Bradford Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Bradford Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3319] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 As the Hon Rick Barker has just pointed out we all have reason to celebrate the slight drop in unemployment announced in the household labour force survey today. However the same statistics reveal for example that we still have nearly 173000 people in the jobless category that male underemployment is actually going up and that the Maori rate of unemployment is at 11.4 percent which is nearly four times that of Pakeha. I am also well aware that there are many people on various benefits and on no income at all who do not show up in those figures. The one thing on which I do agree with Dr Don Brash is that the true unemployment rate in this country is at least around the 300000 mark.  
Alongside that we have the Ministry of Social Development itself acknowledging that nearly a third of our country’s children live in poverty. We have a massive and growing accommodation deficit in many districts and core benefits which were cut by National in 1991 have still not been raised after 3 years of a supposedly liberal-left Government. While we welcome the small rise in the minimum wage to $8.50 that is still far below a survival level and the Green Party unequivocally supports the demand of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions for an immediate rise in the minimum wage to $10 an hour. It is a disgrace that as a country we accept large Budget surpluses and a massive Superannuation Fund while our poorest people continue to live lives beyond the imagining of most members of this House. 
 We should not continue any longer with a welfare system in which many beneficiaries and working people are forced to rely on ramshackle and inequitably applied third-tier benefits just to scrape together a few more dollars for food each week. It is high time that Labour addressed benefit reforms seriously rather than just tinkering at the edges by making sure that benefit levels are enough for people to live on and are equitable across all types of benefit. We call on Labour to seriously consider introducing a universal child benefit—similar to the old family benefit—not only as a way of at least beginning to address child poverty but also potentially as a way of enabling low-income families to capitalise on the benefit so they can raise a deposit for a house.  
As the housing need continues to worsen in many districts we also believe it is high time that the Minister of Housing stopped mucking around with highfalutin promises about being willing to work with the third sector in order to provide housing for families in places like the Hokianga and Auckland and actually worked with groups on the ground to get the houses built. Provision of sufficient and adequate housing cannot be left to the public and private sectors alone. The Government needs to find a way to work in a mutually respectful manner with the community sector so that it too can play its rightful role in helping to meet the huge unmet needs that currently exist.  
Unemployment too must be addressed by more than minor changes in the benefit system and Jim Anderton’s regional strategies. I do not know where all the money allocated for regional strategies goes but not much if any seems to reach the grassroots groups that could do much to create jobs for unemployed people in their districts. Instead it seems to be directed towards businesses that already have capital and into endless surveys and consultations— 
Stephen Franks 
: Or the Warehouse. 
SUE BRADFORD 
: And the Warehouse—and the pokies I believe. People who are on low incomes or on benefits or who are unemployed and their children need action now. The Prime Minister has talked today about the discredited direction of the 1990s. I would like to remind her and her colleagues that in fact they have only begun to touch the edges of what needs to be corrected as a result of their own actions in the 1980s and of National’s and its friends in the 1990s and that the most disadvantaged people in our society to whom Labour theoretically pledges its support expect a lot more—and soon.