Upston Louise; Sepuloni CarmelHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. One of the recent pieces of information about the wage subsidy is that banks are declining loans for people who are in jobs supported by the wage subsidy. So I'm interested to know in terms of the number the additional number of people that the Minister in the chair the Hon Carmel Sepuloni is expecting on benefit—210000 at the moment on unemployment benefits—what specific job creation initiatives and new employment initiatives have delivered the most people on unemployment benefit into jobs in the last three months? Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Well if I talk about exits off benefit into work clearly April and May were not the best months particularly given the level 4 lockdown period and the fact that many people could not work unless they were working in essential workforces. But what is interesting is that in June we had more exits off benefit into work this year than we had in June last year. I think off the top of my head it was around 7000 to 7500 exits off benefit into work. In the same month last year—so in June last year—it was around 5240 and so that is an increase. With the demand increasing in terms of more people coming on benefit we do want to see increases in exits. But it's not so far—you know we haven't necessarily been able to keep up to the same extent.I do need to acknowledge as well that there are many New Zealanders returning from overseas who have lost jobs overseas who have come back and then are also needing to seek out employment and in the interim whilst they find employment some of them are also having to access the support of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). As New Zealanders of course they should be doing that if they are experiencing financial hardship without jobs and without income.With regard to the different initiatives there are multiple initiatives going on across Government in fact to address the challenges that we face because of COVID. We've set up a new ministerial group called the Education Employment and Training Ministers' Group where we are coordinating across Government agencies to ensure that we've got oversight of what initiatives are being rolled out across the country across regions to ensure that they are being rolled out in collaboration with local government with industry partners with our union friends as well. So there are a range of things happening. Just to mention a couple—I announced a few weeks back just during the recess with Mayor Phil Goff in Auckland the extension of Ngā Puna Pūkenga programme which was piloted last year which was successful. It started initially with 60 jobs that Auckland Council would be able to work with their contractors to be able to offer to particular groups who are often disadvantaged in the labour market like Māori and Pacific young people people with disabilities and people who may have been on benefit for a long time. We took that pilot from a 60-person pilot to actually 700 places. So that's just one initiative. You know there's also another initiative that MSD has set up with the mayoral task force to try and get more jobs out in the regions so that the different regions can access up to half a million dollars to support their job creation initiatives that they know are well suited to their regional areas. Those are just a couple.I could go on. There are all the infrastructure projects. We've been very focused on initiatives that are shovel-ready and that is because you know as we've said on multiple occasions we are all about keeping New Zealand moving.Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to turn my attention to the COVID income relief payment. When we had the Estimates hearing we were unable to scrutinise this to the extent we wanted because it was in the $20 billion—it hadn't been broken down at that point. So the original consideration is that it would be $570 million and I want to know if that is still the anticipated spend on the COVID income relief payment and whether the suggestion that another 30000 people are being approached to claim that benefit is correct. I wonder if they haven't claimed it because those who are eligible are in a family situation where they have an income of up to $2000 a week already coming in and potentially a redundancy payment of $30000.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Yes so to date—I mean these are the most recent figures—as at 17 July I think there are about 18500 people receiving the temporary income relief payment. The 30000 that the member talked about that have been contacted with respect to this payment are those that have come on benefits since the 1 March. So of course you know I think it's important that the ministry is making those on benefit aware of what supports they might be eligible for. The COVID payment may be something that they are able to transfer to and we want to make sure that we are putting that information out so that down the track people aren't in a position where they just didn't know that that support was available.I want to say there's a lot going on and so it is important that we keep communicating what is available because given everything that's out there you know people could easily miss things. So that's one of the answers to the questions—so yeah 18500 as of 17 July. There probably haven't been as many people that have picked it up as we thought that there would be. One of the reasons that I've been given for that is—two of the reasons actually: one is that the economy is not faring as badly as what some of the original forecasts were predicting. And then secondly is that at the time that we announced the temporary income relief job loss cover—at the time we announced that—we hadn't taken into consideration or made decisions about wage subsidy extension and so therefore there may have been some people that would otherwise have fallen out of work being eligible for the COVID job loss cover but because we did the extension of the wage subsidy they'd been able to maintain their place of employment and they've been retained by their employer.So those are two of the reasons why I've had it put to me that we haven't had the pick-up that we may have expected. But on top of that I think it's important for us to focus on also continuing to raise awareness and making sure New Zealanders know what supports are available during this time.