Dyson Ruth: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Dyson Ruth: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18192] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 New Zealanders have a lot to be proud of and have every reason to be confident about our future as a country. There was 4.6 percent economic growth for the year to September 2004 and more than a quarter of a million new jobs were added to our economy over the last 5 years. Our present crime rate is the lowest in 21 years. In the past 5 years the number of people supported by benefits has dropped by over 100000—a drop of 23 percent. Our Working for Families package has put significant levels of extra dollars into the pockets of families who need that help. There are nearly 7000 Modern Apprentices and more than 126000 people in industry training and there have been significant boosts to funding in both health and education. New Zealanders in the provinces and in our cities want our country to be a confident proud nation where people want to live work raise their children and invest. 
This year New Zealanders have the opportunity once again to determine our future path as a nation—whether we will continue to invest in our infrastructure services and people or whether we will turn back the clock to the tired and failed old policies of the tired and failed old leader of the National Party Don Brash. Some people may not remember the 1990s but with every speech from the current National leader those memories come flooding back. His policies—a term that I admit is very generous to use in this case—would stifle growth and that is reminiscent of Don Brash’s days as the Governor of the Reserve Bank. They would reduce the opportunities for jobs to be created and would cause division and tension in our country. 
I am privileged to be part of the Labour-Progressive Government which rejects Don Brash’s policies and which offers a strong track record and a vision for the future. It is a future where families are well supported in secure and affordable homes and where our young people can attend their local schools be taught by appropriately trained and valued teachers and leave school and move into accessible and affordable tertiary education into an apprenticeship or into a job. It is a nation where our work environment values the workforce as a critical factor to success. That is one of the reasons why our productivity work is so exciting. That work recognises the potential expansion of our economy by tapping into the potential of our existing staff and by changing the nature of our workplaces in order to make them more attractive to New Zealanders who are currently not in paid work. Our unions and business leaders are committed and valued partners in that productivity work. What a contrast that is to the days of the 1990s when the previous National Government was in power. It entrenched division between employers and unions causing significant amounts of industrial unrest and the words “committed” and “valued” just were not part of the language. 
Do members remember the first Act that was repealed under the National Government in the 1990s? It was the pay and employment equity legislation. What a message to women in New Zealand that was. It was followed by the “mother of all Budgets” and by benefit cuts—although I have to say that Jenny Shipley appears to have been comparatively generous when we look at the current National social welfare spokesperson Judith Collins. That was then followed by years of punitive divisive and frankly mean policy. The benefit cuts the superannuation cuts the Employment Contracts Act and State housing sales—every policy and piece of legislation was as is the case with every muttering from National’s current leader punitive and divisive. 
It is clear that the policies of the National Party have not changed. Mr Brash’s speech at Ratana recently was quite offensive to many Maori. He made implications of welfare dependency but his figures were then discovered not even to be accurate. National’s former leader Bill English would never have given a speech in which he had relied on someone else; he knows the value of having good figures. One would think that a former Governor of the Reserve Bank would at least have added up the figures enough to make sure that he was speaking facts when he went to Ratana to insult the people who were hosting him. 
Many women in New Zealand want to have the chance to be in a paid job in order to contribute their skills and to get both satisfaction and income. Frankly our economy needs to have their contribution. The Government’s policies of supporting substantial investment in childcare and of introducing and recently extending paid parental leave its commitment to pay and employment equity and its support of out-of-school care programmes reflect how the Labour-led Government supports women in that role. The same goes for disabled people. When our Government was elected in 1999 the vocational services sector was despondent. The sector was weak under-resourced and unable to support disabled people into training and employment. There was the disgraceful treatment of 21-year-olds who were told at the end of each school term whether their funding would continue for the following term. We can imagine how that felt for those families not knowing from one term to the next whether their son or daughter would have enough funding to continue with his or her schooling and having no options at all available for that young person’s vocational service. After 5 years of working in partnership with the sector we now have well-trained and well-supported staff. We have good governance structures in their organisations and there are now significantly more opportunities for disabled New Zealanders to get into training and work—to get paid work which has been denied to them for so long. That is the way to move people from a benefit into a job. 
The way to ensure that the gap that exists between a person on a benefit and one in a paid job is made smaller or eliminated completely is by looking at the individual asking what the barrier is that stops that person from getting a job and actively working with the person to remove it rather than by portraying people on benefits as bludgers or as people who as Steve Maharey quoted from the current National social welfare spokesperson spend all their day ignoring their children and indulging in smoking dope. 
Those are not the beneficiaries that I work with. Those people want to have the opportunity to work and we will ensure that those opportunities are given to them. 
The choice this year is very clear for New Zealanders. Our Government is working with and for our country and we are getting results. We are building a stronger future for all New Zealanders to take part in our nation’s activities. The National Party is offering us failed and divisive policies of the past. As is the case with National’s current leader those policies will take us nowhere. New Zealand is a great country. It is a privilege to be part of a Government that knows we have so much to be proud of and that encourages people to enjoy our great nation.