than building more public housing were selling off our State houses. We put a stop to that. We set a target for an additional 1600 public houses a year. We've exceeded that to date; in fact we've built over 4000 already.We passed the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019. And can I say again we cannot underestimate how important climate change is to young people in New Zealand. Mental health and climate change—the two areas when I was at the University of Auckland the other day that all of them were indicating were of most importance to them and it should be. We've also deployed over 2000 new cops across the country—Hon Member: How many?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: —over 2000 new cops—to keep communities safer. We can see also that our economy is in good shape. Our unemployment is now down to 4 percent. It's lower now than it ever was under the previous Government. We've had the highest annual wage growth in a decade. The minimum wage on 1 April will go up again. This time it goes up to $18.90 with a view to make sure that we get to $20 by next year and I think that this side of the House can be proud of that. The economy is growing faster than most similar countries. Over the next two years we're projected to grow faster than Australia—[Interruption]—Canada the US the UK the EU Norway Japan and Singapore and I think David Bennett's yelling out some more countries in support of what we're doing. Interest rates debt and unemployment are all low and on top of that—and we give some kudos to our finance Minister Grant Robertson for this—our books are balanced—they are balanced. We even started in amidst all of that contributions to the super fund—restarted contributions to the super fund—and we're reducing the debt. That all is in stark contrast to what the previous National Government had to offer this country. One of my primary areas of focus is of course the welfare overhaul and I acknowledge the Green Party our confidence and supply partners for putting it into our agreement when we came into Government and we are all committed to that welfare overhaul. We know it won't happen overnight because there's so much to fix up within our social security system. However we're committed to doing it and I wanted to talk a little bit about the things that have already been done. There were 42 recommendations in that Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) report and I'm going to rattle through really quickly in the next three minutes what work has already been done or how we've responded to those recommendations. I'm going to talk really quickly.In response to WEAG recommendation 2 which is to implement principles to guide the design and operation of the welfare system we've developed a working policy framework to guide the welfare overhaul which includes kaupapa Māori values the purpose of the welfare system as a whole and the outcomes we want to see. In response to recommendation 3 to establish a cross-Government approach to this welfare overhaul our Social Wellbeing Cabinet Committee is already overseeing this work. In response to recommendation 5 to implement better reporting we are regularly monitoring the longer-term employment outcomes of people leaving the benefit system. In fact we've already started to record sustainability of employment exits which is what the previous Government completely ignored. In response to recommendation 6 and recommendation 9 to work toward greater equity for Māori the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has launched its Te Ao Māori strategy and action plan Te Pae Tata which is about embedding a Māori world view into MSD to help staff think differently about the way they work with Māori—because let's be honest the welfare system has not worked for Māori in this country for a very long time.In response to recommendation 8 to build MSD's cultural responsiveness and improve outcomes for Pacific people MSD has launched their Pacific strategy and action plan Pacific Prosperity to guide future policy development in delivering better coordinated action together. In response to recommendation 11 to remove some sanctions and obligations we have already removed the section 192 sanction which will come into effect on 1 April which unnecessarily penalised sole parents. As of 1 April 2020 24000 children will be significantly better off as a result of this with many sole parents' incomes increasing by an average of $34 per week. In response to recommendation 12 to improve front-line services at MSD we've introduced a client commitment charter made changes to Work and Income offices to make them warmer and friendlier implemented an online eligibility guide and launched Heartbeat to better understand client experiences. In response to recommendations 14 15 and 16 to address issues of debt we have started an inter-agency work programme to look at Government debt developed the Safer Credit and Financial Inclusion Strategy and my colleague Minister Faafoi has announced new rules around high-cost short-term lending to protect consumers from punishing debt at the hands of loan sharks. In response to recommendation 18 to improve support for people exiting prisons we announced Māori Pathways a group of targeted interventions from the Department of Corrections Te Puni Kōkiri and the Ministry of Social Development aimed at reducing reoffending rates of high security prisoners. And in response to recommendation 20 to increase abatement rates we have increased how much people can earn before their benefit is reduced in line with the minimum wage and that comes into effect on 1 April. I only got up to recommendation 20. There are 42 in here. This Government is about action and we're delivering for New Zealanders.