Bennett David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3412. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
3. 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What are the benefits of getting better results from public services? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 The Government has set targets across 10 results for the Public Service to achieve over the next 5 years. These focus on difficult issues like reducing crime reducing long-term welfare dependency and reducing educational underachievement. The benefits of getting better results are that we get a community that is safer with better education and less dependency and the Government saves money. But I might say that focusing on getting better results is relatively new for the New Zealand Government because the last Government was focused on spending money not on getting results. 
David Bennett 
: How does getting better public service results benefit individuals? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Despite tight Budgets this Government has been determined to continue to improve the lives of New Zealanders through better public services. That means that when we spend billions on education we actually expect more children to reach reasonable levels of achievement. When we spend billions on law and order we expect a safer community with less crime and we expect less reoffending among former prisoners. We do not think it is adequate simply to spend billions and tell the country that we care; we want to get real results for the community and for individuals. 
David Bennett 
: How does getting better public service results benefit taxpayers? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Taxpayers have been rightly concerned that under the previous Government billions more was spent on public services yet our intractable social problems remained unresolved. Despite the fact that they know money is tight they are backing this National-led Government to spend about the same money on community and public services as the previous Government did—in some cases less—but at the same time to get much better results because this Government is about getting results not getting more money. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I seek leave of the House that David Bennett be given odium money for asking those questions. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! [ 
Interruption 
] Order! The right honourable gentleman knows that is not a point of order. 
David Bennett 
: Supplementary question. How does getting better public service results benefit— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! The Speaker is still on his feet. He was about to say that although it was not a point of order he had a smidgen of sympathy with the member. 
David Bennett 
: How does getting better public service results benefit the economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I am not surprised at the Opposition’s reaction given that earlier this week it said that achieving things like less welfare dependency and lower crime rates was all “meaningless stuff” whereas we take it seriously. The public sector makes up about a quarter of the economy so any improvement in productivity of public services flows through to the wider economy. But the economy also benefits because for instance if more of our young people achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 they have the basic competence to go on to further training thereby lifting our skill levels and the potential value added in our economy. We are determined to lift for instance the number of young New Zealanders who do achieve NCEA level 2.