Maharey Steve: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Maharey Steve: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:615;Page:10897] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
:  
I am pleased to take part in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. Four years ago the Labour-led Government came into power against the backdrop of what was then called quite rightly a social deficit. People had said that after the 9 long years of the previous National Government—9 long years of creating social breakdown personal isolation and a range of social issues that we had not seen before in this country since at least the last Depression—they did not want more of that. They said they did not want to see more of that deficit. They said they wanted to see a Government that would put social policy at the centre of its programme. So that is what we have done. 
 The question we have to ask ourselves as a Government made up now of Labour and the Progressives and given support for supply and confidence by United Future is how we are doing. Let me tell members this: no other Government in the history of this country has held itself as accountable as we do. We have begun to produce a social report that tells us how we are doing. We have produced reducing inequalities monitoring reports that tell us how we are doing with regard to Maori and Pacific Island people. We report on ourselves; we do not need an Opposition for that. The group of people on the Government side of the House holds itself more accountable than that on the Opposition side does because we did not come here to sit around saying that we were not making progress and that we had not cracked the social deficit. We came here to get up every single day that we are in Government and say we will make a difference. And we do. We make a difference and we measure it. We can say after 4 short years of Government under Labour that we are now healthier that we are better educated and better housed that the regions are blooming again and that we are more creative more optimistic and socially better off than we were 4 years ago—and we can prove it. 
The previous speaker reminded me of an old joke about the National Party: how do we tell the National Party’s plane has just stopped? The whining continues. That person during her 10-minute harangue did not give one single policy about how she would make a difference. She talked about evidence. We are concerned about evidence on the Government side of the House. We settle for nothing less than the evidence of progress. 
I want to say too in the light of the debate about Maori and Pacific Island peoples that the indicators show we are improving there as well. There are more jobs more education and more health care for Maori and Pacific Island peoples. We are seeing ourselves improve in those areas. I tell the House that this Government will carry on investing in Maori and Pacific Island peoples because that is what we must do. Why is that? Because when we ask questions about education health and housing we find that Maori and people from the Pacific Island nations are in those groups that are not doing as well as other New Zealanders. The social deficit was bigger for them than for other New Zealanders. We are going to spend money on addressing that deficit because we are on about equality. We are on about making sure everybody is going forward together so we will make those investments. 
I tell this House another thing: we will tailor those investments to those groups of people and we make absolutely no apology for doing that. We do that for women for regions for young people for old people for new migrant groups and for men. We differentiate between people in every way because we know that one size does not fit all. I am stunned that the National Party wants to run one policy for every single person in the country. One can have whatever one wants as long as one fits the one size and if National does not mean that what on earth are its members talking about? Will they close kura kaupapa Maori? Well I guess so because there are no Maori according to the National Party. Unless one is full to the brim of what National members decide is 100 percent Maori blood one does not exist. I remember somebody who lived a long time ago in Europe. He used to say the same things about Aryans. The same kind of stupid thinking about ethnicity was in Europe just as it is on the Opposition side of this House at the present time. We will fund those programmes and we will make them different from other programmes because then they will fit the needs of Maori and of the Pacific Islands peoples and they will therefore improve circumstances like employment and health faster than other programmes would. I tell Dr Smith that we make no apology for doing that. We will do it and we will keep on fighting for that. The notion is that a future National Government would come back into this House and start saying it would have no kura kaupapa Maori would have nothing to do with Pacific Island peoples and would no longer deliver health in a place like Manawatu in a way that matches Maori needs. That is the vision from the National members—one size fits all. People must fit the model that Don Brash wants or they will get nothing. That is the model. 
On the Government side of the House we say that we do not intend to rest on our laurels and that we know we have a lot of progress to make yet. Four short years is not enough to turn around the social deficit that National created. We know that we have a lot more to do in education. We know that the deficit we had in education was one of not having access not having high standards and not having people in skills. 
The deficit we had for example is symbolised by the 1992 repeal of the apprenticeship legislation. What has been one of the most popular successful policies of this Government? The Modern Apprenticeships scheme which has now reached 6000-plus young people. We have just put some more money into it and we will put more money into it. We will ensure that it is tailored to the needs of Pacific Island and Maori people as well as to the needs of other New Zealanders. We will carry on investing in that scheme and overcome the deficit that was created by the previous Government where for nearly 10 years industry training—skills training—did not go anywhere. That is why Dr Smith can walk into businesses in his area and find that the average age of tradespeople is about 45-plus and that it then starts to go down again to those in their 20s. Where did those people go? I will tell members where they went. The industry training programme of the National-led Government added up to nothing. National collapsed industry training and we have had to rebuild it. We have invented the Gateway programme—the most popular programme for brokering young people into industry training—and the Modern Apprenticeships programme. We have increased the number of people in industry training from 48000 to 108000 and we will make it 250000. We will have the most skilled nation in the world. That is the goal of this Government. That party over there on the Opposition benches—National—and the people who support it were involved in a race to the bottom. They wanted nothing more than for us to be the cheapest lowest-skilled nation in the world. That is what its policies are about. 
Let us turn to paid work. We are on about successfully getting more people into paid work than at any time in the history of this country. We have 4.6 percent unemployment which ranks us 6th in the OECD. We have Maori and Pacific Island unemployment coming down and we will not stop there. Unemployment will get better. This Government is committed to having New Zealanders in paid employment and not on work for the dole. That was the symbolic policy of the National Government—people working for the dole. It is no wonder National members invented the policy; they put so many people on the dole that they had to get something for them to do. That is why they had the policy. Well I am not interested in having people on the dole working for it. I want them to be off the dole working for a real wage and getting on with their lives. That is what this Government stands for. 
Let us look at what we are doing with welfare policies. We have revolutionised those policies. If we look at the domestic purpose benefit under National we see that nothing ever happened to anybody on the domestic purposes benefit. Now every single year those people will at least have one interview. They will plan their future get educated get trained and go to paid work. Under that Government nothing happened. Those beneficiaries just sat there until their youngest child was 6 or 14 when there was a little flurry of activity—there was no help; just lots of flurries of activity—and then they went back to sleep again. I tell Dr Smith that we are on about that. We are on about making sure that we make a difference. 
Communities and families will get stronger under this Government and we will work with United Future on that. We will do some good business on that this year to make this country better for families. That is our commitment. We will make sure that we have less family violence. We will do something about the housing deficit. National sold 13000 houses. It created a $5 billion deficit in housing. We will fix the deficit.