Smith Stuart: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSmith Stuart: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 23 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5302. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): It is a pleasure to speak on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. I am going to focus a little bit on jobs but before I get to that—this bill is going to extend youth services to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children considered at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency.Youth Service provides wraparound services and support with the aim of reducing long-term welfare dependency in the future. As part of that activity these beneficiaries will be required to undertake youth activity obligations and that is important. These people are in a position where they have been identified as likely to be long-term beneficiaries. They need to get out and enjoy life with other youths in a proper way. That is what this obligation will do.They will also be required to undertake full-time education leading towards National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 undertake budgeting courses and have ongoing budgeting discussions. That is really important. When you go and talk to family budgeting services you realise how that really small step can make a big difference to people’s lives and how they can get themselves saddled with a lot of debt really just because of a lack of planning at the front end. So that is really important. They will also undergo parenting courses and activities to support good parenting and they will receive $10 a week if they meet those obligations.There has been a lot talked about jobs and people speculating that there are not jobs out there. Well in 2011 there was a Government forecast of 171000 new jobs being created over the next 4 years. But we are actually going to make 193000 jobs. That is 22000 more jobs than we forecast—just under 200000 jobs. There are jobs and the forecast from 2015 out to 2019 is 150000 new jobs.To illustrate what that really means at the sharp end I was talking to a contractor in my electorate who was desperate to employ New Zealanders. He is a recognised seasonal employer and he would love to have Kiwis so that he can have long-term people in there to help supervise. But the difficulties of getting people are really quite stark so he is working with Work and Income. He came over to this side of the strait to the lower North Island and sought out and interviewed people. He wanted to initially employ eight workers. He interviewed 22 and he was so impressed with the standard of the young people he was interviewing that he decided to double that and employ 16 and he took those 16 people back over to Marlborough to work. The reason he came to the North Island is that that piece of water—Cook Strait—is quite a barrier for those people.The idea is to get those people out of their environment and with all of the services that are being provided by Work and Income to help these people and ease them into work it is really working. Out of those 16 four have since dropped off but he has now got 12 people—that is 50 percent more than he went over initially to employ—and they are working and working out well. But it does take time and those wraparound services that are part of this bill are there to help those people get through that initial stage of learning good habits around work. It is about changing behaviour. It is about resetting values and so on.I was really disappointed with what I heard earlier particularly from the Green member. I thought she was better than that. She would have those people stranded on a benefit for the rest of their lives damning not only them for the rest of their lives but their children and their families and that is really sad. We are much more ambitious for those people and we are not just telling them to do something; with this bill we are actually giving them the tools to achieve it themselves. When you see those people—the change in their behaviour and their values and their pride in themselves—it is worth every single penny. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.