Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): The member who opened this debate the Hon Kieran McAnulty invited the House to tell it how it is. So let's do exactly that on the state of welfare that we inherited when we took office. Instead of dealing with the welfare State instead of dealing with ballooning numbers that came on to welfare I think the other side of the House would prefer to bury their heads in the golden sand—perhaps the golden sands of Treasure Island. So as I said in the spirit of telling it as it is let's just have a look back at what we have inherited: 70000 more people on the jobseeker benefit—70000—at a time there were businesses everywhere desperate—desperate—for staff. So what do we have now? We have now over 200000 New Zealanders on the jobseeker benefit. That is nearly the size of Wellington—nearly the size of Wellington. But what's worse is 115000—115000—have been on welfare for more than a year.Let's have a look at the children in those households: 220000 children growing up in benefit-dependent households because we saw welfare dependency surge under the last Government.Hon Kieran McAnulty: Excuses—more excuses.Hon LOUISE UPSTON: We're telling it how it is. I'm just laying out the facts which is a great way to do it. But are we gonna sit here and say Oh" you know "woe is me. We can't deal with this."?Tom Rutherford: No. We're going to do something about it.Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Absolutely. So first step job number one—because this side of the House understands the value and importance of work—we have set an ambitious target to reduce the number of people on jobseeker benefit by 50000 by 2030.Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Heartless.Hon LOUISE UPSTON: So what have we done? We have reset—oh it's heartless! They think it's heartless to want to get people into a job. They think it's heartless that someone should be earning their own income and be able to provide for themselves and their family—oh that's heartless! Well I'm sorry I'll tell the House what is heartless: to leave people on welfare to rot—to rot. Under that side of the House you could sign up to a jobseeker benefit you could sign up and have zero contact with the Ministry of Social Development for 12 months—until it was time to sign up again. How does that help someone find a job? It didn't which is why welfare numbers ballooned.So instead under our watch it's a far more proactive system.Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Punitive and callous is what you are.Hon LOUISE UPSTON: So within two weeks a jobseeker will return to Work and Income be very clear about what support is on offer to address the barriers that they face to work. They'll also be really clear about what the expectations are what their responsibilities are in return for receiving welfare support.Now let's just talk about some of those work obligations because the other side of the House used these words like "callous". Well work obligations are: having a CV turning up to Work and Income applying for a job participating in training to get a driver's license taking a job if offered. Oh but those things are terrible! Guess what! Every single one of those work obligations gets someone closer to finding a job. And that's what this side of the House values. So that's why we've introduced our traffic light system to make it really clear—really clear—to people about what their responsibilities are. We want to ensure people are making the most of all of the opportunities available through Work and Income and upholding their responsibilities.Yesterday I announced more things to make the system more active—by ensuring the employment support programmes are actually targeted to those on welfare. Oh shock horror! Shock horror! It's quite amazing to think that only 31 percent of those participating in Mana in Mahi were actually on the jobseeker benefit. So a high-value high-intensity programme that is successful—more of it would be going to people who weren't on welfare.So these are the sorts of things common-sense changes that our Government is changing to make sure the welfare system is more active to make sure it is connecting more people with the opportunities of work because this side of the House understands the value of work. We understand how important it is to have a job and to have an income."