Collins Judith: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22007] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I rise to speak against the estimates in relation to the Ministry of Social Development and Vote Social Development. In relation to that I would like to make a couple of points. I thought today that I might need to come along tonight and apologise to the Minister because as most people in this House know I have been a stern critic of the wastage that has occurred in social development spending. I have also been a stern critic of the Families Commission and of the $9 million every year it gets from this Government as a pay-off. 
Today in the House when I heard about the $9 million that is still going to be spent on singalong courses in the tertiary education sector I decided that maybe I should apologise because at least there is a Families Commission for $9 million and we know that for that $9 million the commission has employed and sacked one chief executive in 3 months and given a secret payout to that chief executive which apparently the Minister cannot tell us until gosh after September. It has also had a survey done and about 2500 people probably all of them related to people who work for the Families Commission have written in and said what they want for families and what makes families tick. That is $9 million which is peanuts for this Government. 
I will not apologise to the Minister though because I have also reminded myself that he has spent $127.8 million to fund a new service to help sickness beneficiaries and invalids beneficiaries in some way. We have a situation where the number of sickness and invalids beneficiaries seems to be continuously growing and the best he could say to us today in the House was that those numbers are not growing quite as much as they were last year. Frankly that is not good enough. There are 120000 working-age New Zealanders on the sickness and invalids benefits and we in the National Party do not for a moment believe that there are 120000 working-age New Zealanders who need to be on the sickness and invalids benefits. What is most infuriating is the fact that that money—which should be going to help the people who really are sick who are dying of cancer and who have terminal illnesses and have to travel overseas to get treatment—is being wasted. That is what is so infuriating. 
Governments do not have money; Governments simply use and borrow taxpayers’ money. There is no such thing as Government money; there is in fact only New Zealand taxpayers’ money. Taxpayers’ money should be spent on what New Zealand taxpayers need—that is on dealing with the sick on really looking after the elderly and on really making sure that hip knee and cataract operations are done. Those are things that this Government has failed to do anything about despite the massive increases in health funding. Tonight I have been sitting here listening to the debate and I have thought about how time is valuable and about the amount of nonsense I have heard from the Labour Government. Certainly I presumed having heard the very good speech from the member from United Future who spoke previously that United Future members would not be voting for this nonsense but I have been told by one of my colleagues that unfortunately they will. I have to wonder why the people of New Zealand have to continue to wait to do something about this Government. Fortunately we now have an election date so something can happen. 
Just the other day we saw one of the examples of bureaucracy and nonsense coming out of the Government in this area. It is something called  
Social Report 2005 
. 
Steve Chadwick 
: It’s fantastic! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I hear from the member for Rotorua that it is fantastic. Unfortunately not everyone agrees with her. This document which I calculate is at least 1½ centimetres thick was described yesterday by the  
New Zealand Herald  
as “Scorecard a waste of money”. The  
New Zealand Herald 
 goes on to suggest in its editorial that one of the first things the National Party should do in Government is to get rid of this PC nonsense—and when the  
New Zealand Herald  
says that in its editorial then by goodness things are about to change. One of the things it says about the report is that it is full of Government propaganda—gosh fancy that—and is uninformative. But Steve Chadwick says it is fantastic. The report suggests that everything is happy and lovely here in the land of Nod but it does not explain why 30000 New Zealanders are voting with their feet every year and going to live in Australia. It does not deal with that unfortunately and the reason it does not is that so many thinking young New Zealanders who can work have already gone. That is what is happening. 
Lesley Soper 
: And why? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: They have gone because they know they are much better off in Australia. They are 25 percent better off in terms of money in the pocket. The reason why is that they get paid more and are in an economy that can do that. We in this country have to try so much harder. I tell Mrs Soper that one of the reasons those young people are going is that they are sick of being told what to do by a nanny State—a pack of parenting experts who would not know one end of a child from the other; a pack of people who are always poking their sticky little beaks into everyone else’s business and telling people what they can and cannot do. And by goodness they had better think nice thoughts! They are sick and tired of social engineering. They are sick and tired of being told in this sort of document from this sort of Minister that they are happy and they are certainly not particularly happy with billboards that tell them that they are better off with Labour. They are certainly not happy about being told yet again how well off they are. This particular social report is just one of those superb indications of the wastage that happens with this Government. 
What did this Government have to do to get Television New Zealand’s profits up? Fifteen million dollars was spent on advertising the Working for Families package. That is what it spent its money on. That was down from the $20-something million it was about to spend until one of my colleagues pointed it out. This Government is so busy waving everyone bye-bye at the airport that it is not prepared to take the tough decisions. One thing I find so interesting with this Labour-led Government—and I should acknowledge Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party although I notice today that he did not use the correct name; that is the new name he has for it—is that it is so good at spin. We have heard that from John Tamihere. This social report which is supposed to tell us all how happy everything is in the land of Nod is one of the things— 
Steve Chadwick 
: Read it. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Strangely enough I actually did read it. Clearly that member did not. Obviously Mrs Chadwick either did not read it or is terribly impressed with glossy pictures and different coloured ink. They are some of the things that fascinate people in the Labour Party. They are very very fascinated by glossy pictures different coloured ink and strange little fonts that most people cannot read without their glasses on. This document is not meant for reading; it is meant for looking at the pictures. That is what this is all about. That is one of the reasons why people are leaving this country. They are sick of being told all about how happy we are in the land of Nod. When I listen to the “women’s brigade” of the Labour Party also known as “Labour’s Ladies’ Party” I understand why so many people are on the sickness benefits and the invalids benefit. People like that have no understanding of the real world. They have no understanding of what it is like to get a real job and get real pay because this is the best money they have ever seen in their lives.