Upston Louise; Sepuloni CarmelHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. Of the three questions that I have asked two of them haven't been addressed at all so I'm going to ask that one again. On the wage subsidy extension which the Minister has said has been a $2 billion cost I specifically asked—because the intention of this scheme was to keep people in jobs; it was to financially support businesses to pay their employees—what proportion are getting 100 percent of their wages? What percent are getting 80 percent? And how many are getting only the $585 a week? I also want to know if the Minister can't answer the job losses in terms of the projected fiscal estimate schemes already at $2 billion what was the estimated estimate? And what is the expected reduction in benefit costs as a result of the extended wage subsidy being in place?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I'll answer some of those questions. Some of them I'm not quite understanding sorry. I heard the member say she wanted to know what the estimated estimate was; I wasn't sure what she was talking about.So the original wage subsidy was estimated I think from memory to be around $12 billion to $15 billion and the extension was—Hon Louise Upston: Just the extension.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: If the member will wait until I answer her question the extension was estimated from memory to be around $3.2 billion and to date as I mentioned earlier we have on the extension so far spent just under $2 billion. So I think it's around $1.9 billion on the wage subsidy extension. I think she also wanted to know how many jobs had been subsidised through the extension of the wage subsidy rather than the $1.7 million overall. That would be for the extension 436922 which is the latest information that I have. In terms of those that may have lost jobs despite having received the extension I don't have that information on me. However what I do know is that between around about I think 20 March and the end of June we've seen an increase of around I think 52000 on main benefits most of which were jobseeker benefit recipients. So those are the numbers that have come on benefit during this COVID period. Also with that we did see recently too that Treasury initially had quite a high forecast for unemployment. They have slightly reduced that in anticipation of the fact that it may not get that high but we have to wait for the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update before we have a real understanding of what that looks like. They have also I think stated that it could take longer despite the fact that the peak of unemployment may not reach to the same extent. I do need to note that alongside doing this though we have been very conscious of the fact that we need to put an investment into employment upskilling and training job creation and support for people to get into work. And actually as Gareth Hughes mentioned earlier around $250 million will go towards supporting something like an additional 900 new staff members many of whom will be working at the front line with respect to not just income support but also work support. I mention that because we have to prepare ourselves. We have to be prepared for job losses that may come about because of COVID.Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I've got lots of questions so I'll keep them briefer with the hope that we get more answers. Is it anticipated that those on paid parental leave would be invited to apply for the wage subsidy extension? The second is: how many businesses have been written to offering them the wage subsidy extension and if they haven't applied for it wouldn't that be assumed that they didn't require it?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): You can't blame the wage subsidy and paid parental leave at the same time. That rule applied with the original wage subsidy and also now with the extension. In terms of whether we wrote to people to inform them of the fact that we were going to have a wage subsidy extension I'm not sure if we did. However in saying that the feedback that I've received from businesses from chambers from people across the country—self-employed people who have accessed the wage subsidy—is that it has been a non-complex process and the information has been available. We certainly haven't had a lack of people applying given that 1.7 million jobs have been covered by the wage subsidy. So I think that really the knowledge out there across New Zealand across businesses for how they access the wage subsidy has been pretty good. I'd be surprised if there were any businesses that weren't aware of the wage subsidy and how they would access that.Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): How many fraud investigations are currently under way with regard to the wage subsidy and how many prosecutions are under way?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Last I checked I think there were just over 500 investigations that have been put forward—54 have been resolved and about just over half of the investigations were currently in action. So some still to start; no prosecutions as of yet. I do need to point out actually that where there have been refunds from businesses because for whatever reason they haven't ended up qualifying for the wage subsidy actually by and large it's been employer initiated. So I think around just under 14000 refunds have been requested but of the 14000 just over 13000 were initiated by the employer and the remaining were initiated by the Ministry of Social Development.So by and large New Zealand companies New Zealand businesses have been very honest in this process. Where there have been concerns raised we have started investigations or we will be starting investigations but some of them require quite robust conversations to get the details sorted. Many just didn't anticipate that they would do as well as what they did. They thought that they would experience the 30 percent or the 40 percent loss and then they didn't. Then it's just been an honest conversation and then where necessary employers mostly have returned the money without having to be asked but because they initiated that refund.