Bennett Paula: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett Paula: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3425. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 In the rudderless ship that they call “Labour Land” as the Davids argue over who should wear the captain’s hat the previous speaker Jacinda Arden is of course the chief purser which is the best job she could do. As she whips around with her clipboard desperately trying to get people’s signatures and thinking that that is actually public consultation let us get to what the real business of the day is. She is someone who calls the targets of reducing child abuse reducing the number of people on benefits and making sure that we attack things like rheumatic fever and immunisation meaningless. I quote directly from that member who said that the Government’s targets are “meaningless” and will fall over in a bit of weakness. 
Chris Hipkins 
: They are if you don’t put any action behind them. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Actually Chris Hipkins can speak up because he too actually turned round and said that these targets are pretty meaningless stuff. Well if actually standing up and setting clear targets putting a line in the sand and holding the Public Service and ourselves to them is meaningless then I proudly stand up here as someone who will not only be backing them but making sure that we do reach these targets. 
This is serious stuff. When we hear David Parker calling these targets meaningless I ask him to ask those children out there whether they think it is meaningless stuff. We have a pretty poor record of child abuse and neglect in this country and since 2004 we have seen the numbers steadily increasing. Some will say that that is because we are targeting better we are getting access to better information and people feel that they can speak up. They feel that they can actually ring the police or ring Child Youth and Family and action will be taken—and that is right. But unless we put a clear target out there that we will hold ourselves to account on that we will bring those numbers down then we will continue to see the rise that we currently do. None of this stuff is easy but for the Opposition to repeatedly say that it is meaningless I think is doing a disservice to those thousands of children who desperately need us. 
We have put a line in the sand and said that we will raise immunisation rates. I think the one on rheumatic fever is ambitious to say the least but it is one where I take my hat off to the Minister of Health who is prepared to stand up and say that he will set an ambitious target and put every resource behind— 
Chris Hipkins 
: What’s the time frame? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Actually the members on that side of the House should be ashamed of their own record in rheumatic fever. They did not put more money into helping those families who desperately needed it. The numbers were going up for some time and we saw no action. This is one area where Labour members generally should hang their heads in shame at their poor record on rheumatic fever. 
 Let us talk about unemployment. We could have just said that we would reduce the number on the unemployment benefit but that would have meant just taking off the benefit those who had been on it for a short time. What we needed to do was look at those who have been on the unemployment benefit for 12 months or longer. We also then turned round and said: “Let’s include those who are on the sickness benefit.” When you look at those numbers you see that it is pretty tough. Currently you will see that 78000 is the number of people on job seeker support who have been on it for 12 months or longer. Reducing that to 55000 means a reduction of 30 percent. But more than 39000 of them are on the sickness benefit. These are not people for whom it is easy to remove the barriers that are stopping them from getting into work. It will take a sustained approach to actually make sure that we are putting around them the support they need. To ignore them as they were ignored under Labour is a disservice. To see the number of people on the sickness benefit increase by 47 percent under Labour at the supposedly best of times when there were more jobs than people knew what to do with is a disservice to those people. 
Grant Robertson 
: So we made people sicker? Is that what you’re saying Paula? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Well actually they have not increased by the same number in the last 4 years. Look at the trends and look at what was happening. This Government will set clear targets and proudly stand up for them. To call them meaningless is absolutely a disservice to those children.