Tolley AnneHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Children): Mr Speaker can I start by wishing you a happy New Year and the same to my colleagues around the House. Also I have a word of sympathy for those of the staff who live here in Wellington because up in the Bay of Plenty and the East Coast we have had a fantastic summer and it is pretty miserable down here in Wellington. As I say I do feel sorry for them.I have a message for the member who has just resumed her seat Annette King: if you do not want people to talk about you you actually have to behave as if you really are focused on the things that matter to New Zealanders—not worry what is happening on the backbenches behind you because then everyone will be talking about you. That is just a reality. If you want to be in Government you have got to learn to govern yourselves before you can get the privilege of governing other people. So that is just a little word of advice to those on the other side.I just want to talk today about poverty because there was a question in question time earlier. For quite some time the Labour Party members have been focused on things about poverty that actually do not really count—and I want to make that point today. They have talked a lot about how we measure it as if we are going to go out knock on doors and get a statistical record of how many people are actually suffering from poverty. I do not mean to demean anyone who is suffering hardship but the reality is—and it is recognised internationally—that to try to measure poverty using one simple measure is impossible.Carmel Sepuloni: Choose one.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: You cannot choose one. That is the whole point. It is multidimensional. It is on a spectrum from bad to worse it is complex and it is impossible and no country in the world has successfully managed to come up with a simple measure for poverty. For year after year I have listened to the Opposition talking about how we measure it. Well this Government has got on with addressing it and in order to address it you have to understand what the drivers of poverty are. All I hear from the Opposition is: We are going to legislate against it. We've got a bill in the ballot. We're going to legislate against poverty." I mean how ridiculous is that?The other alternative that I hear from the Opposition is that they are going to throw money at it. They are not quite sure where the money is going to go and they do not like it when we actually give the money to some of the poorest people in this country—those who are dependent on a benefit. I would have thought—the first time in 40 years—we would have got some acknowledgment of that but no the Opposition voted against that strangely enough while at the same time wanting to put more money in. So the real answers as to how to address poverty have not come from the opposite side of this House. The real answers have come from this Government which has looked at what the drivers of poverty are and how we address those to help people lift themselves out of poverty; not the Government taking action to get them out of poverty.The first thing we have looked at of course is benefit dependency. If you want to be poor you live on a benefit for a long period of time. I do not know how many of those people manage and I take my hat off to those who have to raise a family on the small amount of money that is the benefit. It was never designed to be a lifestyle support. It has always been given by the taxpayers to support those who have fallen on hard times whilst they get themselves back on their feet. That is the whole principle around Whānau Ora. That is why this Government has supported Whānau Ora which is about families independent of the Government looking after themselves and their children and living in New Zealand in the way we want all New Zealanders to do. So the first thing we have to do is get them independent from the taxpayer off a benefit and into work.We have had major success. In fact the proportion of the population now that is dependent on a benefit—they are receiving our main benefits—Carmel Sepuloni: And then find out what they do when they go off benefit to see that they are OK rather than leaving a tetraplegic woman to live in a van because there is no follow-up from Work and Income New Zealand.Hon ANNE TOLLEY: —and you can yell but it does not change the facts. It is 10.3 percent; 10.3 percent of our population are receiving a main benefit and that is the lowest it has been in a December quarter since prior to the global financial crisis. I think that is a tremendous achievement that this Government and more importantly hard-working New Zealanders have made to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.The best group of the lot of course are sole parents most of whom know that the best future for their children is not living on a benefit for long periods of time. I was really shocked when I had a look at some statistics—and I am having them brought up to date. To June 2015 if you look at those people in our population who are dependent on a main benefit 71 percent of them had been a child in a benefit-dependent home during their childhood—71 percent. That is appalling and we have to change that. If we are talking about intergenerational dependence we have to stop that happening to the children of today and the best way we can do that is to help their parents into work. So the total number of those on sole parent support now is just under 65000. That is an enormous reduction in the number of sole parents relying on a benefit and that is great for them and it is great for their kids.There are now over 50000 fewer children living in benefit-dependent homes than there were in 2011 so we know that those children have good role models—their parents are working. I know that many of those parents have gone into perhaps unskilled lower-paid jobs—I hope they are secure jobs—but they are on the ladder of employment. They are in a position where they can go on to earn more money. If they are on a benefit they are waiting for a Consumers Price Index increase every year. That is all they can look forward to. But if they are earning money in employment they are able to get on that ladder and increase their incomes.So on behalf of the taxpayer this Government is absolutely committed to helping people get into employment and lift themselves and their families out of poverty by a whole range of means not the least being the education statistics that my colleague Minister Parata espoused in question time today. One of the best levers to help people into employment is making sure that they get qualifications and to see the tremendous advances that have been made in educational achievement particularly by Māori and Pasifika—who form too big a part of our benefit statistics—I think is outstanding and I am amazed that the House did not burst into spontaneous applause. It is absolutely fantastic and it is due to those hard-working teachers and parents who have worked hard and supported those young people to get those educational qualifications.So when we come to look at the statistics around poverty unfortunately there are still too many people who are experiencing hardship and that is why this Government invested $790 million in Budget 2015-16. We will see the effects of that partly in this year's Ministry of Social Development household incomes report and fully in the 2018 incomes report. It takes a while for the statistics to feed through.In the meantime we are not sitting on our hands. We have done a tremendous amount to help those families who are experiencing difficulties and financial hardship. We have increased their childcare support. We have introduced the free doctors visits and prescriptions for children under 13. We have extended paid parental leave and we have increased parental tax credits. We have served alongside our partners Fonterra and Sanitarium over 8 million breakfasts in schools—over 8 million breakfasts that this Government and its partners have provided to New Zealand children over the last few years. We support organisations like KidsCan which makes sure particularly at the start of the year that kids have shoes and sandals that they have raincoats and of course we have supported the Nit Busters programme.This Government does not just talk about poverty and hardship; this Government has set out to address the drivers of poverty and hardship and support New Zealand families to lift themselves out of that hardship."