Bennett Paula: General Debate 
Bennett Paula: General Debate 
[Volume:677;Page:670] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. This National Government believes that we can and we must support people off welfare and into work. We have heard from the left and from the Opposition members who do not believe in them enough to actually back them into work but would rather keep them down—keep them down. “Let’s not believe in beneficiaries and their ability to get off welfare and into work and to get ahead. Let’s keep them down—particularly let’s keep down the women.” That is what we constantly hear from those members: keep them on the domestic purposes benefit keep them dependent on welfare intergenerationally and do nothing about it but hand-wring and scaremonger—scaremonger I say. Who is the beneficiary basher? It is those who simply wring their hands in despair who think that the answers to the questions are too hard and who are ill-prepared to step in and actually have an active system that works for people and that supports them to recognise what they can do instead of what they cannot.  
Let us be quite clear: at the moment we spend 90 percent of our spend in employment assistance on just 10 percent of our long-term liability—on those on the unemployment benefit. So we spend pretty much nothing or a minimal amount on those who are on the domestic purposes benefit the sickness benefit or the invalids benefit. So even when they as you say do want to get into work and do want that extra support how the system has been under the previous Government is that we did not give them that support. This is fundamentally going to change the system so that they get the support that they need so that they can get ahead.  
It quite amuses me that the honourable member would like to go back to the early 1990s. I have heard the cries of how it was back in my day. It does quite amuse me and I give due respect to those members in my own party who were around in the early 1990s but it would be fair to say that I have never heard a great reflection on that time in terms of welfare reform from Opposition members or from the left. They do not normally brag about how great it was in the early 1990s for beneficiaries— 
Hon Member 
: They are now. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: —but they are now. Now we are constantly hearing how great it was in the early 1990s when I was on a benefit and that we should go back to that time. So instead of a time like now when we spend more than $1.2 billion more just on family tax credit support for those who are on benefits at a time when actually our expenditure on childcare assistance just for those on benefits— 
Moana Mackey 
: You got the TIA then you cut it for every other young mum. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Listen up you might learn something. The childcare assistance for those who are on benefits has more than tripled. It has more than tripled. Yes let us give it some actual numbers. In 1999—let us go for that year—there was $50 million actually in support; now there is $188 million per annum. That is where that support has gone and we think it should be more. This side of the House actually thinks we should be paying more for those who are disadvantaged for those who are struggling to get in there and that is what these reforms are all about. I am not going to join the negative ninnies from over on the left who believe that keeping people down that actually not backing them into work and that looking at what they cannot do instead of at what they can is the way forward.  
Quite frankly the work that was done in the 2000s has led to ongoing dependence on the welfare system. It has seen 29 percent of those who are currently on benefits having subsequent children while they are there. We need to give them that sort of support. If we are serious about getting those women in particular out of hardship there is a better way to do it than what we saw back in the 2000s. We saw sickness benefits going up by more than 18000 when there were jobs supposedly there. We hear constantly about all these jobs that were there and the unemployment rate in the mid-2000s. In fact the number on the invalids benefit went up by over 50 percent and the number on the sickness benefit went up by just under 50 percent when all these supposed jobs were miraculously there and had been created by the Labour Government.  
What happened when things got a bit wobbly out there? What happened when we had the effects of a global recession? It was those very people whom they had not actually educated at school who fell out of this system.