Collins Judith: Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 The National Party has supported this bill all the way through because it does not want to see beneficiaries—who are the poorest people economically in the country—in a situation where they are unnecessarily put into debt because nobody has turned off the taps for their benefits in the situation where they have been put into prison or are not able to qualify any more for a particular social assistance. 
We think this bill has been quite a long time coming. We say that not just because there has been almost 9 long years of a Labour Government but because in this time the debt owed by beneficiaries to Work and Income has more than doubled. That shows why there is a massive need for this legislation. We now have about $760 million worth of debt owed by beneficiaries and former beneficiaries to Work and Income. Although some portion of that debt is the result of fraud a lot of it is because there has been an overpayment for a week 2 weeks or a few months. There have also been situations where a beneficiary has not contacted Work and Income to let it know of his or her change in circumstances. There have been instances where a person been paid his or her benefit after going into prison for instance. The fact is if a person is in prison I am sure it is not the first thing on his or her mind to contact Work and Income and tell it to cut the benefit. There are probably other things on a person’s mind. I think the best thing we could do is to actually have a mechanism to stop people from getting into debt. 
Hone Harawira 
: If you’re in prison you can’t go and contact them. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Well I think Mr Harawira is quite right—that person is not in a position to contact Work and Income. Of course we could ask: “What about their families?”. Well in many cases people’s families in those situations are going through a very difficult time—an extremely difficult time—and the first thing on their minds is not to contact Work and Income and say that if there is a benefit still to be paid it is a different sort and it is to different people within the family. 
It is very important to have this legislation to allow better data-matching not only between say the Department of Corrections and Work and Income but also between Work and Income and other agencies. But this legislation is not being passed for just that purpose; it is also being passed because we need to have some integrity in our benefit system. It is absolutely not acceptable to the taxpayers of New Zealand that people continue to be wrongly paid benefits at various times. Just today in the Social Services Committee we heard about a massive benefit fraud—the Patterson fraud of $3.2 million. Although this legislation might or might not have helped in that situation— 
Hone Harawira 
: What about the Inland Revenue fraud of $600 million? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: No I do not think that was a fraud. Although the Patterson fraud might or might not have been detected by this legislation the fact is that technology is being changed and updated constantly. Those who would defraud the benefit system are getting themselves into a position of using technology to do so. We are finding that the Government technology cannot keep up with the technology of fraudsters. That is because people who really want to defraud the system are sitting all day and thinking of ways to do it while the rest of us are getting on and doing our work. It is incredibly important that we do not allow this to happen without trying to do something. 
I do not know though how this legislation is going to help deal with the current benefit debt. I do not know how it will deal with the three-quarters of a billion dollars owed by beneficiaries and former beneficiaries. I do not know how this will keep beneficiaries as a whole from getting into further debt other than to try to stop new people getting into debt. 
I think it is a real shame that after all the Government’s opportunities to deal with the problem it really has not pushed budgeting services like it should have. It took away the compulsory budgeting service that National brought into place for beneficiaries when they were getting into debt. It took that away and made it voluntary. The problem with making it voluntary is that many people in these situations just want the money now. It is very difficult to talk to them about budgetary services because the very names of those services imply that people will have to put some limits on things. By the time people end up in a budgetary service it is often just too late. In my Papakura budgetary service which does a great job we have had instances where the debt has been $30000.