Bennett Paula: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:17493] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I will start by thanking all those involved in this process particularly all of those hard-working officials who have worked so hard to present the review process. I will talk about what the scope of that is. Being the Minister of Social Development and Employment means that I am responsible for a spend of over $21 billion more than 30 percent of all Government spending. Quite frankly it is going to those people who need it most—about 1.6 million New Zealanders in any year. 
I start by acknowledging the Ministry of Social Development’s most recent work in the Christchurch earthquake. I am sure that other Ministers would disagree with me on this but I believe that my department has been exemplary and is one of the star performers. It moved in quickly. It moved in for those people who were firstly surviving but the situation was also about that saying that “They move to living from surviving.” I think that is a reality for so many people in Christchurch. 
I will run through a few quick facts because that is what this review is all about. The helpline has received 125615 incoming calls. It is extraordinary that staff have stepped up and been there to answer those calls and to provide some pretty amazing help. They have identified 18500 senior clients who were living alone. We have over a thousand staff in the Canterbury region. We have redeployed about 200 staff from across the Ministry of Social Development into Canterbury so that some of those staff can get a bit of time off. Three Work and Income sites are closed but the other eight are open. We now have 10 recovery and assistance centres. We have 10 information kiosks open. Child Youth and Family has reopened in another building. 
Members know the facts. They would have heard them in the House today in relation to the amount of money involved; $160 million has been paid out in employer assistance and under job-loss cover for employees. Civil defence payments have now totalled over 80000 payments and about $14 million has been paid out. The work that is done behind those payments is fantastic. It is one thing for a Minister to stand up and say what is going on but to be honest people out there have been working 24/7 to make this a reality for those people in Christchurch. I take this opportunity to commend them. 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: That’s fantastic. 
Darien Fenton 
: They’re backroom staff. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: They are. They are pretty amazing staff. I say thank you to both sides of the Chamber for acknowledging that. 
What has the Ministry of Social Development done though? Let us talk briefly about that department and what has been going on. The Value-for-Money programme has resulted in a total of $254 million in savings and efficiency gains across the business. In addition to managing the cost pressures of that the ministry has returned $52 million to the Crown in the last 2 years. That has happened through a number of strategies but most of it has been about moving most of our services online. A lot of seniors are now going online as well and students are using the online services more than ever. In fact there has been a 60 percent increase in volumes dealt with by the business. 
Lean Six Sigma has been rolled out throughout Work and Income. That has made a huge difference in how we move people to the front line. We have reduced the amount of waiting time for beneficiaries who go in to get assistance. I think that is pretty remarkable in these pretty difficult times. Shared services have been a big part of that as well—that is working across other agencies reprioritising resources lowering operating costs reducing client numbers and making sure we get that front-line help. We are at a point now where for the first time last week I saw that for people who come in to go on a benefit and then go away we were at an over 50 percent triage rate for them. I want to give one of those facts because we deal with a lot of stuff in this Chamber but when it comes to the Opposition we are not often talking about the actual facts of the situation. 
In the last 2 years 136000 people have cancelled their benefits to go into a job. That does not mean that it has all been fantastic and easy but it does tell us that the labour market is still moving. The biggest concern certainly from my perspective would be if it had stopped moving. People are still moving out of benefits and—most importantly—into work and those sorts of numbers prove it. 
I will end on the issue of children child abuse and neglect. I think that the work done there has been such a key focus certainly for me as Minister. I do not have time to go through all the things from the Never Ever Shake a Baby campaign to having social workers now in all hospitals the first response trial the multi-disciplinary meetings before discharging a child from hospital—re-abuse has been a major concern to me—and better data and monitoring systems. Quite frankly we cannot fix it unless we are monitoring it. Thank you.