Sepuloni CarmelHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I thought this was the time to respond given that the Hon Tim Macindoe had brought it back to social development. I want to start by referring to Tim Macindoe's reflection on the previous Government in inferring that they were successful. I want to reflect on some of the figures in the appropriations that really demonstrate lack of success.I want to start with the hardship assistance figures. In the December 2017 quarter we had 290070 hardship assistance payments compared to 252000 in the previous December quarter. That's an increase of nearly 40000 hardship assistance payments. The main reason that people were seeking those hardship assistance payments was food—was food the Hon Tim Macindoe. Then after that it was housing. Food and housing—a massive increase in the number of New Zealanders needing support from Work and Income from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) for the basics. That doesn't sound like the mark of success to me—or to this Government. So when reflecting on that we need to think about what's been said already in this debate and that has been the issues around housing that have been touched on by many of the previous speakers and the impact that that has had on people's ability to do the basics—put a roof over their head and food on the table. And it's real—that housing shortage is real. We have seen the demand for emergency housing and hardship assistance grants at MSD be driven up because of the fact that people are struggling to pay the money they need to have a roof over their and their families heads. That for me is not a mark of success.We saw under the previous Government that the complete focus was on their Better Public Services target of reducing welfare dependency with no real regard for whether or not people were going into work whether or not people and their families were better off—just the mark of success being if they weren't on benefit then therefore that was a good result for a Government. Well quite frankly that wasn't good enough. There were no checks in place to make sure that those families actually were better off and then when you reflect on the fact that the hardship assistance was going up well that actually shows that there were a whole lot of people that were worse off under the previous National Government—worse off despite the fact that they still tried to sing from the rooftops that success was about pushing people off benefits.I do want to reflect on that because it's really important to touch on it. I also want to talk about the fact that Mr Tim Macindoe touched on welfare reform and the overhaul that we have planned moving forward because it's important to contextualise when looking at the appropriation of the year gone by why we need to do that. The reason we need to do that is because we need to have a focus in our welfare system that is absolutely around the fact that it has to be about people being better off—about individuals' well-being—a different approach to the National Government whereby with their social investment approach it was about making sure that people were not fiscal liabilities to the State. Instead from this Government making sure that we do everything that we can to maximise the potential of all New Zealanders—a very different focus from this Government compared to the previous one but I have no doubt that we'll gain much better results because a deficit approach never works and that's what we see undertaken by the previous Government.We see other things that are of concern with respect to the previous Government. One of them that came up in the appropriations was the massive increase in sanctions that were imposed on people that were going through the welfare system—a 30.1 percent increase in the December 2017 quarter compared to the year before; a 30.1 percent increase in the number of sanctions that were imposed on New Zealanders. Did that help New Zealanders be better off? Well no it didn't because we still see New Zealanders suffering from food insecurity and the inability to access appropriate housing. So how did imposing a 30.1 percent increase in sanctions improve the lives of New Zealanders accessing the support of MSD?All of this is really important to reflect on and I think actually it shows very clearly that the assertion made by Tim Macindoe that his Government was a success is absolutely incorrect.