Lee Melissa: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lee Melissa: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2874. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 I was just wondering whether we were sitting in this House listening to this debate on the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill or listening to a drama unfolding and I was about to fall asleep. It was a soothing voice however. I commend Jan Logie for the voice; it was a very soothing voice to fall asleep to.  
This is my first opportunity to speak on the bill and I have to wonder whether those members opposite were sitting in the same select committee as I was because they obviously have a completely different view of what actually happened in the select committee room. So I would like to take this opportunity to commend the tremendous work that the Minister for Social Development the Hon Paula Bennett has actually done. The previous Labour Government in 9 years did not have the guts to actually tackle— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! Using that term is not acceptable. 
MELISSA LEE 
: Thank you. What I was about to say was that our Minister has the courage to tackle something that the Labour Government did not have.  
When the architects of the welfare system set about designing how it was actually going to work they would never have imagined that we would have 220000 children growing up in welfare-dependent homes or that 170000 people would have been on welfare for most of the last decade. What welfare was designed for was to provide a safety net for people in difficult times and it is still so. But in New Zealand we have long-term welfare dependency which is trapping many people into a life of limited choice poverty and poor health. We all agree across this House that we need to actually do better and that is what this Government is doing.  
We know that often when people enter into the welfare system at a younger age they tend to stay on welfare for much longer and that is a fact. So for me we must provide an environment where these young people who would otherwise have very limited choice going into welfare have a choice for a better life outcome and a brighter future. By identifying these at-risk youth we can provide services to help them re-engage with education training and opportunities for employment and this bill sets out to do just that.  
This bill will deliver a more effective and active welfare system with greater support for our young people as aspects of our current welfare system are out of step with modern life—for example the widows benefit and women alone benefit. The current welfare system simply pays benefits to young people and teen parents and effectively leaves them to it. That is what the Labour Government did. Well that is just not good enough. Often these young people do not have the life skills or the experience to know how to budget or prioritise or to understand that education is what is required for a better outcome. They need good role models and advice on how they can best make things work for them.  
This bill will provide a youth and young parent payment and a youth support provider will work with them to get them back into education and training. The support provider will actually manage the young person’s benefit payments with essentials like rent and power paid directly and an allowance and payment card for living costs. Most of us know how to pay mortgage payments or rent or power on automatic payments because those are the essentials that we cannot spend from our pay packet. We know how to apportion it. Young people do not tend to and we need to actually teach them how to do that. This is a great bill and I commend it to the House.