Bennett Paula: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17663] 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I personally think this sector is the most vital third sector in New Zealand when we look at what it does with the resources that it gets. It works throughout New Zealand and across the board in such a range of services from the volunteers at surf lifesaving clubs and in sports and clubs with our young children to the volunteers who work in essential social services. They do it without a doubt better than the Government can every time. When we are in our communities and look around we see people who are addressing the needs and the wants of their community in a way that no Government can and no Government should in my view. The Government has a role to play in leadership direction and in some of the resourcing. It is quite interesting because in looking at these estimates and from what I hear from the sector they were so grateful to John Key when he raised in January last year the role of the not-for-profit sector and what a vital role it will play in New Zealand. 
They needed to have a wake-up call. Someone needed to deliver it. They needed to hear what the issues were and all of a sudden we have had John Key in what was possibly his most important speech—his first speech as leader of the National Party—saying he would stand up and put a stake in the ground. He said we could not deliver what we needed to deliver for New Zealanders without the not-for-profit sector. We cannot do it without that voluntary and community sector; it is absolutely vital and critical to this. We need to bring in a level of trust and a full funding model and we need to address a lot of the discrepancies. I would like to take my hat off to United Future which has stepped up and said we need to fix some of the payment and the tax stuff and we are delighted to see our policy coming through like that. 
We are equally delighted to see full funding being part of the language finally. It has taken a while to get there. It was certainly John Key who turned round and said in January last year that it was a key focus and that that squabbling should not be happening. The example we often use is if we pitch for a service and it is something that has to happen then why would we say that 60 percent or 80 percent of the funding for it to happen is enough? It simply is not. 
We hear it everywhere we go. In my role as the spokesperson on community affairs and the voluntary sector—which I love; I just think I am the luckiest member of Parliament because I have that role—I get to go out there and talk to people in these services. I constantly hear from people out at the coalface and who are doing some pretty gut-wrenching jobs to be honest. They are certainly often working with people around abuse stuff. They do some counselling and it is pretty gut-wrenching. We hear about the contracts they have and they say there is no way it is anywhere near covering the actual cost in some cases to provide counselling and trauma services to young children. 
So they often fudge those sorts of numbers. We all hear those stories and I know that the Minister in the chair the Hon Ruth Dyson would not be surprised to hear these stories as well. People in these services say their contract is to see 15 children for X number of hours and because they are not for profit and they care—which is the main reason they are doing it—they then turn round and see say 25 children during a lot more hours that do not fit into that funding but their commitment to deliver that counselling is to the community so they do it. 
We have a responsibility to step up and acknowledge that and to make sure that the funding the support and the resources are there. We do not do it for either of the other two sectors we have in society. In fact what we do with the Government sector is to put more money into it. We put more and more people in and we grow the bureaucracy. We grow the bureaucracy to such an extent that it is stifling and crippling the not-for-profit sector which is what it is doing at the moment. I had someone from a not-for-profit group talk to me just on Friday who spends half the time introducing a bureaucrat from one department to a bureaucrat from another department just so that the two bureaucrats will talk in order to make the funding and resourcing of that not-for-profit group easier. For example when volunteers are talking about a health contract with people from the mental health services they will also talk to other people about housing issues which steps into the area of the Housing New Zealand Corporation. They do not see people from those agencies talking together so they step in.