Sio William: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sio William: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3430. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 The contribution made by the last member Shane Ardern with the inane attacks on the senior whip on this side and the Hon Annette King reveal why that member is not a Minister and why younger MPs have been promoted before him. 
What the other side needs to know is that simply setting targets without a plan makes those targets unachievable and calling something a plan does not make it so. My colleague the Hon Phil Goff was correct when he described this Government in earlier Budget debate speeches as being deceptive—as a deceitful Government. How does one describe a consistent pattern of making promises that it has no intention whatsoever to deliver on? This Government deliberately deceived the country by promising a brighter future that it knew full well it would not be able to deliver for all New Zealanders. Instead that brighter future was simply for a select few for its big-business and wealthy mates and not for working New Zealanders. 
To be fair the deception I believe starts from the very top. It is probably aided and abetted by other Ministers but no doubt is started by John Key Steven Joyce and Bill English. Perhaps the only Minister who I believe does not involve himself in this is the Hon Maurice Williamson but I do not know. In fact if we look at the list the National Party in 2010 announced a six-point plan for securing a brighter future. In late 2011 it presented a revised six-point plan this time with 41 actions. As I said simply having targets without a plan will not make those targets achievable. Key’s state of the nation speech in early January this year presented a revision of the revised six-point plan. In March this year Steven Joyce and Bill English announced again a six-point plan. A week later in March Nick Smith announced and released an eight-point plan. Now we have John Key’s 10-point plan which looks like a list of the greatest hits compiled from other lists and probably looks more like Britney Spears than the Beatles. The point is that simply setting out these targets without a plan is not going to achieve anything and simply calling something a plan does not make it a plan at all. 
I want to say that the disappointing thing for many of our communities today is that the Government promised 170000 jobs in last year’s Budget. Where has that gone? Has that been achieved? No that was not achieved—not one iota whatsoever. Today 160000 people are unemployed and that is a 51 percent increase under National in the number of unemployed people. Twenty thousand more people aged 15 to 24 years of age are no longer in education employment or training. That has been an increase since December 2008—since John Key came into power. We now have 87000 young people not in education employment or training. We have got 2500 public sector workers who have lost their jobs since this Government came into power and this Government continues to force Government departments to do more and more for less and less. Things will worsen with a billion-dollar slashing in Government departments as a result of this Budget. 
Youth unemployment is costing us $900 million each year according to the New Zealand Institute. There are 36775 more people on the benefit now than there were when the Minister on that side Paula Bennett took office. There will still be more people on the unemployment benefit after the welfare reforms have been implemented than when she took office. The number of children living in benefit-dependent households has increased from 199000 in June 2008 to 232616 in December 2011. Two in five poor children were from households where at least one adult was in full-time employment or was self-employed. The Community Max scheme failed to get people into real jobs and in one case spent $317000 on a pumpkin patch.