Prasad Rajen: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Prasad Rajen: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I also am pleased to take a call on the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. I say as strongly as one possibly can that Labour will be opposing this bill because it is a bad bill. It starts on the wrong principles and ends up in the wrong place. 
The member who just took his seat Chester Borrows works the trick again that National Governments have worked for a long time: link beneficiaries with poverty with abuse and with crime and then create the space to do whatever you want to do whatever the members want to do whatever the Government wants to do. But there are members in this House who have been beneficiaries. They have taken the largesse of the State have used it appropriately have brought up children properly and have moved on. That is the purpose of the benefit system. But the last speaker did not acknowledge that. The Minister for Social Development herself does not acknowledge that. 
I remember when the National Minister Ruth Richardson tried something similar about beneficiaries with children being given in a sense negative treatment. That did not survive; that Government was kicked out. I remember when the Hon Jenny Shipley came up with a social responsibility bill. Where did it go? Nowhere. Our society turned against those approaches and it will turn against this approach as well because it is a negative approach. 
It is very interesting that members opposite talked about the nanny State when this side was in Government. If this is not nanny State I wonder what is. This Government is going to tell young people how to manage their life and how to spend their money but where is the training? The Government wants to talk about parenting yet it will not give parents the opportunity to parent. I will return to those in a minute. 
In a sense the question I ask fundamentally is this: where is this Government’s detailed plan for welfare reform? We have not seen it. It is coming through in pieces. Why does the Government not do the decent thing if it is absolutely intellectually honest about trying to create a better more effective system? Because it is not. If it was intellectually honest it would bring the whole plan it would put it together it would bring the bills to the House we would debate that we might even support some of that and the select committee could do its work. No what it is doing is really itching the sores that are in society. It is itching those prejudices that exist in society for its own political advantage. This is not designed to make the lives of our beneficiaries any better. If it was I would be the first to support it. This is not. This is designed to be punitive. There is no comprehensive plan. This approach is just another one of those piecemeal approaches which go just so far as to give the sense to the public out there that the Government is doing a lot. 
Let us look at the technique. The technique is that the Prime Minister comes out—and the Minister did it again in her introductory speech—and says that 328000 are receiving a benefit which is around 12 percent of the entire workforce. The Government creates this image that there is a huge group out there and the Government is now ready to address it. What does it pick on? It picks on domestic purposes beneficiaries—mums who are doing by and large a great job. And what percentage is that? Four percent—four percent. So what happened to the rest? What will the Government do about the rest? There is no plan about that. Nothing changes but subtly Government members do their darnedest to create this sense of fear and concern in our society. 
How did the Government get here? The Government got here by creating this myth of dependence—this myth of dependence. I do not hear members from that side talk about the dependence of businesses on the largesse of the State. Are they dependent and is it therefore negative? No they are all right because they are somehow great! Of course I am not impugning businesses but they are dependent as well. That is good dependence. But if a beneficiary bringing up children— 
Tim Macindoe 
: How are you making that link? 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Mr Macindoe they are bringing up children to the best of their ability like that Minister did. That Minister brought up her daughter with a benefit and did well and good on her. I knew her then and good on her. That is what these parents are doing. But here we are creating this notion of welfare dependency in the most negative way possible and then using that as the whipping boy whipping any beneficiary with that and almost disregarding that many of them are doing a great job under very very trying conditions. Yet the Government is not doing the very thing it ought to do. 
Members opposite asked about what Labour did when it was in Government. Well let me tell members opposite and I hope they are listening it was the Labour Government that introduced under Work and Income the most intensive triaging programme imaginable for anybody who walked in through the front door of Work and Income. They were triaged right at the beginning—so much so that they got jobs and unemployment was the lowest in the world. It was under 4 percent. That is what happened. That is what the Labour Government did because it believed that the best way out of poverty the best way out of this is through work. But you cannot do it by creating an image that there is work out there because this Government has not created work. In fact it is going to put thousands more into this programme of work testing and they will have nowhere to go. They will probably have people with a lot of CVs but nowhere to go. That is unfair. That is leading people up a garden path and that betrays the lack of interest that this Government really has in the lives and outcomes of beneficiaries in this country. This is what this bill is trying to do. It is a punitive approach. It is a negative approach. 
Why does the Government not realise that this is mean-spirited? This is really mean-spirited. These are the families that produce the workers that partner capital to produce and enhance this country’s social development. They have always done so. I do not believe there ought to be a big divide between workers and capital. There ought to be a synergy amongst them. Our families produce the workers. They work day and night to bring these children into the world and give them the best start possible sometimes on their own and sometimes with some assistance. For the period those children are growing up that is the best investment the State can make. Yet the Government here is discounting that. 
If it believed in that it would design the most effective system possible but the Government is devoid of ideas on how to design an effective comprehensive system with solutions for contemporary social issues and problems—the very issues the Government members articulate. But they do not show any passion any smarts to actually design 21st century ideas. They use those words they talk about backing these people but they go nowhere. There is so much that is wrong about this bill. 
I want to focus on parenting for the last 2 minutes of my speech. Why is the Government trying to make it so difficult for sole parents trying to bring up their children? Parenting is difficult. The Government ought to be supporting them but the Government is trying to create a punitive system and in the same way it does not understand the needs of youth. Why are we not training our youth to use the money that they are given? No the Government is going to create a nasty system whereby people are watching them and telling them what they can spend. Why is that not nanny State? I am asking the Minister and I am asking Mr Macindoe who will speak next for National. Why is that not nanny State? Members on that side pilloried us when we were designing this system and said it was nanny State. 
The Government has no ideas for job creation but it thinks the jobs will be there. I predict that there will be a treadmill that will make many of our young people turn against this Government and turn against the State and that will create more problems. There will be a treadmill of people coming in finding themselves in a situation where they are going through the system in this really negative way and really beginning to doubt themselves their ability to bring up their children and the very State they desire to be a part of. 
The perverse effects of this programme are going to be felt long term. This is discounting a generation. It does not put any value on our families and it does not value our youth yet it is couched in the language of valuing our parenting and valuing our youth. This is about cuts. This is about reduction. This is about trying to pay for those tax cuts. 
Tim Macindoe 
: This is about hope. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: They are selling our State assets to do it. Why is there one line missing Mr Macindoe? Answer that question—why is the one line missing from the regulatory impact statement? That is holding this House in contempt. That is not telling us as legislators the whole truth. This is an awful bill and I look forward to debating it throughout the Social Services Committee. Thank you.