Prasad Rajen: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prasad Rajen: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 17 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3591. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chair. 
Hon Member 
: Finally! 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Finally indeed Mr Chair recognises me. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Oh no that’s unfair. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: I do apologise for that. I know I am a bit hard to recognise on this side of the Chamber. I would always support—and I say this to the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development as well—well-thought-out social policy; social policy that has gone through a good process and actually does make sense and is supported by a whole lot of evidence that is brought to the House. In the two terms I have been in this House whenever the Government has brought bills like that in the social development area around children this side has always supported those bills. But on this occasion we are not. I simply ask the Minister and indeed the speakers opposite to consider why would it be that this side of the Chamber would be so hostile to provisions like this. It is not because we are silly; it is because these proposals are silly and because these proposals are not well-thought-out. They are driven by something else; they are driven by a particular ideology and I want to come back to that as well. Clearly the officials have been given particular policy outcomes—and I acknowledge the officials here they worked very hard with us in the Social Services Committee—and that is what is driving this. But that is not the logic of what we ought to be doing in New Zealand if this is an issue. The Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is driven simply by a set of ideological statements which really are about welfare dependency. 
So what has been the Government’s approach as shown in the provisions in Part 1? Clearly it has been to think through a whole series of difficulties set up a Welfare Working Group get it to identify and create—welfare dependency is its own creation—and then begin to drive the particular ideology that the Government started with in the provisions particularly in Part 1 and Part 3 of this bill. That has been the Government’s approach in this particular bill. The Government also has an intellectually dishonest approach to what it has been saying. Certainly the chairman of the select committee Sam Lotu-Iiga indeed used that a little while ago. First you start with a large number 339000 of people who are either on welfare or are children who live in welfare-dependent homes. That is where you start. So you create in the country this notion that here we have this huge problem and then you drive this kind of process through. But how many people do the proposals that are in this bill affect? I have taken the officials’ own figures and it comes to about 31 948. So it is not exactly something that is going to alter the development pathway for a whole bunch of people. But somehow what the Government wants to do is to create this notion that here we are addressing welfare dependency. 
The next place where we saw that is the way the whole bill has been handled. It has been one of the most rushed processes one can imagine and this is not a bill that was well-thought-of in the select committee. Our submitters did not support the provisions of Part 1 of this bill. They did not. And yet it was rushed through. The Minister would not allow the select committee to have a decent period. What was the Government’s argument? The argument was that when the Welfare Working Group reported the country had had its say and that therefore it did not now need to have its say. That was also intellectually dishonest. It is taking our people for a ride and that is because the Government wants to drive this particular ideology through in a way that the Minister believes is the right way of doing things. So the rhetoric that the Minister uses here is that change is on the way. Bravado and rhetoric of that type is simply just that but in the end does not achieve fundamental change. The belief that as the Minister says this will achieve fundamental change—it will not. It really will not. It will give the impression that a lot is being done that welfare dependency will be throttled and everything else will be OK. Well it would not be. In the provisions of Part 1 that actually look at the—[ 
Bell rung 
] Mr Chairman! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Dr Rajen Prasad. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Thank you Mr Chairman. Things are looking up already! Thank you. I knew I needed to speak at this time. Thank you Mr Chairman you are so wonderful. [ 
Interruption 
] This is called banking; you have got to bank for your future! 
When we look at the attitude to young people that Part 1 reflects we see that it is actually a negative punitive attitude and it is now being shaped by the Minister herself. This is this new thing—let the agencies out there that know more about this than everybody else work with these young people and it will be all hunky-dory at the end. Well it will not be because this is a rather curious way of shifting resources into the private sector as well and letting them provide. 
Many of these young people who are in this 16-17 year age category have actually come out of Child Youth and Family Services; they were in care. They are quite vulnerable people. The State in a sense has not done very well by some of these kids. What would we do? We are applying in the provisions of Part 1 this punitive approach a little bit further. So the presumption is that these young people cannot manage themselves. That is the starting point of this Government and this bill in the provisions of Part 1. The attitude to these young people is “Let’s not give them a chance to show us what they can do but let us start with a presumption that they will waste their money and that they will not care for themselves.” Part 1 does this—it builds these quite Draconian provisions and I personally object to them because the young people I know actually do have the ability when trusted and guided to do very very well. But this bill does it the other way round. Young people have to earn the respect of some NGO out there or some social worker or some service provider and show that they are good enough to manage their own resources and have the little bit of money they are entitled to get. 
I think that is a curious approach. It is an anti - young people approach and I want to know from the Minister where the science is that says that this is the way young people operate. Which is the theory? What is the research that says that this will work? The Minister talks a lot about being evidence-based. Well this is not evidence-based. This is ideology-based and this is based on a punitive approach: “We will show somebody else out there that we are taking a tough approach.” And that is what bothers Labour members about this particular way that the Government is doing things. The Minister for Social Development shakes her head. The Minister can couch it any way she likes and you can criticise us and say: “You don’t care you don’t know. The Minister is the only one who does.” but in fact the science is not there Minister. All of the theory I know all of the research I know and much of the experience I know says that you work with young people you take them along and you do not start by saying: “No you are not going to get any control. Only when you are good will we give you some control.” That approach comes from a crazy reverse psychology that does not make sense at all and I think that is a fundamental flaw in this area. 
We know that this side of the Chamber has the experience of reducing the number of people on benefits through triaging through the same Work and Income that is there today. Triaging very early on it got people into work and had the lowest unemployment rate in the world. So the science is in that particular ministry right now. Given the space to do it it knows how to do it. But if given a policy direction that says “You have got to apply this approach based on welfare dependency.” then I think we have created a problem and now we are trying to fix it. And what are the chances of that working? Very very little. 
Let me just come back to ask the Minister to have a bit more thought around the young people who have been in Child Youth and Family care themselves are now or have been on the independent youth benefit and now will be caught by this particular programme. I mean these are people who need to be trusted who need to be taken very carefully by the hand and enabled to make something of themselves. Starting from the rhetoric of welfare dependency will not get us there.