Banks John: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Banks John: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3764. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. I start by congratulating the Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett not just on this bill but on her courage empathy and diligence with this rather complex portfolio which she manages on a day-by-day basis. Her success and her progress is something that gladdens me. I also give credit to the chairman of the Social Services Committee and the select committee but particularly to the leadership of the select committee under the member Sam Lotu-Iiga—a first-class member of Parliament doing a great job on that select committee. 
Welfare reform is something that the ACT Party has long championed. ACT MPs and supporters have worked hard in the wilderness to bring about welfare reform. This reform is long overdue. We have made the case that our system no longer works and that too many New Zealanders are left out of work out of hope and out of dignity by a system forced upon them. The system can give somebody else’s cold hard cash but nothing more and that is the problem with socialism: you run out of other people’s money very quickly.  
ACT explained that children and young mothers need love and community—love and community that a bank transfer at midnight cannot give. The ACT Party is glad to see mutual obligation become what everyone in this House deep in their soul knows is right—mutual obligation. One hopes that one day reforming the Resource Management Act the Government spending limits become what everybody knows is right. For now we are pleased with welfare reform and welfare reform is the incremental step to progress for our country; it is taking people without hope taking people without a job removing the welfare cheque and giving them the dignity and opportunity to provide for themselves through work.  
Along the way this bill has been championed by the ACT Party supported by the Welfare Working Group and I want to thank the Welfare Working Group for the hard work that it has done to contribute to this. The group found that one in eight working-age New Zealanders is on some form of handout borrowed every week from the savings of the Swiss the Germans and the Chinese. We cannot continue to borrow on the backs of our great-grandchildren yet born for a welfare system that fails our youth today—fails dignity and fails opportunity fails hope and fails self-reliance fails self-reliance and fails self-esteem. So in this parliamentary term welfare reform is supported not only by ACT but by the recommendations from the working group and is part of our confidence and supply agreement. This Minister this young Minister who knows about these matters these complex matters has helped it by running it hard.  
It is ACT’s vote that makes the reforms possible; it is not the votes of the people opposite who will take from the Chinese the Swiss and the French and spend their money by borrowing it from them on a welfare system that fails us. It is the ACT’s confidence and supply agreement that stipulates the obligations of parents as per the Welfare Working Group—the obligations of being a responsible parent. Having children is a God-given right but an awesome responsibility and it needs to be sheeted home.  
ACT’s confidence and supply agreement also includes initiatives for better support for at-risk families. It is the at-risk families we need to target through income management and the contestable provision of social services. The contestable delivery of social services is critical to the partnership between the State which gives the hand up and the recipient who takes the handout. When I was first elected to Parliament 4 decades ago in the electorate of Whangarei the local police the local social workers and local employers knew everyone in the city. Welfare then could work because in Whangarei all those years ago we were in it together. Now the State has alienated people from the social welfare system. So this bill represents a small step towards that kind of mutual connectivity and responsibility. The community used to say to people on welfare: “We will help you but you have a few things to do for yourself.” We do not hear that any longer. Self-obligation brings self-respect self-respect brings self-esteem and self-esteem brings dignity. That is what this bill seeks to achieve.  
The current welfare reforms do not propose all stick with no carrot because you will not have reform with just stick and no carrot but with true mutual obligations. That is what welfare is about. If we are going to borrow from the savings of others we have to have a true mutual obligation that we are going to help ourselves to help those who are helping us help ourselves. They do not merely take away benefits for non-compliance but will pay extra for recipients who do comply with new obligations and incentives for new obligations because handouts always require that. If you believe in true socialism of taking from people who work hard to give to people who do not work hard then there must be some social obligation and that obligation is two ways. This sense of give and take is closer to the kind of human relationship of which mechanistic welfare has robbed us. Mechanistic welfare has robbed this country. But the ultimate dignity that a person can have is the dignity of work. Work builds self-belief. Work builds self-esteem. Think about that term self-esteem. It is not other people’s opinion of you but your opinion of yourself that builds self-esteem.  
This bill re-emphasises the importance of work. It re-emphasises the importance of work for adults and the importance of working role models for young children and working role models in the community. It acknowledges that in many families with small children both parents work at least part-time. I salute those hard-working families. We put hard-working families on a pedestal. We know it is difficult to raise kids and work around the clock for two-parent families struggling to make ends meet. We see those people as good people and if we are going to transfer at midnight their hard-earned taxes by way of a bank transfer to people who are seeking support from the Government at a time of need then there needs to be some obligation to the hard-working people who are providing the money otherwise it is called blatant socialism.  
Minister Bennett and our coalition partners are investing in the social capital of this country by realigning welfare with the notion of mutual obligation and work. This is what this bill should have been called: the “Mutual Obligation of Self-respect and Self-reliance (and Giving Back Something to the Community that is Funding the Welfare) Amendment Bill”. 
Hon Paula Bennett 
: The next one. 
Hon JOHN BANKS 
: We can call the next one that. We look forward to seeing further bills and enacting further elements of our supply agreement in these coming months. We are turning the corner in New Zealand. The ACT Party has played a long role in all of this. We have long argued that this 40-year experiment in open-ended welfare has not worked because it is based on wrong values. We have argued that a culture of mutual obligation must replace a culture of entitlement and this bill is the arrival of that long march. I am glad to be supporting it as the leader of the ACT Party.