Tolley Anne: Social Security Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Tolley Anne: Social Security Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 National is opposing the Social Security Amendment Bill at its third reading in the House today and people may ask why. Well we think this bill is another piece of political puffery from a Government that has run out of ideas and from a Minister for Social Development and Employment who has few ideas about how to manage a significant portfolio that has a profound effect on the lives of many of the most vulnerable New Zealanders—those who are reliant on the State for financial support. 
People may ask what this bill will do. It does what most New Zealanders thought the Government was already doing: getting New Zealanders into the workforce giving them a step up for themselves and their families giving them a step up towards self-esteem self-sufficiency and satisfaction. More important it gives them a step towards active participation in their communities. We all thought that was what Work and Income was doing anyway so why do we need this bill? Why do we need this bill and all the puffery that preceded its passage through this House? The Minister announced it was the biggest reform to the welfare system in 50 years. Yes the Minister actually said that when all it does is tidy up a few loose ends and essentially changes very little. 
The bill talks about sickness and invalids benefits whose numbers have risen 50 percent under this Minister and this Government. There are now over 125000 New Zealanders getting either a sickness or invalids benefit. That is a quarter of a million working-age people out of a country of 4 million in total. Come on Minister! That just cannot be right. Who would believe that so many working-age New Zealanders are too sick to work? 
Every time we raise this with the Minister and my colleague Judith Collins does this regularly at question time the Minister babbles on about what is happening in other countries under other Governments and under other Ministers—as if that makes it OK. Well it is not OK and I know from the people in my own electorate who have sat in my office and told me that some Work and Income staff are encouraging and have encouraged people from the unemployment register to move on to a sickness benefit in order to make the figures look better. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: The member should stop telling lies. Give me the names. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: I say to the Minister that it cannot be denied; it happens. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: No the member cannot say that. Please withdraw and apologise. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: I know of a chap in Opotiki who was on a temporary benefit for well over a year. Work and Income wanted to put him on to a sickness benefit and he did not want a bar of it. He sat in my office in Whakatane and said to me: “I’m a good worker. I have been sick but now I’m well I’m fit and I want a job. Why won’t they help me find a job?”. 
To the shame of this Minister and this Labour Government in the last 7 years about 30000 people have switched from the unemployment benefit to a sickness benefit. The Government is rorting the figures to make them look better but worse it is denying good people the opportunity to get out in the community and to work to support themselves and their family. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I am rather surprised but I think I did hear the member accuse me and the ministry of rorting the figures. I take offence at that and I would ask her to withdraw. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I will ask the member to withdraw and apologise. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: I withdraw and apologise. This Government is manipulating the figures so that it makes them look better. Thirty thousand people have moved from the unemployment benefit. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The Government does not produce the figures. The figures are produced by the Ministry of Social Development. They cannot in any way be manipulated by the Government. That is a totally inappropriate and outrageous statement. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member has raised a debating point. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: The worst thing about the manipulation of figures is that it is covering up the manipulation of people. People have a right to get the appropriate benefit and the appropriate assistance to help them find a job. The Minister has himself admitted that one out of five potential sickness or invalids beneficiaries who have been signed up by a doctor is fit for work. We might have expected that this amendment bill that we are debating today would address that issue but it does not. We thought maybe there would be a change in the assessment criteria because people who are being signed up on the sickness benefit may not be sick and should not be there. Surely this bill was the place for the Minister to tidy this up. But no we have no changes in the amendment bill to catch that 20 percent who should not be receiving a sickness benefit. So we can only assume that this Labour Government does not care that a fifth of the people claiming the benefit are not actually sick and are not being assisted to find their way back into the workforce. 
The previous speaker talked a lot about sanctions as if they were a dirty word. There are sanctions in this bill for those who will not put a plan together in order to get back into work. But there are not sufficient sanctions for people who refuse to work and who insist upon relying on the State to support them. Yesterday during the Committee stage I questioned the Minister about the existing provisions for sanctions and how often they were applied. I gathered from his answers that they were not applied very often. He has repeated comments about sanctions in the House today but this bill should have addressed some better sanctions on people who consistently refuse to turn up and take part in the workforce. 
I talked last night and I want to talk again about some records that were provided to me by a pack-house in my electorate. They were kept to show the work records of 21 people provided through Work and Income. In one gang of 21 people over the 18 weeks they were working the number dwindled to three people showing up for work in the last week. One of those worked a total of 18½ hours over 18 weeks and the other two worked a total of 8½ hours. Two people did not show up on the first day. Over the next 6 weeks one worked 67 hours in total. That is an average of 11 hours a week. The other worked 100 hours. That is an average of just 16 hours a week. But it got worse because they never turned up again for the following 12 weeks. They never ever showed their faces again. The guys managing the pack-house were tearing their hair out. They had work to be done. They had provided a bus to collect the workers. They had provided training and management tools and safety gear. All they wanted was the workers. 
This is a good industry—the kiwifruit industry. They were offering these workers the important job of pruning. It is essential that the pruning is done immediately after the crop is picked so that there is a crop in the next year. A career path was set out for those workers that they could eventually make their way through perhaps to become part of a workforce that had work for 9 months of the year. All the pack-house wanted was for the workers to come to work. What they got was a phone call every day from Work and Income with an ever-increasing list of who was not coming to work that day. 
So Work and Income knew that those workers were not showing up. By week 7 12 were no-shows two turned up and worked 4 days two worked 3 days three worked 2 days and two worked 1 day in the week. And that was just week 7. By the end—by week 18—18 out of the original 21 people were not turning up for work. After all that work effort and expense only three people took advantage of the job offer put in front of them. 
That is just not good enough. It is not good enough for them or for the community that has to support them. The pack-house itself employed someone to go round and knock on the doors of those people to wake them up and get them turned out for work and that worked spasmodically. But it should not have been the job of the people from the pack-house to do that; that should have been the job of Work and Income. With all the talk about assisting people into work and making sure there are provisions to do so anyone would have expected Work and Income to do that follow-up. We can only hope that this bill turns out to be more than mere puffery from this Minister and this deadbeat Government.