Shanks Katrina: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shanks Katrina: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 18 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:13248. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak on the third reading of this legislation tonight. Firstly I acknowledge our hard-working Minister for Social Development and Employment Paula Bennett for her effort and her commitment to vision of and unrelenting focus on getting people back to work. I also acknowledge the officials who came to our committee and provided great support. They have been here for most of the readings and were here for most of last night supporting this legislation through the House and listening to members as we debated our way through the night on this legislation. I acknowledge the submitters who came before our select committee and made their submissions. I thank them for the time and effort they put into their submissions because it does take time and effort to make high-quality submissions. I acknowledge the work they have put in. I also acknowledge all of the members on the committee who sat through a number of submissions participated well and asked very well-thought-out questions of our officials. We sent them back many times for more answers when we were trying to tease out some of the details in the legislation. 
I stand here in support of this legislation and I do not apologise for the focus that this legislation has on getting people into work. I think it is a really positive step to have legislation that says the Government wants people to enter the workforce and have a successful life. During the debate yesterday there was a lot of talk about there being no jobs and people ending up with no support at all. That is not true. That was a bit of a scare tactic in the debate yesterday. If there are no jobs out there there will always be State support for those people. That will always be the case under a National Government. We will not say that there is no support for people if there are no jobs. We are focusing on getting people back to work where the jobs are. 
I want to touch on one more point in the debate and it came through quite clearly to me last night. Labour members believe that no work is better than low-paid work. Actually I do not believe that is true. Dr Prasad is looking at me like I do not understand what I am saying but that member has said many times that low-paid work is not good work and that it is better to be in no work than in low-paid work. I do not get that. I ask what message is being sent to all the people out there who are on minimum wages working really hard to sustain themselves and their families independent of the State and are getting ahead. Members opposite place no value on those people in the work they are doing. I do not get that. I will tell the House that work is better than no work regardless. Work is better than no work. Members opposite are saying that if someone has children no work is better than work. I am sorry but this Government is about giving people opportunities to get work and it is focusing on that. 
I will talk about some of the new obligations under this legislation. I will highlight three or four of them. The first obligation is that the unemployment benefit is limited to 12 months and after that time a recipient has to reapply for it. That is a really good provision. It gets those people into the office to talk about how they are going and where they need to go to get themselves into a state of employment. That is a really positive move. The reassessment of sickness beneficiaries is really good. They will be assessed at 4 8 and 13 weeks plus they will undergo a mandatory 1-year reassessment. That means going back to those people and asking them how they are whether they are feeling better whether anything has changed and whether they can do some part-time work because part-time work is a good thing as well. This provision is about bringing people back into the office and asking them how we can help and how we can take them along this pathway. 
The other thing we talked about in this legislation is youth training requirements. The ministry can now direct our youth into education and training as a first priority. That is a really really good thing. We have to ensure that we do not have a generation of youth who come out of a recession and have not worked for 4 or 5 years. After that time it is very difficult to change their habits and make them employable. We want to keep them busy in education and training. That will be our priority for them if they cannot get work and that is really important. 
We have put in three new supports under this legislation. The first one is boosting the income abatement level the second is the inflation adjustment in law and the third is training support for a student loan to support sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit to study full-time at level 4 and above. That is really important as well. This legislation implements a whole lot of new obligations on recipients of benefits and it also has some new supports in place. I commend this legislation to the House because I think it will make a difference for the people of New Zealand. Thank you.