Upston Louise; Sepuloni CarmelHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. So on the topic of emergency housing and the use of motels I think the Minister should just accept that actually on every one of those metrics you have failed and the result of that is children growing up in motels trapped in motels in places where social service providers are too scared to go because of the threatening behaviour the violence the gang intimidation and the drug use. The fact that the Minister doesn't have a deadline by when she will stop putting children in motels is a disgrace.So I'm going to move on. I want to address the issue of wage subsidies. So most New Zealanders would say that the wage subsidy roll-out last year was incredible—very successful—and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has had an incredible amount of well-deserved praise for the work that it did. So my question around the wage subsidy specifically relates to Delta. What planning was under way for Delta and for the wage subsidy that would be rolled out? Why is it that despite more than doubling the numbers of staff looking after the wage subsidy firms were waiting on average 17 days for round one? Why is it when the feedback had been positive in getting the wage subsidy out the door quickly a very cumbersome confusing system of a two-week application process was introduced and then when the first deadline appeared the system was not available it shut off at midnight and business people who are already incredibly stressed about running a business paying staff putting food on the table and paying their rent that MSD made it incredibly difficult to get the support to them? And I want to know as the final question: what additional increase for funding has MSD received for the wage subsidy and what forecasts are there for the wage subsidy to be utilised under the traffic-light system and at what traffic-light colours will the wage subsidy be payable and what will the rules be?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Some of those questions would actually be under the purview of the Minister of Finance and so I wouldn't want to step into his terrain otherwise I might get in trouble.With regards to the wage subsidy thank you to that member it has been a lot of work from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) working with Inland Revenue alongside the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and others and it was a huge exercise. The vast majority of people that I talked to have received the money in their accounts very quickly.I think with Delta what we did see was that there were some issues with regards to information that was given at the time that people were applying for the wage subsidy. That did not help with regards to delays and so that certainly was one of the reasons. Not ideal but of course I think on a number of occasions MSD have said that they are working as quickly and as hard as possible. Many of them could be rectified and sorted out and so in the end it did work out.With that issue when it was shut down for applications early the member said it was shut down at midnight. It was actually meant to be shut down at midnight. Unfortunately someone pressed the wrong button at shut it down at 7 p.m. and that's where there was confusion for anyone who might have gone on because they thought that they still had that five-hour period to be able to apply. So that was human error. MSD fronted about that. We also put communications out to people to say that they wouldn't be disadvantaged and that they could still apply and they could let MSD know if they had attempted to go on during that five-hour window and couldn't because of the fact that the application process had already been stopped as part of that.What we have learnt as we've gone I think as we've continued with the wage subsidy there have been continued bolstering of the integrity checks and I think that has been important as well as just the kind of fluidity in which MSD has been able to work except for as the member rightly put out where there were some delays because of information supplied and some technical issues between IRD and MSD. So it was verification of entitlement validating information with IRD and ensuring that the right employers were paid. So there were a range of issues that came up which caused those delays.