Bradford Sue: Estimates Debate —  
Bradford Sue: Estimates Debate —  
[Volume:610;Page:7178] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 A number of interesting issues were raised during the Social Services Committee’s examination of the estimates for the Ministry of Social Development this year particularly in relation to the Work and Income side of its operations. First of all there is the ongoing question of why so many more people are to be found proportionately on the invalids and sickness benefits than in years gone by. For example the number of people on the invalids benefit has doubled in the last 10 years and the number on the sickness benefit has increased by over 50 percent. As a result of rising concern about why that is happening—and it is not new news—the Government has responded by investing $400000 in research into it this year. 
While the Green Party commends the Government for its willingness to confront and analyse the problem I suggest that with some 350 or so policy analysts at its beck and call within the Ministry of Social Development itself that particular ministry should already have the capacity to find out the answers. I also suggest that those answers are actually self-evident both to the Minister and to the ministry—and in fact pretty much to anyone else who has been following socio-economic and health trends in our society over the last decade. 
The Government acknowledges as Steve Maharey himself did in the Chamber earlier this afternoon that a lot of the reasons for the increase in numbers on the sickness and invalids benefits are well known. They include the fact that we have an aging population like many other countries that the retirement age has been lifted to 65 that people are being pushed forcibly off the accident compensation tail and into the benefit system—that is if they are lucky—that hospital waiting lists are growing and that the number of people with a serious mental illness is rising. 
 When people are older and disproportionately sicker whether physically or mentally in part because of failures in other parts of the Government like the health system it is no wonder that the number of people on those benefits goes up. Personally I think it would have been a lot more useful to spend the extra $400000 on finding and actioning solutions across and between various parts of Government like Work and Income the Accident Compensation Corporation and the mental health physical health and disability sectors rather than on more analysis that I believe will simply tell us what we know already. 
The second area I would like to touch on today is that of special benefits. The cost of the special benefit is forecast to increase from nearly $83 million in 2002-03 to over $130 million in 2003-04. The Green Party welcomes this Government’s avowed commitment to do more to make sure that people receive their proper entitlements but at the same time we are concerned at the ever-increasing reliance on third-tier income support like special benefits and special-needs grants to make up what families need to live on when what really needs to happen is a wholesale reform of the benefit system so that the core benefit for all beneficiaries is enough to live on in the first place. 
As the Ministry of Social Development itself pointed out last year in its report to the incoming Government a huge amount of Work and Income staff time is wasted on administering the massive complexities of the around 35 different benefits allowances and supplements that are potentially available to people. I am sure it would be much more economical for this or any Government to throw the 1964 Social Security Act out of the window along with all its amendments and to immediately rewrite all relevant law and regulation in the form of a slimmed-down sensible system governed by the principles of simplicity sufficiency and universality. 
The Minister himself continues to promise that under Labour that will happen one day and that a lot of work on it has already been done—and I say good on Labour. However that day is an awfully long time in coming and it is galling for people who are barely surviving on benefits right now to see $4 billion or more in Budget surpluses and billions more in the “Cullen superfund” while benefits stay at levels where they cannot be lived on and Work and Income itself depends on food banks to feed many of its so-called clients. 
 Finally and again in relation to the special benefit the Green Party would like to highlight the ongoing disparity in how that and other third-tier benefits are administered around the country. The Ministry of Social Development rejects the findings of the  
Widening the Gaps 
 report put out last year which showed that Pakeha were more likely to obtain a special benefit than Maori and Pacific Island people and that there were huge geographical variations in how special benefits were administered. However even in the department’s own statistics for February of this year variations continue. For example at one extreme 59.1 percent of the potentially eligible people receive the special benefit at the Kapiti office while at the other extreme 2.7 percent of those at Gisborne and 2.5 percent of those at Ruatoria luck out. If that does not show regional and ethnic variation I do not know what does.