Goff Phil: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2532. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 I have been listening to this debate for some time. I was not going to take a call but I noticed that the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development has stayed silent—stayed silent—all the way through this debate. I want the Minister to get up on her hind legs and explain to me to the Committee and to New Zealanders why it is that during the whole election campaign she said nothing to the elderly people of this country about what she was intending to do—not one word. No wonder this Government is sneaking the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill through under urgency because it would not have the guts to stand up— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —and tell the people who appeared before the select committee why it was doing this. It would not have the intestinal fortitude if you prefer those words Mr Chairman to say to the people of New Zealand that it stuck this in and it did not tell them about it.  
I heard the Prime Minister during the campaign say the grand words “You judge a society on how it treats not its wealthiest and strongest citizens but its most vulnerable.” What weasel words they turned out to be. This is a Government that is hitting the vulnerable in everything it has done in this Budget. It is even picking the pockets of the paper boys and paper girls of this country—kids who cannot vote. It is taking a tiny amount of money in fiscal terms but a lot of money in terms of what those kids get. It is picking on the people who send their kids to public schools. Is it not ironic that we have a Government whose leaders send their kids to private schools that advertise the fact that they have lower class sizes telling the parents who send their kids to public schools that class sizes do not matter? That is a double standard. There is a word you cannot use in the House but everybody in this country knows what I am talking about.  
Now the Government is doing it to the elderly. It is a miserable amount of money—$4.5 million—but what does it tell the elderly people of this country? These are people who have worked all of their lives and have built up some sort of asset. They are not wealthy people; probably the only thing they have is a home and few possessions. The Government is telling those people that in the twilight years of their lives they will have to spend those assets rather than die with the dignity of knowing that there is something they can pass on to their kids. I have to say that that is pretty pathetic.  
I say to the Minister to get up on your feet and explain to the country why you are doing this. Tell the country why you never gave any warning that that is what the re-election of a National Government might mean. 
Hon Annette King 
: What’s their agenda? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: We said during the campaign that there was a secret agenda but oh no no—no secret agenda! National members said they were upfront and nice that they smile and they talk optimistically. Then they come in straight after the election with the first Budget and do they hit the people who have a lot of money—people like the Prime Minister who got another $1000 a week in tax cuts? No! They are sacrosanct. The wealthy and the powerful will be looked after by the National Government. This bill is a further example of how a National Government picks on the most vulnerable. Yes the people that you are affecting Minister will be dead by the time of the next election. You will not suffer any political consequences but what is the Minister doing—I know you Mr Chairman would not consider an underhand thing like this. The Government is picking on the people who are vulnerable the people who have least to give and the people who cannot hurt them politically. That is to use the term of my colleague Annette King a despicable act by this Government. It is picking on these people. At one end there are the paper boys and girls who get about $2 an hour and at the other end are the people in the twilight years of their lives.  
Ruth Dyson mentioned that the average time that a person is spending in a rest home now is about 8 months— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: 18. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —18 months I am sorry. It is the last 18 months of their lives and this Government is taking advantage of their vulnerability by sneaking in a measure that it had not warned the public about. It never had the intestinal fortitude to tell the public what it was going to do before the election and it does not even have the courage to stand up in this Chamber and defend the measure that it is pushing through. Why can this not go to a select committee? There is no—