Dalziel Lianne: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8919. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am glad that I have an opportunity to speak on this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill because I have listened to a number of the comments that have been made on the other side of the Chamber and I have to say that I am very disappointed that there seems to be a complete misrepresentation really of the argument that we are making on this side of the Chamber. There is no question that every single person in this House is appalled when there are people who want to work and who cannot find a job—absolutely appalled that that is the case—because it must be a priority in any economy to ensure that those jobs are there. But I have listened to some very peculiar arguments particularly the one about how important it was to get your child into early childhood education so that you could go back to work as quickly as possible and that that was not an issue one way or the other. 
Well I just want to ask someone this question. In fact the Minister in the chair could perhaps answer it the best. If one knows through having read extensive literature on the impact on child development around certain features that a child’s educational outcomes are best predicted by mum’s educational outcomes—by her qualifications; not dad’s but mum’s—if that is the biggest predictor of how well a child will do at school and what qualifications that child will leave with what would you do with somebody on a DPB faced with the choice and with that knowledge? Would you send that woman out to work for a minimum-waged job—any job—just to get her into the workforce or would you send her back to school? Which one would you choose? 
The Government has made it absolutely crystal clear which one it would choose because a few years ago it took away the training incentive allowance for tertiary education. The Government left it there for the basics for the preliminary work that you would want to do just to get into a basic diploma course but nothing more than that. It used to be available for somebody who wanted to bring themselves up to speed with a tertiary qualification to take them into nursing to take them into teaching to take them into a profession of some sort—maybe one day to even have the ambition to be the Minister for Social Development. That is what the training incentive allowance was for. 
So I think that the Government has to seriously rethink its approach. It is starting from the wrong position. It looks at somebody on a benefit and it says that that person is dependent on the benefit. It looks and makes judgments about the individual. It starts from all the negatives from all the deficits. It is a deficit model that this Government has adopted. 
I want to talk about a strengths-based model because I believe that is the way we should go. I heard the most inspiring speech at a conference I attended recently. This woman was running a company that helps people off welfare and into paid work. That is what the company does. But it certainly does not have the ambition of getting anyone into the minimum-waged jobs that we are hearing about in this debate this afternoon. 
She described the company’s approach with a story. Here is the story. Two women go into the London office of this particular organisation. One has been living rough for 5 years. She has not showered. Her clothes are dirty. She is in her late 50s. She has become estranged from her family. She has had an anxiety disorder. She has faced some pretty tough times. She has a difficult condition. She wets herself while she is sitting in the waiting room. It is a difficult situation. The other woman who comes into the office has been out of work for a number of years but she used to work for a major corporation as the personal assistant to the general manager. So she has got great skills but she has a skill that nobody learns these days. She knows shorthand. Shorthand is the most fantastic skill you could possibly have and I know that many people value it. So this is a great opportunity for this woman to get herself back into work. She loves animals. That is her passion. She loves her grandchildren. So she has got a lot going for her; that is the way they see her. Of course the woman then said that these two women are the same woman.