Rich Katherine: Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Rich Katherine: Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:610;Page:7687] 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 What a pitiful speech that was from a member we used to hear a lot from! We used to hear a lot from him but he has gone all quiet under Helen Clark’s thumb. He is laughing but that was one of the saddest slowest speeches I have heard with the least amount of content. What we are supposed to be talking about of course is the Budget. When like many members I got to read the Budget I had great expectations that we would see something in the welfare area. But no I thumbed through the Budget and did not see any expenditure that will make a difference to people at the front line. I think the Government realised it did not have enough in its Budget for the welfare area so it quickly moved to make the announcement that next year would be welfare’s chance to get some expenditure. 
But as we know Labour—through its polling I imagine—then realised that it was on the wrong side of the welfare debate and we have seen an about-face this week. We have seen a rush to announce a number of new policies with great fanfare. The Government has presented them all as new. The policy is called the Jobs Jolt renamed the “Jobs Joke”. The Government reannounced a whole set of things that were already in place. Some of them had been in place for the last 10 years—no one had told the Minister. The Government dressed up existing programmes and tried to sell them as new ways of trying to get people into work—and so it should try to get them into work. One of the questions Government members have failed to answer is why the number of people on welfare has gone up not down even though the Government has had the best economic conditions in a very long time. If we look at total figures in this country we see that the number of people on welfare dependent on the State has increased not decreased. That is something the Government should be very very embarrassed about. 
This is a Government that was going to make huge changes to the welfare area. What it did was to take a backward step by undoing a number of things that had been done by National in the last 5 years. We have seen a large increase in certain benefits. The number of people on the sickness benefit and the invalids benefit has skyrocketed in the last few years. No one can explain that yet. The numbers on both those benefits have increased at rates that cannot be explained by levels of disability within the community and they certainly cannot be explained just by saying we have an aging population or that it is due to population growth. 
 The culture within Work and Income has changed all right but it has changed for the worse. Some of the initiatives that have been reintroduced as new were there already. They are some changes within Work and Income to do what it should have been doing in the first place. The Minister announced a new initiative for intensive new services in isolated areas. Case managers have always had the right to call people in for interviews and they have always had the ability to provide one-on-one advice and support to individuals. That was the whole theory of that case-management approach. In terms of special assistance for sole parents the Minister has often said that no assistance was provided to help women in particular to get back into the workforce but that is absolute rubbish. Each year there were interviews training programmes and all sorts of support such as the Compass programme which was brought in by Jenny Shipley. Once again what is being proposed is not new. 
My personal favourite looking at the Jobs Jolt is the information technology training something called “cyber communities” which will help 140 long-term unemployed people back into work through information and communication technology. That is a fat lot of use for the 6000 New Zealanders who have been on some form of welfare for the last 10 years. The amounts of money we are talking about are pitiful: $2.5 million over 3 years. That department spends $3.5 million a day so $2.5 million over 3 years is not a drop in the bucket. It is not even one drip and it will make little difference. There is an idea that suddenly there will be greater support for the Mayors Task Force for Jobs. For the last couple of years Work and Income New Zealand has provided staff members for that task force so what has been announced in the last couple of days is not new. 
The next thing the Minister has introduced as new is the idea that people could potentially have their benefits cut if they move to remote locations. Once again Work and Income New Zealand had the ability to do that. What was new yesterday was that when Sue Bradford asked a question about whether Maori would be asked to relocate from papakainga or ancestral lands the Minister confirmed that they would not be included. It seems that everybody else will be asked to move from remote areas to look for work except Maori. Once again we are seeing two standards of citizenship develop in this country and Steve Maharey agrees with that. 
Finally it is rather ironic that when the Minister tries to talk tough on welfare he does not focus on the under-25s which is the group on the welfare register that is of most concern to New Zealanders but picks on the 55-59-year-old New Zealanders—those who are nearing retirement. When he talks tough on welfare the first thing he does is to try to kick those who are about to retire in the shins. I ask the Minister where it states in the third-way manual that the first people one picks on are people aged 55-59. Most of us know that those people are the sector of the welfare register who are very motivated to get work but face a wide range of barriers into employment that should be recognised. So that is kind of funny—he talks tough on welfare but the first thing he does is talk tough in respect of those who are close to retirement. That is really kind! I am sure Tony Blair would be very proud of Steve Maharey and that announcement. The thing is that someone forgot to tell the Minister that people in the 55-59 age group are already work tested. Yesterday he seemed to think that that was something new. I say to the Minister that what was removed was the ability to apply for an exemption. People apply for those exemptions not usually because they want to but because their bodies may have worn out from a lifetime of hard work and they are unable to work. 
I can see that members on the other side of the House are getting really uptight about this because they know we have seen through this plan—a plan they announced as being some sort of cunning plan. I remember the story of the emperor’s new clothes. I say to the House that Steve Maharey has no clothes. What he announced yesterday amounts to absolutely nothing. It is a rehash and a reheat of policies already in place not just in the last couple years but in some cases in the last 10 years. Some policies were in place when we had the New Zealand Employment Service. Somebody forgot to tell the Minister that many of those things were already being done. 
Tonight we heard about welfare fraud. We heard about a staff member who after 2½ years has managed to extract $1.9 million out of Work and Income New Zealand. It comes as no surprise. Benefit fraud on both sides of the ledger is something that has been truly neglected under this Government. That Minister can shrug his shoulders as he did tonight and say that that was an operational issue but if National were in Government we would not think it was just an operational issue. We would think the Minister would have to get involved in an issue of $1.9 million. We are talking big dollars. We have an expectation of those on welfare that they will not defraud the system. 
The Minister poor thing puts out his press release and has to ring around because nobody has followed up on it. I can see why he is feeling under a bit of pressure with his “Jobs Joke”. Everybody knows that it is a joke and that it is not designed to make one iota of difference to those who are unemployed or to bringing down welfare numbers—numbers that Treasury have projected to increase over the next few years. We have the best economic conditions in a generation and welfare numbers will be going up. That is because that Government has undone many of the things that were being done in Work and Income New Zealand to bring numbers down. It was working. The Government has a problem. Its polling is telling it that it has a problem and that it had better make some decisions. That is why Steve Maharey has had to swallow a dead rat and start to bring in some things that he feels deeply uncomfortable about.