Sepuloni CarmelHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): It's a privilege to be able to speak in this debate tonight and can I acknowledge the co-leader of the Green Party for the speech that she's just given and also the fact that the Green Party in our confidence and supply agreement prompted the overhaul of the welfare system that this Government has committed to. Can I just say that I've been listening to the speeches in the committee tonight and I'd like to respond to some of what is being said.Firstly I want to start by acknowledging the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and the amazing job that they have done—11 members of that expert advisory group who were deliberately selected because of the fact that they represented a broad spectrum of New Zealanders. We know as a Government that a broad spectrum of New Zealanders have to access the welfare system at some point in their lives and so it was appropriate that we had that representation. The fact that those 11 members could come to a consensus on 42 recommendations really shows that when you take an evidenced approach to something like this that is this important then actually you can get agreement. When it's not political ideology when it is in fact an evidence-based decision-making process with a group of New Zealanders who perhaps never had that much to do with each other but are all looking out for the best interests of New Zealand you can get consensus. So I want to acknowledge all of the members of that expert advisory group and particularly the leadership of Professor Cindy Kiro in bringing that group together and the amazing report that we were presented with.Can I say that really coming into Government—and this is reflected in the last year of action in the Ministry of Social Development (MSD)—the overhaul didn't start from the report but we needed the report to inform the work that the Government is doing. We started it immediately and what we could do immediately was actually begin the culture change—service delivery change—that needed to happen in the Ministry of Social Development. It's very clear to me that actually both sides of the House do believe and support one thing we have in common and that is that New Zealanders need to be supported where able into work and that employment needs to be a focus for us. We don't dispute that on this side of the House; in fact we support that wholeheartedly but the motivation—the agenda—behind that perhaps differs on the different sides of the House.We saw with the previous Government's welfare reforms that actually what happened when they were introduced was that within 18 months of people going off benefit—because that was actually their target; just reducing the number of people on benefit—50 percent of those people were back on benefit. I don't think any New Zealander would think that that is actually the optimum outcome. In fact that really underpins our drive which is to make sure that yes we support New Zealanders into meaningful and sustainable work where they are able to take up that employment but it has to be meaningful and sustainable employment because we don't want to see the churn on and off benefit that we saw under the previous Government.So our focus has been on how we create meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities for New Zealanders who do enter the welfare system so that we can assure them that they are getting all the support that they need to actually do better for themselves and better for their families and to have better long-term prospects—much better I think than the previous Government who were focused on short-term numbers getting people off benefit and trying to report on the fact that that was a positive outcome when in fact it's proven not to be. So I don't apologise that for the last year MSD has been focused on improving their service delivery improving the culture at MSD offices around the country because every New Zealander who needs support from the welfare system deserves to be treated with dignity and to have their mana upheld.Simon O'Connor: So does the taxpayer.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I just heard from National that they're saying Well the taxpayers don't necessarily think that." Well I'm sure that actually the taxpayers do think that. For the 1.1 million New Zealanders who have to access the support of the welfare system many of them are actually not on main benefits. There are actually 290000 main beneficiaries—[Time expired]"