Beaumont Carol: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:17492] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I will follow on from my colleague the Hon Annette King. The work of the Ministry of Social Development and of the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development and Employment is meant to be about successful individuals building strong healthy families and communities but in these areas New Zealand is going backwards. We are becoming a more unfair society; we are becoming a worse place to bring up our children. The sad fact is that the Government is out of touch with the reality facing most New Zealanders particularly low and middle income New Zealanders. 
I will tell members some stories about people because this portfolio in particular is about people. These people have come to either my Panmure office or my Onehunga office. We see these people as a consequence of the policies that are reported on in this financial review. There was the mother of three who lost her job. She did not get any redundancy and she had a medium level of debt so she was reduced to seeking handouts of food in order to get by. She made sure her children were fed before she ate anything herself. Once a certain number of food parcels have been accessed the overwhelmed agencies handling these cases cannot give out more. Her situation was not about poor life choices as our Prime Minister would have us believe. 
There was the man on the sickness benefit who was reduced to eating out of rubbish bins because his household goods and his wallet had been stolen. His debt which he had subsequently run up through replacing fridges beds etc. was with Work and Income and two local appliance stores. The debt was too high for him to get any more advances and the repayments for the money borrowed from three sources took up most of his benefit after his rent was paid. He has mental health issues and his diet is so poor that he has been hospitalised twice because of it. These are real people. 
Then there was the man who thought that he would actually be better off in prison because at least in prison he would get something to eat. We have mothers coming into my offices who are living in tin sheds. We have had three in 1 month including one with a severely ill baby. These are real people. 
I could go on about housing issues but perhaps it goes past this portfolio so I will not continue down that track. But I am saying that this Government is out of touch with the reality of these New Zealanders. It does not have a plan to deal with them. In fact the best plan it seems to have come up with is giving the wealthy tax cuts costing $14 billion over 4 years building roads cutting money out of industry training and cutting funding for early childhood education. That is not a plan and that mismanagement of our economy is taking us backwards. 
That so-called plan is leaving many New Zealanders feeling helpless and hopeless. This is contrary to the idea of social development. We need a bold Government that governs for the benefit of all New Zealanders and understands the realities that they are facing. We do not need a Prime Minister who talks about these people making lifestyle choices. We certainly do not need Kate Wilkinson and Hekia Parata who think that New Zealand women who are underpaid and struggling to make ends meet should be grateful that there is a National Government supposedly focused on lifting economic performance. That is not what those women out there are feeling. 
The fact is that economic progress and social progress are inextricably linked. A plan that really addresses social and economic development will come only from a Labour Government focused on creating jobs and opportunities for our children and grandchildren. It is about the question of unemployment. We now have 100000 more people on benefits. Where is the plan to deal with that? Where is the active Government working to try to create a stronger economy that delivers jobs? Where is the support for research and development? Where is the support for skills? Where are the initiatives to lift productivity? 
Talking about the issue of skills how is it that we can have something so significant that would lift our productivity and increase employment security yet we cut funding out of that area? We cut $55 million out of industry training. It did not go into social development to pay for more job skills did it? No. That is an absolute outrage in the current economic climate. 
As my colleague Annette King said the situation of child poverty in this country—and the Salvation Army report talks about this—is that 22 percent of our children are living in workless households where they are below the poverty line. That fact impacts on the future of this country in terms of health education and our economic performance let alone the situation—