Woods Megan: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woods Megan: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2882. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I am very happy to rise to speak against the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill especially after listening to what we have endured in this House tonight. We have been told that Labour has kept its people in poverty. We have even been misled when the member opposite Alfred Ngaro put his hand over his heart. Well we might like to suggest it was covering a gap so that the wind did not whistle through. This is a serious issue that we are facing here: to be told that Labour has kept our people in poverty. Well let us talk about the facts. We heard his colleague the chair of the Social Services Committee talking about how National has created more jobs than ever before. Well here is Statistics 101—that is called population growth. The simple fact of the matter is that there are 52 percent more unemployed people in this country than when the members opposite took office. They should be ashamed of themselves. They have thrown more New Zealanders on the scrap heap through their inaction and their inability to do anything to create jobs in this country. 
The reality is that there are now more than 40000 people on the unemployment benefit. There are 50000 New Zealanders leaving this country every year. If you want to talk about taking people out of poverty create jobs. When Labour came into office in 1992 there were 162000 people on the unemployment benefit. By the time we left office in 2008 there were 17700 on the unemployment benefit. This is the way that you beat poverty. We are hearing some heckling from the members opposite about getting real in the real world. I want to read a quote from John Key at the Job Summit when he launched the beginning of this brave new world and the glittering future that National was going to offer. At the Job Summit Mr Key said: “I don’t want to spend much time talking about how difficult economic conditions are at the moment … I’m here to do something about it.” Well he has done precisely nothing except preside over an ever-increasing dole queue and that is not good enough.  
What is more this bill has young New Zealanders paying for the deficit of the Government’s thinking. Those members have no idea how to create jobs. I want to focus on some of the impacts on young people of this bill. In the Budget it was trumpeted that there was going to be an upfront investment of $287.5 million over 4 years. Well this comes at the expense of $155 million that is already committed—let us not kid anyone here—and $58.8 million of that is being cribbed back from the Youth Transition Services scheme the very scheme that is there to get young people from training and into work. We have no objection to wraparound services but we do not see why you would get rid of a scheme that actually in many cases is being successful. Why not build on the scheme that is already there? That is what we believe would have been a far better solution. We think it is really telling in places where the scheme is working and the obvious model was with Dale Williams in Otorohanga and Youth Transition Services. The fact is that these people did not even tender in the first round. These people do not see how the new schemes being put in place are going to work. We have zero to two young people in that area who are unemployed. 
 We also have huge concerns about the tendering out of the provision of these services. We have clear evidence from Australia and we have clear evidence from the United Kingdom that there is gaming of the system and that the incentives are not there for providers to actually get young people into success. When you get paid your $1200 bonus for getting someone to National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 you do not have to be a genius to work out that the providers are going to steer clear of the most challenging kids many of whom do not even have NCEA level 1. The effort required to get them to level 2 is just going to be too immense in the time frames they are given. This is not a bill that is designed to help young people. This is not a bill that is designed to create employment. This is a bill that has young people once again paying for— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member.