Bennett Paula: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett Paula: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3760. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 I move  
That the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. Doing nothing about benefit dependency is no longer an option. For too long the system has let thousands of New Zealanders languish on benefits with no hope no support and no encouragement to live and lead a better life. In fact the welfare system itself has failed too many New Zealanders. This Government will not stand by and let that continue. The bill before the House today continues the significant and comprehensive reforms this Government has introduced to modernise the welfare system. It started with Future Focus in 2010 and we are following it up with this bill before introducing a third tranche of welfare reform later this year that will contain the most significant changes.  
The changes we are making will reset obligations and expectations introducing a level of fairness that is long overdue. The statistics have been telling us for years that welfare dependence is intergenerational. This causes a loss of hope and a lack of ambition for adults and for their children in so many ways. One hundred and seventy thousand New Zealanders have spent most of the last decade on welfare. You cannot tell me that that is good for them as individuals good for their families or certainly any good for their children. We simply cannot continue to spend up to $8 billion a year to support 12 percent of the working-age population. I cannot ask taxpayers to support a system that continually grows but does not address the causes of dependence at the expense of health education and other priorities that taxpayers might like us to make.  
I am not convinced that the left sees a problem with this level of dependence but I am convinced there is a difference in philosophy when it comes to welfare. The left creates dependence; the right creates independence. We would rather give them the tools and the support to be independent. The right will incentivise while the left are busy with sympathising. This is not about a lack of compassion. I have a huge amount of respect for people who are raising their families with little money. I just want them to have more. We could do nothing as the left would prefer and that means leaving the 320000 New Zealanders on welfare with no hope of a better life. I simply refuse to do that.  
When listening to the debate on these reforms it is clear that some have no faith whatsoever in the ability of New Zealanders to get off welfare and provide for themselves. On this side of the House quite frankly we see that as demeaning. We believe in people and their ability to succeed and better their situation and we believe in providing them with the support so that they can do so. We do not believe in leaving people on the scrap heap. To continue simply paying a 17-year-old sole mother a weekly sum of money and give her no other support would quite frankly in my view be irresponsible. We will not do that. To write off single women as unable to support themselves financially simply because they are women would be ignorant. We will not do that. To allow people to just give up and opt out of work would be a failure of any Government and we will not do that. National will modernise the welfare system with a clear work focus that applies to a far greater number of people.  
We will take a completely new approach with young people. They will be required to be in education or training to get a benefit. Their bills will be paid directly. Money for food will be loaded on to payment cards instead of giving them cash. They will have to complete budgeting and/or parenting programmes if appropriate. They will receive small cash incentives for meeting these milestones. Instead of having a solely financial relationship with Work and Income teen parents along with other young people will have a youth service provider or private worker working alongside them. That provider will help them navigate issues like accommodation bills getting access to education or training and upskilling. Teen parents will get vital childcare. We are putting aside $80 million for this so there is no barrier to them getting the education or training they need.  
This bill will require sole parents with children over 14 to look for full-time work and will require sole parents with children over 5 to look for part-time work. This bill will require those parents to start preparing themselves in advance for this change. This bill removes the sexist and discriminatory policy that has seen the women alone and widows benefits existing well beyond a time when they were necessary. These benefits effectively said that a woman could not fend for herself without a man and I think that is just archaic. We are modernising welfare. We are providing more support and we will be expecting something back. We have changed the commencement date of 30 July 2012 for the youth package changes to 20 August 2012. Changes to the widows benefit women alone benefit and DPB come into effect in October of this year.  
As I have mentioned the bill introduces a new system of support obligations and financial assistance for young people and teen parents. The aim of this is to balance support and obligations in a way that will improve social outcomes for young people. This is new; it is a different approach to a longstanding problem. Never before has anyone looked at the benefit pipeline and put such a huge investment into those very young people who are likely to go on to benefit. Currently there are around 3000 16 and 17-year-olds and 16 to 18-year-old parents on a benefit and around 14000 young people aged 16 to 17 years who are considered to be “neets”—not in education employment or training. We are determined to stop the track on to benefit. The changes in this bill will reduce the risk of long-term benefit dependency for teenagers and ensure they have better outcomes and opportunities. The best way to do this is through work and training and we are investing $148 million over 4 years for youth services to achieve this including that very necessary wraparound support.  
The left has criticised this investment a lot. I stand by it. We are going to have youth-focused providers who are the experts in working with young people motivating them and helping them to turn their lives round. We are being flexible and innovative in how we do that but uncompromising in the outcomes that we want. There has been some speculation on the next welfare reform bill. I would like to assure the House that progress is being made. As I previously have indicated amongst other things we will change the benefit categories install the investment approach and put in a regime of social obligations and drug testing for some beneficiaries.  
But in conclusion on the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill I would like to extend some important thankyous—firstly to Sam Lotu-Iiga and to those members of the Social Services Committee from all sides of the House who have worked on the bill. I want to recognise your work for sitting during adjournments for the time that you gave to people to make their submissions and for the suggestions you made for changes to the bill some of which we were able to take on board. I know that through the select committee process the committee actually found a couple of things that were slightly ambiguous and suggested we make changes to those problems. I think we see a better bill for that process so I want to thank those members of the select committee for the time they spent on the bill.  
I particularly would like to thank my hard-working officials. There have been many officials from many departments but mainly obviously those from the Ministry of Social Development who work in the policy unit who hopefully are listening out there. I just say an absolute heartfelt thank you. They really are the engine behind all of this. They take those ideas and they turn them into something real and I want to say thank you. Treasury has worked really hard. Despite the sometimes fun comments I make Treasury has actually just got on alongside of this and has been a real part of that robust debate that I think leads to a better piece of work. We have had other ministries—whether it be the Ministry of Health the Inland Revenue Department or the Ministry of Education in particular—that have helped us. Their role in this has been absolutely critical so I do say a real genuine thank you.  
I also say thank you to Cabinet. I say thank you to Cabinet because it is actually putting in that huge investment of more than $148 million. The total costs of this are $287 million. Cabinet does not do it lightly. I had to go to Cabinet and prove a really strong case of why this was going to make a fundamental difference to these young people—and it does. Change is on the way. I think this is a big part of that brighter future for New Zealand and I would like to commend this bill to the House.