Ardern Jacinda: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Jacinda: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:13144] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I find it particularly telling that at no point in Minister Bennett’s contribution did she address any of the areas of this bill the Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill where we have expressed our opposition. At no point did she talk about any of the additional testing that has been put in place. She simply addressed issues around the abatement which we have said we do not contest; we are in absolute agreement. The fact that the Minister has chosen not to talk about those more controversial aspects of this bill is I think particularly telling—it does indeed say it all. 
Before I go on to the substantive points of my initial address to the Chamber I want to reflect on some statements that were made previously by Chester Borrows a member of this House whom I frequently work with and whom I have a great deal of respect for. But I have to say that I do not believe for a second that Mr Borrows believed anything he said during his contribution. I do not think I need to remind the Chamber as to who brought down benefit numbers to the lowest level in decades. It was Labour. It was Labour that brought down benefit numbers in its last term of Government. I refuse to be lectured by the Government about aspiration in that context because it was the previous Labour Government that brought down benefit numbers. 
The Government can talk and chant about the pure rhetoric of aspiration. It may talk about aspiration; we were the ones who made it happen. It is the numbers that matter and I have seen nothing on that side of the House to demonstrate that the rhetoric has been translated into anything tangible except words. 
National constantly claims that it believes in the so-called aspiration of equal opportunity. Where is the equal opportunity in being one of 2700 applicants for one job at Countdown? Where is the equal opportunity in that? There is no aspiration in this bill there is no dignity in this bill and there is no opportunity in this bill. If the Minister would like to refute that when it comes to the work-testing elements of this bill and when it comes to what we are doing to sickness beneficiaries I would be interested in hearing from her because we not disputing abatement rates on this side of the Chamber. 
I have to say that if nothing else I do see some consistency in some of the policies that we see being put forward by the National Government. There are similar approaches in this bill to what we have seen in terms of national standards in our primary schools. We are spending significant amounts of money measuring an issue categorising failure and not doing much more. We are doing nothing to fix the heart of the problem and in doing so we are compounding the issue. I welcome members on that side of the Chamber to contest that point if they choose to. 
I agree with the Minister that context matters and that is why it is important that we do not just throw out numbers about how many jobs are being put on the books at Work and Income. We also need to talk about how many people are going on to the books at Work and Income. Context matters in this situation particularly given that we are in a recession. I refuse to believe that the hardest times have hit us already. We are seeing it truly bite at this particular period which is why context matters. 
My interest is that if this bill really is about getting folks off the benefit surely our test should be about the impact it would have on the groups that are currently without work and are seeking work. There are other elements to the argument including in particular those on the invalids benefit and those on the sickness benefit and I look forward to coming back to those. But in terms of those who wish to work but are out of work what impact will this bill have? That should be our true test. If we are going to talk about that group of people let us be honest and acknowledge that we are talking about Maori Pasifika women and young people. They are the groups that have been impacted the most by this recession and they are manifesting most heavily in our unemployment figures at the moment. Those are the groups that we should be discussing. 
In my view this bill does absolutely nothing to change the situation that those groups find themselves in. That leads to questions as to the real motive for this bill—but I believe that other members on my side of the Chamber have discussed the fact that it was a manifesto statement and was not backed up by evidence or research and we can go into more detail on that. But clearly it is not about jobs and has not been about jobs. 
If we look at young people in particular we see that they have experienced a rapid increase in unemployment. Although we see a rate of unemployment of about 6.8 percent across the board—in Auckland it is 8.7 percent—for young people specifically it is 13.7 percent. Although we have seen some fluctuation in the younger end of that spectrum for the 20 to 24-year-olds it has gone up 2.6 percent since the last March quarter measurement. That is a total of 68200 people. The Minister talks numbers so I tell her that 68200 is the number of unemployed young people that we are talking about at the moment. 
All the initiatives the Government has put forward may have been noble attempts but they are a flash in the pan when we look at those numbers. There are 60000 young people who are not in employment education or training. The Government may add compulsion to its independent youth benefit—compulsion to be in training work and education—but that concerns about 1500 young people. There are 60000 in total and most of them are not receiving any form of Government support to get into work training or education. 
We know the impact on young people of lingering on benefits for long periods of time. The 1990s showed us what happens when a young person stays on a benefit for 12 months or more. Really that is the first point at which this bill will bite for that young person. According to this bill which is meant to be assisting people into work the first thing that will happen for young people who have been on the unemployment benefit for 12 months is that they will get an extra work assessment. That is not good enough in my book. Firstly it is far too late to give genuine assistance because if that young person is on an unemployment benefit we would naturally assume that that young person is lacking the skills needed in our now progressively higher-skilled workplace. We are losing our unskilled jobs in New Zealand and if young people lack the skills and the work experience simply adding another work assessment after 12 months of floundering without anything will do very very little. 
Over a year ago now when the Government undertook its Job Summit members on this side of the House decided to look specifically at youth unemployment. One of the initiatives that we handed to the Government to assess was something that the UK is doing. Any young person who is out of work for 12 months or more is guaranteed if he or she signs up to work alongside the equivalent of Work and Income a placement in education training or work. The Government may claim that that is its Youth Guarantee but it is far from it. There are 2000 places according to the Government and 60000 who are seeking work and those 2000 placements are often unsupported. 
Young people who have not previously done well in education are being chucked into polytechs to tick a box for the Government and they are failing or not even filling the placements that exist. If we ask anyone who runs a polytech institution that is the story we will get. Those young people are not being supported to succeed in those roles. 
The second thing the Government did was say that if people are not coming in through a Youth Guarantee they may not be getting in at all because it has capped places in tertiary education and in our polytechs. We are turning young people away. This is a fundamental shift in what has otherwise been a universal policy in New Zealand—that is if people make the bar for tertiary education in New Zealand they will be accepted. The National Government has changed that by stealth. [ 
Interruption 
] It has absolutely changed that. Grant Robertson has been campaigning on this fact. 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: Sorry Labour did it in 2008. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: Mr Joyce may claim that that is not the case but it absolutely is. Any member of this House who has seen the letter from the University of Canterbury will know that there has been a fundamental shift in the policy of tertiary education in this country and that Minister is entirely responsible for it. That will be the shame of that Government and the legacy it leaves for our young people and I would welcome an address by Mr Joyce so he can tell the Committee why he thinks I am wrong. 
If young people are our measure as an overrepresented group in the unemployment statistics the first point at which this bill assists them is after 12 months of being on an unemployment benefit. But by that point we would already be seeing the damage done by the loss of dignity the loss of employment the loss of skills and the loss of the ability to build their futures. In my mind that is not just a failure; it is an epic failure. If we want to look at genuine initiatives to help our young people we can look no further than across the ditch. Unlike us—our Government has capped the ability to get into tertiary education—Australia has spent billions on skills training and education. Australia recognised that that is where investment should go during a recession and not the reverse which is what we did here.